It's All So Tromatic!

Once you decide that you own a part of something, then you have to let it become part of you. Case in point: My girlfriend's stegosaurus tattoo. Not too many people know as much as she does about that extinct animal, and not many people want to know that much either. She is alone most of the time when it comes to the "cult of stegosaurus". But if she signs onto a dino message forum or goes to a conference, she is suddenly surrounded by people who can learn from her and from whom she can learn. She enters a room full of people who care about every little detail and who are not run-of-the-mill in any sense. Her knowledge will be tested. She will also get to test others. My girlfriend is a geologist/paleontologist and dinosaurs are her proving grounds for others who claim to be in love with them as much as she is.

Horror fans also have their proving grounds. Evil Dead is one, although that's fairly surface-level if you ask me. Cannibal Holocaust is another. Cannibal Holocaust is the type of movie that doesn't get reviewed very often because the reviewers are too nervous/scared/sane to watch it. A favorite proving ground of mine, but one that I have to keep out of conversation too often, is Troma.

Watching Troma movies, or calling yourself a fan of Troma movies, is a covenant that you make with yourself and other Troma fans. (Laugh all you want but hear me out.) Not only are you standing up for free speech and the right to display gratuitous boobies and crushed heads, but you're also saying that you believe in independent cinema and the right of anyone to be able to make anything. You're saying that all artistic expressions are valid. You're also saying that you're crazy in the head, but only to some.

Troma is a company formed by people who had experience working from within Hollywood, but preferred, after some time, to do it their own way. Troma tends to make movies that have a lot of highly offensive content. This is for a couple of reasons: 1) Troma doesn't censor anyone's art; 2) Hollywood won't put out movies with certain brands of "humor", nor will they put out movies with explicit content; 3) Offensive content is all good fun. If you want your movie to have explicit content and offensive dialogue, you've gotta do things yourself...and Troma has helped many people do that. (Kevin Smith made Clerks before he got funded by Hollywood...and it's his most offensive movie in my opinion as well as how he became famous.)

People may tend to think of Troma movies as singularly weird and gross. This is completely true, but it's not a unique way of doing things. People have different reasons to make movies with extreme elements. A director you may have heard of, Pedro Almodovar, a director from Spain who has been making movies since the late 70's, has a reputation for visually frank cinema. Almodovar's second film, The Labyrinth of Passion, has a scene wherein some thieves hold up a bank and the teller gets so frightened that she shits her pants. There is a shot with the shit sliding down her leg. The shot doesn't mean anything, and wasn't necessary at all. (You can tell she's shit herself from several other shots around the shot in question. Almodovar also could've gotten the point across differently.) But Almodovar wanted to put that graphic scene in because suddenly he was allowed to.

Franco was the dictator of Spain from 1947 to 1975. During that time everything in that country was moderated and censored. Many films couldn't be made if they were deemed too offensive, or they were harshly edited or banned. When Almodovar started making movies he realized that this reign of censorship and tyranny had ended and he could do whatever he wanted in his movie. He didn't know when he'd get the chance to make another movie, however. Since Almodovar wanted to make the most of his opportunity, he chose to put in a scene, or two or three, that were offensive and gross and gratuitous. He was simply exercising his freedoms, freedoms never offered to anyone before.

Troma is doing the same thing. I'm not saying that Troma's movies are in the same league as Almodovar's, but The Labyrinth of Passion could easily be mistaken for a Troma movie, what with its poor production quality and gratuitous imagery. The concept is the same. Troma stands for freedom of expression.

Troma doesn't stand for good taste. It doesn't stand for "family-friendly". It doesn't stand for "moral high-ground". But I'm okay with that. The Troma fans are okay with that. Watching Troma movies is an experiment. You want to see what they can pull off next. You want to see if you can stomach what they're going to put on screen.

There's a group of people who know what Troma is, and they love it for what it is. I'm one of them, and I hope Troma is around for a long time. I can connect with others who love Troma and other movies of that ilk. Troma is how I can tell the insiders from the posers. It's a little snobbish, but I can live with that.