dir. Christopher Louie

Garbage netflix movie about a budding DJ who gets a gig at an edm festival, apparently made for people who have never participated in an organic non-commercial underground music community of any kind, but who have been to or understand big festivals as a place to periodically party in an ecstatic/anonymous/cathartic way. The movie is bad primarily because the script is absolute garbage, but it’s difficult to imagine any rewrite that would result in something good, given the generally bleak consumer-escapist perspective on youth the movie takes broadly. What’s good about the “good” rave movies I’ve seen is that they’re about rave as a site for taking masks off, and the communities that orbit and facilitate that as an urgent, valuable, central thing – the rave as real life. XOXO is a movie about a form of uninvested partying that seems to be about putting masks on: the rave is just a fun dream, and normal life is the reality, and hey, we all gotta get up and go back to work on Monday. Extremely Sagat vox: “funk dat“

Definitely has that paint by the numbers Netflix curation feel: their data told them they needed an EDM movie of their own and so by god, they bought one.  Six or so not particularly connected characters make their way to and then through a festival, shooting for something of an EDM Dazed and Confused.  This proves to be way too ambitious for the skill set of this director (Dazed and Confused‘s form is end-boss level in terms of difficulty), and the movie never finds any real relevance in the characters or much to say about the experience besides “vague friendship is good,” or “music is good” style platitudes.  It’s kind of an open question as to whether EDM is going to prove useful in the future to understanding our current times – the movie is pretty up front about its opinion that it’s something you get into before you head off to business school, or while you’re taking a vacation from your high-paying Silicon Valley job.  Since EDM is shown as the shadow of what the characters are taking a break from, I hate to say it, but I think those areas are where understanding of our current world will live when looking back. The movie even seems to back this idea up through the one character who’s a rave culture lifer. He’s a bitter crank at war with himself, and utterly miserable in comparison to the college-age kids shown to be consciously dipping in temporarily.  Don’t do subculture too seriously kids: it can have long-term detrimental effects. With all this said, I have something of a soft spot for this film, as it contains the line “I was thinking about putting an LFO after the drop” – a delightful bit of nonsense pulled from almost-there electronic music making terminology that’s proven to be a good mind-clearing mantra for me, when making music on my own.