Chuck Klosterman 's Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: A Review
by Adam Frazier
Chuck Klosterman’s collection of essays is like VH1’s “Best Week Ever,” only more superfluous and less entertaining. As a culture we seem obsessed with reality television and celebrity gossip – bazillions of blogs and tabloid magazines take advantage of this fact with drive-by tidbits on celebrities going to rehab and what happened on Desperate Housewives last night. So, in an age where the whole world is preoccupied with pop culture, do we really need a book that supposedly “analyzes” the phenomena?
To me, this is exactly the kind of book hipsters and wearers of skinny jeans cling to, namedrop, and reference when discussing “popculturally-relevant-events-common-people-don't-understand-but-I-do-because-I'm-intellectual.” I know, the irony (and hypocrisy) of me saying this is not lost, as I’ve been accused numerous times of perpetrating this same crime.
Truth be told, I think Chuck Klosterman is a bit of a dipshit. That’s really the best description I can give him. To his credit, Klosterman does have a good (though completely inconsistent) comedic eye when it comes to delivering obscure pop culture references. The line in his opening essay where he references Coldplay as a photocopy of Travis who was a mediocre photocopy of Radiohead is dead-on and I was hoping for this kind of like-minded wit to carry on throughout the book.
But by the time I reached chapters devoted to The Real World and Billy Joel, I was sick and tired of hearing Klosterman’s opinions and deep critical analysis of everything. Did I completely hate this book? No, I guess not – I did enjoy the Guns N Roses cover band story and his interaction with Will Wright– but honestly, that’s about it. Chuck just tries too hard to extrapolate meaning and importance out of intellectually bankrupt material.
For the most part, the book is too rhetoric, too much like a lecture in which Klosterman is painstakingly dissecting what is "uberly" important and what sucks. I get it Chuck – you are a hip writer for Esquire and Spin magazine. You are a D-list celebrity, worthy of a two-second blurb on “I Love the ‘90s” about how big and bulky Zack Morris’s cell phone was.
At first, I thought Chuck was just a dipshit – but then he crossed the line. In the chapter entitled, “Sulking with Lisa Loeb on the Ice Planet Hoth,” Klosterman attempts to convince the reader that Star Wars and filmmakers like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg destroyed American filmmaking.
“In 1977, few people realized this film would completely change the culture of filmmaking, inasmuch as this was the genesis of all those blockbuster movies that everyone gets tricked into seeing summer after summer. Star Wars changed the social perception of what a movie was supposed to be; George Lucas, along with Steven Spielberg, managed to kill the best era of American filmmaking in less than five years.”
My immediate response: Jaws (1975) was the first blockbuster. Not to mention, the James Bond films carried a certain ounce of blockbuster swagger and offered up the same kind of action and adventure. Star Wars and Indiana Jones are based off of '30s and '40s saturday morning serials. Lucas and Spielberg simply took those styles and intermeshed them with a modern day myth. So, I'm a little curious as to how two filmmakers could kill cinema using styles and technqiues from the '30s and '40s.
Oh no, it gets more absurd: “Yet – over time – Star Wars has become one of the most overrated films of all time, inasmuch as it’s pretty fucking terrible when you actually try to watch it.”
Regardless of George Lucas and Star Wars, Klosterman honestly thinks he’s making good sense when he says Lucas and Spielberg killed the best era of American filmmaking? As for Star Wars being overrated or, dare I say, fucking terrible, let’s make a trip back to reality.
The American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest Movies is selected by AFI's blue-ribbon panel of more than 1,500 leaders of the American movie community. Let’s take a look at the top 25:
1.CITIZEN KANE (1941)
2.CASABLANCA (1942)
3.GODFATHER, THE (1972)
4.GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)
5.LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)
6.WIZARD OF OZ, THE (1939)
7.GRADUATE, THE (1967)
8.ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)
9.SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993)
10.SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952)
11.IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)
12.SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)
13.BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, THE (1957)
14.SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)
15.STAR WARS (1977)
16.ALL ABOUT EVE (1950)
17.AFRICAN QUEEN, THE (1951)
18.PSYCHO (1960)
19.CHINATOWN (1974)
20.ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975)
21.GRAPES OF WRATH, THE (1940)
22.2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)
23.MALTESE FALCON, THE (1941)
24.RAGING BULL (1980)
25.E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982)
Yeah, so… when it comes to educated opinions on film, I think I’ll stick with the American Film Institute. I’m sure Spielberg killed cinema in the same way I’m sure Star Wars is fucking terrible. What a joke. On top of this, Klosterman’s understanding of the meaning behind Star Wars is completely laughable. To have apparently taken so much time analyzing and researching pop culture, this whole diatribe on the death of American cinema seems based solely on assumption. If he had ever listened to a DVD commentary, watched a documentary or read a book on the subject, that would have helped.
It’s easy to imagine Klosterman locked away in his hipster dungeon typing up these essays, stopping every now and again to pat himself on the back and stand in awe of his own cleverness. He reminds me of the elitist culture snobs I would see on campus, walking around in their tight t-shirts with books by Tolstoy or Vonnegut under their arm.
In fact, Chuck Klosterman seems to be nothing more than a photocopy of those intellectual snobs with skinny jeans and thick, black glasses. You know the guy, the annoying bastard at any party who has read all the books you keep meaning to read, and scorns all those that you have read as poorly written bestseller trash.
Yeah, that’s Chuck, only with Billy Joel, Saved By the Bell and Pornography.
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