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"Postmodernism is a change-or-be-changed world. The word is out: Reinvent
yourself for the 21st century or die! Some would rather die than change."
Leonard Sweet, cultural historian.

08/18/2006 Entry: "Snakes on a (MF) Plane (aka SoaP)"

Everybody else is writing about it today, so why not join the fun? WARNING: bad language ahead.

To begin with, I haven't seen it yet, but I plan to go. Why? Because this film has defied the system all-the-way, and even in its release, the system doesn't understand the phenomenon. The best review so far is from Pajiba publisher Dustin Rowles, who seems to recognize what's going on better than most. While I'm here, let me once again put in a plug for Pajiba, one of the best contributors to my RSS reader.

Truthfully, SoaP defies everything I ever believed about filmmakers who actually set out with the intention of making a good-bad flick; I didn't think it could be done. And maybe without the attendant hype, it couldn't have, because damn near half of Snakes success comes from the spectacle of 75 college kids ripped to the tits chanting "Snakes on a Plane" and tossing toy planes around the theater. Indeed, Snakes absolutely demands an audience. It's a participatory event. And it may be the only time you can ever watch a film and not hate everyone in the theater for yelling throughout, because hell if you don't find yourself treating the whole experience like a college basketball game, just waiting for Samuel Jackson to drain the Snakes on a Mother Fucking Plane to win the game. I actually applauded. More than once. And I didn't even shake my head in wonder when the audience gave it a standing ovation as the credits rolled.
Rowles dwells far too much on what he believes to be hype generated entirely through manipulation, and this is where I think he's just plain wrong (and doesn't understand the blogosphere). If people find something humorous and entertaining (the concept, the catch phrase), they'll pass it along to their friends, and I hardly think that's a new phenomenon. If this wasn't truly entertaining, no hype machine in the world could have produced the kinds of in-theater reactions about which we're reading today. So where does hype leave off and genuine enjoyment begin (and the wish to share that joy with others)? Mr. Rowles' cynical view ("We got played by a subsidiary of Time Warner.") is common among those who don't understand the power of the snowball in the Media 2.0 world.

His view that the influence of bloggers can be gamed in such a way is fairly typical of people who don't actually live in this world. From the outside looking in, he sees New Line Cinema "creating" hype -- a purely Media 1.0 concept -- when the reality is that the snowball they rolled was sufficiently substantive to gain momentum on its own. This is very different than manipulating results, because who has control over the snowball? Nobody. What it needs is sufficient weight to get it rolling in the first place.

I think Samuel L. Jackson recognized the end the moment he saw the title and, according to interviews, told his agent to get him in the film. Throw in the catch phrase, and you've got an instant classic. The quality of the film matters nothing. As Mr. Rowles noted, it's a participatory event.


"The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create."
Leonard Sweet