Hack-O-Lantern
What do you watch in times of extensive emotional stress? Do you run the risk of having something you love forever tainted by trauma? I ask this because of the extended election timeframe back at the beginning of the month, because it was a deeply fraught time and we were all going through it — whether in piecemeal glances stolen at smartphones or in continuous television feeds, clicking our internal systems for an emotional refresh to try and gather and process information as quickly and comprehensively as possible. How exactly do you try to metabolize these two separate existences — what you’re watching and what you’re living — when the stakes are crazy high?
What it reminded me of was something a friend told me about coming back down after an intense and soul-shaking psilocybin mushroom experience. (Note: If you’re going to dabble in psychedelics, don’t do so and then casually watch something like Mulholland Drive, which is built on compelling the viewer to confront their own absolute moral truth.) In that instance, it was a third-season episode of The Simpsons, “Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington” (currently streaming on Disney+), involving an essay contest, government corruption and the horror of political music parody. But it was that particularly beloved episode that allowed a troubled soul to reconnect with reality in a gradual way, and as such it helped immeasurably.
That’s not to compare the experience of election results to a mushroom trip (though your experience may vary), but it provides us with an opportunity to get at our relationship to the media we love. The night of Nov. 3, I ended up making a very deliberate decision, and restarted Happy Endings (currently streaming on Hulu), an a-mah-zing series that I love dearly (Max and Grant 4-evah) and hadn’t rewatched in several years. It’s a known quantity — a great show with good characters and a brisk pace that keeps the viewer occupied. It is a show unconducive to dawdling on the phone in the background, and that was ideal.
But in the back of my mind was, “What about Dr. Strange?” That — also streaming on Disney+ — was the film I took some friends to see on election night 2016. It’s a fun and inventive film that I have been unable to watch at any point since. That’s nothing on that film, but merely the circumstances under which I watched it. Similarly, Wreck-It-Ralph (Disney+ as well) is forever blended with the euphoria of the 2012 election (going to the movies on election night was a thing for a while there), and I can never watch Hardcore Henry (Netflix) again, because after I watched that movie and turned my phone back on, I had dozens of voicemails and texts telling me that my mentor, editor and friend, former Scene editor-in-chief Jim Ridley, had passed away.
So the stress is double: on Happy Endings to keep the soul afloat, and on the universe to not torpedo my love of the show. Which is a lot of stress, thankfully lessening as election week stretched on. It’s also an indication of how privileged I am to be able to frame the genuine horror of the past four years in this way. But I can’t express the roiling bile and acid seeping up from my gut and scorching my throat — or the millions of pointilist papercuts of anxiety, or the fear that Supreme Court subterfuge is going to disassemble my family — because that’s not something visual that can be directly related to by everyone. I’m interested in the art that helps people keep their shit together.
Below are a couple more recommendations on what to stream. As always, you can look back at past issues of the Scene for scores more: March 26, April 2, April 9, April 16, April 23, April 30, May 7, May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, June 18, June 25, July 2, July 9, July 16, July 23, July 30, Aug. 6, Aug. 13, Aug. 20, Aug. 27, Sept. 3, Sept. 10, Sept. 17, Sept. 24, Oct. 1, Oct. 15, Oct. 29, Nov. 5.
Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins on Disney+
It’s the childhood dream that goodhearted leftists and subs tap into — a magical being who values kindness and musical numbers, teaches human decency, aides in class consciousness and giving help to the helpless, and refocuses the family on internal cohesion and allegiance rather than a subjugation to dominant capitalist ideology. Mary Poppins is of a piece with the classic art-film archetype in which a mysterious stranger helps each member of a family through unlocking their emotional blockage, for better or worse — see also, to varying methodology and results, Teorema (Criterion, Mubi), The Guest (Netflix), Boudu Saved From Drowning (Criterion, Kanopy) and its remake Down and Out in Beverly Hills (HBO Max).
Hack-O-Lantern on Shudder
If you want to see a movie with a character who gives off the vibe of Divine playing Emperor Palpatine, look no further than 1987’s Hack-O-Lantern. It has satanic goings-on in and near a California orchard, many ’80s outfits and looks (big ups to the partygoer whose outfit involved her dressing as a bowl of salad), weird children and nudity so gratuitous that it loops around and becomes Roxy Music-album-cover iconic.
