And who brought the beer?
The animated movie Igor (2008) breaks up on the rocks of its own plot twist. The primary export of the country of Malaria are the products of its independent Evil Scientists. The class of people known as Igors, complete with humps, are relegated to the jobs of Evil Scientist Assistants. When an Igor proves inefficient, it is sent to the recycling center to be chopped up for reuse.
We follow an above-average, ambitious but humble Igor who has discovered how to create life. After a couple of his early secretive efforts turn out well, his Evil Scientist accidentally kills himself. Igor uses the opportunity to go for the big time – creating an immense monster which will defeat all the other Evil Scientist creations at the annual competition, and elevating Igor out of his class rank and into the Evil Scientist rank.
One problem. His monster’s Evil Bone fails to activate, and the subsequent brain wash accidentally results in the creation of… an actress. Who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
The movie hurtles onward, ending in the predictable erasure of the Evil Scientist class and Malaria’s only export (evil), as Igor learns that Evil Scientist status is not really what he wants.
As a plot twist, it’s nice in isolation. The problem is that as a society-wide practice, it’s highly unstable. The practice of assassination appears to be common, and quite honestly this doesn’t lead to a stable, prosperous society. Now, perhaps in a fantasy-parody, it shouldn’t matter. Maybe that’s what the movie creators thought, and proceeded onwards. But the problem is that movies are taken more seriously – even comedies – when the mind perceives that lessons can be learned and new insights gained, and this can only happen in a context which is perceived as realistic in some sense.
And the lessons learned by Igor all go against the culture-wide training of creating and exporting evil. True, we do gain a depiction of evil self-destructing, but as Igor falls in love with his creation, it really brings an inadvertent question to the fore:
How does this society produce babies? If everyone’s suspicious of everyone else, well, what then? Is it some sort of ritualized rape culture, perhaps reminiscent of that portrayed in Jack Vance’s The Face, in which married couples individually go into their planet’s desert at night, purely to kidnap and ever so politely rape the teenagers of their population?
The more connected the plot mechanism is to the surrounding society, the more leverage it gains; we see the opposite in this story, because the society is really dissolving into an inchoate collection of madness in the back of our minds. As we see the relevance to ourselves retreat, the movie comes more and more to depend on the wry word play of the characters, main and supporting, and it’s not quite up to this gargantuan task, despite some spirited efforts which had my Arts Editor and I groaning (“What, do you think this is the first time I’ve gnawed my legs off?”).
It gets off to a promising start, but the rocks upon which this movie founders is also the foundation on which it is built – if I may mix my metaphors. And that just doesn’t work out.
