Moon Pies and Lowered Expectations

I will admit I am not with the times. I am no pop culture expert. I don’t go to the movies. I don’t stay up late to watch either of the Jimmys. I rarely watch TV. A couple of hours per week is my limit and it’s usually a movie or documentary.

But every now and then, I turn on the TV and watch a movie or binge on a National Geographic series. (Yes, I pay for cable even though I never watch it and neither does anyone else in my house.)

Yesterday, I came across a film called Red2 starring Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, and some other big names I can’t recall. They are spies or government assassins or something, all older and well passed their prime, and they (gasp!) find themselves in the middle of Russia with only a few hours to save the world from a bomb that has been hidden under the Kremlin for decades.

Bruce Willis’ character takes the crew to an old safe house that he hadn’t used since the bomb had been lost in the 1980’s. The apartment is a dusty museum full of relics from the time when MTV played actual music. Yes, such a time existed, and it was magical.

The Malkovich character finds an old Moon Pie, tears off the wrapper and takes a bite. Another character, Bruce’s girlfriend asks, “should you be eating that?” It’s a fair question because although Twinkies are believed to last forever, no such claims have been made about the delicious Moon Pie. Have you ever had a Moon Pie? It might be worth the risk to eat one that’s been sitting around since Reagan was in power. But I digress.

Malkovich answers: “It’s okay, it’s from before they had sell-by dates.”

He speaks the line with a mouthful of Moon Pie, so you barely catch what he’s saying. It was a great line. Maybe one of the best lines in the movie, which was just a bunch of older people making wise cracks while killing other older people and some young people in an effort to save the world. 

The reason the line stuck to me was because it was treated as a throwaway line, something to fill in the space between the lines that dragged this movie across the finish line. Yet, it was a great line and it was beautifully delivered. It spoke of a time when we weren’t such wimps about everything. We weren’t worried about GMOs and Certified Organic. We were living in the moment and shooting for the Moon (Pie.)

I think about the hugely popular Adam Sandler, who has made a very successful career of lowering expectations and assuming his audience are idiots. In The Wedding Singer, a movie based in the 1980’s, there is a scene when they are in an airport and the gate agent has the Flock of Seagulls hairdo (I’ve added a picture below in case you don’t know what I’m talking about.) Rather than going about the transaction, accepting the hairdo as a part of the culture, the agent asks if they like Flock of Seagulls, making sure the reference wasn’t lost. The filmmakers couldn’t trust the audience to figure out that there was something unusual about the guy’s hairstyle. I can’t be the only thinking person who finds this insulting.

This is something that has become all too common. As our devices get smarter and we move in the opposite direction, the purveyors of pop culture aren’t even trying anymore. They occasionally stumble across a great joke, and either tuck it between cliches or explain the funny out of it. I understand mindless entertainment and recognize its value and I accept that it’s not going away. But please, Hollywood, give us a chance to figure out the joke for ourselves. If we raise our hands and ask for help, then go ahead and give us the answer. At least let us try.

Not The Author. Young Trump, perhaps?

Adolfo Jimenez is an author, poet, and blogger. He lives in Hollywood, Florida. He has published ten books, which you can find here.

The views of the author are his own.