Upon a recent trip the the one-page bookstore (anything that costs $4 should be a book, not a card) I noticed a "pop culture" section with movie and tv quotes on them. Being a geek of the big and small screen, I was very interested. I initially saw a top gun quote, although it probably wasn't one everyone thinks of immediately. I checked out a few other cards and found a good portion were from "high school musical" which is like grease, except for 13 year olds. I understand "pop culture" isn't a well-defined category, but I would generally think a two-year old made-for-tv movie (cable even) wouldn't have earned such prestige that it would usher out more longstanding pop culture icons. I also found at least one for the TV show "Lost" and the intersperesed with the "pop culture of the last two years" cards I found a few that dated back 50 years. Apprently these cards are not meant for those between 16 and 61.

I realized that this desire of the masses to capture the "pop culture" market and try to commercialize on it (which is ironic, in and of itself) may be getting out of hand. I recently watched the pseuo-indie film Juno thanks to my friendly neighborhood redbox machine (and the free rental codes from insideredbox.com.) A lot of people talked this up and when people start mislabelling low-budget films as "indie" and then start talking about how great they are, I generally turn off. After seeing enough parodies however, I wanted to see the original product.

Juno is about a teenage girl dealing with pregnancy. Being as this is the theme of the movie, it was a bit surprising to me that they could've dropped the pregnant suit and 95% of the movie would've worked the same. In total there were less than a handful of references to her actual dealing with the pregnancy. Pop culture references were present but felt "injected" into the movie as did Rainn Wilson's character who seemed to have a scene in the movie just so they could say "Hey look, it's that guy from The Office, isn't that wacky!" Everything seemed a bit "off" to me throughout the movie including the main character interest in acts such as iggy pop without a single friend or family member sharing that interest. Who introduced her to anti-establishment punk of the 70's?

I never really realized how disingenous the references were until the main character announces her water breaking by yelling "Thundercats are go!" While most people chuckled, my ears perked up. Thundercats being a series when I was a kid I enjoy a good Thundercats reference. However, the line "Thundercats are go" never happened in the show so even if Juno was watching TV when she was -15 years old, she still wouldn never have heard that. Instead, the Thundercats would rally behind the cry "Thundercats Ho!" So where did the "Are go" come from you ask? In the 1960's (when Juno was -35ish) there was a super-marionetta show called "The Thunderbirds" about a group of rescuers with strange flying machines who announced "Thunderbirds are go" when they spring into action. During the 60's there wasn't a huge amount of children watching science-fiction puppet shows on TV so even if it wasn't 40 years old, it is still not that well known.

What struck me is that it is a major line in the movie but it's wrong.. The most highlighted pop culture reference and it's wrong? Mistakes happen, yes. The author is a of the right age to know the TV show but maybe someone directed to put in more references like this. The director, who recently directed and produced the 2007 holiday ads for wal-mart (not kidding) should also bare some of the blame. I blame the major studios who want to find the next "hot new director" or writer by pairing them up and put big movie hype behind freshman work.

This entry was posted on July 2, 2008 at 8:12 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.