December 3, 2004
Ask The Movie Guy!
Dear Movie Guy:
I’m scared. My girlfriend loves FOOTLOOSE. I figured it was harmless, but then I watched it with her, and I have become convinced that she must have an incurable brain tumor to enjoy it. Am I missing something?
Blaine
Edina, Minnesota
Are you missing something, Blaine? Is it possible that you are somehow deficient because you failed to enjoy two hours of the stiffest, whitest dancing known to man, a lead who strongly resembles an otter with a perm, and a soundtrack composed entirely on a second-hand $20 Casio keyboard?
I’m gonna have to go with no.
In fact, Blaine, your suspicions about your girlfriend couldn’t be more dead-on. As recently as 20 years ago, physicians were using FOOTLOOSE as an early indicator of massive, crippling brain damage. You see, not long after the film was released, scientists were faced with the difficult prospect of explaining exactly how a movie that impossibly dumb could become so massively popular. There could only be one possible explanation: Kevin Bacon must be one sexy piece of man-meat.
Alas, this hypothesis was quickly investigated and dismissed. The less said the better.
However, at about this time, one astute physician working at the Kramden Institute for Comedic Injuries to the Head (leaders in the burgeoning field of head-bonk amnesia research) began to notice an unusual crossover between patients being treated for blows to the head with bowling balls and fans of FOOTLOOSE. Quickly but quietly, data was gathered and then published in the New England Journal of Medicine under the headline, “Awful Film Popular With Idiots, Norwegians.” Despite protests from both Oslo and Paramount, an entire new field arose around this radical new approach to the early detection of mental problems. The results were stunning. Concerned friends and family began reporting loved ones suspected to be FOOTLOOSE fans to police by the hundreds, and even though they showed few other warning signs besides taking seriously a film where the swing choir kid is the bad-boy rebel, thousands were institutionalized “just to be safe.” Congress even passed a law requiring people buying guns to be screened for purchases of “Lets Hear it for the Boy” by Denise Williams.
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Fortunately, just as FOOTLOOSE hysteria was reaching a fever pitch, statisticians at MIT proposed a radical theory: What if the film wasn’t attracting people with brain damage, but giving it to them? This did seem to better fit the available evidence. People attending the film did report feeling noticeably dumber after screenings, although the effect would wear off after a cold beverage and an episode or two of THREE’S COMPANY. Only those who persisted in viewing the film multiple times seemed to show signs of permanent brain damage. Still, the theory remained controversial, largely because the first group had already spent all their grant money and didn’t want to give it back.
Proponents on both sides argued furiously for months until a third faction emerged. This third, controversial faction believed that FOOTLOOSE was, in fact, responsible for the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, thus instigating World War I. A fourth faction emerged, calling the third a bunch of doodyheads who wouldn’t know historical causation if it bit them on the butt. The third faction responded by getting drunk and hitting on the fourth’s mother at a wedding. A sixth faction surfaced, but was quickly dismissed when it was pointed out that the fifth faction had not yet arisen, and so the sixth faction apologized and went home. And so on.
While all this academic sniping was going on, FOOTLOOSE had come and gone from the theaters, though the psychic scars remained. Unfortunately, just as the nation had begun to heal, however, Paramount released TOP GUN, and the hurting began again.
In recent years, however, a new, more credible theory has emerged that may explain your girlfriend’s poor choices: Feminine Bad Taste Syndrome, or FBTS. This grand unified theory of female judgment attempted to account for the disproportionately high numbers of women who attended FOOTLOOSE, many of whom had also flocked to see films like XANADU and DIRTY DANCING. The implications were staggering: Could FBTS also account for leg warmers, C. Thomas Howell, and big hair? And what about Andrew McCarthy? No, that was probably the cocaine, but nice try.
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Now before you get your panties in a bunch, I have to ask: Why are you wearing panties, Blaine? Whatever. What I was going to say is, yes, there is a masculine equivalent, which attempts to account for Jerry Bruckheimer, Burt Reynolds, and anything past the second ALIEN film. But the fact remains, your girlfriend may very well have FBTS, but we can’t know for sure until we do further investigation. Does she laugh when she reads “Cathy”? Does she own any Marc Anthony albums? Does she make you watch GREASE?
If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, Blaine, your girlfriend may indeed have FBTS. Which means you have to ask yourself the same thing that men with FBTS-afflicted partners have been asking themselves for centuries, the question for the ages…
Is she hot? Yeah? Well then, shut your cake hole.
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