GOAT (2016) by Andrew Neel: A Review and an Interview
Dude, this is like, dude…the review part.
Goat (2016) by Andrew Neel
A Testament to The Boundless Possibility of White American Male Stupidity
White American men are, by and large, a strange bunch. Donald Trump is not an exception to that rule. Some would say that he is proof of it.
I went to school with many American boys with minds far more capable than my own who went back to the US at 18 to take up places at Ivy League colleges.
But on the other hand I also once had a heated discussion with an American chap relating to a contractual dispute between us in which he said the following – word for word; “You are a douche. Plain and simple. Go find another way to suck.”
Goat is the sort of film which makes you wonder where the average white American man s(h)its between these two types.
When Bill Burr (according to Youtube) “destroys” Ricky Gervais for his manner of hosting the Golden Globes, the only intelligible comment he makes (although I use that word loosely) is that it is inappropriate for “some jerk who’s not even from this country” to do so – therefore inadvertently exposing the very parochialism and small mindedness which makes his countryfolk so vulnerable to parody in the first place.
To compound matters Burr goes on to explain – and I will again quote the great polymath word for word: “I didn’t like eh- I didn’t like his little comment – I didn’t like – You know what I didn’t like? I didn’t mind any of his jokes. I just didn’t like his little comment about Americans not liking movies with subtitles. I am sick to death of Europeans acting like they’re so fucking smart.” Burr would perhaps be rather more convincing were he capable of stringing a simple sentence together.
He neglects to understand that the “little comment” to which he has singled out for objection is itself also a “joke” and he consequently makes no attempt to provide any logical or moral basis for objecting to one sort of joke whilst accepting another.
Burr then goes (in his own characteristically and stupendously American inarticulate way) to try to explain that people outside of London are “just as dumb” as Americans are. He conflates his views of Europe and of the UK until they collapse completely rendering it impossible to determine what he thinks of either. So for example although he refers to “London” as “their Paris”, he then goes on to say that “Paris is right there. They should be more cultured.” (presumably unlike London, which I thought he had said was our Paris).
Although Youtube informs us that Bill Burr has “destroyed” Ricky Gervais, it is a very real struggle to understand what brought about this destruction.
One is ultimately left with the impression that, although Gervais is himself no Jonathan Miller, he would crucify Burr in any form of live debate.
Burr himself has a level of intellect no larger than that of an average turnip. (That actually might explain a few things about his physical appearance).
His theory of the environmental determinism of intelligence in the UK is incapable of withstanding any degree of serious scrutiny – although it may be easier to argue that there is geographical variation in social mobility levels across it, Britain is a small country with a relatively well spread middle class. The “London effect” in fact trickles down into a large part of the British South.
Burr also neglects to account for the adverse impact that American culture itself – and more particularly its standing as the forefather of the celebration of stupidity in the Western world – has had on countries such as the UK.
Burr himself is good evidence of that culture as is Andrew Neel’s 2016 film Goat, which is ostensibly a film about the trials and tribulations of US college students pledging fraternities and sororities.
The film has been hailed by some as an unflinching and intense look at masculinity. Yet the peculiarity of white American culture means that any such ambition is immediately curtailed by this different type of geographical variation. That is the first fundamental flaw of many in this film.
And that flaw in fact reveals itself in the opening credits as accompanied by Arjan Miranda’s distorted soundtrack we catch first glimpse of a topless animalistic herd of American students taking part in a ritual of some form.
This is mirrored in a scene featuring a truly grotesque cameo turn by Producer James Franco with naturalistic close-up shots of these students shouting a whole load of nothing. However seductively close up and intimate these shots of the fraternity are, it seems to be impossible to disguise the fact that they are of fundamentally empty, mindless zombies without much to recommend them as recipients of our sympathy.
This strange homoerotic seductiveness is perhaps the film’s second fatal flaw – for Andrew Neel’s artistic vision seems to commit exactly the same crime that the purported villains of the film are guilty of. The film depicts the least diverse world that it is possible to imagine in modern America where women are relegated to objects of sexual lust and non-white people do not seem to exist.
In one scene the boys are blindfolded and forced to fish out and eat bananas which have been dumped into a toilet which they are led to think are human faeces.
If Goat really does try to make a serious point about the dark side of masculinity, why does this point have such limited practical application?
After all, Mike Tyson is man who is certainly in possession of traditional characteristics you would associate with masculinity. I wonder whether the apparently testosterone fuelled “frat boys” would ask Iron Mike to eat shit too.
Or how about Richard Dawkins - a different sort of man admittedly but one with the paternal robustness of character and intellect to cut a very definite “masculine” figure? Would Dawkins be more easily persuaded?
So Goat fails to speak about masculinity on at least two counts. In the first instance the men of the fraternity are far from “macho” men in any globally objective sense anyway. In the second these characters seem to resemble zombies more than humans.
Goat could only make a claim to be able to say something relevant about masculinity if the characters which inhabit it were not completely braindead.
In fact this zombified dimension to these characters is a thing of wonder because of how omnipresent it is.
The film commences with Brad Land (played by Ben Schnetzer) – patently the Cuck of the Year – inexplicably accepting a plea for a lift from two complete strangers and then driving them – upon their direction - into the middle of a forest - before being viciously assaulted and robbed by them both for no apparent reason.
The scene is terrifying – the most affecting in the whole film - but sits out of place tonally within its context. It is as if David Lynch also made a cameo contribution as the director of this scene which then threatens to outweigh the bulk of the film.
Brad’s more popular and sexually prolific older brother Brett (played by the strangely miscast 168cm Nick Jonas) convinces him to go to college and try to join his fraternity and chaos ensues as Brad and his ill-fated roommate Will endure a series of increasingly inventive and sadistic homoerotic hazing rituals which result in tragedy and yet more odd tonal shifts and turns.
The dialogue does not provide us with any deeper understanding of the male psychology of hazing or of fraternity groups.
The actors are not really provided with anything substantial to work with either.
Brett to Brad: “What the fuck do you mean they don’t look like anything? Brad? Fuck...”
Chance to Brett and Brad: “I'm going places. We're smart fucking dudes. You know? We're going to do shit with our lives. Big shit. And these fucking dudes...I love them, but they're fucking trashy dudes, man. They suck. They're just not going...They're not going anywhere, man. Brookman's kind of a shitty school. You know, my dad...Fuck that guy, man. That guy hates my fucking guts. I'm so fucking glad you guys are here.”
In fact, in many ways, Goat is inadvertently (and tragically) really a film about the folly of the current inefficiency of white Amercian male verbal communication.
Perhaps if any of these characters could articulate their thoughts and feelings with some modicum of accuracy, all of the unpleasantness which we are forced to witness could have been avoided.
The (mainly male) characters display childlike overspills of emotional diarrhea but are never quite two dimensional enough to shed any light as to what really motivates them to behave in such a grossly idiotic fashion.
So when the evil Pledge Master Dixon, played by Jake Picking, says to the new troops “I want to see a mesh of all of your faces in one.” the real problem is that this is all we see too. Is this effect a deliberate statement about the dehumanizing impact of torture? Or is this effect in fact an unintentional statement about the quality of US education? On that point, this appears to be an educational establishment at which there does not appear to be any education.
In attempting to re-frame the middle class white American male as the victim of privilege, Goat has to take us into a world with which we can neither identify nor make any real sense of.
If Andrew Neel is attempting to make a point here about masculinity, it is very unclear what that point is.
His film’s purpose seems only to evidence the boundless possibility of white American male stupidity. Yet I was certain that he had already served that purpose with his 2009 documentary “New World Order”.
On the new world order itself, these are certainly testing times for people who lament the decline of Western civilisation. This is the age of cultural relativism. The age where religious texts which are thousands of years old have been eschewed in favour of new brands of picked and mixed religion which are the product of constant ongoing and ultimately self-serving individual invention not so coincidentally coinciding with the new Consumerism where we should be entitled to benefit from religion in the way that suits us – as opposed to having to apply properly objective tests to our behaviours in order to determine whether it could be said that indeed we have fallen short.
“Calm down dude.” people say. “It’s only a film. Don’t think that you are so superior.”
But I wonder whether the manner in which humans have traditionally taken aim for superiority might have provided the impetus for civilisation itself.
I wonder whether the whole purpose of human life, in many ways, could not be most appositely defined as a desire to try “to do better”.
I wonder whether human life really is better served by a silent but ultimately suicidal pact that we should all be allowed to do as we like.
And I wonder whether when Charlie Chaplin wrote, directed and starred in his 1940 masterpiece “The Great Dictator” on the eve of the possible destruction of the world as the Nazis and their collaborators systematically murdered millions of people on account of their religious and racial identity, closing the film with the dialogue “Look up, Hannah. The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow – into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me, and to all of us.”, he could have done so in the expectation that 76 years into the future, his successors would be making films about the lives of American college students being force fed bananas that they are made to fish from the bowls of toilets which they are deceived into believing are lumps of shit.
“Well, shit happens” people may say.
Indeed it does. But the fact that shit does happen does not alter the shitty fact that today my filming my own shit happening would be deemed to be of sufficient artistic value to receive a glowing review in The Washington Post for the fact that “This isn’t an easy film to watch. But it’s even harder to forget.”
I myself will not be on this planet for much longer to have to endure the torture of knowing that Goat has a 64% score on Metacritic.
Since the film was lauded by Entertainment Weekly, I have carefully been plotting my escape from this planet in a spacecraft which I have carved from bananas that look like shit. (And some shit that looks like bananas).
This Banana-Shit Rocket will have sufficient escape velocity to propel me above the earth into the unending vacuum of space (with my having invested a lifetime of savings in the construction of its elaborate design) and towards the oblivion of my final moments of life.
As I Banana-Shit Rocket my way to my certain doom, I will realise that this might not have been the best idea.
My failure to calculate the G-forces at play and to factor these calculations into the design of the Banana-Shit Rocket will mean that I begin to suffer broken bones, a shifting of internal organs and burst blood vessels.
The blood will begin to rush from my brain starving it of oxygen.
At this stage shit will also happen.
But as the G-forces rip my cheeks from the sides of my skull, if you watch closely enough you will just about be able to make out the faintest of smiles, as I veer further and further away from the (not so) United States of America, from the self-congratulatory stupidity of (so many) young white American men and from a world in which a film like Goat could be called by the Hollywood Reporter “a film that should draw adventurous audiences receptive to provocative drama.”
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you and good night.
Dude, this is like, dude…the interview part.
An Interview With Andrew Neel (“AN”)
AN: “So what did you think of the movie? Did you find it powerful?”
Me: “Powerful? Yes…these things can be powerful. Crikey. Yes. These things often are... Powerful I mean.”
AN: “Did you find it bold?”
Me: “Bold?”
AN: “Yes bold. I just really wanted to make a bold statement with this one, ya’ know? I mean, it’s like that’s what the world is crying out for right now. That’s just what the world needs. A masculine voice. And a bold one. From the greatest country in the world. Did you get that?”
Me: “Hmmm. Yes I certainly got that.”
AN: “Some A-hole criticised my movie. Because of some of the torture scenes…ya’ know? But the way I see it, it’s not exactly me who does the torture really and truly. That’s like the characters in the movie. But I just made the movie. I’m not a character in it. It’s so hard to explain. Do you know what I mean? Some people don’t get my stuff. It’s like they think I’m rolling around putting bananas down the shitter and making blindfolded college students eat them. But it’s really from my perspective – like “No, I’m not the one doing that.” I am just the guy behind the camera, do you know what I mean? Are you getting this?”
Me: “Yes. Yes I am.”
AN: “I’m glad you understood that’s what I was trying to do. Hey. Where are you from anyway? You sound like posh English. But you look like Spanish or fucking Swedish or shit or – I don’t know…I wanted to make a statement about what masculinity means today, ya’ know? And I wanted it to be…I dunno…Just-“
Me: “Bold?”
AN: “Right! Bold! Man! Fucking finally someone who gets it. Someone finally who actually gets my stuff. You probably know what I mean though right? I mean you’re from London. That’s like the capital of British multi-coloured life and what not. Everyone from Pakistan is just like coming out of their Halal butcher shops and raping and killing everyone. Right?”
Me: “Well that’s perhaps a slight oversimplification of London life.”
AN: “Exactly! It’s an oversophistication man. That’s the problem. If something is good and pure, like why oversophisticate it with multicolourism or multicultirism or what not. And now you have all of these fucking Sikhs running around…with towels wrapped around their heads and shit. I mean fuck man. I don’t want to wake up to that. Why don’t we just play hide and seek? Hide and seek with these….”
Me: “Sikhs?”
AN: “Right. I mean that’s the thing with this movie. It’s just so hard to give white All-American Boys like me a voice in Hollywood. Every other film is being made by some Iraqi or some other Chinese person from the Middle East. I wanted to give guys like us a voice. And it was very important to me that that voice would be a bold one.”
Me: “So, in effect, you wanted to scream for white male America?”
AN: “Dude, totally. Well not exactly a scream. Women scream. This was more like a howl. Like the Big Bad Wolf howling.”
Me: “One of the most resounding images in the film is the parallel that you explicitly draw between the hazing of the prospective new recruits and the signs and meanings of the Abu Ghraib photos as two pornographic fantasies possibly echoing Braudillard’s theory of “hyperreality”.”
AN: “Err, yeah. Sure.”
Me: “This is the angle of the film which I found the most interesting. I wonder what motivated you to draw that parallel.”
AN: “Woah, ok! Well. Firstly I have not really studied the dictionary, ya' know? I have not really ever gone to bed with the dictionary as a pillow. I didn’t go to Oxford or Eton. I don’t deal with wordy stuff and what not. I don’t know every word in the dictionary like you do man. I’m just a straight up “All American Boy”. I don’t think you necessarily need to use long words to express shit anyways. That’s just bad grammar. I mean like fuck - shit. I prefer to say things simply. With short words. Real to the point. Like, if you can say it one way, why say it a longer way, ya' know? So yeah yeah. Your vocabulary is impressive man. But seriously it’s just not where I was at with this one. I just wanted to come straight out and hit a home run right off the bat. So that’s the first thing. I’m not the type of artist who is going to marry a dictionary ya' know? I haven’t had sex with a dictionary man. Ha ha.”
Me: “Ok….”
AN: “But yeah man. I hear what you’re saying. Abu Ghraib. It’s like. The way I see it. And what I wanted to say man. It’s like some people see what happened to all of those prisoners, you know the “bad guys”, and thought “Yeah man. Fuck em.” Like you know torture is good. But what I’m saying in my film is like torture is not always good. But then in another sense of the word. It can be good. You know? Like when we need to go get the “bad guys”. It’s like those fuckers in Iraq who did the whole 9/11 thing and just like took a massive shit on America and took a shit on my grandmother and shit. Ya' know? These guys are still out there man. These guys are still at large. And they want to harm my daughter and my country man….So like – is torture always a bad thing?”
Me: “Well the 9/11 hijackers are dead. They died in the planes of course.”
AN: “Right.”
Me: “That’s the official story at least.”
AN: “Exactly. The “official” story. If you’re dumb enough to believe that….”
Me: “But if you do not accept the official story, then you must think that the 9/11 attacks were planned by the US government….”
AN: “Erm….Yeah. In that sense yes. Yeah man….Anyhoo and anyways man. Like right on. Fucking A.”
Me: “But you just said that the attackers are still out there…..”
AN: “Sure. Out there and in here and what not. Like who are the attackers man? And who are the attacked? That’s really where I was taking bold aim with this one. Goat man. Like the Goat is a symbol of attack. On human life. And all that jazz. Hey man, where you from? You look good looking but not in a Prince Harry way.”
Me: “Ok. I think we are perhaps drifting from the purpose of my question slightly. The reason why I asked the question is because I have a sense that, perhaps both consciously and subconsciously, this parallel that Goat evokes runs deeper than that. It is the key to unlocking the underlying message of the whole film. The hazing rituals that the fraternity use mirror the tactics of both the US military and the Islamist miltants. The students subjected to the hazing display a degree of blind faith in what is essentially a brand of radicalism.”
AN: “Who wrote these questions? Did you come up with that yourself? Hey buddy, do you want a beer?”
Me: “Yet because the film portrays some members of the fraternity in a humanising and sympathetic light, critics could say that this evidences an underlying right wing sympathy. So what would you say to those critics?”
AN: “So that’s your question?”
Me: “Yes. It is.”
AN: “That’s your question to me…. Which you want me to answer?”
Me: “It is the question I am asking you yes.”
AN: “ What do I think…..? Hmmm. Well now! Slap me in the face with a halibut and call me Saddam Barack Hussein. What do I think? Without having sex with a dictionary. I think….You are a douche! Plain and simple! Go find another way to suck! That's what I think dude. I mean, what is it with you? What the heck is your problem man, anyways? You obviously hate me and my country so much. Yet you want to ask me questions. Who the fuck ARE you??? Who the hell ARE you? I haven’t seen a birth certificate. I know you are an enemy to the United States of America. But you don’t reveal yourself. I want to see DNA test results. What are you, Jewish? Is that what this is about? Are you a Moslem? Is that why you are asking me these dumbass questions? Where did you learn to talk like that? Are you a Freemason? What the fuck ARE you? You better listen up, buddy. Whoever you are and wherever you’re from. I am an American. I am from the greatest country in the history of the world. My country could blow your country up with a button if we wanted man. You better remember how we saved your country after all that 9/11 stuff. I am a white American man. And I’m proud. I don’t know what the fuck you are. But I know who I am . My blood is Scotch-Irish. And German. And I am a AmeriCAN baby. Get used to it, World! This is one white AmeriCAN man who CAN. And if you AmeriCANT, you must be a CUNT. I am proud of my country for how they took all of those Middle Eastern motherfuckers out. After the Second World War. I mean if it wasn’t for us, Osama Bin Laden would be President of Britain now. So I will write how I wants to. I won’t be speaking the way Britain tells me to speak. Those days are over. American is the new English. And American is bold and loud. Get used to it, World! Yes I haven’t read every chapter of the dictionary. I have only read parts of it. But I don’t give a fuck! Because my country rules the whole world. I don’t need to know what eloquent means. Get used to it, World! I mean what the fuck do we have to do to make sure that you understand our movies? Do we have to employ a thinly veiled passive-aggressive strategy of military aggression to bolster American hegemony under the guise of attempting to liberate the world with paradoxical and fundamentally unattainable democratic values? Do we have to put a banana down the toilet, and blind-fold all of you guys and make you fish it out and then eat it thinking it’s shit??!! Is that what we have to do?? ”
Me: “I’m not sure how much that would help to be honest.”
AN: “Oh yeah? Wiseguy has all the answers right? Yeah, I bet….Ok man listen I’m sorry I lost my shit like that. It’s just….I get so tired sometimes of being stereotyped and discriminated against as a white American male every day. Daily. On a daily basis. 7 days a week. Every day. It’s like we ruined the world or something, the way some people act towards us, ya’ know? It’s hard to explain. It’s like we’re wearing some form of head covering because of our religious views which has the tragic collateral effect of transforming us into a highly visible target for media coverage induced hate crime which purports to be motivated by a desire to defend the West from terrorism despite the fact that almost 1.6 billion of the 1.6 billion of us have never committed or facilitated an act of terror. Can you imagine what that would be like?”
Me: “No. But I think I know some people who could.”
AN: “I mean hey. I think it’s great that you are the way you are and stuff. You sound just like Stephen Hawking or something.”
Me: “People tell me that all the time.”
AN: “Yeah man. But then you look like an extra from Sunset Beach or something. I think it’s great man. I do love multicolouredism really. I like eating exotic food man. You know – like “Fish and Chips”!”
Me: “Hehe.”
AN: “And “Vodka!””
Me: “I think that’s more of a Russian thing actually.”
AN: “Really? No way! I thought that’s what the Queen is famous for drinking.”
Me: “Not to my knowledge, no.”
AN: “Hey – whatever you are, are there a lot of you in Britain?”
Me: “Not really.”
AN: “But you’re not as smart as my cousin Rad anyway. Rad is the smartest guy I know. He actually has read the whole dictionary. In English. Twice. From start to finish. And from finish to start. You should have seen it man. It was incredible. My brother Tyler made a bet with him that unless he read the whole dictionary, he would have to stick a carrot in his ass and sing the Koran. It was hilarious dude. But Rad really surprised us. He read the dictionary and stuck a carrot in his own ass anyways! You know – like a double bluff type thing or whatnot. It was impressive man. I mean that was bold. He must have an IQ of like 300 or something.”
Me: “That is certainly very impressive.”
AN: “Yeah. Hey – he actually helped me write the script for “Goat”.”
Me: “Wow. With the carrot stuck up his ass?”
AN: “Come on dude! Where’s your brain at?? No! That really would be stupid! This was before he had read the dictionary. When we wrote Goat together he didn’t even know what a dictionary was. When I told him he said that book sounded boring dude. And I was all like “Woah dude. Come on! If we’re going to write this film, we better read as many books as we can first. I would hate for this film to become the subject of extreme ridicule by an obscure and most likely insane but also hugely original and vastly intellectually superior writer from London in an unusually metatextual review of the film on his website that nobody ever reads!””
Me: “Well. There are worse things that could happen.”
