RMNB recommends the Institute of Gremlins 2 Studies – Russian Machine Never Breaks

We dont have any hockey to distract us right now, so here are some ideas from us at RMNB on how you could spend your time while in lockdown.

In todays episode: an academic journal dedicated to the Greatest Movie Ever Made.

All human beings, regardless of where or when they live, operate in three stages:

Thanks to the Gremlins 2 advocacy of my very wise partner, birthday gal Aileen OHearn, PhD, I am now in stage three. Joining me are all right-thinking individuals, including the Institute of Gremlins 2 Studies. The G2 Institute is a definitely real organization of certainly more than just one sad person endlessly considering the philosophical dimensions of the 1990 popcorn classic, Gremlin 2: The New Batch, starring Phoebe Cates, Dick Butkus, Christopher Lee, and Hulk Hogan.

Generation Z may know Gremlins 2 only through this Key & Peele sketch, and this is a great shame.

But all that dumb stuff isnt just in the film; that dumb stuff is what gives the film its life. Its an aggressively whimsical and powerfully stupid movie. Its a cartoon. And all that early 90s whimsy and stupidity and cartoonishness now just feels like an accurate maybe even conservative prediction of our historical moment.

Or, put another way:

The original myth of the Gremlin is a being that lives in our machines, causing malfunctions. This shatters the illusion of naturality by breaking them, they are revealed as constructions, within our control. More radically, the Gremlin reveals our world is subject to change.

Institute of Gremlins 2 Studies (@G2Institute) April 28, 2019

Little nuggets of is this a gag or is this profound? is extremely up my alley, which is why the Institute has joined the hallowed halls of my Twitter notifications.

There was a time when this twitter account just made me chuckle every once in a while, but now I feel like it is shouting truth directly into my soul.

Many fixate on the third act of Gremlins 2, as if its delirious meltdown is a novelty or aberration. Yet I propose precisely the opposite: the narrative disjunction depicted is now the definingmode of daily life. What is alien is not the breakdown, but its ultimate conclusion.

Institute of Gremlins 2 Studies (@G2Institute) October 26, 2019

Give them a follower on Twitter. Someone giveJoe Dante a ton of money to make more weird movies. And you can rent Gremlins 2 on Amazon for $2.50 right now. Watch it tonight, and lets take down Daniel Clamp in November.

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RMNB recommends the Institute of Gremlins 2 Studies - Russian Machine Never Breaks

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero