"Puppet wrangler? There weren't any puppets in this movie!" – Crow T. Robot
Year of the Meeting continued today, although there was also a coworker’s birthday, with cake and donuts. (Munchkins, actually, which some of you might recognize as Timbits? Weird.)
Otherwise, really just a typical Monday, although a slightly better one than I think I expected.
“How You Like Me Now?” by the Heavy
Earlier today on Twitter, I was making light of the fact that Newt Gingrich has reportedly been told to stop using the song along the campaign trail, having apparently never obtained permission from either the record label or the band. (And the band is reportedly no fan of the candidate either.)
This follows in a long tradition of politicians using songs without permission — see, recently, Tom Petty and Michelle Bachmann — or without a clue — see…well, again, Petty and Bachmann, but also these song blunders as well.
But with Newt and the Heavy, there’s just so much going wrong here. Let’s leave aside the band’s name, which raises the specter of Gingrich’s weight and the idea of him as the heavy, a big, often outsized character who’s more often than not the villain of a piece. (Iago, for instance, is the heavy in Othello.) Let’s dive right into the lyrics of the song itself:
Now there was a time
When you loved me so
I couldn’t do wrong
Now you need to know
That time, for Newt, was a brief moment in the ’90s. You know, before all the ethics violations, affairs, and forced resignation.
See I been a bad bad bad bad man
And I’m in deep ya
Aw, baby, Newt only hurts you ’cause he loves America so damn much. Why you gotta be like that?
I found a brand new love for this man
And I can’t wait till ya see
Oh yeah, you’ll all come crawlin’ back to Newt. What’re ya gonna do, vote for Romeny? Oh, you are? Damn.
Remember the time when he took over
Ya I was a lie that you can’t give up
If I was to cheat on
Now would you see right through me
If I sang a sad sad sad sad song
Would ya give it to me
Would ya say
How ya like me now?
So just to recap here: Gingrich is playing a song about a man who lied and cheated, then comes back with an apology he admits right there is bullshit, easily seen through, and then (a little petulantly) asks, “How you like me now?”
I first encountered the song about a year ago, when I saw it used really effectively in The Fighter. Gingrich’s use is anything but effective. It reveals a pettiness at his heart — or, at the very least, a cluelessness about that that’s how it will be perceived. “Yeah, you kicked me out,” Gingrich seems to be saying with it, “because I was a bad bad bad bad man. And screw you, I haven’t changed. How you like me now?”
I will say this much for him, though, it’s a damn catchy song. It’ll put a bounce in your step, maybe even make you want to run for President or build a moon base.
If your movie is super high concept, and I decide to see it, I have probably, to some degree, already accepted the concept, you know? “Everyone in the future has a puppy surgically grafted to their chests.” Okay, fine, I promise not to spend a lot of the movie going, “Surgically grafting a puppy to your chest is a weird thing for a person to do.” I will, however, question every piece of outerwear that does not have a dog-head flap in it, or any moment in your movie where a character is like, “Well, now my dog has grown too big for my chest cavity and medical science didn’t allow for that in the many generations we have been living with these grafted puppies, so now it’s too late for me, you go on!” Because that is worldbuilding, and that you need to do. And the higher the concept is, the more work you need to do. (Moon, for example, requires little. Dark City requires more.
In these genres, the fundamental realities of a world can be anything imaginable: There can be wizards, or dragons, or intergalactic spaceships, or time travel, or dragon-wizards in time-traveling intergalactic spaceships. Nothing can be assumed. Which makes it mighty easy for authors to cheat by changing the rules whenever it’s convenient to the plot: “Oh, did I not mention that dragon-wizard time-travel spaceships are sentient and can crossbreed to produce baby spaceships? Well, they can.â€