I have to confess. I have a bizarre, frustrating addiction to the cheesy movies made by and shown on the SciFi Channel (or SyFy as it’s now known and a spelling change which I refuse to acknowledge) and Chiller. Seriously, I’ll be sitting there, flipping through channels and see that a perfectly good movie like “Air Force One” is on TNT (and I would not under any other circumstance deny myself some Harrison Ford), and yet I will always pick the movie entitled “Frankenfish”, or some other “groan-worthy” title that’s playing on the SciFi channel.
Why? Why do I feel compelled to deprive my brain of fulfilling, quality entertainment? Could it be that the “SciFi” channel has found a way (being true to its name) to broadcast endorphin-releasing waves during its movies, thus keeping us from changing the channel and making us compulsively return for more? Even more puzzling is the huge number of relatively “big-name” actors who take parts in these “low-budget” theatrical travesties…Can it be that the SciFi channel is indeed controlled by some endorphin-releasing alien overlord (much like a past Doctor Who episode) who seeks to enslave mankind and make us look ridiculous at the same time because of our taste in movies?
Personally, I have another possible theory, which places the root cause of our obsession with crappy SciFi movies in the fact that “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ is no longer on the air. As described on Wikipedia, “The series features a man and his robot sidekicks who are trapped on a satellite in space by an evil scientist and forced to watch a selection of bad movies, especially (but not initially limited to) science fiction B-movies. To keep sane, the man and his robots provide a running commentary on each film, making fun of its flaws and wisecracking (or “riffing”) their way through each reel in the style of a movie-theater peanut gallery.” I believe that since we can no longer be made to feel superior to bad movie makers through the MST3K character’s wisecracks, we might feel the need to do it ourselves in a society where we have constant entertainment available at our fingertips.
It’s almost an oxymoron of a personality flaw. We crave infinite varieties of entertainment of some sort, be it video games, movies, music, etc. and in order to avoid feeling the resultant powerlessness that comes with being so “needy”, we become addicted to shows that we in turn can ridicule WHILE we are being entertained…a sort of pseudo-control that we create in our minds saying to ourselves, “Yes, I am watching a really bad SciFi movie and I should be mowing the lawn, but it feels so awesome to know that I am so much smarter than someone that actually gets paid to make a movie! I will point out all the flaws, misspellings and bad acting and thus prove myself superior to the people who created this “entertainment” that is consuming 2 hours of my life, thus validating my need to actually watch it instead of doing something more productive!” It’s really a never-ending circle, like the snake eating its own tail. We love “junk food” entertainment and love it even more when we can find some way to validate our wasting our time on it.
Whether the curious appeal of crappy SciFi movies is due to an alien overlord seeking to control us through our need for “junk food” entertainment or due to our own need to be able to ridicule the moviemakers that we secretly admire because they get to create such entertainment, I have to admit I am addicted and have no desire to be cured of this addiction. So, in my own effort to attempt to validate my own addiction within myself, I plan to offer occasional blog posts on here, and possibly jewelry or art, dedicated to specific SciFi/Chiller movies that make me feel especially superior (i.e., ones where the acting/plot/graphics/etc are so bad they deserve a particular mention). After all, everyone’s a critic right? I’m just fulfilling my role in society, paying homage to Joel Hodgson, Mike Nelson, Tom Servo, Crow T. Robot and the rest of the MST3K crew, and trying to hold off the alien overlord invasion by not resisting their attempts to keep us glued to our TV’s watching bad SciFi movies.
