Rebecca's Thoughts

Originally published in The Lost Art of Pearl Clutching

Rock of Ages is objectively not a good movie, my mom called it one of the worst movies ever, yet I think that its reflection of politics, politicians, and everyday people is fascinating and funny. To give a quick synopsis for those who haven’t seen the movie there is a brief description:

Soon after hopping off a bus from the Midwest, aspiring singer Sherrie Christian (Julianne Hough) immediately finds herself in trouble. Coming to her rescue is Drew (Diego Boneta), a bar-back at the legendary club the Bourbon Room. With stars in their eyes, the young lovers chase their dreams, but a misunderstanding involving rock god Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) threatens to tear them apart.

One of the B-plots in the movie, and likely the most relevant to this essay, has to do with the Bourbon Room, the in-movie version of The Roxy. In the movie, the Bourbon Room was going under in debt all while being attacked and protested against by the rich wives of Los Angeles’ elite. This subplot was added to the movie in the adaptation process. In my opinion, the stage musical is vastly different than the movie, they have very different tones, and the outcomes of the movies are almost completely different. This means that someone somewhere thought that a “family values” subplot was not only necessary in the adaptation but also needed to redeem half of the cast. This, I think, turned the themes and the story of the movie on its head as any reason for not liking rock music can be dismissed through characters like the mayor and his wife.

This movie is not vague or nuanced in what it has to say; rock’n’roll is amazing and nothing will ever be able to stop it. The movie is quite blatant with its sex, alcohol, and rock’n’roll messaging so much so that having an affair is used as like 3 different conflicts in the movie. It’s not a subtle movie, but that is also kind of the point. Rock of Ages is not a well-liked movie, it’s actually the opposite and people seem to have a deep hate and many negative things to say about it. I on the other hand have a very soft spot for this movie and quite frankly enjoy watching it and the garbage shoot it wants to show me.

In that vein, I want to have a quick defence of the movie to later prove my point that this movie’s satire outlines a string of false outrage that has filled the hole left by the PMRC and the lack of pearl clutching.

Defence #1 – dude chill… its just a satire

Rock of Ages the movie, much like its musical counterpart, is a satire at heart. The movie, despite what critics want you to think, is not serious in its messaging nor serious in its writing as a movie. I think this is obvious in the dialogue and the places the story goes. Nothing in this movie should be taken seriously and anyone taking it seriously misses what I think is the true message of the story.

Do I think that Rock of Ages is a good satire? Um no. But that doesn’t mean that we still shouldn’t treat it like one. There’s an article in Salon that I think explains lots of the sentiments that I have towards the movie and why I like it. The author of the article Andrew O’Hehir describes the movie as “an effulgent celebration of fakeness. It isn’t trying to be real; it’s trying to be faker than any fake thing has ever been before.” The article goes on to describe the Broadway musical it’s based upon as such: “After its fashion, “Rock of Ages” — the screenplay is by Justin Theroux, Allan Loeb and Chris D’Arienzo, writer of the Broadway show — is in fact true to its own tradition, one that’s a little difficult to describe. Let’s call it the tradition of deliberately misunderstanding cultural conflict, of reducing it to cliché and fantasy in order to fit it into a let’s-put-on-a-show musical.”

This move, and the musical, are products of stupidity and good intentions (I think). They want to tell a story and manage to do it in the craziest and most bizarre way possible.

Defence #2 – none of this music is controversial…

This movie is incredibly ironic in the sense that, despite what the movie wants you to think, nothing particularly controversial happens in it. The movie is very PG-13 in nature, and it takes the rating to heart. As put on Common Sense Media: “[this] Musical has more glam than grit, except for drinking.”

To go back to that Common Sense Media review I mentioned earlier. The reviewer asked the following question under the “talk to your kids about” section: Families can talk about rock music. Do you agree with some of the people in Rock of Ages who say that rock can inspire debauchery and wear away community morals? Or is it a means of self-expression that shouldn’t be censored?

I think the most ironic part of this movie is the fact that most of the songs in this movie are particularly controversial. For being a movie about the dredges and corruption of society it’s amusing when musicians like Bon Jovi start playing. Like, these are really safe song choices meant to represent a sub-culture of debauchery and mayhem. Bon Jovi was hated for their lack of street cred when it came to the rock scene.

Whether intentional or not, I think this contributes to the satirical nature of the movie and makes fun of this idea of fake moral panic and sensationalism. In the Salon article, O’Hehir put it

“You should never underestimate the power of stupid movies to give people stupid ideas, but I certainly hope no one comes away from “Rock of Ages” with the idea that the music of Journey and Bon Jovi and Pat Benatar was ever remotely controversial, or represented any kind of subculture (other than the subculture called “people who sometimes turned on the car radio”). One thing that occurred to me while I was watching it is that “Rock of Ages” portrays the L.A. rock scene of 1987 with the same degree of accuracy we would have seen in an exploitative TV movie made in 1987. It bears the same relationship to reality that “Miami Vice” bore to Miami, or to vice.”

Defence #3 – to quote john green… it’s really bad pornography?

Reading the reviews on the website there is a sense of fake outrage and the sensationalism of what is very much a film for adults or as what the rating depicts, people over the age of 13. When this movie came out in 2012, I saw it in theatres with my dad and I don’t think that either of us thought that this movie was any less inappropriate than any other movie we saw that year.

In the province of Alberta and I think for much of Canada, this movie was only rated PG (for course language). A different movie that came out that year 21 Jump Street in comparison got a 14A rating for course language and violence. Alberta does not have a PG-13 rating and therefore movies ranked as such in the States get either demoted or promoted depending on where they fit in the classification system. They see each rating as a spectrum rather than a “one-size-fits-all approach.”

I think this is just a very long-winded way of saying, this movie isn’t particularly bad or controversial. Like, in no world is this movie on the same level as a movie like Sausage Party or Fifty Shades of Grey in either profanity or sexual content. The way that some of the people talk about this movie you’d think it’s straight porn. As this review so elegantly put it: 21+ Heavy Sex/Nudity ADULT content (if you can find Pres’ comment on the website, they… um… watched a very different movie than I did). And sure, there are sex scenes but for being a movie about sex and rock’n’roll they are done mostly off-screen and despite not being particularly chaste they definitely aren’t graphic.

Other ratings on the website include:

• Amazed that it wasn’t given an R rating.
• Really sorry I let my 14-year-old watch this,
• If you want your children to develop sound sexual morals, do not let them see this movie.

and my favourite…

• crotch shots galore–not for kids or teens.

I think what adds salt to the wounds of these comments is the idea that hundreds of teens throughout the English-speaking world perform the teen version of this musical through high school drama productions every year. As of publishing this article 24 high schools will perform this musical in the 2023-2024 school year.