Movie Night: Best In Show

BEST IN SHOW (2000)
D: Christopher Guest

First of all, I've seen Christopher Guest's Best In Show at least a dozen times: I've shown it to friends (new and old), I've watched it with my wife, I've watched it with my parents, I've caught half of it on TNT at 2 in the morning, I've put it on while grading papers or making lesson plans or listening to Braves games or...well, almost anything; I know the jokes, I know the characters, and I know the scenes like the back of my left hand (or, maybe, my left foot).  But there's a funny thing about Best In Show, and it has little-to-nothing to do with Fred Willard: despite all the times I've seen it, I'm still not sure what, exactly, I think it's up to.

Now, that needs a little explaining.  After all, what are any movies "up to"?  I suppose what I mean when I say that is that I believe most movies are made with an argument in mind.  Sometimes, that argument is simple: The Back-Up Plan wants to convince thirty-somethings love is still out there for them (or, at least, it wants to convince them to spend $12 to be told love is still out there for them); Saw VI wants to get you off on grossing you out.  Heck, even Yogi Bear wants to convince you of something (Bears are poor aeronauts?  Points to the best answer to this question in the comments section).  But some other movies--movies I, subjectively, think of as "better" movies--try to do a bit more: Inception wants us to question what exactly happens when we sit down to "share a dream" in a movie theater; Inglourious Basterds wants to convince us that art makes its own history (and that history leaves a mark); Toy Story 3, of all things, wants desperately to convince us that its the fragility of our lives that makes our relationships meaningful.  In short, movies like these challenge us to think about things earnestly and carefully, and--these movies hope--that will help them move beyond the spectacle (where we are passive) and to a point of true communication (where we are active participants in the exchange of ideas).

But that's where I don't quite get Best In Show.  Best In Show has all the earmarks of a movie with an agenda: it's sharp, it's certainly targeted at a particular group of oddball people, and it's edited with an edge to it--a willingness to let discomfort sit on the faces of its characters (and, at least in Beatrice's case, its dogs) in a way that "begs" us to question what, exactly, we're really laughing at.  And that's what bugs me.  For all the laughs I get at the expense of these yuppies, hicks, schlubs, and golddiggers, I'm not really sure what's being taken apart.  Is the point just that dog show people are freaks?  Who didn't know that already?  Did someone think the dog show world had a quiet dignity we were all simply missing?  Or is the target the broad gathering of regional and cultural stereotypes who bring their dogs to this zoo?  Are we supposed to be laughing at the mumbly North Carolina ventriloquist because all North Carolinians are equally driven towards a kind of lackadaisical curiosity?  Is the short-fused anger and aggression underneath the surface of that yuppie couple--and maybe their desire to perpetually deflect blame or responsibility--an indictment of Starbucks (and L.L. Bean) elitists?  If this is true, what does that make the gay couple here?  Or Cookie Googleman?  I don't know the answer, but the line of logic is strange to me: are these characters just grotesques?

Alright, I know I ran off on a tangent there, but let me bring it back to something simple: it seems to me Best In Show never cares much for these people.  That doesn't mean it isn't funny--I laugh at that damn Busy Bee every single time--but it does give me an answer to why I prefer This Is Spinal Tap and even Guest's follow-up, A Mighty Wind: their characters aren't just losers, they're lovable, too.

One last thought to close out this stream-of-conscious return to the blogosphere:

Last night, while watching Best In Show I noticed something I hadn't noticed before: it is an exclusively white movie.  The closest the movie comes to a non-Anglo character--Ed Begley Jr's hotel manager, who literally looks like a Scandinavian ghost--has his ethnicity reassigned by the script as "Irish-German" ("like Robert Duvall in The Godfather!" notes John Michael Higgins' loud and gay Scott Donlan).  This makes me wonder if one of the questions this movie is asking (or, I suppose, one of the arguments is making) is whether or not these kinds of freak shows--the dog shows, the beauty pageants, the sci-fi conventions, the PBA--are endemic, somehow, to whiteness; that they are a truly peculiar development, stemming less from a real passion for dogs (for a movie about doglovers, it's amazing how little it seems these people love their dogs!) and more from a peculiar cultural licensing of oddity and fancy.  That's an incredibly obnoxious sentence, so let's try again:  Maybe what Best In Show wants us to think about is not only why people are interested in this kind of goofiness, but also why our culture permits and encourages these kinds of curiosities over other kinds.

Hmm.  I'm not sure what I think about that.  But I do know this: that is the only time I've ever done it on a rollercoaster.