The Goods

Saturday my buddy and me went movie hopping. "Isn't that something you do in high school?" Well, yea. Unless you live in Fresno and have nothing else going on.

It was fun though, reliving high school a little bit. It was great being afraid of getting caught when we darted in between theaters (they had a good bit of security too). I liked having authority to be afraid of instead of just being afraid of my own stupid actions.

We saw District 9. Eh. Inglourious Basterds. Great movie! Nothing to do with Fresno though.

But The Goods. Surprise surprise, it's got a Fresno joke! I wrote earlier about the astonishing number of movies which make fun of a city most people on the east coast have never heard of.

In fact, I took note of the lowest-common-denominator nature of most of the jokes in The Goods. Almost all of them were either racist, sexist, made fun of retarded people, or were simply about sex. If they weren't that then the humor depended on simple volume or the juxtaposition of a businessman wanting to be in a boy band (a.k.a. effeminate). Anyone from any era anywhere would get these jokes as we all know what Asians are and what sex is.

This makes the Fresno joke an anomaly, it's one of the most sophisticated and thought out jokes in the whole film! Why do they run this joke knowing it will be completely lost on more than half the people who see it (as the east coast has way more citizens than the west)?

I can just see that part of the film playing in a theater in my hometown. The whole audience would be silent.

It's an inside joke. And yet they still couldn't resist.

I wondered too about the other people watching the movie. Does it bother them that their hometown gets constantly lampooned by outsiders? Do they ever wonder if it really is better in the outside world? Do they think that maybe this many people just can't be wrong and that they need to do something about it?......

Nope, they don't.