Has Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies (1996) aged well? A film critic I really admire expressed in a tweet (which has been deleted since) that maybe it hasn’t, which got me thinking. The suggestion was that the mom in the film (Brenda Blethyn) didn’t have access to abortion and thus, was forced to give birth to the daughter (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) who she reunites with as an adult and the movie treats this as a blessing. I should also note the racial dynamics in this movie – the mom is white and the daughter is half-Black. I’m not sure Leigh’s film really makes a point to speak an opinion on any contemporary political points on abortion access at all. His working-class sensibilities operate in contrast to Ken Loach’s, where they try to depict life as-is and the political undertones of such tales are left open to conjecture rather than assigned as a thesis statement. Secrets & Lies to me represents a tragic circumstance of a woman and the singular positive relationship she develops in spite of the system failing her. It doesn’t feel nefarious or calculated to me but rather hopeful.
The Variable and the Constant
When someone considers a movie having poorly-aged, they often mean by the standards of today’s social view on things rather than the actual quality of the work or what the work is saying. I understand why the film critic feels this way about Secrets & Lies. In the wake of the overturning of Roe v Wade, it would seem unsavory for a movie like that to come out right now. The fact is though, it came out in 1996. Because movies are inherently political, there is always a contextual reference from the point of view “of the times”, but this can be overcome if the filmmakers are conscientious enough of the humanity of their characters. Mike Judge, much like Mike Leigh, makes narratives that have a voice reflecting the spartan sensibilities of the lower middle class. The endearing characters and situations in TV shows like Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill spotlight a side of America that is culturally always tussling with their country’s tumultuous social, economical, and technological landscape while scraping together a simple existence amidst it. For the oblivious-to-everything-but-sex duo of Beavis and Butthead, this comes easier than for most.
Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe has a bigger scale and a grander vision for its plot than the show did, but its titular duo remain the same sex-crazed (and starved) idiots who fall ass-backward into everything they come across through space and time. The result is a movie that impressively demonstrates the vitality of late-90s comedy in today’s cultural climate. The film starts in 1998, with the boys getting in trouble for accidentally causing a fire in their school, but instead of going to juvenile hall, the judge decides they’re both “at-risk youths” and sends them to NASA science camp. At the camp, they get enamored with a shuttle docking machine that looks like a penis going into a vagina. They get so good at operating this machine that the head of the program, a woman named Serena Ryan, assigns them to actually perform it at the ISS, which they mistake for her asking them to have intercourse with her. This joke becomes the thread of the rest of the plot of the movie. After entering a wormhole and traveling to the present day, they go in search of Serena, who is now Governor of Texas, in a long-winded attempt to “score”.
Failing Upwards
The film’s conception of very-90s-oriented mindsets arriving in our present day with no ability to evolve over time into it becomes a perfect test for whether Beavis and Butt-Head and by virtue most comedy of its era (like South Park or Strangers with Candy) has “aged well”. Beavis and Butthead are at one point confronted on a University campus by a gender studies professor who lectures them about white privilege. This scene could have gone a myriad of terrible ways. One is to turn the situation into a forced “learning moment” for the audience (yuck!). The other is to go the complete opposite direction and make it an “owning the libs” routine (double yuck!).
This movie finds the perfect out, one which many of us with brains damaged by the internet have perfected – absorbing culture into our own narcissistic personalities. The boys find white privilege to be a revelation. They become fully aware of their inherent ability to continue failing upwards in society despite not giving a rat’s ass about anything and attempting to take it to the extreme. They rampage through the college, steal food from others, push people down and steal a cop car and crash it.
Conclusion:
The age and staleness of certain topics in contrast with today’s social standards is something a lot of movies have to navigate, but too many of them take the easy road of trying to earn political points with it. A major blessing of a film like Beavis and Butthead Do the Universe is that it doesn’t betray its roots to fit the times. By time-traveling Beavis and Butthead to the future, in a society and culture completely changed from the one they came from, the film forces the cultures of past and present to have to confront each other’s stubbornness. By doing so, it steadfastly seeks to prove that you can just be funny no matter where or when you are.
Have you seen Beavis and Butt-head Do the Universe? What did you think? Let us know in the comments below!
Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe was released for streaming on June 23rd, 2022 on Paramount+!
Watch Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe
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