I figured I'd post my personal experience with RLM content here. I've never talked about it before, but I used to love the Harry S. Plinkett reviews. Like, a lot. I guess it's going to read kind of bloggy. Sorry about that. It's probably not that interesting.
I was in my mid-to-late teens when the original Plinkett reviews of the prequel trilogy came out. They were unlike anything else on the internet at the time and I thought they were truly sensational. I came across the Phantom Menace review shortly after its first release and was part of the crowd that clamored for them to "do the other movies" in between each review. I rewatched them pretty regularly. Every time I met someone who liked Star Wars but hadn't seen them we would make an evening out of watching them. I've seen the Plinkett prequel reviews more times each than I have seen any of the actual Star Wars films. Although I am part of the group that have "revisited the prequels" with some positivity my experience with them is still very largely defined by the RLM Plinkett videos.
As the Plinkett series went on and started to have an actual narrative behind the reviews I thought it was amazing experimental film-making and a seminal internet experience. I watched the Baby's Day Out and the Avatar reviews like once a month. I thought they were really funny, but more importantly, I found them extremely validating. Having a multi-hour analysis dedicated to something you largely agree with was a thrilling self-indulgent exercise. I didn't love these videos just because I thought they were funny and unique. I loved them because I thought they were right. I agreed with them. They weren't just funny to me, they were validating.
I never really got in to the actual personalities behind the show. I never watched the "real" reviews like the Half in the Bag. I was only in it for the Plinkett stuff. In a weird way those Plinkett reviews are part of why I loved Star Wars. Even though they were exceedingly negative and comedic, relating to the brand over how much I hated parts of it was really cathartic. That negativity was how I expressed my enthusiasm. While I definitely do not hold those videos in the same reverence that I did as a teenager, they definitely got me started on approaching things critically and trying to explain
why I liked (or didn't like) something instead of just treating my opinion like its own absolute. They are juvenile, but so was I, and they were a great place to start at my age.
What changed how I felt about all of it was the Plinkett review of The Force Awakens, which prompted a great deal of self-reflection on my part. I still very vividly remember what got me reflecting on things. It was from an AV Club article linking the review.
I was able to find it.
When I read this, I thought it was spot-on. Harry S. Plinkett was always a post-modern Comic Book Guy to me. The Comic Book Guy in The Simpsons was an obvious archetype for the super-nerd who felt they were the authority on everything they loved. They spoke about their interests with pretentious exactitude and the audience was never meant to
relate to this parody archetype. Comic Book Guy was funny, familiar, and common, but he was not portrayed as
right.
Harry S. Plinkett was interesting to me because it cranked up the intensity to an almost Troma-level absurdity but he was also often
right. What made him so captivating wasn't just the character, it's that you were meant to find what he was saying interesting, insightful, and even correct. You were supposed to relate to his criticism and beliefs even though you laughed at his character. I loved Harry S. Plinkett because I agreed with him. He said what I felt. The satire element wasn't only that he was extreme and perverse - it's that he gave good criticism too.
This meant Harry S. Plinkett wasn't just a satirical construct, he was a reflection of the viewer. Of me, even, which I was perfectly fine with. I thought it was good to portray such intense fan criticism with a self-deprecating tilt. Like, maybe we're all super in to what we love and have a lot to say about it, but what makes us different from
that guy? Besides bestiality and murder, of course.
Then I watched the new video.
I haven't rewatched it since, so my memory is fuzzy, but there were several instances I remember as really uncomfortable. I remember him referring to the Star Trek movies and dropping a trans slur. I remember a diversion where he says he is "triggered" by the use of the phrase "mumbo-jumbo" and then goes on a fake tirade about how racist it is. This stuff sucked but I put off my response until the end of the video. And then it ended with a diversity rant... a
long diversity rant. And this was really hard for me to parse. Because Plinkett was supposed to be a gross old murderer who said and did suspect things but ultimately
said things I agreed with. His criticism was the selling point of the series. But this wasn't Plinkett saying what I was thinking. This was Plinkett making fun of me. This wasn't me relating to the Plinkett character in a tongue-in-cheek way, this was the Plinkett character making
me the enemy.
And that was tough.
I thought back to the AV Club description of the Plinkett character from before I watched the video:
After watching the Force Awakens review, I didn't think this was true anymore. Instead of being a subversive construct that peddled legitimate and insightful film criticism under the veneer of a cranked-up Comic Book Guy, he'd become something totally different. The Plinkett character was definitely a hateful slob, but he wasn't self-aware anymore. He was, unironically, the kind of character he was supposed to be parodying. I liked the Plinkett character because it took my grievances with fandom and Star Wars movies and it put them in to words. It made them funny and far-reaching and somewhat smart. But Plinkett wasn't legitimizing my armchair criticism of Star Wars movies anymore. Now he was legitimizing ideas that hurt me. That part wasn't about Star Wars. That part was about me.
I just stopped watching after that and left any interest I had in their stuff behind. I was never really in to the RLM brand itself. I'm not on a first name basis with anybody. I don't know who anybody is or what they actually believe. But I know that I used to be really in to some of their content and felt really let down and targeted by that inclusivity rant. It made me rethink the whole series of reviews, and the entire character, and I felt completely alienated by something I used to really like. There have always been people who hated the Plinkett reviews and thought they were damaging to Star Wars discourse. I never gave any credence to that and still don't. I don't think saying "Phantom Menace doesn't have a main character" is damaging to Star Wars discourse. I don't think the super-flawed "how many things can you say about this character?" sequence hurts anybody. You can disagree with the method or the meaning but it's not
damaging, I don't think.
But ranting about inclusivity and downplaying the significance it has, especially on young people, does hurt the discourse. It does hurt people. Because, just like I used to, there are people who watch the Plinkett reviews and laugh their ass off and think "this guy gets it!" I feel like the review for The Force Awakens validates the wrong kind of people and the wrong kind of criticism. That comes at my expense.
People can take what they want from this sort of content and maybe they can more easily separate out what they agree with and what they don't. But I really hate when people respond to these criticisms with claims of satire. Satire is not a shield. It's not a magic word that means you can say whatever you want without scrutiny. The whole point of satire, the very crux of its use, is to impart a political message. Including this section as a bullet point in a long review of Star Wars and the state of the brand isn't satirizing anything. It's airing a grievance. There is no way to delegitimize this part of the critique because the review presents it as legitimate.
I think continuing the Plinkett character in 2016 was a mistake. Star Wars discourse was extremely different after The Force Awakens and a character like Plinkett ceases to be subversive in an era where racists and misogynists reign social media with transparent fervor. Plinkett does not embody "the best and worst" qualities of anything anymore. It's just the worst.
And that makes me think back on how much I used to enjoy the content and how many people I initiated in to the character. I still can't think of pizza rolls without thinking of Plinkett. I still sometimes say "if you want to tell jokes, go to the circus." I still sometimes say "you might not have noticed, but your brain did." Stuff from Plinkett content that has been hard-coded in to my brain from all the times I watched the videos and shared them with others.
I wonder: did I change or did the content change? Did the Plinkett character become different or simply more of what it always was?
Anyway, I've never watched anything else from the site and am not very familiar with any of their modern or non-character content. I don't have any personal grievance with the site or the content beyond condemning the above and being disappointed by something I used to really like. From what one of my friends told me, their contemporary content is still very largely based on validating the existing feelings of their audience. So it probably isn't for me.
That's my sad story about how I used to like some funny internet videos and now I don't. Much ado about nothing, I suppose. But nice to talk about at least once.
Edit: Fixed some early-morning typos.