[THS] Hollywood gets political with its stoner movies

[Peter Webster]

Hollywood gets political with its stoner movies

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/arts/story.html?id=1624fe1c-
c635-454d-9d77-38fe418f2793

Pot films no longer blissful nonsense

Katherine Monk, Canwest News Service
Published: Friday, April 25, 2008

Pot, stalk and smoking pipe barrels. Devil weed. Mary Jane. Playing twister.
Reefer. No matter what you call it, cannabis continues to spark debate in
popular culture. More than 70 years into the drug's prohibition at the hands
of U.S. lawmakers, it seems Hollywood is ready to blow smoke in the face of
current policy.

The proof can be seen in a new crop of films that don't just depict glassy-
eyed potheads giggling at moronic gags in the tradition of Cheech and
Chong, but go much further, suggesting pot as the symbolic cure for
personal and cultural oppression.

Using pot as an overt sign of rebellion is nothing new. Since the weed was
banned in the U.S. in 1937 -- in part due to William Randolph Hearst's
desire to use cheap, yellowing wood pulp in place of its competitor hemp in
order to print his newspapers (giving rise to "yellow journalism") --
marijuana has assumed an iconic place in the annals of counter-culture,
from the haze of Harlem dance halls to the full-throttle rebellion of Easy
Rider.

Yet with Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay's North American
release today, it's clear the pot movie has shifted away from its stoner base
to become more than blissfully empty nonsense. Now, it's political, man.

The first example of this brand of pot movie is Sam Mendes's 1999 classic
American Beauty, in which Kevin Spacey plays ganja-smoking suburban
dad named Lester Burnham.

Lester is your average white-collar Everyman. He's white, affluent and
married to a gorgeous real estate agent. He should be happy, but Lester
lusts after his youthful neighbour, resents his employers and dislikes his wife
almost as much as she hates him.

The only happiness Lester finds comes in the form of a $3,000-an-ounce
bag of bud he buys from the boy next door. When Lester tokes, he feels
free. Moreover, he feels good about himself and his increasingly
meaningless life.

We've never seen a pothead like Lester onscreen before. One might argue
The Big Lebowski features an aging white male sucking on Zig-Zags in an
attempt to "find freedom," but the Coen brothers' vision of white male
purgatory differs greatly from that of Sam Mendes.

In Lebowski, we're watching a self-exiled social dropout indulge in
escapism. In American Beauty, it's the cannabis that helps Lester wake up
from the American Dream and discover his inner truth.

The difference is significant because where the Coens' film essentially
reaffirms the status quo by linking pot to a listless slacker, Alan Ball's script
turns the moral order on its ear and suggests everything we've been taught
is a lie -- from the sanctity of marriage to the suburban ideal.

Harold and Kumar don't face the same dramatic complexities as Burnham in
their latest gonzo adventure, but the film triggers a political thought or two
about the nature of "freedom."

The plot sees our two heroes jailed as suspected terrorists when they
attempt to smuggle a bong on board their plane to Amsterdam. Holed up in
Gitmo sans habeas corpus, the boys do whatever they can to set the record
straight -- and that means the rule of law is gonna get real bent.

Subversion has always been the thematic heart of the stoner movie, which
explains why the genre was born when trust in government was at its nadir
in the wake of Richard Nixon's presidency.

Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke (1978) was the first film to show rampant
pot use without exacting a moral price for all that fun, offering an emotional
and cultural antidote to overt anti-drug films such as Reefer Madness.

Around the same time Cheech and Chong started their big screen puffing,
the American government banned the word "hemp" from all school text
books, insisting any mention of the once powerful hemp industry (predicted
to be the No. 1 crop in the U.S. by Popular Mechanics in 1938) would only
confuse youngsters who didn't understand the difference between useful
hemp fibre and the combustible of choice among teens.

Pot and politics had entered into an indirect but equal relationship that
continues today.

The more American lawmakers try to ring the moral alarm, the more
adamantly the creative community rallies around the latest social villain. This
not only explains the recent rise in pot-friendly films, it also sheds light on
the birth of the relatively recent sub-genre of pot movie, the hip-hop stoner
film.

Where Cheech and Chong exposed devil weed to the world of white people
on screen, the likes of Dave Chapelle and Chris Tucker brought Mary Jane
home to the 'hood 30 years later.

It seems wherever there's oppression, there's a good pot movie waiting to
happen.

Whether this rising tide of marijuana-friendly movies results in a revision of
current drug laws remains to be seen, but if it does, we don't have to look
far for the smoking gun.
--

FILMS WITH HIGH THC CONTENT

Pineapple Express
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
The Wackness
Knocked Up
Up in Smoke
Go Further
Grandma's Boy
Deception
Bong Water
Dude, Where's My Car?
Pot Zombies
The Big Lebowski
Smiley Face
Harold & Kumar go to White Castle
Anywhere, USA
Across the Universe
Almost Famous
Alpha Dog
American Beauty
The Anniversary Party
The Breakfast Club
Clerks
Easy Rider
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
School Daze
Friday
Go
Grindhouse
Half Baked
Hustle & Flow
Igby Goes Down
Puff, Puff, Pass
Reefer Madness
The Royal Tenenbaums
Saving Grace
Slackers
Superbad
Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny