FROM THE LAKE TO THE SOUND, it seems everybody in Seattle's just giddy to
find our once-fair city depicted as the fictional headquarters of the arch
criminal Dr. Evil (Mike Myers) in the new sequel movie Austin Powers: The
Spy Who Shagged Me. Someone who'd been frozen as long as the movie's hero
might not understand why, but from the present day it's easy to get.
Back in 1969, when most of the film's time-traveling plot takes place,
Seattle's World's Fair-derived aspirations toward "world class" status were
starting to stall. Boeing was heading toward massive layoffs; the Seattle
Pilots baseball team was struggling through its one-and-only season before
moving to Milwaukee; and a generation of young adults was starting to turn the
cusp from wannabe-revolutionaries to sedate Deadheads (and, before long, to
domesticated urban professionals).
Nowadays, the municipal zeitgeist's a little different.
No longer is Seattle seen as a town to move to when you wanted to stop doing
anything; a semiretirement home of smug baby-boomer complacency.
It's now seen, by its residents and outsiders alike, as a dynamic, bombastic,
even arrogant burg of hotshot movers-'n'-shakers. Dennis Miller has referred to
Bill Gates as the only man in the world with the kind of power once held by
governments. And Starbucks, the booming mass-market food-and-beverage chain
that still claims to offer "gourmet" products for persons of quiet good taste,
is openbly reviled by Frisco elitists and by aging bohos who cling to far
homier notions of what a coffeehouse should represent.
So, while the swingin' hero Austin Powers continues his retro-mod "mojo" thing, Dr. Evil moves
with the times by setting up HQ atop the Space Needle, which has been festooned
(in the digitized stock-footage establishing shot and the studio-set interior)
with Starbucks signs inside and out. An image of late-modern, Global Business
treachery. And Seattleites love it, even if it's a throwaway gag with no
ultimate plot relevance. Oh we're just so bad, don't you know--but bad
in a sleek, stylish way, just like Dr. Evil's shaved head and shiny white
suits.
(The film's titular hero also gets a Seattle connection of sorts: During the
opening titles, he dances to a remake of an old track by Seattle's own musical
legend Quincy Jones.)
Meanwhile, I'm surprised nobody's compared the Starbucks reference to a
similar corporate-conspiracy plotline in another thriller-spoof movie. The
President's Analyst, directed in 1967 by Barney Miller co-creator
Theodore Flicker, starred James Coburn (whose In Like Flint is briefly
excerpted in the new Austin Powers) as a shrink who personally treats an
unseen Commander-In-Chief, only to get chased and trailed by many nations'
spies who all want whatever secrets he might know. But the ones who want Coburn
most, the most dangerous force of treachery in that peak-of-the-cold-war era:
The Phone Company!
Monday: Speaking of swingin' hipcats, there's a U.K. social critic who sees the "sexual
revolution" and "queer culture" as just more consumer-culture selfishness.
Recent highlights:
- Part two of our party roundup, the dee-lish Insta-Poem contest.
- Part one of our party roundup, the groovy MISC.-O-Rama questionnaire.
- Introducing the new daily MISC. World.
- The column's 13th anniversary inspires thoughts on changing views of "popular culture"; plus a freebie-postcard company that doesn't get what the Seattle Film Festival's really about, and something sweet to nibble on.
- Wedgwood residents fuss about saving a small supermarket that doesn't even have 17 kinds of cilantro; plus Robert Hughes vs. the new Star Wars, the one place Taco Bell goes bilingual, tips for teens, and herbal upper and downer drinks.
- Musings on the decline of softcore, as Penthouse sneaks in an apparently-real sex scene; plus Denny's new "diner" look probably won't solve the chain's image problems.
- Another World heads toward soap-opera oblivion; plus the new hip typeface.
Archives:
MISC. Media Updates:
As of June 14, 1999, the site's changed yet again. Now, your doses of popcult confusion are titled MISC. World and come to you every darned weekday. (The shorter "MISC." title lives on in The Big Book of MISC., which is now shipping.)
As of April 29, 1999, we've got a new URL. Re-set your bookmarks for http://www.miscmedia.com so you can quickly get to your favorite popcult commentary and other features.
To learn more about these and future changes, join the splendid Misc.-l mailing list. Send an email to Majordomo@lists.speakeasy.org. Leave the "subject" line blank, and in the body of the message write simply:
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