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most-hated-blorbo-bracket · 8 months

Note

any chance of an updated list?

Of course!!

Also, this is the NEW and FUCKING IMPROVED LIST, I alphabetized it so it’s even better than before >:3

Currently, we have 340 unique characters (if I counted right) and 487 total submissions. The top three most submitted fandoms are Homestuck, Danganronpa, and One Piece, excluding submissions that were spelt wrong or spelt differently. The top three submitted characters are Haiji Towa, Vriska Serket, and Stella Goeta (stella has so many submissions it’s funny)!

Finally, this is the raw, unedited list of characters submitted so far. Just because they are here doesn’t mean they’ll be in the tournament; it just means they’ve been submitted, regardless of media or what character they are!

as always, list under the cut!

This first list is for characters with two or more submissions. Characters who have three or more submissions will get first dibs in the tournament!

Akechi Goro

Akio Ohtori / Himemiya

Anakin Skywalker

Ansem the Wise

April O’Neil (2012)

Ardyn Izunia

Ayin

Azula

Bill Cipher

Boston

Bramblestar

Buzz McCallister

Caillou

Chibiusa

Childe

Cici

Cullen Rutherford

Darkstalker

Dazai Osamu

Dio

Dio (Zero Escape)

Donald Trump

Donquixote Doflamingo

Dr. John ‘Jack’ Seward

Drannus

Eichi Tenshouin

Elias Bouchard/Jonah Magnus

Eridan Ampora

Evan Hansen

Every Genshin Impact Character Ever

Glenn Quagmire

George Wickham

Greg Heffley

Haiji Towa

Happosai

Her Imperious Condescension

Higashikata Josuke

Huey Emmerich

Ibara Saegusa

Izzy Hands

Jace Herondale / Wayland / Lightwood / Morgenstern

Jin Guangyao

John Gaius

Julia Mazzone

Junko Enoshima

Jurgen Leitner

Katsuki Bakugo

Kokichi Ouma

Kristoph Gavin

Kromer

Kusaka Masato

Kylo Ren

Kyubey

Lance Dubois

Le’garde

Live Action Buggy

Makima

Mal

Marvin Falsettos

Meenah Peixes

Merlin

Micah Bell

Michael

Minoru Mineta

Mr. Bungee

Pierce Hawthorne

Pierre

Princess Daisy

Ranpo Edogawa (Beast)

Regal Farseer

Ronaldo

Rose Quartz

Santa Claus

Sasuke Uchiha

Scrappy Doo

Sentinel Prime

Shiver

Shou Tucker

Simon

Simon Laurent

Sosuke Aizen

Spamton

Stella Goetia

Teddy / Kuma

The Maverick

The Metatron

The Once-Ler

Thistleclaw

Tony Stark

Tsumugi Aoba

Ty Betteridge

Val Velocity

Viren

Vriska Serkat

William Afton

c!Dream

Ōchi Fukuchi

The next list is for characters only submitted once. If you want these characters to have a higher chance of being added to the tournament, feel free to submit more propaganda for them!

Absalom

Abyss Sibling

Adam

Agamemnon

Airy

Akane

Akito Shinonome

Akito Sohma

Alastor

Alexander Hamilton

Ali Lectric

All For One

Aloise Trancy

Anatole Kuragin

Angel Dust

Anne Hathaway

Any Character From Welcome to Nightvale

Anyone From The Locked Tomb

Aranea Serkat

Ashfur

Astarion

Asuka

Bella Swan

Ben Jackson Walker

Betsy Wolfe

Billy

Billy Hargrove

Black Pete

Blackbeard

Blitzo Buckzo

Booker

Box

Bro-Strider

Buck Cluck

Buzz (cheerios)

Byakuya Togami

Caesar Clown

Caliborn / Lord English

Captain Kuro

Cersei Iannister

Chloe Bourgeois

Chris McClain

Chrollo Lucifer

Cicero

Clara Oswald

Coco

Cozy Glow

Cynte

Damian Wayne

Dan Moroboshi

Dean Venture

Dean Winchester

Detective Saracusa

Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd

Disembodied Voice

Don Flamenco

Dr. Henry Miller

Drew

Duke

Edelgard

Elias Ainsworth

Elon Musk

Equius Zahhak

Erebus

Eric Cartman

Erlina and Brugaves

Eugene Coli

Every Single Country In 1993

Everyone In Romeo And Juliet

Father / Dwarf In The Glass

Feferi Peixes

Five

Five Pebbles

Floch

Foreman Oyun

France (Hetalia)

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu

Gamzee Makara

Georg Weissmann

God

Goeffry St. John

Gordon Blackwall

Graham Spector

Gra’ha Tia

Haiji Senri

Heath cliff

Henry Miller (OC)

Henry the Eighth

Himiko Toga

Hisoka

Hiyoko Saionji

Holly Blue Agate

House

Huey Laforet

Ianthe Tridentarius

Il Dottore

Inspector Tobias Greyson

Itsuki Shu

Izumi Sena

Jacopo Bearzatti

James T. Kirk

Jayne Cobb

Jiren

Joe Destefano

Johnny

Jonah Magnus

Jonathan Groff

Judith Ford / Natalie Cook

Judo

Julia

Julie-Sue

Ken

Kevin

Kusunoki Muu

Kyouichi Saionji

Ladd Russo

Lady Catherine de Bourgh

Lebreau Fermet Viralesque

Light Yagami

Liontari

Lotor

Louie

Louis

Luke

Mahiru Koizumi

Makoto Itou

Marie

Marlon

Mary Keay

Master Crown

Matou Shinji

Matpat

Medusa Gorgon

Meredith Rodney McKay

Michael Scott

Miguel O’Hara

Millions Knives

Moash

Moeka Kiryuu

Monokubs (Except Monodam)

Mori Ougai

Morris

Mr. Collins

Ms. Valentine

Muu Kusunoki

Muzan Kibutsuji

Mystery Hunter (Jeremiah Hartley)

Nagito Komaeda

Nanami Kiryuu

Narumi

Natsumi Sakasaki

Nefera DeNile

Nickel

Nikola Tesla

Noor Pradesh

Ocelot

Octavian

Ogai Mori

Orochi

Otto Apocalypse

Paul Von Oberstein

Pencil

Petyr Baelish / Littlefinger

Prince Louis

Queen Scarlet

Quiche

Quill Kipps

Rafal (FEE)

Rafal (SGE)

Rafe Cameron

Randy

Raven Queen

Rebecca Costwolds

Redd White

Riley Finn

Roger

Rohan Kishibe

Roland

Roshi

Rumpelstiltskin

Ruruka Ando

Sakazuki Akainu

Sandy

Sanji

Sebastian Mechaelis

Sheldon Cooper

Shen Jiu

Shiki Tohno/Nanaya

Shinonomes (both)

Shredder

Sigma Klim

Silver Spoon

Skizzleman

Slayer

Solf J. Kimblee

So Sejima

Splinter

Stark Sands

Steven Universe

Stormcaller

Subara Akehoshi

Tatsumi Kazehaya

Teruhashi Makoto

Teruteru

The Eleventh Doctor

The Entirety Of Homestuck

The Groke

The Little Palace Mistress

The Mage

The New Ninja

The Old Palace Master

The Operator

The Pale King

Tim Drake

Tom Wambsgans

Tomaru Sawagoe

Touichiro Suzuki

Trishna

Tumblr Staff

Valens Van Varro

Verstael Besithia

Victor Frankenstein

Vivienne Medranno’s Impsona

Voice In The Calm Ad On Spotify

Volgin

Wanderer/Scaramouche

Wen Chao

Whiteout, Clearsight, and Benjamin

Will Shuester

Willy Stampler

Woodes Rogers

Xisuma

Yoshiharu Hisomu

Yu Ziyuan

Yumichika Ayasegawa

Yuri Briar

Zeke Jaeger

Zenos Galvus

Zhou Zishu

#mod speaks #not a poll #most hated blorbo bracket #ask answered #this is very silly

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thealmightyemprex · 8 months

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Halloweenathon :Jekyll and Hyde

TOday we look at a TV movie based on a classic horror tale

In this 1990 TV movie Sara Crawford (Cheryl Ladd) relives past hardships as she recounts to John Utterson (Ronald Pickup) the events leading to the death of Dr Henry Jekyll (Michael Caine) and the invovement of a certain Mr Hyde

.....So Jekyll and Hyde is not a fave horror monster of mine .at least in film,as I have seen several adaptations and they rarely stick the landing for me .I think this is a contender for favorite (Tied with the John Barrymore film )

Whats interesting about this film is the Jekyll and Hyde part isnt the focus ,but more uses the story to talk about life in Victorian .I like the vibe and all the supporting characters including DAvid SChofield asa nosey reporter ,Lionel Jeffries as Jekylls father,and the great Joss Ackland as the antagonistic Dr Lanely

Michael Caine shines as Dr Jekyll,with some really solid scenes and he is also fairly menacing as Hyde ,and Cheryl Ladd has some great chemistry with him.

If I have an issue with the film the main problem was the design of Hyde,where he looks like a lumpy potato.AS good as Caine is,it was hard to take Hyde seriously .ALso the final reveal is....rather silly

I enjoyed this film a lot

@ariel-seagull-wings @the-blue-fairie @themousefromfantasyland @theancientvaleofsoulmaking @amalthea9 @angelixgutz @princesssarisa @makingboneboy @marquisedemasque @filmcityworld1

#Halloweenathon

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singeratlarge · 8 months

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Bud Abbott, Badly Drawn Boy, Sigtryggur Baldursson (The Sugarcubes), Victor Borge’s 1953 “Comedy in Music” premiere, Mahatma Gandhi, Moses Gunn, Richard Hell, Dave Holland, Freddie Jackson, the unsinkable Violet Jessop, Persis Kambatta, Chris LeDoux, Annie Leibowitz, George “Spanky” McFarland, Groucho Marx, Don McLean, Ron Meagher (Beau Brummels), the 1995 album WHAT’S THE STORY MORNING GLORY by Oasis (good to meet you Noel), Phillip Oakley (Human League), John Otway, Michael Rutherford, Jo-El Sonnier, my cousin Susan Stamm, Sting, Nat Turner, THE TWILIGHT ZONE TV series (premiered 1959), Gillian Welch, Yokozuna, and the great British writer (journalist, novelist, screenwriter) Graham Greene. I cite him as a key influence on my lyrics, and I’ve read his novels repeatedly—many of which have been made into films (some more than once): The End of The Affair (1955, 1999), The Human Factor, the excellent Our Man in Havana (Alec Guinnes, Ernie Kovacs), The Quiet American (1958, 2002), The Power and The Glory (Henry Fonda), and the landmark film noirs This Gun for Hire (Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake) and The Third Man (Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Wells + Anton Karas’s ironic zither music).

Greene’s 67-year long career as as journalist took him to leper colonies, war zones, and odd “hot spots” around the world, along with spying for MI6 during World War II. These provided settings for his stories, exploring ambivalent ethical and political issues of the modern world, often through a Biblical lens that offered redemption to criminals and sinners while exposing the hypocrisies of moral superiors. I can find his imprints in several of my songs, but the most overt is “Unresolved—Graham Greene’s Script for Laurel & Hardy,” imagining if Greene had written a script for the comedy team of Laurel & Hardy (maybe echoing Greene’s late-in-life friendship with Charlie Chaplin). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBvBEVq0PSE Meanwhile, HB GG and thank you for your volumes of spiritually-informed writing and letting us be human.

#birthday #grahamgreene #novelist #spy #thirdman #MI6 #johnnyjblair #singersongwriter #chamberpop

#johnny j blair #singer songwriter #music #singer at large #san francisco #pop rock #Graham Greene #film noir #birthday

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kwebtv · 1 year

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General Electric All Star Anniversary - ABC - September 29, 1978

Special

Running Time: 120 minutes

Stars:

John Wayne - Host

Lucille Ball

Jon “Bowser” Bauman

Albert Brooks

Henry Fonda

Alex Haley

Pat Hingle as Thomas Edison

Bob Hope

Cheryl Ladd

Michael Landon

Penny Marshall

Denise McKenna

Donny Osmond

Marie Osmond

Charley Pride

Nelson Riddle

John Ritter

Red Skelton

Suzanne Somers

James “Jimmy” Stewart as Mark Twain

Elizabeth Taylor

Leslie Uggams

Jimmie “J.J.” Walker

James Whitmore as Will Rogers

Cindy Williams

Henry Winkler

#General Electric All Star Anniversary #TV #1978 #ABC #Special #John Wayne #Lucille Ball #Henry Fonda #James Stewart #Bob Hope #Red Skelton #Elizabeth Taylor

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creativecuquilu · 1 year

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Today is my birthday. And for this year, here is something I've been thinking about for quite a long time: A good bunch of my favorite male characters - including those I recently knew or I like but not enough as to fanart, but taking away everyone I've abandoned or just felt like they shouldn't be here - all gathered up in a boxing ring, the majority wounded and weary, but some a bit dirty and confused. Serious and sad faces, a dark story to tell behind their piercing bleary looks but for some, way worse. And of course - the simplycity, cartoonism and bouncyness of my circled neckless heads, bubble eyes and long rectangly trapece bodies. Dedication and pressure to myself cannot be forgotten on this process...as well as telling you this is based off the Whatcha Say meme. And now the copyrights, which tells you the characters, their series, their actors and their rights, starting from the first row. Hope you like it! But first...Artwork (c) @CreativeCuquiLu Peter Venkman - Ghostbusters - Bill Murray (c) Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Paul Atreides - Dune - Kyle Maclachlan (c) Universal Pictures, David Lynch and Frank Herbert James Tiberius Kirk - Star Trek - William Shatner (c) Desilu Productions, CBS Paramount Television and Gene Roddenberry Larry Daley - Night in the Museum - Ben Stiller (c) 20th Century Fox, 1492 Pictures and 21 Laps Entertainment Agent K - Men in Black - Tommy Lee Jones (c) Columbia Pictures and Barry Sonnefield Horatio Caine - CSI Miami - David Caruso (c) Anthone E. Zuicker, Ann Danahue, Carol Mendelsohn, Jerry Bruckheimer Television and CBS Television Studios Jaime Lannister - Game of Thrones - Nikolaj Coster Waldau (c) HBO Entertainment and George R.R. Martin Guy Montag - Fahrenheit 451 - Oskar Werner (c) and Ray Bradbury Rick Deckard - Blade Runner - Harrison Ford (c) The Ladd Company and Ridley Scott Roj Blake - Blake's 7 - Gareth Thomas (c) BBC and Terry Nation Luke Skywalker - Star Wars - Mark Hamill (c) 20th Century Fox, LucasArts Films and George Lucas Dave Lister - Red Dwarf - Craig Charles (c) BBC Marty McFly - Back to the Future - Michael J. Fox (c) Universal Pictures and Steven Spielberg Sherlock Holmes - The Hound of the Baskervilles - Tom Baker (c) BBC James Bond - Goldeneye - Pierce Brosnan (c) United Artists Pictures Inc. Michael Knight - Knight Rider - David Hasselhoff (c) Universal Pictures Aragorn - Lord of the Rings - Viggo Mortensen (c) Warner Bros. Entertainment, United Artists Pictures Inc, Peter Jackson and J.R.R. Tolkien The Doctor - Doctor Who - David Tennant (c) BBC Arthur Dent - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Simon Jones (c) BBC and Douglas Adams John Hannibal Smith - The A Team - George Peppard (c) Universal Pictures Lucky Luke - Lucky Luke - Jacques Thébault (c) United Artists Pictures Inc, Réne Goscinny and Morris Peeta Mellark - The Hunger Games - Josh Hutcherson (c) Lionsgate Films and Suzanne Collins Alan Grant - Jurassic Park - Sam Neill (c) Universal Pictures, Steven Spielberg and Michael Crichton Asterix - Asterix and Obelix - Roger Carel (c) Extrafilm Produktion GMBH Berlin, René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo Shaggy Rogers - Scooby Doo - Casey Kasem (c) Hanna Barbera Neo - The Matrix - Keanu Reeves (c) Warner Bros. Entertainment, Village Roadshow Pictures and The Watchoski Brothers Gomez Addams - The Addams Family - John Astin (c) Hanna Barbera Inspector Gadget - Inspector Gadget - Don Adams (c) DIC Entertainment Corp. Harry Potter - Harry Potter - Daniel Radcliffe (c) Warner Bros. Entertainment and J. K. Rowling Rocky Balboa - Rocky - Sylvester Stallone (c) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists Pictures Inc And for anyone who wants to watch its process...

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tonimining · 2 years

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vimeo

GLAIVE "MINNESOTA" (is a place that exists) from Ramez Silyan on Vimeo.

Starring Glaive & Ryley Ladd Featuring Noah Centineo With Dalton Jones & Sophia Parker

Director: Ramez Silyan Prod Co: HPLA Executive Producer: Ryan Hahn Producer: Janelle Lee Director of Photography: Marz Miller Production Designer: Ava Villafañe Costume: Sydney Szramowski Editor: Ramez Silyan

Colorist: Kaitlyn Battistelli @ Ethos Color Producer: Sam Cesan Sound Design: Ramez Silyan & Brent Asbury Sound Mix: Brent Asbury @ Beta Petrol VFX: Buralqy VFX Prod: MADNOMAD

1st AD: Khyber Law 1st AC: Seth Lawrence 2nd AC: Sergey Lobanov Steadicam: James Troost & Luke Rihl Audio Mixer: David Shearer Key Grip: Perry Karidis BBG: Keith Karidis Gaffer: Dimitri Christo BBE: Nick Weir Set Dresser: Vinny Parillo Set Dresser: Jonathan Rodriguez Set Dresser: Moises Carranza Armorer: Todd Creason Pyrotech: Dan Gaspar Pyro Assist: David Marten Pyro Assist: Steve Purcell Water Truck: Michael Dunbar FSA: Mike Clemens SPFX MUA: Olga Tarnovetska SPFX: Ian Von Cromer Cat Wrangler: Studio Animal Services PA Driver: Cesar Mojica PA Set: Alaura Wong PA Set: Chris Solorzano PA Set: Keats Boyd

Film Processing/Scan @ Fotokem Label: Interscope Commissioner: John Jigitz

Special Thanks to Enzo Marc, Noah Centineo, Donut Prince, Skylar Newman & Praying, Ava Nirui & Heaven, Alix Ross & Online Ceramics

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genevieveetguy · 5 years

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All you need is for one person to think you're cool, and you're in. Everyone else will be scared to question it.

Never Been Kissed, Raja Gosnell (1999)

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ufonaut · 11 months

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When you said I never talk about the war, what you really meant is that I never talk about him. The second engineer on the project -- Corporal John Michael Ladd. My Johnny.

Alan Scott & Johnny Ladd in DC Pride: Through the Years (2023) #1

(Tim Sheridan, Cian Tormey)

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kristipetersenschoonover · 3 years

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Need original monsters? WICKED CREATURES antho features my story “Carving Grace” and lots of unique creeps!

Monster anthologies—there are so many! Wicked Creatures is crammed with seriously unusual ones, though—everything from a mumble man to scary train beings. And it’s now available! The antho features my short story “Carving Grace.” In it, living figureheads scour the streets of Timber Inlet in search of happy souls to punish. Grace, who struggles with depression, thinks she’s safe … until (more…)

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eyeliketwowatch · 6 years

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The Proud Rebel - Late Career Ladd Western

Queued this one up from our Amazon account last night, and ended up staying up later than we usually do to finish it, so it was a bit more engaging than most of these westerns we’ve been watching lately (otherwise we would have shut it down halfway and returned to it later). Alan Ladd (a bit older than we’re used to seeing him) and his son David Ladd play southerners after the end of the war heading north for more opportunities and a cure for his mute son. He ends up butting heads with some disreputable sheep herders (led by Dean Jagger and his number one son Harry Dean Stanton, in an early role), and is taken in by local spinster Olivia de Havilland. A good story with some great melodrama, and the sheepdog almost steals the show.

3.5 stars out of 5

Released 1958 First Viewing March 2018

#1958 #Michael Curtiz #Alan Ladd #Olivia de Havilland #Dean Jagger #Harry Dean Stanton #Cecil Kellaway #James Westerfield #John Carradine #Henry Hull #Western

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scared-aquarius · 3 years

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The worst of your zodiac sign

***Im very aware that these people vary GREATLY in horribleness, I am not equating them***

Aries

(L to R: Logan Paul, Quentin Tarantino, Tessa Brooks, Thomas Jefferson, Chris D’Elia, Sam Pepper, Dylann Roof, Danielle “Bhad Bhabie” Bregoli, Piers Morgan, Perez Hilton, Dennis Quaid, Ted “Unabomber” Kaczynski, John Lennon, Kourtney Kardashian, Brendon Urie, Hugh Hefner, Clyde Barrow, Rick Harrison)

Taurus

(L to R: Chris Brown, Melanie Martinez, Saddam Hussein, Chase Hudson, Mark Zuckerberg, Candace Owens, Albert Fish, Big Ed, Blac Chyna, Nikocado Avocado, Adolf Hitler, Melania Trump, Noah Beck, 6ix9ine, Austin McBroom, John Wilkes Booth, Stephen Baldwin, Lena Dunham)

Gemini

(L to R: Donald Trump, Iggy Azalea, Scott Disick, Mike Pence, Amy Schumer, Kanye West, James Charles, Cryaotic, Boris Johnson, David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz, Lance Stewart, Rudy Giuliani, Bill Burr, Azalea Banks, KSI, Alissa Violet, Jeffrey Dahmer, Carole Baskin)

Cancer

(L to R: Bill Cosby, Nicole Arbour, Tom Cruise, Shane Dawson, Elon Musk, Henry VIII, Khloé Kardashian, Drake Bell, Jaclyn Hill, Curtis Lepore, O.J. Simpson, Chris Pratt, Michael Vick, Gary Busey, Tana Mongeau, Wendy Williams, Kevin Hart, Lele Pons)

Leo

(L to R: Kevin Spacey, Kylie Jenner, LeafyIsHere, Lori Loughlin, Bill Clinton, Morgz, Tony Lopez, Fidel Castro, Casey Affleck, Joe Rogan, Mark Salling, Dixie D’Amelio, Rodney Alcalca, Tomi Lahren, Lil Pump, Benito Mussolini, June Shannon, Bryce Hall)

Virgo

(L to R: R. Kelly, Lea Michele, ProJared, Ivan the Terrible, Alfie Deyes, Gene Simmons, Charlie Sheen, Louis C.K., Ed Gein, Blaire White, Gertrude Baniszewski, Jason Derulo, Sean Connery, Laura Lee, Michael Jackson, Jared from Subway, Genghis Khan, Abby Lee Miller)

Libra

(L to R: Kim Kardashian, Dr. Luke, Lil Wayne, Lee Harvey Oswald, SSSniperWolf, Bella Thorne, George Zimmerman, FaZe Banks, Vladimir Putin, Jacob Sartorius, Addison Rae, Simon Cowell, Eminem, Margaret Thatcher, Halsey, Nikolas Cruz, Gwenyth Paltrow, Milo Yiannopoulos)

Scorpio

(L to R: Rachel Dolezal, Charles Manson, Ivanka Trump, Pablo Picasso, Aaron Hernandez, Erika Costell, Kendall Jenner, Michael Peterson, Dr. Mike, Jeffrey Star, Onision, Roseanne Barr, Tyga, Caitlyn Jenner, RiceGum, Drake, Belle Gunness, Kris Jenner)

Sagittarius

(L to R: Woody Allen, Austin Jones, Joseph Stalin, Armin Meiwes, Snooki, Daddyofive, Jay-Z, Pablo Escobar, Sia, Ted Bundy, Tyra Banks, Teala Dunn, Ed Kemper, Anne Coulter, Emperor Nero, James Holmes, Vanessa Hudgens, Billy the Kid)

Capricorn

(L to R: Jeff Bezos, Jake Paul, Ajit Pai, Matt Lauer, Eric Trump, Kid Rock, Kirstie Alley, Al Capone, Betsy DeVos, Vlad the Impaler, Ted Cruz, Kim Jong-un, Noah Cyrus, Brent Rivera, Mel Gibson, Lovely Peaches, Mini Ladd, Donald Trump Jr.)

Aquarius

(L to R: J.K. Rowling, Gary Ridgway, Alex Jones, Emma Roberts, Ronald Reagan, Xxxtentacion, John Travolta, fouseyTUBE, Nikita Dragun, Ellen Degeneres, Jeffrey Epstein, Gabbie Hanna, JayStation, Brett Kavanaugh, Hannah Stocking, Social Repose, Tati Westbrook, Paris Hilton)

Pisces

(L to R: Osama Bin Laden, Aileen Wuornos, Delphine LaLaurie, John Wayne Gacy, Mitch McConnell, Joe Exotic, Martin Shkreli, Keemstar, Camila Cabello, Ansel Egort, Richard Ramirez, Ivana Trump, Justin Bieber, Bruce Willis, Bugsy Siegel, Dennis “BTK” Rader, Toby Turner, Harvey Weinstein)

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dustedmagazine · 3 years

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Music for Films, Vol. II: Chick Habit

For good and for ill, Quentin Tarantino’s movies have been strongly associated with postmodern pop culture — particularly by folks whose reactions to the word “postmodern” tend toward pursed lips and school-marmishly wagged fingers. There for a while, reading David Denby on Tarantino was similar to reading Michiko Kakutani on Thomas Pynchon: almost always the same review, the same complaints about characters lacking “psychological depth,” the same handwringing over an ostensible moral insipidness. Truth be told, Tarantino’s pranksome delight with flashy surfaces and stylistic flourishes that are ends in themselves gives tentative credence to some of the caviling. Critics have raised related concerns over the superficiality of Tarantino’s tendency toward stunt casting, especially his resurrections of aging actors relegated to the film industry’s commercial margins: John Travolta, Pam Grier, Robert Forster, David Carradine, Darryl Hannah, Don Johnson and so on. There might be a measure of cynicism in the accompanying cinematic nudging and winking, but it’s also the case that a number of the performances have been terrific.

The writer-director brings a similar sensibility to his sound-tracking choices, demonstrating the cooler-than-thou, deep-catalog knowledge of an obsessive crate-digger. Tarantino thematized that knowledge in his break-through feature, Reservoir Dogs (1992). Throughout the film, the characters tune in to Steven Wright deadpanning as the deejay of “K-Billy’s Super Sounds of the Seventies”; like the characters, the viewer transforms into a listener, treated to such fare as the George Baker Selection’s “Little Green Bag” (1970) and Harry Nilsson’s “Coconut” (1971). As with the above-mentioned actors, Tarantino has sifted pop culture’s castoffs and detritus, unearthing songs and delivering experiences of renewed value — and thereby proving the keenness of his instincts and aesthetic wit. “Listen to (or look at) this!” he seems to say, with his cockeyed, faux-incredulous grin. “Can you believe you were just going to throw this out?” And mostly, it works. If the Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” (1974) has become a sort of semi-ironized accompaniment to hipsterish good times, that resonance has a lot more to do with Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel and Co. cruising L.A. in a hulking American sedan than with the Disney Co.’s Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).

In Death Proof (2007), Tarantino’s seventh film and unaccountably his least favorite, soundtrack and screen are both full to bursting with the flotsam and jetsam of “entertainment” conceived as an industry.

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In just the opening minutes, we see outmoded moviehouse announcements, complete with cigarette-burn cue dots; big posters of Brigitte Bardot from Les Bijoutiers du claire de lune (1958) and of Ralph Nelson’s Soldier Blue (1970) bedecking the apartment of Jungle Julia (Sydney Tamiia Poitier); the tee shirt worn by Shanna (Jordan Ladd), which bears the image of Tura Satana; and strutting under all of it are the brassy cadences of Jack Nitzsche’s “The Last Race,” taken from his soundtrack for the teensploitation flick Village of the Giants (1965). Bibs and bobs, bits and pieces of low- and middle-brow cinema are cut up and reconstructed into a fulsome swirl of signs. And there’s an unpleasant edge to it; the cuts are echoed by the action of the camera, which has been busily cleaving the bodies of the women on screen into fragments and parts. First the feet of Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito), propped up on a dashboard; then Julia, all ass and gams; then Arlene’s lower half again, chopped into slices by the stairs she dashes up (“I gotta take the world’s biggest fucking piss!”) and by the close-up that settles on her belly and pelvis, her hand shoved awkwardly into her crotch.

As often happens in Tarantino’s movies, furiously busy meta-discursive play collapses the images’ problematic content under multiple levels of reference and pastiche. The film is one half of Grindhouse (2007), Tarantino’s collaboration with his buddy Robert Rodriguez, an old-fashioned double-feature comprising the men’s love letters to the exploitation cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. In those thousands of movies — mondo, beach-cutie, nudie-cutie, women in prison, early slasher, rape-revenge, biker gang, chop-socky, Spaghetti Western and muscle-car-worship flicks (and we could add more subgenres to the list) — symbolic violence inflicted on women’s bodies was de rigueur, and frequently the principal draw. Tarantino shot Death Proof himself, so he is (more than usually) directly responsible for all the framing and focusing — and he’s far too canny a filmmaker not to know precisely what he’s doing with and to those bodies. The excessive, camera-mediated gashing and trimming is a knowing, perhaps deprecating nod to all that previous, gratuitous T&A. His sound-tracking choice of “The Last Race” metaphorically underscores the point: in Bert I. Gordon’s Village of the Giants, bikini-clad teens find and consume an experimental growth serum, which causes them to expand to massive proportions. Really big boobs, actual acres of ass. Get it?

Of course, all the implied japing and judging is deeply embedded in the film’s matrix of esoteric references and fleeting allusions. You’d have to be very well versed in the history of exploitation cinema to pick up on the indirect homage to Gordon’s goofy movie. But as in Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino doesn’t just gesture, he dramatizes, folding an authoritative geekdom into the action of Death Proof. In the set-up to Death Proof’s notorious car crash scene, Julia is on the phone, instructing one of her fellow deejays to play “Hold Tight!” (1966) by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. Don’t recognize the names? “For your information,” Julia snorts, Pete Townsend briefly considered abandoning the Who, and he thought about joining the now-obscure beat band, to make it “Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick, Tich & Pete. And if you ask me, he should have.”

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It’s among the most gruesomely violent sequences in Tarantino’s films (which do not run short on graphic bloodshed), and Julia receives its most spectacular punishment. Those legs and that rump, upon which the camera has lavished so much attention, are torn apart. Her right leg flips, flies and slaps the pavement, a hunk of suddenly flaccid meat. Again, Tarantino proves himself an adept arranger of image, sign and significance. Want to accuse him of fetishizing Julia’s legs? He’ll materialize the move, reducing the limb to a manipulable fragment, and he’ll invest the moment with all of the intrinsic violence of the fetish. He’ll even do you one better — he’ll make that violence visible. Want to watch? You better buckle up and hold tight.

Hold on a second. “Hold Tight”? The soundtrack has passed over from intertextual in-joke to cruel punchline. It doesn’t help that the song is so much fun, and that it’s fun watching the girls groove along to it, just before Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) obliterates them, again and again and again. The awful insistence of the repetition is another set-up, establishing the film’s narrative logic: the repeated pattern and libidinal charge-and-release of Stuntman Mike’s vehicular predations. It is, indeed, “a sex thing,” as Sheriff Earl McGraw (Michael Parks) informs us in his cartoonish, redneck lawman’s drawl. Soon the sexually charged repetitions pile up: see Abernathy’s (Rosario Dawson) feet hanging out of Kim’s (Tracie Thom) 1972 Mustang, in a visual echo of Arlene’s, and of Julia’s. Then listen to Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) belt out some of Smith’s cover of “Baby It’s You” (1969), which we most recently heard 44 minutes before, as Julia danced ecstatically by the Texas Chili Bar’s jukebox. Then watch Abernathy as she sees Stuntman Mike’s tricked-out ’71 Nova, a vibrating hunk of metallic machismo — just like Arlene saw it, idling menacingly back in Austin, with another snatch of “Baby It’s You” wisping through that moment’s portent.

For a certain kind of viewer, the Nova’s low-slung, growling charms are hard to resist, as is the sleazy snarl of Willy DeVille’s “It’s So Easy” (1980; and we might note that Jack Nitzsche produced a couple of Mink DeVille’s early records, connecting another couple strands in the web) on the Nova’s car stereo. Those prospective pleasures raise the question of just who the film is for. That may seem obvious: the same folks — dudes, mostly — who find pleasure in exploitation movies like Vanishing Point (1971), Satan’s Sadists (1969) or The Big Doll House (1971). But there are a few other things to account for, like how Death Proof repeatedly passes the Bechdel Test, and how long those scenes of conversation among women go on, and on. Most notable is the eight-minute diner scene, a single take featuring Abernathy, Kim, Lee and Zoë (Zoë Bell, doing a cinematic rendition of her fabulous self, an instance of stunt casting that literalizes the “stunt” part). Among other things, the women discuss their careers in film, the merits of gun ownership and Kim and Zoë’s love of (you guessed it) car chase movies like Vanishing Point. One could read that as a liberatory move, a suggestion that cinema of all kinds is open to all comers. All that’s required is a willingness to watch. But watching the diner scene becomes increasing claustrophobic. The camera circles the women’s table incessantly, and on the periphery of the shot, sitting at the diner’s counter, is Stuntman Mike. The circling becomes predatory, the threat seems pervasive.

If you’ve seen the film, you know how that plays out: Zoë and Kim play “ship’s mast” on a white 1970 Dodge Challenger (the Vanishing Point car); Stuntman Mike shows up and terrorizes them mercilessly; but then Abernathy, Zoë and Kim chase him down and beat the living shit out of him, likely fatally. In another sharply conceived cinematic maneuver, Tarantino executes a climactic sequence that inverts the diner scene: the women surround Stuntman Mike, abject and pleading, and punch and kick him as he bounces from one of them to another. The camera zips from vantage to vantage within the circle, deliriously tracking the action. All the jump cuts intensify the violence, and they provide another contrast to the diner’s scene’s silky, unbroken shot. The sounds and the impact of the blows verge on slapstick, and our identification with the women makes it a giddily gross good time.

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So, an inversion seeks to undo repetition. Certainly, Stuntman Mike’s intent to repeat the car-crash-kill-thrill is undone, and predator becomes prey. But, as is inevitable with Tarantino’s cinema, there are complications, other echoes and patterns to suss out. For instance: as the women stride toward the wrecked Nova, while Stuntman Mike pathetically wails, the camera zooms in on their asses. Bad asses? Nice asses? What’s the right nomenclature? To make sure we can put the shot together with Julia’s first appearance in the film, Abernathy has hiked up her skirt, revealing a lot of leg. Repetition reasserts itself. In an exacerbating circumstance, Harvey Weinstein’s grubby fingerprints are smeared onto the film. Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios is credited with production of Grindhouse, but Dimension Films, a Weinstein Brothers company, handled distribution.

When the film cuts to its end titles, we hear April March’s “Chick Habit” (1995), with its spot-on lyric: “Hang up the chick habit / Hang it up, daddy / Or you’ll never get another fix.” And so on. Even here, where the girl-power vibe feels strongest (cue Abernathy burying a bootheel in Stuntman Mike’s face), there are echoes, patterns. Note how the striding bassline of “Chick Habit” strongly recalls the pulse beating through Nitzsche’s “The Last Race.” Note that March’s song is a cover, of “Laisse tomber les filles,” originally recorded by yé-yé girl France Gall. The song was penned by Serge Gainsbourg, pop provocateur and notorious womanizer. The two collaborated again, releasing “Les Sucettes,” a tune about a teeny-bopper who really likes sucking on lollipops, when Gall was barely 18; the accompanying scandal nearly torpedoed her career. Gall refused to ever sing another song by Gainsbourg, and disavowed her hits.

Again, that’s all deeply embedded, somewhere in the film’s complicated play of pop irony and double-entendre and the sudden explosions of delight and disgust that intermittently reveal and conceal. Again, you’d have to know your pop history really well to catch up with the complications, and Death Proof moves so fast that there’s always another reference or allusion demanding your attention as the cars growl and the blood spurts. Too many signs to track, too many signals to decipher — that’s the postmodern. But perhaps we have become too glib, assuming that all signs are somehow equivalent. Death Proof insists otherwise. Much has been made of the film’s strange relation to digital filmmaking, of the sort that Rodriguez has made a career out of. Part of Grindhouse’s shtick is its goofball applications of CGI, all the scratches and skips and flaws that the filmmakers lovingly applied. They are digital effects, masquerading as damaged celluloid. Tarantino cut back against that grain, filming as much of the car chase’s maniacal stuntwork in meatspace as he safely could. Purposeful practical filmmaking, for a digitally enhanced cinematic experience, attempting to mimic the ways real film interacts with the physical environment and its manifold histories. Is that clever, or just more cultural clutter?

Amid all the clutter that crowds the characters onscreen, and their conversations in the film’s field of sound, it can be easy to lose track of the distinctions between appearances and the traces of the real bodies that worked to bring Death Proof to life. Which is why Tarantino’s inclusion of Bell is so crucial. She provides another inversion: Instead of masking her individual presence, doing stunts for other actresses in their clothes and hair (for Lucy Lawless in Xena: Warrior Princess, or for Uma Thurman in Tarantino’s Kill Bill films), Bell is herself, doing what she does best, projecting the technical elements of filmmaking — usually meant to bleed seamlessly into illusion — right onto the surface of the screen. And instead of allowing one group of girls to slip into a repeated pattern, bodies easily exchanged for other bodies, Bell’s presence and its implicit insistence on her particularity (who else can move like she does?) breaks up the superficial logic of cinema’s market for the feminine. She disrupts its chick habit. There’s only one woman like her.

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Jonathan Shaw

#music for films #chick habit #jonathan shaw #dusted magazine #death proof #quentin tarantino #reservoir dogs #grindhouse #Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick & Tich

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