OK. Recovered

I've had some time now to get over the first shock of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and some time to learn about the context in which to understand it. As you may know, Roger Ebert cowrote the screenplay for this little porno, so his critical commentary was particularly educational viz. context.

'I wonder whether at some level [Russ Meyer] didn't suspect that "BVD" would be his best shot at employing all the resources of a big studio at the service of his own highly personal vision, his world of libidinous, simplistic creatures who inhabit a pop universe. Meyer wanted everything in the screenplay except the kitchen sink. The movie, he theorized, should simultaneously be a satire, a serious melodrama, a rock musical, a comedy, a violent exploitation picture, a skin flick and a moralistic expose (so soon after the Sharon Tate murders) of what the opening crawl called "the oft-times nightmarish world of Show Business."'

Ah! So it's a SATIRE.

'And the movie as a whole? I think of it as an essay on our generic expectations. It's an anthology of stock situations, characters, dialogue, cliches and stereotypes, set to music and manipulated to work as exposition and satire at the same time; it's cause and effect, a wind-up machine to generate emotions, pure movie without message.'

That's interesting. I would agree that as far as sensationalistic indulgence is concerned, it's perfectly effective; 'movie without message' as Ebert says. I would further agree that as a satire and pastiche - a theoretical essay on genre - the movie is a great success, and as an academic I applaud it. But I would disagree that the characters are 'stock' or that the story is 'cause and effect, a wind-up machine to generate emotions.' In fact, my impression was that it's just the opposite, that the complete LACK of Aristotle's recommendation for a plot driven by probability and necessity is what ultimately makes the movie flounder. So far from stock, the characters are irrational and erratic; though the situations may be generic enough, the characters themselves make the most non-obvious choices that go counter to everything you've been led to believe about them, so that there appears to be neither motive nor motivation for any of the crazy twists that transpire. For example, I don't know what about Kelly's character would make her dump Harris and shack up with a self-proclaiming gold-digger. I don't know why Pet would take home a boxer and cheat on Emerson...because Harris lost a fist fight? I don't know why Casey was gone for most of the movie, only to make a surprise cameo as a lesbian (I mean, I know why it's there, but it doesn't make sense in the story). Z-Man/Superwoman...uh, I don't get at all. And it's no wonder:

'The movie's story was made up as we went along, which makes subsequent analysis a little tricky. Some of the questions at Syracuse dealt with the "meaning" of Z-Man's earlier scenes, in light of what is later discovered about the character. But in fact those earlier scenes were written before either Meyer or I knew Z-Man was a transvestite: that plot development came on the spur of the moment.'

Speaking of Z-Man, an interesting side note:

'The character of teenage rock tycoon Ronnie "Z-Man" Barzell...was supposed to be "inspired" by Phil Spector -- but neither Meyer nor I had ever met Spector.'

What, Phil Spector as a gun-toting, murdering narcissist? How prophetic!

Anyways. I think all this craziness leads to a narrative incoherence that I couldn't put focus on in my first encounter; walking away from the movie, I just had a vague idea of: "that looked cool, but...wtf?" I definitely think it's possible to enjoy the movie for what it is - a sexy, violent and funny adventure - but the intellectual aims of the writers may have caused them to overshoot the mark. In striving to push various generic conventions, Meyer and Ebert seems to have abandoned some very basic narrative principles that really shouldn't be sacrificed.

Further proof, perhaps, of why critics can't be artists, and vice versa.