Disney has now repurposed its vintage characters, Chipmunks Chip and Dale, to comment on Hollywood’s unending appetite for remakes. “Talking about a reboot. Think they can squeeze a dollar out of essentially nothing,” Chip rues as he spots hoardings for President Dog 3, Fast and Furious Babies: babies take the wheel! And Batman versus E.T., which he admits he might give a watch, while walking back home.
Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers is replete with easter egg humour. The main street Chip and Dale visit while on the case carries a stark resemblance to Disneyland, except cartoon characters play themselves instead of actors in costumes. Chip opens his fridge to packages of Disney merchandise food with Ice Age, Incredibles and Loony Toon characters on them. Take a look at the Mickey Mouse shorts, Woody and Transformers leg, the aristocat face and Wreck it Ralph arm of the mutated figure of bootleg Peter Pan in the end, it’s canon for days. This has to be one of the most self conscious movies to come from Disney.
It's been over two years since director Martin Scorsese said that Marvel films weren’t cinema but closer to theme parks. He defended these comments in the New York Times: modern movie franchises do not put you in any real emotional danger. “They are sequels in name but they are remakes in spirit, and everything in them is officially sanctioned because it can’t really be any other way. That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption,” he said.
This trend was literalised by an older studio, a parent to Marvel, when it opened the gates of the first ever Disneyland in California and thus transformed its status from a bastion of art to the supplier of family entertainment. Arguably, Disney can be called the pinnacle of an aggressive mixing of business and art.
Scholars have written about the golden ages of Disney, the terrible slumps and a glorious renaissance. Each age flowed with a winning formula and ebbed because of formula fatigue. For instance, the ‘80s established the studio’s Broadway tradition with the Little Mermaid as well as revamped the Disney Princess. Ariel had more agency than her predecessors Cinderella, Aurora and Snow White. She quested after the prince rather than waiting for him to show up and save the day. Villains like Ursula and Lion King’s Scar became ironic in tone and thoughtful, sowing the potent seeds of meta-commentary.
The formula was exhausted by the time Tarzan released. The changing times meant that the princess would again need to evolve past a love story and her own trope to survive. As author and Youtuber Lindsay Ellis puts it, Disney used commentary not so much as a means to examine its past, as much as it used metacommentary to justify its own existence. It’s a clever way to hide the medicine, an integral part of the ongoing formula of retromania. The studio could remake Beauty and the Beast or Lion King in live-action and show its audience that it is hip to its own criticism because it knew that the audience would pay to feel heard.
In his book, Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past, Simon Reynolds observes that we are the victims of over documentation. Retromania is our hyperfixation with the past blown up by access to digital technologies such as Youtube that both record and archive. So what we’re making in the now is built upon the detritus of what has already been made.
While our means of looking back have expanded, our desire to do so has too. It’s almost like we’re living in a fairytale ourselves, which is a kind of story with hopelessness in it. Stuck between vague recovery efforts from a pandemic and the certain effects of climate change, the ability to look back brings us some sort of experiential control. There’s comfort in familiarity. A franchise of multiverses gives us second chances -- an undo button, fulfilling our ultimate wish. Chip N Dale: Rescue Rangers gives us the multiverse of animation styles and narratives where Polar Express eyes collide with the uncanny valley CGI of the ‘00s, claymation, sock puppet and puppet animation; Dale who undergoes a CGI surgery and the jarring answer to Peter Pan: Where is He Now? In fact, there’s a fleeting reference to Rick and Morty, to which all multiverse stories are obliged, in the scene where the CGI surgery machine is rotating through options to select new looks for the trapped Chipmunks.
But there is no mention of one show to which, I think, the movie shares the most in common visually. Bojack Horseman’s Mr Peanutbutter has a nifty little catchphrase which is possibly the best summary of Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers, “Is this a crossover episode?” Humans and toons coexist smoothly in the same world that strongly resembles the dystopian boulevard that is Hollywood. However, Bojack works where Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers does not in fashioning a story beyond a statement. In Bojack, it’s crushing sadness that steers the story, not nostalgia.
Eisha Nair is an independent writer-illustrator based in Mumbai. She has written on history, art, culture, education, and film for various publications. When not pursuing call to cultural critique, she is busy drawing comics.
Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://ift.tt/tEBUC3e
No comments:
Post a Comment