Beautiful Loser

He watched MORTAL KOMBAT. At the cinema. And he enjoyed it. And then he went back for the sequel. John Fellows celebrates crap - the second best alternative to mediocrity.
07 December 2001

If you get me drunk enough, I'll explain how all post-millennial culture is merely a natural iteration of cult film classic MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION. Its overt use of apparently submissive feminine sexuality, paired with the simultaneous empowering of the aforementioned women, is positively dripping in modern pop culture subtext. Its prediction of The End Of The World as perpetrated by mysterious middle-age cliques in all defiance of the accepted rules is almost Nostradamus-esque.

There have been only a select number of occasions when I've even contemplated asking for my money back after experiencing a particularly unconvincing piece of "entertainment". I never do, because I've fully accepted that quality is a subjective assessment. There really is nothing more separating epic masterpiece CITIZEN KANE and Hulk Hogan vehicle MR NANNY than a chorus of critics. But sometimes there are films that stir the very depths of creative horror that it would seem a fool's task to justify their existence.

Why I've even seen MORTAL KOMBAT - never mind the sequel - is a question for the ages. I felt dirty as I walked out, willing the marquee letters above the screen entrance to spontaneously combust rather than have to admit to observers what I'd just paid to watch. It was the same feeling I'd had after walking out of BATMAN & ROBIN. In fact, I actually had a semi-vision as I walked into that screening. An uneasy feeling that Something Was Wrong. My vision was born out in all its horrendous Day-Glo glory.

So why do seemingly sane individuals inflict such tripe upon themselves? An honest mistake, possibly? Maybe it's the vicious sadist in us all that just likes to laugh at other people's misfortune. For the writers among us, it could be what noted screenwriters Ted Elliot & Terry Rossio refer to as "Crap Plus One", the need to feel superior about your abilities. But more than anything I think it's the need to feel some kind of emotion, even if it's an emotion usually saved for complex dental canal work or the oncoming evacuation of a misjudged curry.

I like MORTAL KOMBAT. I even like the sequel. I can't forgive its misogynistic tendencies, or the fact that the filmmakers were able to find an actor to replace Christopher Lambert who was even less talented. I don't believe in the idea that something can be so bad it's good; that you can somehow disappear off one end of the quality scale and wrap around to the other. I believe these products are bad and we don't celebrate that enough. Because liking something is altogether separate to admiring its intrinsic qualities.

Think about it; how often do you really experience true inferiority? I'm not talking about a couple of dodgy sub-plots or a boom in shot. I'm talking about something that is so bad that it - as a rather astute internet message-boarder put - gives you the death shits. How many films have you seen that just made you feel nothing? That you walked out of with two hours scratched from your card and nothing to show? Mediocrity is taking over our entertainment, but it's not too late for the incompetents to take it back.

The internet has proved that there really is a fan for every piece of work out there. How many obscure D-Grade comic-book characters have their own lovingly crafted websites? For every piece of work put out, there is somebody willing to mouth off about its relative quality. For every nay, there is a yea.

Quality has become a devalued concept, meaningless. Nowadays quality all comes down to whether the colourist gets Power Girl's costume the right shade of puke. A comic-book is no longer bad because of the more obvious problems; instead it's quality is purely a result of how little The Beast looks like he did in the last four hundred issues of X-MEN. Conversely, comics are also qualified purely on whether they feature super-heroes, or whether they present an obscure navel-gazing map of the creator's pet psychoses.

I've had discussions with people who extolled the virtues of films I wouldn't defecate on if they were combusting. I've smiled and looked them in the eye and found no hint of sarcasm. Because these films are bad. They are not mediocre. They are pure out-and-out sub par works of entertainment. And that's something I can get behind. I also know people who own certain albums that make me question the existence of a loving God. These albums are not stashed behind cupboards or played once and discarded. They are owned and loved. Equally, I'm sure that some of my album collection would be laughed out of town.

Bad is a value judgement, and so is good. But these are at least works to which a value can be assigned. For every MORTAL KOMBAT, there are a hundred TV movies about children with incurable bone-diseases, or staid teen slasher movies, or albums by Yet Another Pop Band. Drowned in the sea of nothingness that is Lowest Common Denominator entertainment, we have forgotten how to truly excel and how to fully plumb the depths.

From my brief dalliance with the world of cognitive psychology, I learned that the profession is based largely on the study of the mentally damaged. Unable to truly understand how the brain works, we are forced to merely observe its malfunctions and draw assumptions. Creativity is a force that is equally - if not more - misunderstood. Digging in the stool samples of our genre will bring up just as many pearls as anywhere else you choose to look.

I scour reviews, search the shelves and examine entertainment listings for the truly bad. I long for sites dedicated to the bad, singing the praises of crap products. Because whether bad through intent or accident, both are just as helpful. While Ninth Art does the honourable task of bringing your attention to the glorious comics work that you should all be reading... where is it's Shatner-style evil twin? Comics seem to have a surfeit of good or mediocre work. The mainstream, by and large, publishes mediocrity as a mission statement, while only the truly talented can survive the slog of self-publishing. This leaves little room for the truly bad.

This may be seen by some as a paean to less quality work, but that's not the case. It is mediocrity that is the problem. Comic books that sail through each month's sales chart losing little because they are too vanilla to ever offend anybody. The passion is gone. We've forgotten that hatred is just as loud an emotion as love. I'm sick of feeling nothing. I want to be so offended by CAPTAIN WHATEVER that the only possible response would be to wipe my spotty behind on the rough newsprint and post the mangled comic back to the publishers with a scrawled faecal death-threat to its creators. Anything less and I'll be forced to go back to watching my SHOWGIRLS DVD.

John Fellows works in the television industry providing assistive services to the deaf community.

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