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originally published on WildWeb, 6/7/99
She Said
...
'Austin Powers' is required viewing for the pop culturally savvy.
By
JESS BARRON / I have a confession. I melodramatically mouth "You
complete me" to my dog in moments of affection. Sometimes this is
accompanied with the sign-language for "I love you." Although
my colleague Allyson might think I
am just an extremely loving dog owner who has a soft spot for "Jerry
McGuire," any other person on this planet would immediately realize
that Dr. Evil is my latest pop hero and I'm not ashamed to admit it.
Not only did I stand in line to see "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" on opening weekend, but I attended a pre-party where the original Mike Myers flick was shown on video and the attendees were dressed in psychedelic '60s mod attire. (I wore a bright purple macrame mini-dress, if you must know.)
Did I feel like a a fool? Or worse, a follower? No, not at all. I had a fabulous time and relished another excuse to pepper my speech with the mock-mod parlance that Myers has brought into everyday dialogue.
Movies and TV series that are able to grab the imaginations of an entire generation, or even an entire nation, are not something to be trifled with. As Mr. T's B.A. Baracus from "The A-Team" would say, "I pity the fool who misses out on a cultural touchstone." Well, he might not have sounded quite so articulate, but you wouldn't even be aware of any of this had you refused to watch "The A-Team."
What constitutes required viewing for a pop-savvy person? The original "Star Wars" trilogy, all of the '80s John Hughes movies, including "The Breakfast Club," "Pretty in Pink," "Sixteen Candles," "Some Kind of Wonderful," and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," and multiple viewings of every episode of "Seinfeld," "The Simpsons" and even "The Brady Bunch." These are films and TV shows to be celebrated and revered, to be watched with friends, and to be discussed and dissected for years. References to these films and shows will pop up in casual conversation well into the new millennium. Imagine conversations without "D'oh!" "Yadda, yadda, yadda" or a whiny "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia." It's a lonely lingual landscape.
When I first arrived at college, for example, I was thrown together with people from all over the country -- places I had never been before like Missouri and Oregon -- and one thing we immediately bonded about other than Nine Inch Nails, Jane's Addiction and Nirvana was "Star Wars," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and episodes of "Little House on the Prairie." We were as excited as kids as we recounted our favorite scenes, songs, characters and episodes in a stream of rapid-fire, "Remember whens." It's great to be able to share laughs and moments of TV nostalgia with people you've never met before.
Similarly, when I visited friends in California a few weeks ago, one of these friends started using Dr. Evil's patented pantomime quote marks around every other word -- whether it was "laser," "razor" or "gay-dar," and it was simultaneously ridiculous and contagious as adding "baby" and "shagadelic" to conversation. We live 3,000 miles apart and hadn't seen each other for months, but we could all share in these jokes.
As a nation made up of people from diverse ethnicities and religions the United States doesn't really have any of its own universal shared customs -- except for commercialism and mass-market popular culture. Advertisements, fast food chains, big Hollywood movies and nationally syndicated TV series are what we all can share as our cultural canon. Back in the day and in other cultures, people shared the Bible, plays and classical literature as their canon, and the educated and savvy made their references from these. Today, we in our millennial temporary culture the important references are made to "The Simpsons" and Austin Powers.
And let's not forget the best thing about Austin Powers (and this goes for the Simpsons as well) -- the referential humor that spoofs all of the pop culture that came before it -- from James Bond movies to "Jerry Springer" to Will Smith's "Just the Two of Us."
If you refuse to enjoy the fruits of our collective media culture, you're missing out on more than just laughs -- you're missing out on shared experiences. And, besides, the in-jokes will be referenced more times than Mike Myers can say mojo.
What do you
think? Is Austin Powers a cultural touchstone? Or do you agree
with Allyson that he's painfully has-been? Tell us.
WildWeb | July 07, 1999