Kahn vs. the World of PopBy Armond White Pop culture moves fast but not as fast as Joseph Kahn’s Detention, a rampage through recent pop history that is so delirious–and so sharp about the cynicism ingrained in commercial pop’s heedless seductions of youth–that it sometimes seems one and the same with the target Kahn is satirizing. Students at Grizzly Wolf tk High School are being stalked by a maniacal killer who chops heads and limbs with a scythe. Yep, this Grim Reaper is Time itself–the digital countdown on products and branding and self-esteem that, for this millennial generation, have become the only measure of what matters. This desperate dizziness describes current pop consciousness. The kids at Grizzly Wolf tk are interchangeable consumers–tk (tk), tk (Josh Hutcherson), tk (tk), tk (tk) are caught up in an existential whirl of bait-of-switch which is the consequence of capitalism’s rise and morality’s decline. Kahn, a music video director of true visual imagination has written a script that comically expresses this fast-moving hysteria. In the near-decade since Kahn’s still-remarkable action movie Torque, pop culture has gone through so many head-spins that satire has virtually disappeared from the culture. Torque was castigated for Kahn’s avant-witty technique. (He knew what was thrilling and absurd in action tropes and heroic bravado and yet had the ability to parodying it.) Since then, wit is no longer used to criticize behavior but merely to flatter it; to get people to buy more product, to train kids to worship the market, consume attitude and display vanity without thinking. Detention mocks that brazen self-satisfaction when an unbearably obnoxious high-schooler (“I‘m Beautiful, Intelligent, Talented, Charmismatic and Hoobastank!”) meets the Reaper. From there, Kahn’s script rings the alarm on modern, cultural-wide homicide. Kahn’s premise–combining John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club with Scream, then amping it with a mash-up of Back to the Future and Saw–would be diabolical if it weren’t so dead-on funny (harshest of tk’s many put-downs is to tell a Spielberg-basher “I don’t speak Fanboy!”) and executed with drop-dead panache. There’s a continuous 360-degree pan through eleven years of pop song totems and teen fads that sneaks up on you as one of the most fantastically detailed set-pieces in modern movies. It’s also an homage to Brian DePalma’s great 360-pan in Blow-Out. Both DePalma and Kahn use their technical aplomb and social acuity to similarly encircle a moral void. Kahn’s DePalma trickery may obscure his own considerable point about cultural overload (also DePalma’s unconscious panic). It is through cultural critique that Kahn avoids the moral confusion of Diablo Cody’s ludicrous Young Adult where Jason Reitman purveyed Cody’s undigested narcissism for Oscar-baiting self-pity. It carried high school petulance into adult pathology then tried to pass it off as a social statement–yet never honestly admitting a fascination with cool cruelty. (Kahn’s as hip to those tricks as Whit Stillman is in Damsels in Distress when Violet says “Cool people are not entirely inhuman, just enough to be cool.”) Detention gets at the urge toward cool that is intrinsic to pop marketing. Perhaps only an artist toiling in the marketing trade like Kahn can realize this complexity so clearly. Detention’s other antecedents include Gregg Araki’s “Doom” generation trilogy–especially its pinnacle, Nowhere (which Kahn has the inspiration to mash-up with Cronenberg’s The Fly) and the works of Neveldine-Taylor, the avant-gardists whose brilliant, disreputable genre parodies have been completely ignored by the smart-about-movie elitists worshipping the literally hopeless Pedro Costa, Apitchapong Weerasthekul. Lars Von Trier and Michael Haneke who remain out of touch with the zeitgeist. Kahn’s keen pop critique earns its justification through self parody. Depicting his own directorial credit as vomit is silly and blatant but the further Kahn indulges pop excess, he sketches a vagrant poignancy that nearly resembles Edgar Wright’s vivifying pop consciousness in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Kahn’s 80s and 90s pop references declare nostalgia for a time when pop wasn’t as frantic or ironic but could be genuinely touching. Tk is accosted “Who taught you how to make a snuff porno, Lady GaGa!” (Kahn helmed Gaga’s Paparazzi music video but apparently didn‘t have the license to give it the La Dolce Vita emotional gravitas that Araki accomplished in Nowhere). When Kahn conceives a romantic dance for tk and tk he evokes both Dirty Dancing and Napoleon Dynamite, his vision suggests High and Low surrealism.
Detention reviewed by Armond White for CityArts
Detention
Kahn vs. the World of Pop
By Armond White
Pop culture moves fast but not as fast as Joseph Kahn’s Detention, a rampage through recent pop history that is so delirious–and so sharp about the cynicism ingrained in commercial pop’s heedless seductions of youth–that it sometimes seems one and the same with the target Kahn is satirizing.
Students at Grizzly Wolf tk High School are being stalked by a maniacal killer who chops heads and limbs with a scythe. Yep, this Grim Reaper is Time itself–the digital countdown on products and branding and self-esteem that, for this millennial generation, have become the only measure of what matters. This desperate dizziness describes current pop consciousness. The kids at Grizzly Wolf tk are interchangeable consumers–tk (tk), tk (Josh Hutcherson), tk (tk), tk (tk) are caught up in an existential whirl of bait-of-switch which is the consequence of capitalism’s rise and morality’s decline. Kahn, a music video director of true visual imagination has written a script that comically expresses this fast-moving hysteria.
In the near-decade since Kahn’s still-remarkable action movie Torque, pop culture has gone through so many head-spins that satire has virtually disappeared from the culture. Torque was castigated for Kahn’s avant-witty technique. (He knew what was thrilling and absurd in action tropes and heroic bravado and yet had the ability to parodying it.) Since then, wit is no longer used to criticize behavior but merely to flatter it; to get people to buy more product, to train kids to worship the market, consume attitude and display vanity without thinking. Detention mocks that brazen self-satisfaction when an unbearably obnoxious high-schooler (“I‘m Beautiful, Intelligent, Talented, Charmismatic and Hoobastank!”) meets the Reaper. From there, Kahn’s script rings the alarm on modern, cultural-wide homicide.
Kahn’s premise–combining John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club with Scream, then amping it with a mash-up of Back to the Future and Saw–would be diabolical if it weren’t so dead-on funny (harshest of tk’s many put-downs is to tell a Spielberg-basher “I don’t speak Fanboy!”) and executed with drop-dead panache. There’s a continuous 360-degree pan through eleven years of pop song totems and teen fads that sneaks up on you as one of the most fantastically detailed set-pieces in modern movies. It’s also an homage to Brian DePalma’s great 360-pan in Blow-Out. Both DePalma and Kahn use their technical aplomb and social acuity to similarly encircle a moral void.
Kahn’s DePalma trickery may obscure his own considerable point about cultural overload (also DePalma’s unconscious panic). It is through cultural critique that Kahn avoids the moral confusion of Diablo Cody’s ludicrous Young Adult where Jason Reitman purveyed Cody’s undigested narcissism for Oscar-baiting self-pity. It carried high school petulance into adult pathology then tried to pass it off as a social statement–yet never honestly admitting a fascination with cool cruelty. (Kahn’s as hip to those tricks as Whit Stillman is in Damsels in Distress when Violet says “Cool people are not entirely inhuman, just enough to be cool.”) Detention gets at the urge toward cool that is intrinsic to pop marketing. Perhaps only an artist toiling in the marketing trade like Kahn can realize this complexity so clearly.
Detention’s other antecedents include Gregg Araki’s “Doom” generation trilogy–especially its pinnacle, Nowhere (which Kahn has the inspiration to mash-up with Cronenberg’s The Fly) and the works of Neveldine-Taylor, the avant-gardists whose brilliant, disreputable genre parodies have been completely ignored by the smart-about-movie elitists worshipping the literally hopeless Pedro Costa, Apitchapong Weerasthekul. Lars Von Trier and Michael Haneke who remain out of touch with the zeitgeist.
Kahn’s keen pop critique earns its justification through self parody. Depicting his own directorial credit as vomit is silly and blatant but the further Kahn indulges pop excess, he sketches a vagrant poignancy that nearly resembles Edgar Wright’s vivifying pop consciousness in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Kahn’s 80s and 90s pop references declare nostalgia for a time when pop wasn’t as frantic or ironic but could be genuinely touching. Tk is accosted “Who taught you how to make a snuff porno, Lady GaGa!” (Kahn helmed Gaga’s Paparazzi music video but apparently didn‘t have the license to give it the La Dolce Vita emotional gravitas that Araki accomplished in Nowhere). When Kahn conceives a romantic dance for tk and tk he evokes both Dirty Dancing and Napoleon Dynamite, his vision suggests High and Low surrealism.