Somebody oughta sue: satirizing old-media movie journalists
THE EARNEST YOUNG SATIRIST who compiles the cruelly sclerotic “davekehr.com” parody blog continues his/her dual project, mocking the style of the New York freelancer (“self”-described as a former writer “of fourth string reviews” for the New York Times who “eventually backed away from fourth string reviewing, mainly because the movies—a flood of fifth-rate American independent films—were so appalling and the Times freelance review rates were so dispiritingly low”) But there’s also an ongoing parody of what happens to some writers who go online without the protection of an old-media copy desk. After trashing Ang Lee and Brokeback Mountain—the ventriloquizing writer is well-versed enough to telegraph that “Kehr”’s tastes run to 60-to-70-year-old post-“classicists” like Clint Eastwood, Harold Ramis, Robert Zemeckis of Frank Oz—“Kehr” further takes the occasion of a review of the DVD of The 40 Year Old Virgin to compare Steve Carell to Harold Lloyd, and while striking again at Lee’s quaking heart, offer up a phrase that would find the word “USAGE!” full-capped in the margins of copy in your everyday newsroom: “…The 40 Year Old Virgin has no apparent ambitions beyond its core mission of assuring its young, male target audience that just because you’re afraid of women, it doesn’t mean you’re gay (a motif regrettably reinforced by the film’s abundance of fag-bashing humor). Which somehow brings us back to Brokeback Mountain…”
The anti-Brokeback remarks, of course, summon up a non-film array of targeted Google ads (pictured). Earlier, having his way with Brokeback—“Film by film, Lee’s work seems almost painfully sincere, but in the aggregate his oeuvre looks disturbingly opportunistic”—Kehr’s double argues that Lee’s film is in no way a Western, before proceeding then in a tepid King Kong notice to misspell “Yosemite” (perhaps as a way to avoid seeming anti-Yosemitic). “[Peter] Jackson doesn’t even show these hurled bodies hitting the ground, allowing the viewer to assume that they bounce back to life like so many Yosimite [sic] Sam’s [sic] in a Warner Brothers cartoon.” Many messages are mixed in another sneering satirical passage: “Lee has set the story in the 60s and 70s, presumably to take full dramatic advantage of the period’s more blatant and socially-approved homophobia (and allow the contemporary audience to congratulate itself on its more enlightened attitudes), but he doesn’t hesitate to evoke the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard when it suits his storytelling ends. The whole thing reeks of a masochistic romanticism that is probably more appealing to teary-eyed straights than it is to gays, some of whom might prefer to see a touch of the hopefulness and happiness in their lives that Apichatpong Weerasethakul captured with such casual grace in Tropical Malady.” Somebody oughta sue.
The argument for this blog being a forgery is certainly convincing. I myself have wondered a few times if it’s the real thing. But this is the only skepticism over its authenticity that I’ve read. (Honestly, who has the time, energy, and diabolical sense of humor to undertake such a strange — and hilarious — project?) David Hudson at GreenCine seems to accept it as Kehr’s actual site, as does J. Hoberman, who refers to this “essential new blog” in his Ice Harvest review. Is there any hard evidence to confirm or deny, other than the speculation? If this is indeed a hoax, I think you’re the first to point it out, Ray.