There are certain things that you don’t do lightly, my friends. Certain activities and actions that you do not undertake without either the proper mindset or every tool you have at your disposal. You do not, for instance, go up to Scott Walker a United States governor and kick him in the head unless you’re willing to face the consequences…or have some damn good connections to get you out of the country. It is for this reason that I do not believe that I am not, in any way shape or form, qualified to review the Terry Gilliam film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Perhaps earlier I could have done just that; written my piece and gone onto the next thing or next thinly veiled “I WANT”post. But I think I know better now. To review Fear and Loathing wouldn’t just require a watching the film or review purposes. Reading the book by Hunter S. Thompson  for comparison wouldn’t be good enough either (though I have done that, too). To properly review Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas would in fact require a not only those, but a look at Thompson himself, the man’s other works, Oscar Zeta Acosta, the collapse of the 60’s counterculture, the drug culture of the 70’s, and other factors that a quick Google search isn’t sufficient enough to cover. By all means, I recommend the book and the movie, but that is all I can do right now. I have neither the knowledge, the tools or the insight at my disposal for anything deeper or meaningful. As it stands I only know of three people who are qualified: Lindsay Ellis, Kyle Kallgren, Chuck Sonnenburg and David DeMoss. So please, go to those people and demand ask them to do that.
Especially you, Dave. You should be on that like a pack of starving piranha on a cow.
So as I sat down, realizing I had finally gotten to a point where I’ve started to become ever-slightly so embarrassed at my early works and pondering again whether or not to start fresh with a new blog, I still felt like writing something,anything, related to Fear and Loathing. My mind pondered and puzzled and contemplated what I should do. Eventually my mind trailed off, as it is often wont to do, like reflect on the character of James McGill of the excellent television series Better Call Saul. This is when the idea came to me  The wheels of my brain went round and round and round and round until sort of fictional character apophenia began to take hold. I saw three men, yes! three men; Superman, Raoul Duke and James McGill, all connected by one goal. I saw it as clearly as a flock of geese flying in a clear midday sky. There it was, standing over their heads in bright, mile-high neon letters: The American Dream.
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Pictured: Id, Ego and Superego, if you’ll forgive the pun |
(Hey, it was this or talk about how much Son of Batman sucks.)
Now, let us not dwell upon the differences of each of the fictional men. They’re obvious and they’re various personalities a well documented elsewhere. So let’s look at how these men relate to each other:
- For starters, each man is putting up a false front in some way. Raoul Duke says he’s not Hunter S. Thompson and lies about his profession at the National Association of District Attorneys Conference both for laughs and to make sure a maid doesn’t report him to the authorities. James McGill’s trying his damnedest to go straight, wearing Matlock suits and presenting himself as trustworthy friend while constantly at war with his “Slippin’ Jimmy” past and his honed senses for being a con man. And Superman is the greatest false front of all: someone who presents himself as the paragon of good and virtue despite the fact that he is Clark Kent, a human man, with all the faults and wants of such a creature.
- Both James McGill and Clark Kent are both sons of the Midwest and, if Jimmy’s brother Chuck is anything to go by, had the virtues of hard work, honesty and doing the right thing taught to them in their developmental years. While Clark internalized those teachings, Jimmy mostly brushed them off (save for hard work).
- Hunter S. Thompson and Clark Kent, the men behind the character, both took up the trade of being a reporter. They’re reporters of different stripes, of course, but they are (or were in Thompson’s case; being dead kind of hinders your ability to report on anything other than the afterlife) reporters none the less.
- Both Jimmy and Duke are essentially ne’er do well normal human beings. While I’m sure legal acumen and the ability spin a tale as well as Thompson can are all attributes we’d all love to possess, they’re not superhuman abilities. Well, as far as I know, they’re not superhuman abilities. I could be incredibly wrong.
- Both Jimmy and Clack have an obvious affection for a co-worker (or former co-worker, anyway): Lois Lane and Kim Wexler.
- Lastly, all three have a distinctive look to them (Jimmy’s Matlock suit, Duke’s shades, panama shirt and hat, Superman’s costume).
Of course I may in fact be completely wrong. Maybe these connections I see are thinner than Christian Bale in The Machinist. But the fact remains, I see the three men, characters from wildly different sources, connected by that grand notion of the American Dream, whether it be a search for the thing itself, a pursuit of it or just being the embodiment of it. Thank you for reading.
(Next time: Why Son Of Batman Sucks)