Upon reflection, it occurs to me that I am the targeted audience
of “Scary Movie 4″ even though I didn’t see the
franchise’s first three installments and have absolutely no
interest in seeing its current rendition. Still, after watching the
film’s trailer, I have a sneaking suspicion that the
producers of “Scary Movie 4″ expect me to buy a
ticket.
This realization is certainly both scarier and funnier than
anything in the movie itself. More importantly, it also reflects
the underlying principle behind “Scary Movie 4″ and
explains why the movie made more than $40 million in its opening
weekend, vastly outperforming even the most optimistic of
expectations.
Some people may criticize my attempt to explain “Scary
Movie 4″ without having seen it, but such a critique is
shortsighted. The movie’s success is purely economic, and the
issue at hand is one of marketing, not artistic merit. Once people
buy their tickets, studios have done their work; making a
film’s trailer is the studio’s most important marketing
tool.
I have seen the trailer for “Scary Movie 4,” and
perhaps more importantly, I’ve seen the trailers for all the
movies that “Scary Movie 4″ spoofs. Expressing the sort
of dizzying overlap of allusions that postmodernists like to
justify as pastiche, the trailer for “Scary Movie 4″
runs through parodies of “War of the Worlds,”
“The Grudge,” “The Village” and
“Saw” faster than Robert Cheruiyot at the Boston
Marathon. I’ve only seen one of the four (“The
Village”), but being mildly obsessed with movie trailers,
I’m mildly versed in all four.
Apparently, that’s all that’s necessary. The trailer
also depicts a Tom-Cruise-like actor on an Oprah-like talk show,
and while I never saw Cruise’s appearance on Oprah, I
immediately knew what was going on.
The trailer for “Scary Movie 4,” and, from what
I’ve read of reviews, the movie itself, respond more to
popular knowledge of its source material than the source material
itself. In other words, to the creators of “Scary Movie
4,” it doesn’t matter that I haven’t seen
“The Grudge” as long as I know the basic idea behind
it. And since I know the idea behind every movie that “Scary
Movie 4″ parodies, I should be first in line to buy a
ticket.
The publicity plan seems to be working extremely well. By taking
in what it did in its opening weekend, “Scary Movie 4″
earned more than the opening weekends of four of the six films it
significantly spoofs. At this point, it’s entirely possible
that by the time “Scary Movie 4″ leaves theaters, more
people will have seen it than five of those six movies. Ultimately,
the parody will be more successful than its source material.
For the life of me, I can’t think of any other work of art
in which this is the case. The basic idea that imitation is the
sincerest form of flattery assumes that when you make fun of
something, it makes that thing more famous. It’s a cousin to
the idea that all press is good press, but “Scary Movie
4″ seems ready to alter both those concepts in a drastic and
unparalleled way.
Of course, the situation isn’t as historic as it outwardly
appears, because the film only parodies the basic concept of other
movies. For instance, not many “Scary Movie 4″ audience
members saw “Brokeback Mountain,” but when “Scary
Movie 4″ makes its inevitable “I wish I knew how to
quit you” joke, everyone will understand the reference. But
it seems a dishearteningly shallow and easy joke, quickly becoming
a tragic representation of modern popular culture when so many
people are paying money to laugh at it.
I guess the real joke is on everyone who saw “Scary Movie
4,” when the only real jokes in it are of the type everyone
has already made. The problem with satirizing the surface level of
popular culture is that the satire can only reflect that surface.
When the “Scary Movie 4″ trailer made fun of the fact
that a character in “The Village” is blind, I kept
waiting for the real punch line.
I’m still waiting.