Hollywood Style Homes

Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Sewers: Sewers are the dark and claustrophobic homes of cannibalistic humanoids and phantasmagoric clowns. Giant alligators patrol the polluted waterways and pregnant aliens disappear into the shadows. At any moment a screeching vampire might burst from concealment or streams of squealing rats might issue from a murky tunnel. Arcane valves and flow controls and drain hatches could activate and carry unwary visitors off to a skeleton-strewn pit or, at the whim of the writer, to safety.

The reality: You're more likely to get bit by a rat than a vampire and even in the nest of a sewer clown the worst nightmare of childhood you will have to confront is a case of hepatitis. Sewers are not pleasant places, true, but they have been designed specifically for maintenance teams to gain access; without being killed in some horrible way.

Techo Clubs: Regular haunts of people covered with piercings and tribal tattoos, techno clubs are also frequently visited by purpose-driven cyborg killers, evil vampires, extra-evil vampires that kill regular vampires, and Eurotrash computer software. There is always at least one pair of women wearing vinyl pants, dancing with each other.

The reality: There is very little truth to Hollywood's portrayal of techno clubs. Most techno clubs are required by health codes to put out traps to catch vampires, and all of our cyborg killers are busy disposing of roadside bombs in Iraq.

Remote Space Colonies: Once humanity has started its spread into space no one ever bothers to set up a border defense force. Alien invasions and cannibal mutants blow right through customs without stopping and inevitably wipe out the first human speed bump they run across on their way to earth. This is based on the early history of American expansion, when pioneer villages were frequently wiped out by billions of rabid Indians rampaging towards Europe.

The reality: We don't have any space colonies yet, but if they're anything like humanity's space station we can expect a lot of experiments involving globs of water or ants. In the unlikely event aliens arrived to wipe out our space station that would be the most useful experiment it has ever conducted.

Small Town: Hollywood holds Small Town, USA in utter contempt. It is either a thin facade of inoffensive pleasantness with ugliness and violence lurking beneath or the facade is gone and it's just an ugly poverty-wracked hell. Huffing gangs of perverted drug dealers and hateful dullards rule the streets and Bjork gets hanged mid-stanza. The one exception is when a nuclear holocaust is approaching, presumably because all actual centers of culture in America have been vaporized. In that case small-town Americans exhibit stoic survival instincts until their hair and teeth fall out while cradling a dead baby.

The reality: David Lynch was pretty much right. Small towns in America are terrorized by kidnappings of children, severed ears, and psychopaths that wear a fake mustache when conducting drug deals.

Chinatown: Streets lined with steaming woks and cured gooses, sing-song shouts and paper lanterns. Gun battles and kung fu fights are equally likely to erupt. Lightning-flinging evil gods walk among us. Stacks of empty boxes and food carts full of confetti await a car chase. There may be some conspiracy involving the water supply and incest, but you might as well forget about it, buddy. It's Chinatown.

The reality: They sell iPods and bootleg movie posters. The dim sum is made by Mexicans. There are no kung fu battles there.

Hollywood teaches:. Every innovation is capable of turning on its creators and causing untold death and mayhem. Witness the unruly cannon-wielding ED-209 from Robocop, which opened fire on an innocent OCP employee in its initial technology demonstration and was later defeated by a staircase. Any time a new technology is demonstrated in a movie it will either result in a deadly mishap or it will be comically ineffective. In the case of ED-209 it was both.

The reality: Most technology demonstrations are for products or innovations that pose zero risk to participants. A new toaster is not going to start firing a chain gun at the audience and a two foot tall astronaut robot in Japan is not going to put down its trumpet and snap a man in half. Even the most sinister masterminds like us buy insurance. Insurance companies don't like it when they have to settle lawsuits titled "Hanson v. OCP's Murder Droid Division" and they pressure the companies they are insuring accordingly.

NYC: Hookers, pimps, grimy streets, rampant crime, and giant monsters, welcome to America's city! New York is the last earthly stop before hell, a favorite of every noxious human being imaginable and the frequent host to unstoppable killing machines. Since 9/11, Hollywood also really loves to use New York as a backdrop for Big Destruction in the hopes of touching America’s sensitive side. Hollywood has always had a fondness for using New York City as a cardboard skyline to tear down, but now it gets to do it and then the producers of the movie can congratulate each other about how a big green CGI blob smashing buildings has a deep contextual meaning.

The reality: Rudy Giuliani rounded the homeless people and hookers up, floated them out into Hudson Bay on barges, and then sunk them. Huge swaths of the city have been turned into America's fat version of Tokyo. Giant HDTV screens blast ads 24/7, corporate outlets have nestled in to real estate formerly leased by pawn shops and strip clubs, and the sidewalks are awash in glandular cases from Wisconsin wearing khaki shorts. The gangs and giant monsters might have been a nobler end.