Lu récemment ce texte assez pertinent sur l'instinct grégaire qui sévit sur internet et la manière dont la culture se choisit des boucs émissaires :
Citation:
The culture agrees: that thing is the worst.
You see this all the time where folks, collectively as a culture, decide that some artist or artwork is acceptable to tee off on without mercy. It’s de rigueur to lay into whatever movie Adam Sandler comes out with, to deride each and every one of his films in the exact same gleefully cruel terms, to thoughtlessly hammer the shit out of every one of his movies as a matter of course.
It’s a weird phenomenon, it functions almost like mass hysteria: movies as distinct as Ridiculous Six (a shambling, R-rated ensemble western-comedy featuring prodigious amounts of heroic horse diarrhea, a film made by a group of real-life buddies with seemingly no concern for the its potential audience) and Pixels (stereotypically bland, test-focused sci-fi SPFX summer blockbuster made by a filmmaker whose entire life mission is make his films as generic and personality-free as possible) are described in the exact same terms, tarred with the exact same brush. Whether you think both Pixels and Ridiculous 6 are AWFUL!!! or not, they are not similar and they are certainly not so bad as to warrant unanimous, culture-wide derision.
I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but for whatever reason when it comes to Adam Sandler, it’s acceptable - no, it’s expected - for everyone to pile on. That this happens with Sandler isn’t entirely unfair (he’s had a long career, so folks can reasonably anticipate despising another one of his movies if they’re inclined to do so) - but what’s extremely bizarre is when there’s a unanimous cultural consensus on movies that people haven’t even seen.
Mortdecai was a box office bomb - it made very little money. I’m confident that the majority of the jokes being made at its expense are being made by people who haven’t even seen it. That makes the gleeful, self-congratulatory derision constantly flung its way completely baffling - why Mortdecai? Why single out it, of all films? It’s far from the worst “ill-conceived Blockbuster” on Johnny Depp’s resume, it’s not even the one where he wears a notably dumb hat. Is it because it tries to do something slightly different than literally any other film in 2015? It can’t be because it botches the tone of an interesting book (because no one has read it) or because the filmmaking is so incompetent or its ideas so offensive or its execution so infuriating (because they’re not.)
But come early December, when the Oscar promotional machine chugs into gear and critics dutifully perform their role in the marketing of star-brands and entertainment-product by organizing promotional “Top 10 Best and Worst Films of the Year” lists, they all peek into their little notebooks and remember it’s time for them to take their final shots at Mortedecai, one of the worst piece of shit they’ve ever seen. And everyone squeals with delight, “Yes, Mortdecai, I hate his stupid mustache! That movie is the worst! Certainly the worst!”* It’s fucking bizarre, man.
What’s gotten ahold of everyone? With Hot Tub Time Machine 2, you can at least see the machinations cranking in the skulls of the brainless: “it’s a dumb title for a movie, therefore I am funny if I point it out.” It reminds me of Stephin Merritt complaining about critics who pantingly mention the title of “69 Love Songs” as though it’s a joke they’re making, not repeating a joke he already made. Do people not understand that calling a movie Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is a joke that the filmmakers have already made? That it’s an intentionally dumb title? It’s not some clever observation you’re making, not a little testament to your good taste and well-honed sense of everyday irony that you spotted this little bit of silliness.
People are dangerous, man. They’re deluded - they're consistently smug without warrant. The people with the lousiest senses of humor think they’re the funniest fuckers on Earth and the impulse for the crowd, in its single voice, to bag on Mortedecai is the same collective impulse to cheer as traitors to the Soviet state swing from the gallows. The glee of the bloodthirsty crowd, the self-congratulation of a unanimous mass engaged in cruelty, the same lazy jokes about Adam Sandler’s laziness, mongoloid tittering about Johnny Depp’s headgear. Watch out, man: that finger always needs something to point at as the crowd behind it squeals with a joy and cruelty beyond sense and logic - someday it might point at the people and things you love.
I loved Mortdecai and Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is what I’m saying. Fuck you all.
* I should point out that Noel Murray nailed it by predicting Mortdecai will be an Ishtar/Hudson Hawk style reclamation project in the future. That is to say, it is destined to be rediscovered and then praised too much.
http://thepinksmoke.com/2015yearinreviewchris.html
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