This isn’t a theory exactly, more a turn of phrase I created in an attempt to define an issue that arises when watching popular old movies. The issue of contextual rogues.
“Contextual spillover” is probably a better term but Contextual Rogue sounds cooler.
These are movies like The Godfather, Citizen Kane or Casablanca that are on every film student’s “100 MOVIES TO WATCH BEFORE YOU DIE” lists on IMDb. Movies you are encouraged the watch without being told why – “Just watch it, it’s fantastic, you’ll see what I mean.” While that might seem like a testament to a movie’s legacy, I feel like it encourages the viewer to ignore an integral part of many movies: the cultural context.
Right off the bat, this is not me complaining that everyone who doesn’t do hours of research before watching a movie is watching them “wrong”. I know that’s not a reasonable ask. But what I’d like to point out is that certain movies – the film buff favorites – have superseded their contexts.
Context is a cruel barrier in terms of how movies are perceived in later years, but I also understand that nothing exists in a vacuum and everything is a remix. Movies are informed by the eras and cultures they were made in, making them cultural time capsules of sorts. And if you need to do a deep dive on a movie for a research project, you quickly realize how much cultural influence informs movies. That all goes without saying, I guess. Of course movies are reflective of the cultures they’re made in. The “WHAT ARE THOOOSE??” joke in Black Panther was relevant at the time of its release but I won’t be surprised if in 50 years no one will remember the reference.
Back to Contextual Rogues: What do I mean that certain movies have superseded their contexts? What I mean is, how you discover a movie informs your first impression, and first impressions may be the only context you enter a movie with. If you are not forced to acknowledge some aspect of when, how, or by whom the movie was made, your interpretation could be wildly different than the filmmakers’ original intention.
I want to use some examples. Specifically, A Clockwork Orange and Boys in the Sand, both released in 1971.
When it first released, you could probably only see A Clockwork Orange at late night theatre viewings. Yes, it’s technically a dystopian future film, but in all other aspects it is a product of the time. If you bought a ticket to this film due to a scandalized review in your local paper, you knew what you were getting into. You are the intended viewer. I was not an intended viewer. Doesn’t mean I can’t watch it, but the filmmakers behind A Clockwork Orange did not make it with the intention of it being watched by 20 year olds in Toronto in the year 2020.
Back to the modern era. Let’s say your first exposure to A Clockwork Orange is when one of your buddies in high school lends you a flash drive containing all his favorite horror movies. You save those to your PC and watch them indiscriminately. Your only context in that situation is that A Clockwork Orange is a “horror” movie. You know nothing of Stanley Kubrick, of Anthony Burgess, or the cultural climate that movie was made in. You are not one of those kids watching the movie in a shady cinema in Liverpool at midnight in 1971. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it’s a fact that I think is worth acknowledging, even just passively.
The means by which A Clockwork Orange was found and watched in this situation gives no indication of the cultural context. Its popularity and notoriety have reached a point where you do not need to have an interest in dystopian or experimental cinema in order to find it. Maybe Kubrick wanted to create a gripping and surrealist commentary on society and issues of humanism, but all you went into it hoping for was a good horror movie.
Personally, I found out about A Clockwork Orange through WatchMojo videos around 2013. I didn’t watch it in full until much later but I had no real context for it in the beginning either.
I’ll come back to this later, but what I’m saying is, most movies are obscure. Most movies are obscure. Most movies exist within their own pigeonholes, but a select few have gotten popular enough that they’ve flown the coop. Or flown the dovecote, rather.
The next example I had was Boys in the Sand. I admit this is a recent fascination… but whatever.
Boys in the Sand is a gay porn film. A culturally significant one, to be sure, but still, a porn film. It is not a movie your high school English teacher would recommend to you. It is not a movie anyone outside very specific online forums would recommend to you. Unless you were an 80’s kid home alone watching your dad’s secret tape collection I highly doubt you’d stumble across it by accident. Boys in the Sand (I’m shortening it to Boys) exists in a pigeonhole – the Gay Porn pigeonhole. I did not find it watching WatchMojo, I found it by scrolling through a twitter account that posts vintage gay porn. My expectations were immediately tempered by the environment I was in. To find A Clockwork Orange, all I had to do was watch some random youtube videos when I was 13. To find Boys in the Sand, I needed to be actively looking for gay porn.
Boys in the Sand is not a Contextual Rogue. It is not mainstream, which I think helps preserve its historical context. Because it isn’t mainstream, you do not have a whole swath of people instinctively filtering their perception of the movie through a 21st century lens and posting lengthy video essays about it on YouTube. Which I suppose is unfortunate in some ways, since pornography is its own fascinating reflection of culture and is worthy of study, but I know it has plenty of its own dedicated scholars.
Anyway, the concept I’m trying to define here is very vague, but it’s been on my mind for a while now, the idea that all these “classic” movies are now strangers in strange lands, original meanings lost to time.
Or maybe this whole thing was just an excuse for me to talk about Boys in the Sand cuz I’m currently enraptured by it. I’d never seen gay porn shot before the 2010s before that. I knew once I got into Soft Cell that I had an innate fascination with retro queer culture, so I feel like I’m on the precipice of a rabbit hole. lol. I love how part 2 starts out with a totally logical setup and then BAM, Bath Bomb Boyfriend. That Casey Donovan ain’t too shabby looking, either. I’m not huge into buff dudes but they look good on their knees. Him in part 3... holy shit. If that’s not an art, I don’t know what is.
Also the camera’s keen focus on the male member has inspired me to try and use a slinky to create a packer with more realistic physics. Wish me luck.
Rest in power, Casey.
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