FILM « In Which The Parody Predates The Thing Itself »
Wednesday, October 20, 2010 at 10:57AM 
La Folle Histoire de l'Espace
by JESSE KLEIN
So I was having a conversation with no one. This was at age three, riding in the backseat of a brand new, baby blue Dodge Caravan in Montreal, Quebec. I was talking on an old, broken rotary telephone to no one in particular. Not myself, not my imaginary friend (I could never relate to kids with one of those; not that I really "related’"to anything at three), not to my mom who was two feet in front of me, driving. "Blah ba buh buh blah," I rambled on, bopping my head, feigning interest as I had seen my parents and other adults do when they used the telephone. Then, my mood suddenly changed, I politely put the phone down and muttered under my breath, "Shithead." "Jess, where did you learn that word?" My mom assumed one of my siblings had whispered swear words into my ear when I was asleep, or I had picked up one of the terms my father employed when describing people that weren't himself. "Thas what they say in Spaceballzss," I answered.
I was quoting Mel Brooks, obviously. After a tedious phone call with someone he thanks "for not reversing the charges," President Skroob (Brooks) mutters the aforementioned expletive under his breath. This is not to be confused with the scene on Spaceball One wherein Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) haplessly wonders, "How many assholes we got on this ship anyhow?" only to receive the dutiful response ‘Yo’ from two dozen men. No. When I was three, it was about shitheads, not assholes.
Spaceballs, written, produced, directed and starring Mel Brooks was my introduction to movies. Also to comedy, romance, family, violence and most crucially, sarcasm. The film parodies, most explicitly, Star Wars, though Star Trek and Alien play a supporting role; it refers to everything/anything as many times per minute as possible, as crudely as each reference could possibly be articulated. No pun too low, no gibe too obvious, in Spaceballs, Brooks pushes his comedic vision, and the genre, to its logical conclusion: a parody of not only the film, but of the filmmaking process too. It’s a post-modern, self-reflexive meditation on Hollywood, consumerism and media consumption. It's also blisteringly smart, and an amazingly entertaining film. And it was the first film I ever saw.
Cult classics now have Quote-A-Longs. Heathers, Reality Bites and Napoleon Dynamite, among many others, incite people not only to watch them again and again at home, but now to return to the theatre after a decade or longer to sing "My Sharona" in unison or trace over Napoleon’s "liger" in their mind’s eye. Maybe in ten years we’ll all pay for a ticket to collectively squeal, "You know what’s cooler than a million dollars…"
Spaceballs is a quote the size of the spaceship from Alien that it mocks. The film is meant to be quoted, exists only insofar as it’s repeated, in or out of context. Often better out of context. When running late, I as often as possible exclaim, "The ship is too big, if I walk, the movie’ll be over." Blank stares more often than not followed by dirty looks. When waiting in line at the grocery store, I ask the old woman in front of me, "When will then be now?" She asks if I’m OK. I say, I'm fine thanks, you? She says she’s well. I say I was looking for the retort "Soon." She turns around and counts her coupons for the third time in two minutes. I assume she’s seen Spaceballs as many times as I have and can’t remember it because she’s old.
At three, Mel Brooks said everything I wanted to hear. Bad things could happen, really bad things. Like a planet losing all of its air (What? Is that possible!?!), or being abandoned by someone you loved. But through hard work, a keen sense of comic timing and being born lucky (like, say, a prince), there was every chance you’d come out on top. By the time I reached double digits, I had watched Spaceballs around thirty times. I’d wake up at five-thirty, six if I was feeling luxurious, and creep downstairs into the basement, wearing my favorite ensemble of super-cool spandex matched with kind-of-cool spandex. I would put the tape in, then sprawl out on the couch, waiting for my favorite parts, reciting the movie as it went along. Is that what a king looks like? A prince? A mawg (half-man half-dog)? Who were those tiny brown people and why did Yogurt (also Brooks) look like my Grandma? (I recently realized that Brooks, as Yogurt, performed on his knees, that’s why he wears a muumuu.)
I assume everyone’s seen Spaceballs, but just in case: Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga) leaves a man she doesn’t love at the altar and escapes her home planet, Druidia. President Skroob and Dark Helmet attempt to kidnap her in order to blackmail the King to give up the country’s air supply, but Lone Star (Bill Pullman) and his sidekick Barf (John Candy) rescue her in the nick of time. Stuff happens. All very funny. Ninety minutes later, Lone Star rescues her again, this the third time, they marry and then those fun credits with the signature moments of the famous actors, and not the randoms, begin to come up.
As you can see, Spaceballs is no Feminist treatise. Not the intergalactic version of that Sally Field movie that people only remember because of her Oscar's speech. Yet, it does lampoon — and thus take sides — the archetypes that define the science-Fiction/adventure genre. Late in the film, Princess Vespa, a helpless captive, sits in a cell in Spaceball One with Dot Matrix (Joan Rivers) and sings "Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen." The very existence of the song in this film is absurd; a Spiritual sung by a White Princess in a world without Black history — or any history, or planet Earth. When Barf hears her, he can’t help remarking, "She’s a bass." It’s a decidedly unfeminine act, sharing her booming voice with anyone who will listen to her blues. This deepens her character; it makes her, and the film, self-knowing, in on the joke.
Like any good parody, Vespa (and Lone Star and Skroob and Barf and…) is everything that came before her and in its amalgamation becomes something else entirely. With even the smallest amount of probing we see Brooks’ nods and winks, we see that he’s talking about everything, that it’s all there. George Lucas had to go to a galaxy far far away to talk about good and evil (and incest). Brooks brings it back to reality, stunt doubles and all.
The Megamaid of meta-ness is at about the midway point of the movie. Dark Helmet and Colonel Sandurz (George Wyner) cannot find the Princess, so, naturally, Sandurz has the idea to watch the movie — the one they’re in — and fast-forward to find the answer. "How can there be a cassette of Spaceballs the movie, we’re still in the middle of making it!" Dark Helmet (or Moranis?) asks. They fast-forward through the embarrassing moments until Sandurz stops the tape. At the exact moment they’re in. What follows is straight out of Abbott and Costello, but tinged with the absurdity and wordplay of Vladimir and Estragon. Sandurz explains, "Everything that’s happening now is happening now" and "We’re at now now." This all plays out on our screen and theirs, we watch them watch themselves. The screens could continue forever, (actors playing characters watching actors playing characters watching…) creating as many mirrors as Brooks would like. But two is enough; we already feel as if we’ve gone to plaid.
Growing up, Spaceballs was a metaphor for what it was like to be alive. My siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins all used lines from the film as shorthand for how they felt. When pleased, my Dad would put his hand out and say "Gimme paw!" and then I would sigh, and give him "paw." When trying to make light of a bad situation, my eldest brother would groan, "F-, even in the future nothing works." And it was not until age twelve that I understood what my brothers meant when they whispered, "I bet she gives great helmet." The film made everyone I knew sillier, happier. I admired Brooks/Skroob/Yogurt for that. It made me want to do it too. I didn’t want to be Lone Star, or the handsome guy who played him; I wanted to be the one who made people laugh like that, the one who dreamed the whole thing up.
I saw Spaceballs nearly a decade before I saw Star Wars. I knew what Star Wars was, as you would anything that is such a huge part of your culture. Though, when I finally saw it/them, I could only see it through Spaceballs-colored glasses. It all seemed so innocent, so obvious. My older brothers — and everyone born before 1980 — watched them in the proper order, the original followed by its sardonic twin. When I watched Spaceballs, I didn’t even know Star Wars existed.
Maybe that was a first. Maybe, at that point, the culture was becoming so accelerated, the intellectual turnover so quick, that you could see the parody before the original. Before, readers and viewers knew the source material and then saw its ironic counterpart; you would see a John Ford film before you saw Blazing Saddles. But those born after, say, 1980, would have every chance of seeing the parody before, and not because of, the work it sent up. Today, a fourteen-year-old probably knows about the next Not Another film and not what it is parodying, where it originated. They’re partially aware of the primary content like I was of Star Wars; it’s there, but only insofar as it spawned its cooler, more cynical offspring. Bad thing?
Jesse Klein is a contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in Austin. He last wrote in these pages about the film Ex-Drummer.
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jesse klein, spaceballs
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