#i've been laughing at how bad this trainwreck of a movie looks but this takes the cake for stupidest shit i've seen today lmfao

[definitelyjunehomestuck]

"we can always tell" motherfuckers when they see a teenage boy, a teenage girl, a black woman, and a bearded man in pink;

[mizzpinkiewrites]

my Solondz deep dive/

While listening to Selma Blair's autobiography yesterday, she briefly mentioned Storytelling (2001), reminding me how much I love that movie and of the existence of its controversial (but highly esteemed) director Todd Solondz.

I decided to look at his other movies, of which I'd read detailed Wikipedia descriptions in high school, but never had the stomach to attempt screening. Starting with his beloved 1995 classic, Welcome to the Dollhouse. After devouring the first film I dove straight into Happiness, and promptly vomited at the 30-minute mark. I needed to take a long shower before I felt clean enough to continue.

My feelings on Happiness were so strong that I needed to pour through reviews, many of which praised the director as a visionary and called the movie laugh-out-loud funny- a guilty pleasure, so bad its good, etc... I wasn't shocked at this because honestly, most movies in the white/ hipster/ male/ manic pixie film canon have quite a bit of subject matter that I've been immediately horrified/repulsed by, but Solondz had me feeling conflicted. There's a feeling that because he's calling the bullshit out, he's not a part of it. Is he blameless in the culture he depicts? What are the consequences of the discourse he creates? Is it..funny? are these even comedies? A self-fulfilling prophecy? Where is the line? Why would you make this movie/ what is the urge to create... this? Does it serve a purpose? Does this reflect the violent culture of this era later to be marked by the themes that his films predict, or does it instruct them? I also am perplexed by these feelings of guilty pleasure many of us find in these movies, the urge to peek through our fingers and watch, to take a shower and try again, to experience and enjoy the trainwreck.

This era of films is marked so distinctly by the way children are used to display violence, perversion, corruption and overall plain evil to drive home a message about suburbia, internet culture(sometimes), and banality. Though played out by kids of the millennium, the messages are the gospel of Gen X, cynical and ironic to a fault, playing upon their own experiences growing up, but also blending with anxieties for the generation they were watching arrive. These movies say something about "late" capitalistic trends and the depravity of white suburbia, the dream sprung from colonial acts of violence, but also seem to intend to reveal something inherent in mankind itself.

It is with these thoughts and questions that I intend to work through a deep dive into Solondz's works. Or at least the reasonably accessible ones, if my brain can stand it.