The Invisible Counterpoint

I'm not quite sure if it is accurate to say that  Baywatch  was created to titillate men. That is, I'm not sure when they developed the fitness regimes for the women in the film, if what they specified mostly was for a physique that would sexually excite men. For the women in the film are at least as much fit as they are sexy, and when you look at women who look as if they've been training hard for months without incursion of a break, I'm not sure if the first thing that comes to a guy's mind is "eye-candy" but rather more,  iron discipline...  something almost repellent in its grownup-accomplishment, its intimidation factor.   None of these women is put in a compromised position in the film where for a moment we become voyeurs imagining them being physically exploited. None of them is forced to pretend they're prostitutes or the like, where they have to wince and take a sexist comment or two for the cause, in order to infiltrate a b...

There is perhaps no generation more inspiring of intense disappointment from its successors than is the Baby Boom generation. Here is a generation that knew the 1960s and 70s, that knew what it was like to hope for a world where everyone shared in utopia, that quickly in the 80s seemed to instantly switch into one that decided that it actually rather preferred to enjoy the life of an elite served by compromised minions. Gen Xers would know this best in that they were born into the 60s/70s mood; they saw whom the boomers were earlier and were there to witness the switch that occurred around 1980 when all of a sudden they became those that, rather than live in a world where people accepted that the young were being made better each time around and so should rule as early as possible, had decided that they weren't now as comfortable with the idea of being replaced, and could instead make peace with themselves delaying things a bit as they ranged as lords enjoying the...

The evil mage Vortigern says at one point something along the lines of, "there is no better feeling than when you know you scare the living shit out of everyone... when everyone feels compelled to do what you want out of fear." You wonder if not just his own servants but if everyone in the realms of the "good" and "bad" in this film, must have felt something of this sort of ongoing trepidation -- that doom awaits them if they for a moment displease -- particularly its armed warriors. For though they can look menacing, are ready to fight without fear, know sword skill and bow expertise, they are also ultimately useless... beside the point. This is not "Lord of the Rings" where you can be a great wizard, armed with an artifact that makes you near unstoppable, and yet the courage and bravery of just one man might yet still prove sufficient to topple you. This is a realm where if you're the evil wizard who's near his top power, or a warrior...

  The film begins with an idyllic family situation, set thirty years or so before the picture begins. A young married couple are enjoying themselves in their suburban paradise, planting a seedling that will eventually blossom into something ostensibly beautiful, and close to about to birth a son for which much the same must have been expected. After this, we get switched to present tense, and we see the son that was about to be born, as an adult, performing in a fashion his good start would have made him due for. He and his friends, under contract to stop a menacing alien intruder from stealing some powerful technology, ably fulfill their end of the deal, and they receive the payment promised them. If this was how their day finished -- contract undertaken and completed, with promised renumeration provided -- if his mother and father were still alive, he might call them and let them know of how well things had gone, and we could imagine them justly proud.  Only it doesn'...