Humor me while I write about Hard Ticket to Hawaii. If your algorithm is anything like mine (which, lets hope it is not. No one should be subject to the weird and esoteric mixture of standup comedy, Karen interactions, Creed, public freak outs, Magic the Gathering, and doom metal that I have unintentionally curated through feeding my addiction to distraction), then you have at least seen clips of this movie. The two most famous include an attacker on a skateboard with a blow up doll being obliterated with a rocket launcher and a mirror-shaded guard losing his fingers and life after trying to catch a specialty frisbee lined with razor blades.
I watched Hard Ticket to Hawaii for the first time one evening this last week. It had been on my list for over a year, championed by folks like Matt Hoffine and Curt Gettman. It was as ridiculous as I had hoped it to be, because I love a terrible movie. But this movie was something else.
But here is the thing. I thought that this movie had been made recently; like, within the last five years. I thought that some brilliant and hilarious film maker had put together a mocking satire of 1980s sexploitation films. As I watched the film, I was impressed by the “analog video” filter I thought they had put on the recording. I laughed every time, seemingly for no reason, that one of the women in the film exposed their breasts. I shook with joy upon hearing the ridiculous theme song as it played over stunning footage of a small plane flying through Hawaiian mountains.
After I finished and was poking around online for some information on the movie, I was stunned to find out that it had been made in 1987.
But, does it matter? Watching this film with the belief that the gratuitous breasts and ridiculous characters were intentionally crafted for a specific level of absurdity betrayed not only an eye for the genre, but a brilliantly executed style. Finding out that it lacked that intention and had, instead, been created in earnest made me feel differently.
The subjectivity of artistic creation feels like it shouldn’t be allowed or work, but the disconnect between what the viewer takes and what the creator intends couldn’t mean less.
Carrie was attending graduate school and interning at places like the MOMA and Guggenheim the first time we talked about it. At museums, I usually had read the little card next to the art before I would take the time to seriously consider the work. She challenged me to change it up. Should looking at art, specifically art that is less clear in its delivery or evocation, be experienced on its own or does it deserve and need a context to be experienced within? (My words, not hers.)
I love these things so much, and I think that writing them is an art form all on its own.
So, where does that context fall when considering my experience of watching Hard Ticket To Hawaii? I found the film to be hilarious. Had I known that it was unironic and and filmed during a time when the like (boobs, bullets, and bombs) were being shot out into the world, straight to video and late night television, would I have found it less funny? I think what I am feeling is disappointment. I wanted someone to have made this film as a satirical homage. It seemed to me a very fun and rewarding endeavor. Now, it just seems like another ridiculous chapter in a long series of same.
But I had enjoyed it. The experience was there. I had laughed very hard in the process. Was the inverse acting on my feeling as well? I did not like imagining writer and director Andy Sidaris filming the ex-Playboy Playmates unsheathing their breasts and thinking that it was hot and erotic. It felt really gross. But, on the other hand, imagining the nudity for humor had been very effective.
As a very random-feeling tangent, the consideration of context makes me think of the Andrew Wyeth painting Christina’s Word. Lurking in Maine as often as possible, my encounters with art by the Wyeth family are unavoidable. The first time (and long after) I saw this piece, it felt haunting and beautiful. It read whimsical to me. Later, likely at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, I learned the truth of the painting. I read that the subject, Christina, suffered from a degenerative muscular disorder that left her unable to walk, and, refusing a wheelchair, she crawled instead. Ever since this revelation, the painting feels much, much different.
So what is it then? Where does meaning come from in art and literature. Poems confuse in the same way. Most modern poetry is filled with vague imagery and word combinations that rely more heavily on the reader’s relationship with language than any sort of understanding of the poet and their intentions. It it wrong to have an emotional reaction to art which was unintended by the artist? What if that art was intended for problematic reasons? Can you enjoy the atmospheric and psychological horror of H.P Lovecraft once you know that his homophobia and antisemitism fueled the terrors of his cosmic ‘others?’
I don’t have an answer to any of these questions. But, what I will say is this: Somehow, Hard Ticket to Hawaii, with its gratuitous breasts, terrible characters, and abundant violence still somehow passed the Bechdel Test.
If you would like to watch Hard Ticket to Hawaii, it is free to view on YouTube. Or, if you are an insufferably glutton for the most awful of the written word, you can read the transcribed script HERE. Either way, thanks for reading.