Starring the Smug, Bisexual, Hybrid with The Automatic Transgressiveness …

Sadly, the new film “Cars” doesn’t, and that whiff of patriarchy and Castrol Type R has sent NY Times movie reviewer Manohla Dargis careening ’round the bend in writing her review.

To watch McQueen and the other cars motor along the film’s highways and byways without running into or over a single creature is to realize that, in his cheerful way, Mr. Lasseter has done Mr. Cameron one better: instead of blowing the living world into smithereens, these machines have just gassed it with carbon monoxide.

Even stranger, the film turns Detroit’s paving over of America into an occasion for some nostalgic historical revisionism. Surreal isn’t the word.

“Cars” is rated G (General audiences). Everything is clean but the fossil fuel.

Read the whole thing, it’s charming in it’s West Hollywood/Manhattan insularity.

Actually, it’s too bad Manohla didn’t study her urban history better; in the idyllic cities she so obviously misses, the biggest hazard to human health was the tons of horseshit that were left in the streets.

I’ll leave the snarky comment to the readers…

13 thoughts on “Starring the Smug, Bisexual, Hybrid with The Automatic Transgressiveness …”

  1. the biggest hazard to human health was the tons of horseshit that were left in the streets.

    Actually cars greatly reduced noise pollution, which was enormous in 19th century New York because of iron-shod wheels crashing over cobblestones.

    Thanks to the NYT, the horseshit hazard is greater than ever.

  2. I can think of no greater innovation than closed sewer systems in terms of the number of lives saved, excluding vaccination in general.

    Unfortunately, New York left one open sewer remain from the Progressive Era…

  3. OK, I’ll bite – if autos could run on crap, New York’s “paper of record” could fix the fuel problem all by itself.

    True, and lets me test our anti-spam system….

  4. Can’t a kids movie just be a kids movie without people attaching political bs to it?

    You left out the best quote of all in that piece of rubbish of a review:

    “…the film can’t help but bring to mind James Cameron’s dystopic masterpiece, ‘The Terminator,…'”

    If a G rated kid flick makes you think of the Terminator, then it’s time for a new therapist.

  5. I’ve got a humerous story: Pixar wanted to name the hippie van in the movie “Waldmire” after a local/Route-66 legend the car had been modeled after. Waldmire, picking up the potential future McDonald’s tie-in, declined, stating that he was an “ethical vegetarian” and would only allow his name to be used in the movie with a contribution to the charity of his choice. Pixar declined.

    Also, in the movie is a recreation of a local/Route-66 legend, the Cozy Dog, known for its deep-fried hot dogs on a stick. Curiously, that restaurant is owned by the Walmire family and where you can buy “plush” cozy dogs.

    Anti-meat or anti-McDs, you decide.

  6. Her name alone is a bad joke, why bother to read the rest of that lefty drivel. How many tress were killed just to publish that dreck? Why anyone bothers to take the NYT seriously is beyond me.

  7. Andrew, Manohla Dargis was born and raised in Manhattan, and she is as white as the driven snow. Whiter than laundry day at David Duke’s house.

    Did you assume that she was a minority person because of her unconventional name? You shouldn’t stereotype people, you know.

  8. “Did you assume that she was a minority person because of her unconventional name?”

    I think that he thinks that she comes from one of those upper-class ‘progressive’ backgrounds in which parents name thier children things like ‘bedspread’ and ‘shoestring’ and don’t consider this to be unusual cruelty. Whether this is still unfair sterotyping is a topic of some debate, but I don’t necessarily think racism is involved in his prejugdice. At least, that wasn’t what I took from his statement. I took it to mean he thought her name sounded like something from a SNL comedy sketch.

    On the good side, at least when you google her you don’t get hits for anyone else. That’s got to be worth something to a celebrity.

  9. Lets just not forget, the Honda Pius may produce significantly less CO2 and carbon monoxide, but the levels of Smug it puts out is alarming.

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