RNA:
“Why are my genetics such a bitch?” Who wouldn’t belt this line to the heavens, if offered a set of pipes to sing it with and a birdcage bedroom to sulk inside? Also, “My legacy is not up to my genes.” I agree with both sentiments, but Shilo Wallace declaring her emancipation from her DNA with a limo ride provided by her trillionaire godfather might just prove that something else makes the world go round too.
Entrails:
Blood and guts count as currency as well. They give people rights, like Nathan Wallace’s right to poison his daughter, and privileges too, like the privilege of a beautiful pool of corn syrup and food dye to lie in as this Repo Man’s world crumbles around him.
Passageways:
And if Nathan’s world includes a handsome salary from being Rotti Largo’s red right hand, why does he have a secret lair behind a fireplace that he has to crouch under to get inside? He definitely has enough dough to make it a walk-in dungeon and save himself from the future lower-back pain.
Odd:
Differing in nature from what is ordinary, usual, or expected. Much like how a lovingly written mess of a poem is “interesting” or a poorly-designed passageway is “clever,” Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) is certainly “odd”: I don’t know Bousman, Smith, and Zdunich well enough to call them something, but can’t we agree on their creation being… odd?
Teen Angst Accompanied by Dancing Skeleton:
Ditch the smeary blacks and greasepaint whites for blue and purple gels, and throw in some stuffed animals singing backup, Joan Jett, and a moshing skeleton too! (Fun fact: they’re a distant relative of the one grooving next to Auntie in Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House (1977), a film where seven girls with their entire lives ahead of them squirm in the clutches of a spinster who lost her fiancée to lavender-tinted newsreels of World War II.)
Hair:
Now compare Auntie’s web with Rotti’s wig, Nathan’s slap, and Shilo’s middle fingers. Denial of what was, is, and shall (never) be.
Electromagnetic Radiation:
Similarly, you see what someone’s made of once you bombard them with enough subatomic particles, lies, and musical numbers: “Beautiful X-Rays: It’s What’s on the Inside That Counts!”
Gasp!:
Faced with overflowing graveyards and glowing blue vials, Shilo can only take so much! And in Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain! (2006), another exclamatory(!) film, only so many murderous relatives and boy-crushes revealed as girl-crushes can be discovered before it becomes “Too Much For Guy!”
Eyes Without a Face (1960):
Or make it a triple feature with Georges Franju’s shocker and its pearl white masks, cramped Gothic interiors, and fathers willing to do anything for their daughters. And take your pick of Dr. Génessier being mauled by the dogs he tortures as Christiane glides into the night-lit woods, or Rotti falling over in slow motion as everyone stands around and watches.
Not-Too-Distant-Future:
But why these gaslight galas instead of off-world colonies, or limousine rides rather than flying cars? (Besides obvious budget constraints.) Aiming downward is the safer bet. “I see this in every news feed.” “Look at how far we’ve fallen.” “Couldn’t this have been prevented after so many warnings?” No: now has always been the age of silhouetted skylines, somber violin accompaniment, and exposition via comic book panels.
Educated References Four Through Seven:
Pause for disjecta membra: “scattered remains,” originating from a Latin phrase meaning “limbs of a dismembered poet” first encountered in the back of Eiji Otsuka’s The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. Violence so exactingly labeled reflects society’s most persistent tragedies: it chills like “catamites” in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or “miscegenation” in Christine Smallwood’s “Island of Lost Souls: The Beast Flesh Creeping Back.”
Tragedy:
And in the time between my first and second viewings of Repo!, I lost one friend and two students. Maybe it’s Repo!’s heaps of pulpy, wet death and rock recitative that make me think about silent seats at movie nights that will never be filled or warmed again?
Intoxicants:
They’ve also helped me through every screening of Repo! And are there penalties for overtaxing GeneCo’s kidneys and livers? Are security deposits forfeited, or does Nathan just drag offenders to the top of his list?
Cosplay:
In fact, it was during my first screening that one of my friends announced, “I’d love to cosplay as this movie, but only after I get my tits cut off.” I don’t remember their choice of character, but it must have been Rotti’s bodyguards in tails and fishnets or Shilo in her black bob.
Obligatory Susan Sontag Quote:
“Camp taste turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgement. Camp doesn’t reverse things. It doesn’t argue that the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer for art (and life) a different—a supplementary—set of standards.” From “Notes on Camp.”
Planned Obsolescence:
Speaking of standards, GeneCo brags that they gave Blind Mag a new pair of eyes with superb video playback capabilities, but do any of their products have expiration dates? For cameras that are seventeen years old, do they ever hit storage limits or require system updates?
Earnest Inquires Nine and Ten:
And is this musical diegetic or not? Grave Robber alerts the GeneCo soldiers by screaming “graves,” but is it because he’s singing, singing too loudly, singing about committing illegal activities, singing whilst committing illegal activities, or some combination thereof?
Revenge (AKA Earnest Inquiry Eleven):
Nathan thinks he killed his wife and becomes a corporate assassin but gets to keep (and poison) his daughter. Meanwhile, Benjamin Barker spends fifteen years in a penal colony thinking his wife is dead before discovering that his daughter has been adopted by a perverted judge. Applying the Sweeney Todd threshold, which father has greater justification for their Grand Guignol rampage? Respond in 500 words or less, and referencing Nathan calling himself a monster, broom, and/or mop is highly encouraged.
Appendix:
Always last on the list and never mentioned once in the entire film, whereas “blood” receives eighteen references, “hearts” and “eyes” eleven and eight drops each, and “brains” only three. (And if any of these choices seem forced, that’s The Genetic Opera for you!)
RNA:
“Why are my genetics such a bitch?” Who wouldn’t belt this line to the heavens, if offered a set of pipes to sing it with and a birdcage bedroom to sulk inside? Also, “My legacy is not up to my genes.” I agree with both sentiments, but Shilo Wallace declaring her emancipation from her DNA with a limo ride provided by her trillionaire godfather might just prove that something else makes the world go round too.
Entrails:
Blood and guts count as currency as well. They give people rights, like Nathan Wallace’s right to poison his daughter, and privileges too, like the privilege of a beautiful pool of corn syrup and food dye to lie in as this Repo Man’s world crumbles around him.
Passageways:
And if Nathan’s world includes a handsome salary from being Rotti Largo’s red right hand, why does he have a secret lair behind a fireplace that he has to crouch under to get inside? He definitely has enough dough to make it a walk-in dungeon and save himself from the future lower-back pain.
Odd:
Differing in nature from what is ordinary, usual, or expected. Much like how a lovingly written mess of a poem is “interesting” or a poorly-designed passageway is “clever,” Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) is certainly “odd”: I don’t know Bousman, Smith, and Zdunich well enough to call them something, but can’t we agree on their creation being… odd?
Teen Angst Accompanied by Dancing Skeleton:
Ditch the smeary blacks and greasepaint whites for blue and purple gels, and throw in some stuffed animals singing backup, Joan Jett, and a moshing skeleton too! (Fun fact: they’re a distant relative of the one grooving next to Auntie in Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House (1977), a film where seven girls with their entire lives ahead of them squirm in the clutches of a spinster who lost her fiancée to lavender-tinted newsreels of World War II.)
Hair:
Now compare Auntie’s web with Rotti’s wig, Nathan’s slap, and Shilo’s middle fingers. Denial of what was, is, and shall (never) be.
Electromagnetic Radiation:
Similarly, you see what someone’s made of once you bombard them with enough subatomic particles, lies, and musical numbers: “Beautiful X-Rays: It’s What’s on the Inside That Counts!”
Gasp!:
Faced with overflowing graveyards and glowing blue vials, Shilo can only take so much! And in Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain! (2006), another exclamatory(!) film, only so many murderous relatives and boy-crushes revealed as girl-crushes can be discovered before it becomes “Too Much For Guy!”
Eyes Without a Face (1960):
Or make it a triple feature with Georges Franju’s shocker and its pearl white masks, cramped Gothic interiors, and fathers willing to do anything for their daughters. And take your pick of Dr. Génessier being mauled by the dogs he tortures as Christiane glides into the night-lit woods, or Rotti falling over in slow motion as everyone stands around and watches.
Not-Too-Distant-Future:
But why these gaslight galas instead of off-world colonies, or limousine rides rather than flying cars? (Besides obvious budget constraints.) Aiming downward is the safer bet. “I see this in every news feed.” “Look at how far we’ve fallen.” “Couldn’t this have been prevented after so many warnings?” No: now has always been the age of silhouetted skylines, somber violin accompaniment, and exposition via comic book panels.
Educated References Four Through Seven:
Pause for disjecta membra: “scattered remains,” originating from a Latin phrase meaning “limbs of a dismembered poet” first encountered in the back of Eiji Otsuka’s The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. Violence so exactingly labeled reflects society’s most persistent tragedies: it chills like “catamites” in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or “miscegenation” in Christine Smallwood’s “Island of Lost Souls: The Beast Flesh Creeping Back.”
Tragedy:
And in the time between my first and second viewings of Repo!, I lost one friend and two students. Maybe it’s Repo!’s heaps of pulpy, wet death and rock recitative that make me think about silent seats at movie nights that will never be filled or warmed again?
Intoxicants:
They’ve also helped me through every screening of Repo! And are there penalties for overtaxing GeneCo’s kidneys and livers? Are security deposits forfeited, or does Nathan just drag offenders to the top of his list?
Cosplay:
In fact, it was during my first screening that one of my friends announced, “I’d love to cosplay as this movie, but only after I get my tits cut off.” I don’t remember their choice of character, but it must have been Rotti’s bodyguards in tails and fishnets or Shilo in her black bob.
Obligatory Susan Sontag Quote:
“Camp taste turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgement. Camp doesn’t reverse things. It doesn’t argue that the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer for art (and life) a different—a supplementary—set of standards.” From “Notes on Camp.”
Planned Obsolescence:
Speaking of standards, GeneCo brags that they gave Blind Mag a new pair of eyes with superb video playback capabilities, but do any of their products have expiration dates? For cameras that are seventeen years old, do they ever hit storage limits or require system updates?
Earnest Inquires Nine and Ten:
And is this musical diegetic or not? Grave Robber alerts the GeneCo soldiers by screaming “graves,” but is it because he’s singing, singing too loudly, singing about committing illegal activities, singing whilst committing illegal activities, or some combination thereof?
Revenge (AKA Earnest Inquiry Eleven):
Nathan thinks he killed his wife and becomes a corporate assassin but gets to keep (and poison) his daughter. Meanwhile, Benjamin Barker spends fifteen years in a penal colony thinking his wife is dead before discovering that his daughter has been adopted by a perverted judge. Applying the Sweeney Todd threshold, which father has greater justification for their Grand Guignol rampage? Respond in 500 words or less, and referencing Nathan calling himself a monster, broom, and/or mop is highly encouraged.
Appendix:
Always last on the list and never mentioned once in the entire film, whereas “blood” receives eighteen references, “hearts” and “eyes” eleven and eight drops each, and “brains” only three. (And if any of these choices seem forced, that’s The Genetic Opera for you!)