Which leads us to a revelation perhaps even too sophisticated for those professed cultural sophisticates. – Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, 1961 The element of language still plays an important part in this conception, but what happens on the stage transcends, and often contradicts, the words spoken by the characters. The Theatre of the Absurd…tends toward a radical devaluation of language, toward a poetry that is to emerge from the concrete and objectified images of the stage itself. Plainly, The Fast and the Furious tells us action movies can be about something Torque answers with “why should they?” So, when we lay out the bro-pleasing, soap opera seriousness of a story like The Fast and the Furious, a film like Torque comes along, sees that seriousness, and virtually says “to hell with it.” That casual use of parody is what gives Torque the upper hand on artistic expression because the heightened sense of self that comes with absurdity is enhanced by this humor. Now, replace the horses with motorcycles, and you literally have a scene from Torque starring Monet Mazur and Jaime Pressly.). And eventually, the horses join the fight as well while they’re being ridden. On a commentary track, one of the film crew points out that Torque is “a spaghetti western on motorcycles.” In that brilliant description, the film is a modern update of Western tropes, with ridiculous results (imagine if you will a fight between two opponents on horseback and they fight while riding the horses. In pure form, parody subverts what is expected and brings new meaning to the material. Parody, as a comedic virtue, often transforms the sublime into the ridiculous. Although at times highbrow entertainment can take a cue from its lowbrow counterpart (one could argue the works of arthouse filmmakers like Peter Greenaway or Walerian Borowczyk may fall into this category), many cinephiles still have trouble seeing the merit when action movies employ similarly simple “vulgarities.” “Vulgarity is a very important ingredient in life…We all need a splash of bad taste,” former Vogue editor Diana Vreeland is famous for saying, and the fact that the snob-a-rama Criterion Collection includes entries from Paul Bartell and John Waters, let alone special editions of RoboCop and Armageddon from years back, should be enough evidence for us all.īut let’s get back to comedy. Many regard “lowbrow entertainment” such as action films as unsophisticated and possibly even vulgar. One leans toward the highbrow/lowbrow argument. Action and comedy historically have played well with one another (just ask Vaudeville or any number of “buddy cop” movies from the last 40 years), but while comedy has found enduring value with examples throughout timeless beloved filmmaking and even classical literature, action as a genre has not enjoyed the same reverence among cultural scholars and commentators alike. But to the savvy viewer, Torque reveals itself as a film that parodies the hard muscle and macho attitude of a certain street racing film that came before it, so much that it transcends parody itself and enters its own realm of cool.Īction movies are often described as “absurd” a generally agreeable statement, as action films tend to exist within the scope of “wildly unreasonable,” “illogical,” or “over-the-top.” Torque certainly lies within this description (Kahn has stated on one of the Blu-Ray commentaries that he wanted to make an “unrealistic biker movie…on purpose”), partly because the absurdism it presents is peppered with tongue-in-cheek and sarcastic humor. The sequence, a late addition to the movie, proved to be a good one: an adrenalized race between both four-wheeled and two-wheeled high-powered machines introduces us to what amounts to, at a glance, seemingly little more than an aggressive action movie about motorcycles and the people who ride them. “Cars suck,” the not-so-hidden message in the opening scene of Joseph Kahn’s 2004 action piece Torque, presents itself with cocksure bravado via a super-stylized spinning street sign.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |