There's a reason why chocolate covered bacon exists. People love chocolate. People love bacon. If you put together two things you love, you should love the combination as well.
Now, my experience has not been that favorable with chocolate covered bacon, but the logic makes enough sense. This is why I'm very interested in mash-ups of media franchises and alternative takes on media. For instance, I love this trailer for Thor: Ragnarok done in the style of an 1980s Cannon film:
When Thor: Ragnarok was released, the movie evoked a sense of nostalgia. Movies like "The Adventures of Hercules" and "Clash of the Titans" tended to mix together elements of science fiction and fantasy. In fact, one of the most beloved media/toy franchises of the 80s, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, established itself in a realm where science and magic co-existed in a way only 8-year-olds could understand.
Many of the elements of Thor: Ragnarok harken back to this kind of goofiness. As a marketing ploy, it actually works well. After all, if you're going to make a movie about a Norse god being trapped on an alien planet fighting giant green men in forced gladiatorial combat, you shouldn't hold back on the cheese factor. The video above was made by Nerdist, a website that started as a podcast that discussed things like comic books, science fiction movies, and the like, usually with a humoristic bent. Since Thor: Ragnarok seemed to already have this callback to nostalgia built in, by actually adding things like VCR tracking lines and footage from old TV shows, as well as a big voiced VO actor on the trailer, we see the cycle is complete and get this funny view of what a Thor movie in 1987 might have looked like.
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| Of course He-Man carried a sword and rode through the air in a rocket powered plane firing laser beams! Image found here |
But what happens when two seemingly incongruous things are put together, like Quentin Tarantino's Star Trek?
Quentin Tarantino, regardless of whether one considers him a plagiarist or homage creator, directs movies that, like Thor: Ragnarok, call back to earlier films. In Tarantino's case, however, they usually are reminiscent of blaxploitation (like Jackie Brown) or kung-fu movies (like the Kill Bill series), i.e. movies that use violence as spectacle to move along a paper-thin plot with characters motivated by baser impulses like greed or revenge. This is why it is baffling (to me anyway) that Tarantino expressed interest in directing a Star Trek movie. Created by Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek represents a future in which the baser human instincts are kept in check as humanity has learned to live in peace with (most of) the universe and engages in exploration. This is not to say Star Trek does not deal with issues of war, greed, or racism, but just that characters tend to think things through before picking up a phaser and blasting away.
But then again, there are green skinned Orion slave girls, Harry Mudd and Nazis.
This brings me to the Care Bear/Hellraiser image. Cute greeting card bears and Pinhead don't go together. And yet, because of technology making it easy to create and distribute this image, now they do. The mash-up has a synergistic and nostalgic effect based on its structural elements. Now they can be realized using software and others can see your handiwork. While a Star Trek fan might question a Tarantino directed movie, we can see from scenes in the show that maybe this material isn't as outside of his wheelhouse as we thought. We see a grindhouse element in Star Trek that is compelling, to say the least. So while putting together the cute with the scary might seem incongruous, maybe their juxtaposition might tell us something about those two components and ourselves that we never knew.
To learn more about some theories that come into play, click here.
Quentin Tarantino, regardless of whether one considers him a plagiarist or homage creator, directs movies that, like Thor: Ragnarok, call back to earlier films. In Tarantino's case, however, they usually are reminiscent of blaxploitation (like Jackie Brown) or kung-fu movies (like the Kill Bill series), i.e. movies that use violence as spectacle to move along a paper-thin plot with characters motivated by baser impulses like greed or revenge. This is why it is baffling (to me anyway) that Tarantino expressed interest in directing a Star Trek movie. Created by Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek represents a future in which the baser human instincts are kept in check as humanity has learned to live in peace with (most of) the universe and engages in exploration. This is not to say Star Trek does not deal with issues of war, greed, or racism, but just that characters tend to think things through before picking up a phaser and blasting away.
But then again, there are green skinned Orion slave girls, Harry Mudd and Nazis.
This brings me to the Care Bear/Hellraiser image. Cute greeting card bears and Pinhead don't go together. And yet, because of technology making it easy to create and distribute this image, now they do. The mash-up has a synergistic and nostalgic effect based on its structural elements. Now they can be realized using software and others can see your handiwork. While a Star Trek fan might question a Tarantino directed movie, we can see from scenes in the show that maybe this material isn't as outside of his wheelhouse as we thought. We see a grindhouse element in Star Trek that is compelling, to say the least. So while putting together the cute with the scary might seem incongruous, maybe their juxtaposition might tell us something about those two components and ourselves that we never knew.
To learn more about some theories that come into play, click here.
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