at swim two sharknados

a few days ago my friend tom beckett wondered why i haven't reviewed the sharknado movies.  i've seen the first movie but i haven't watched the sequel.  i liked the first movie because it reminded me of some cheapjack matinee fare.  we recorded the second one but it was deleted before i could watch it.  nick loves these pics.  who couldn't love them.  sharks!  flying thru the fucking air eating people!

if the concept of the movies are a bit silly well so are giant bug films that were dominant in the 1950s.  of course giant bug movies were the creation of a nation worried about nuclear holocaust.  and sharks eating people on land and air?  what sociological detail can conjure up that?  nothing really.  it's all marketing.  Sy Fy channel took to social media and made the first film an event.  it caught on and people began to tweet about it.  sharknado became a bonafide hit. 

why not make another.  hire the same d-list actors, write a script knowingly stupid and conjure up some cheezy CGI and presto!  another hit.

i'm curious about our late capitalist age.  the dominant genre in TV and movies are end of the world affairs, either by zombies, or viruses, or political and economic collapse, or by Rapture.  the fears these pics explore are myriad and complex in causes.  the world is always changing but our fears of climate change, socio-economic instability, exploding population, lightning fast changes in robotics and computing and artificial intelligence, are some of the reasons for our fascination with apocalypse.

no wonder we must take a break now and again and be simple and delight in a really bad movie or two.  if that means seeing a film about human-eating sharks in a severe weather event so be it.  taste is a subjective thing anyway.  delight in the bad can sometimes be divine.