Arts & Culture

Magazines, newspapers and the Internet are constantly full of articles listing the best movies, the best films, the best books, the best grilled cheese sandwiches in restaurants with names beginning with a consonant in neighbourhoods with names beginning with a vowel, etc. But you know what never gets much love? The worst things! And perhaps with good cause. But still. 

For example, when it comes to comic books, Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman get all the press, but what about the lesser-known heroes, like Doctor Hormone (a doctor who, uh, harnessed the awesome power of hormones) or The Eye (a glowing, disembodied eye which (who?), in the words of its Wikipedia entry, "existed to encourage average people to do what they could to attain it [i.e. justice] for themselves.")? I think it's time for a reboot of The Eye: "The Eye: Hears No Evil, Speaks No Evil…SEES All Evil – Summer 2018," or "The Eye: Like…Your Conscience Or Something? – Summer 2018."

• The League of Regrettable Superheroes: Half-baked Heroes from Comic book History!, by Jon Morris (eBook)

Similarly, anyone can challenge a superhero with The Joker's sadistic pranks or Lex Luthor's super-intelligence, but it takes real courage to go up against Earth's mightiest protagonists armed with nothing but poisonous bricks (hi, Brickbat!) or a single disembodied hand (take a bow, The Horrible Hand…oh, wait. Also, can a hand be armed?). The Eye versus The Horrible Hand; who ya got?

• The Legion of Regrettable Supervillains: Oddball Criminals from Comic Book History, by Jon Morris (eBook)

Okay, maybe you're not a comic book fan. But everyone eats, and everyone has eaten things they (hopefully) lived to regret having eaten. The Gallery of Regrettable Food, by James Lileks, takes us back to the 1940s, '50s and '60s, when seemingly every meal was encased in Jell-O and/or consisted of canned vegetables stuffed into canned meat, stuffed into another type of canned meat. These days, if anyone served you one of the dishes featured in this book, you'd take it as either an insult or a threat, and you'd be right.

One thing the world has a seemingly inexhaustible supply of is bad movies. And while "bad" is in the eye of the beholder (maybe the modern version of The Eye could float around encouraging average people to make good movies for themselves?), some movies look at those which are merely mediocre, say "Hold my beer" and show the rest of us how it's really done. One of these rarefied films is Troll 2 (sadly unavailable at the Toronto Public Library), which a) has no actual trolls in it, and b) was so bad it inspired a documentary (directed by its lead actor) about how and why it was so bad.

• Best Worst Movie, directed by Michael Paul Stephenson

Troll 2, as terrible as it is, is only one film, and once you've watched it you might ask why anyone would do such a thing to themselves and others and also an entire art form. But you might also ask "What are the other classics of the bad movie genre?" A good place to start your research might be The Official Razzie Movie Guide: Enjoying the Best of Hollywood's Worst, by John Wilson. The Razzies are short for The Golden Raspberry Awards, a sort of reverse-Oscars where cinematic misfires like Battlefield Earth, Catwoman and Gigli clean up. For a more thoughtful examination of how and why so many films go so horribly wrong, I recommend Nathan Rabin's My Year of Flops: The A.V. Club Presents One Man's Journey Deep into the Heart of Cinematic Failure, which groups movies into three categories; Failure, Fiasco, or Secret Success (spoiler: Battlefield Earth is not a Secret Success).

If there was a Troll 2 of music, it was probably Florence Foster Jenkins, an amateur opera singer who didn't let her complete lack of singing ability stop her from declaring herself a coloratura soprano and performing at Carnegie Hall. "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice!", the old joke goes. Or you could just rent it and sing whatever you want, like Jenkins did, which is something I didn't even know you could do and maybe you can't any more thanks to Jenkins. Anyway, she shares with Troll 2 the distinction of having been so bad that she inspired a documentary, although unlike Troll 2 her story has also been told in Broadway play, book and feature film form.

• Florence Foster Jenkins: The Inspiring True Story of the World's Worst Singer, by Nicholas Martin (eBook)
• Florence! Foster!! Jenkins!!!: The Life of the World's Worst Opera Singer, by Darryl W. Bullock (eBook)
• Glorious!: The True Story of Florence Foster Jenkins, the Worst Singer in the World, by Peter Quilter
• Florence Foster Jenkins, directed by Stephen Frears

Prolonged exposure to all this monumentally lousy pop culture may leave you feeling somewhat despondent. And so, gentle blog reader, I leave you with a single comforting thought; this too shall pass.

• The Worst of Times: How Life on Earth survived Eighty Million Years of Extinctions, by PB Wignall