Movie 43.

I’ve noticed with some wry amusement that “Movie 43”, – a sort-of gross-out, shock-for-shock’s sake, less-witty Kentucky Fried Movie, – is being called one of worst movies ever made. At the time of this writing, Rotten Tomatoes, an aggregate of total film ratings, gives it a mere 4%. Lest you think I’m some old prudish fuddy-duddy, one of the premises of the sketches is that a young girl gets her period and makes a mess. Hilarious, isn’t it? What? Pointing and laughing at a young girl isn’t funny to you?

Movie 43 is another example of Hollywood being creatively bankrupt. It seems like an industry run by Frat Boys who still think it's cool to wear their baseball caps backwards, whose tastes never grew from Junior High School. (Exhbit A: Transformers, Battleship, etc. etc.)

I should point out that shock humor has a place in comedy. One of my favorite things is South Park, which revels in a cesspool of scatalogical and political incorrectness. The difference is that South Park is speaking in good faith. Its power as cultural Court Jester is that it speaks truth to power and never lies.The shock of South Park is (usually) not from gross-out, although there is plenty of that too, but in the way that South Park exposes the fact that the Emperor Wears No Clothes. Comedy Central has two huge and influential cultural critiques. The Daily Show successfully critiques The Right’s Moral Culture War, and South Park skewers the touchy-feely-inclusive, but unimaginably intolerant, Left Wing Moral Do-Gooders who are decidedly NOT HELPING.