FIRST TIME AS COMEDY (11)
By:
June 12, 2024
Some years ago, HILOBROW friend Greg Rowland pointed out that the 1990 movie Dances With Wolves ought to be regarded as a sentimental remake of the 1970 revisionist Western Little Big Man. The series FIRST TIME AS COMEDY will offer additional examples of this recursive (and often, though not always middlebrow) syndrome.
FIRST TIME AS COMEDY: SUPERDUPERMAN vs. WATCHMEN | WILD IN THE STREETS vs. PREZ | EMIL AND THE DETECTIVES vs. M | THE SAVAGE GENTLEMAN vs. DOC SAVAGE | GULLIVAR JONES vs. JOHN CARTER | THE PHONOGRAPHIC APARTMENT vs. HAL | HIGH RISE vs. OATH OF FEALTY | JOHNNY FEDORA vs. JAMES BOND | MA PARKER vs. MA BARKER | DARK STAR vs. ALIEN | SHOCK TREATMENT vs. THE TRUMAN SHOW | JOHNNY BRAVO vs. ROCK STAR | THE FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS vs. THE MATRIX | CAVEMAN vs. SASQUATCH SUNSET | LITTLE BIG MAN vs. DANCES WITH WOLVES | THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO vs. BE KIND REWIND | LEN DEIGHTON vs. LEN DEIGHTON.
“Once upon a time, in a town not far from yours…”
The 1981 musical comedy Shock Treatment is a follow-up, if not quite a sequel, to the 1975 cult classic Rocky Horror Picture Show. Both films were directed by Jim Sharman, and co-written by Sharman and Richard O’Brien; Brian Thomson designed the sets of both movies.
Just-married couple Brad and Janet Majors (presumably the same couple from the first movie, though played here by different actors; Jessica Harper is best known for her portrayal of Suzy, in Dario Argento’s Suspiria) attend the live taping of a TV show in Denton, Ohio. Owned by fast-food magnate Farley Favors, the town has been moved inside the walls of a studio. Think of Downunder, the underground and artificially old-timey town in the 1975 sci-fi movie A Boy and His Dog; it’s like that.
The town’s purpose (like America’s purpose, increasingly) is to churn out campy TV shows — game shows, reality shows, soap operas. Denton’s population is divided into the show’s contestants and subjects, audience members (who live in the bleachers), background cast, and crew. Plucked from the audience to be contestants on the game show Marriage Maze, Brad and Janet enter upon yet another outré adventure.
The mastermind behind Denton’s TV programming is Bert Schnick (Barry Humphries, best known to most of us as the TV character Dame Edna Everage). Blind yet intensely perceptive, Bert can twist any human predicament or tragedy into a popular middlebrow TV show.
As in Rocky Horror, Brad and Janet are not an entirely fulfilled couple. Janet feels unstimulated; Brad is neurotic. Once their unhappiness has been diagnosed, via Marriage Maze, Brad is sent to star (as an “emotional cripple” needing treatment) in Dentonvale, a soap opera set in a mental hospital. There, he succumbs to the ministrations of Cosmo and Nation McKinley — played by Richard O’Brien and Patricia Quinn. i.e., the alien duo Riff-Raff and Magenta from Rocky Horror. Janet, meanwhile, is transformed into a self-absorbed TV star; dubbed “Miss Mental Health,” she becomes the spokeswoman for “Sanity Today,” a mental-health racket foisted upon the American public.
Janet’s parents, by the way, are chosen to star in Happy Homes, a reality TV show about an idealized suburban home.
Farley Flavors, it transpires, is Brad’s jealous, long-lost twin brother, who seeks to destroy Brad and take Janet for himself! Can Brad and Janet be saved from perdition yet again? Is it possible to leave Dentonvale… or Denton… or our mediated reality?
Released as a midnight movie on Halloween 1981, the film was both a critical and commercial failure.
What if Shock Treatment had played it a bit… straighter? No camping it up. Drop the musical numbers, and the mental hospital stuff. Make the presiding genius of the town-in-a-studio less villainous… just your usual Hollywood director type. Let the protagonist be goofy, for sure — but let’s make sure that we feel for him. Because he doesn’t even realize he’s in a reality show.
The Truman Show is a 1998 American psychological “comedy drama” written and co-produced by Andrew Niccol (a New Zealander; note that Jim Sharman is Australian), and directed by Peter Weir (an Australian). Selected from birth and officially adopted by a television studio, Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey, perfectly cast for the role) is the unsuspecting star of The Truman Show, a reality TV program filmed 24/7. Truman’s hometown, Seahaven Island, is set inside an enormous dome populated by crew members and actors, including his wife Meryl (Laura Linney); the movie was filmed at a “master-planned” community in Florida). Christof (Ed Harris), the show’s creator and executive producer, manipulates Truman for decades in order to give audiences a relatable everyman.
As the show approaches its 30th anniversary, Truman begins to notice unusual occurrences around him; we enter into Philip K. Dick territory, here. It’s quite effective and eerie. Truman begins questioning his life and realizes that the city, and all of its inhabitants, somehow revolves around… him.
The movie descends into bathos as Truman seeks to escape… reality. It’s Plato’s allegory of the cave, only the prize is Natascha McElhone if Truman can make it out.
The movie was a critical and commercial triumph. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “The Truman Show is emotionally involving without losing the ability to raise sharp satiric questions as well as get numerous laughs. The rare film that is disturbing despite working beautifully within standard industry norms.” The language here says it all.
MORE FURSHLUGGINER THEORIES BY JOSH GLENN: SCHEMATIZING | IN CAHOOTS | JOSH’S MIDJOURNEY | POPSZTÁR SAMIZDAT | VIRUS VIGILANTE | TAKING THE MICKEY | WE ARE IRON MAN | AND WE LIVED BENEATH THE WAVES | IS IT A CHAMBER POT? | I’D LIKE TO FORCE THE WORLD TO SING | THE ARGONAUT FOLLY | THE PERFECT FLANEUR | THE TWENTIETH DAY OF JANUARY | THE REAL THING | THE YHWH VIRUS | THE SWEETEST HANGOVER | THE ORIGINAL STOOGE | BACK TO UTOPIA | FAKE AUTHENTICITY | CAMP, KITSCH & CHEESE | THE UNCLE HYPOTHESIS | MEET THE SEMIONAUTS | THE ABDUCTIVE METHOD | ORIGIN OF THE POGO | THE BLACK IRON PRISON | BLUE KRISHMA | BIG MAL LIVES | SCHMOOZITSU | YOU DOWN WITH VCP? | CALVIN PEEING MEME | DANIEL CLOWES: AGAINST GROOVY | DEBATING IN A VACUUM | PLUPERFECT PDA | SHOCKING BLOCKING.