This film offers little of substance, preferring to revel in the its glib portraiture of lower middle class under-25s than examine the social implications of the issues it raises. Produced by Film Four – a subsidiary of UK broadcaster Channel 4, who produce the similar shock-fest Skins (2007-Present) – the film owes more than a passing debt to the vacuous music promo aesthetic and the boorish, culturally damaging attitudes of male lifestyle magazines. Helmer Conway isn’t interested in examining male attitudes towards woman in society, or the questionable depiction of sexual relationships in the mass audio-visual media, instead opting to paint pretty, cod-anarchic images of populist male anxiety: nymphomania and castration are touched upon as quickly as they are disregarded in favour of a pair of tits.
Sex has a central place in cinema – it lies at the heart of the (sometimes perverted) cinematic spectacle and should never be ignored – but, like violence, it needs to be dealt with in an honest, mature fashion in order for its inclusion to be justified. Films like Alex and Her Arse Truck are too concerned with pop-surreal imagery and adolescent shock tactics to explore the deeper psychological subtitles of the voyeurism they offer: the female lead in this film is a one-dimensional sex object, derided for her obsession with the sex act but held aloft as an idealised modern woman – all other female roles are either substandard copies of this one or grotesque monsters – but Conway makes no attempt to question or dissect this portrayal.
Films like this, and the filmmakers behind them, camouflage themselves with comforting notions that they are presenting inter-personal relationships and social problems as they (and ergo the audience) see and experience them, believing that the essential questioning and debating processes necessary to the fair consideration of such issues is somehow negative to the audience’s perception of the film. Modern media professionals like Conway are frightened of alienating their audiences, preferring to misunderstand the process of objectivity and the audience’s final reading of their work (read more about that here) to the point that any validity they aspired to is rendered negligible: they become didactic by that same reluctance to question their own material. Here, the audience is left with the degrading image of woman as castrating whore-goddess, rather than with the desire to criticise and debate the subject of the film, something that should be recognised as the essential successor of any cinematic experience.
Alex and Her Arse Truck at the IMDb
Alex and Her Arse Truck (2007; dir. Sean Conway)
This film offers little of substance, preferring to revel in the its glib portraiture of lower middle class under-25s than examine the social implications of the issues it raises. Produced by Film Four – a subsidiary of UK broadcaster Channel 4, who produce the similar shock-fest Skins (2007-Present) – the film owes more than a passing debt to the vacuous music promo aesthetic and the boorish, culturally damaging attitudes of male lifestyle magazines. Helmer Conway isn’t interested in examining male attitudes towards woman in society, or the questionable depiction of sexual relationships in the mass audio-visual media, instead opting to paint pretty, cod-anarchic images of populist male anxiety: nymphomania and castration are touched upon as quickly as they are disregarded in favour of a pair of tits.
Sex has a central place in cinema – it lies at the heart of the (sometimes perverted) cinematic spectacle and should never be ignored – but, like violence, it needs to be dealt with in an honest, mature fashion in order for its inclusion to be justified. Films like Alex and Her Arse Truck are too concerned with pop-surreal imagery and adolescent shock tactics to explore the deeper psychological subtitles of the voyeurism they offer: the female lead in this film is a one-dimensional sex object, derided for her obsession with the sex act but held aloft as an idealised modern woman – all other female roles are either substandard copies of this one or grotesque monsters – but Conway makes no attempt to question or dissect this portrayal.
Films like this, and the filmmakers behind them, camouflage themselves with comforting notions that they are presenting inter-personal relationships and social problems as they (and ergo the audience) see and experience them, believing that the essential questioning and debating processes necessary to the fair consideration of such issues is somehow negative to the audience’s perception of the film. Modern media professionals like Conway are frightened of alienating their audiences, preferring to misunderstand the process of objectivity and the audience’s final reading of their work (read more about that here) to the point that any validity they aspired to is rendered negligible: they become didactic by that same reluctance to question their own material. Here, the audience is left with the degrading image of woman as castrating whore-goddess, rather than with the desire to criticise and debate the subject of the film, something that should be recognised as the essential successor of any cinematic experience.
Alex and Her Arse Truck at the IMDb
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