Bloggrokker (Scott) 9/29

Snakes on the Brain??
Yes, its true.
Alright, alright--I know all the hype is fizzling away, what with the tv campaigns skidding to a halt on the mortal side of the theatrical release date--just as tv campaigns do for just about any film whose corporate puppetmasters lose interst in the Almighty Ad Blitz after what said corporate puppetmasters term a round of disappointing boxoffice receipts--but I just saw that potential postmillenial Plan 9 from Outer Space no-nonsensedly titled Snakes on a Plane.
What? Hype? Fizzling away?
Here's the postmodern rub.
Oh, those corporate puppetmasters. They knew what they were doing. They held back SOAP's release date for an extended time. methinks. They knew the jokes and guffaws and knee-slappings surrounding the film's ridiculous title could only mean the "P" word: PUBLICITY.
And I hear tell there's no such thing as the bad kind.
There is such a thing as the Internet, though.
And this crazy Internet thing ran with SOAP long before its release date.
All the world's Netheads made SOAP an original species of media darling.
And this media darling could be summed up in another "P" word: PARODY.
For nearly a full year, SOAP parodies, spoofs, and mocking tributes pockmarked the Internet like an odd electronic strain of chicken pox. Entrepeneurial media pranksters shot digital video lampoonings. Yankovic-itis hit hard; a plethora of jokingly praising tunes were uploaded. T-shirts were pressed and sold emblazoned with riffing SOAP logos. WIRED magazine (yeah, yeah, I still read WIRED--I've still got a computer running on Windows 98, too--ha!!!) called SOAP The Best Worst Movie of the Year many months before its megaplex unleashing. I even heard rumors of a far-in-advance-of-release SOAP amateur e-comic, although I've yet to see this confirmed. Point is, all of this pre-release hype--with WIRED's exception--sprang from entrepeneurial web-tinkerers who hadn't even seen the film. It all came from the name.
As for the postmodern rub for the whole shebang? I see all of this as a great big exemplar of commentary over authority. Far-ranging communications-based hype is no longer in the grip of the corporate puppetmsters.
And a word to the former puppetmasters regarding those disappointing boxofice receipts--DVD sales. Fear not.
SOAP itself? File under Guilty Pleasures.
I could say something more concerning the postmodern fear of death (poisonous serpents, a plane in danger of going down, a Technological Garden of Eden in a Big Steel Tube Gone Berserk), but I'll refrain.
Too late.