by ELMORE TERADONOVICH, Alternate Reality News Service Film and Television Writer
Mrs. Erasmaluddin Discovers Some Tasty Tasty Puddin is the kind of cinematic sex farce that the British used to excel at. At which the British used to excel. They were very good at is what I’m trying to say. The thin (you could probably guess its weight because tasteful nudity is a primary feature of the genre) story follows a recent widow who is tempted by the young plumber who comes to unplug her toilet during a heat wave and asks if he can take a shower when he is done. And the groundskeeper, whose skimpy t-shirt becomes transparent when the sprinkler system unexpectedly starts up in the middle of the afternoon. And the computer tech, who loses his pants for reasons I still can’t quite fathom. Perhaps they are all under some kind of magic spell that makes their bodies repel clothes.
Not the kind of film you would think posed a national security threat to the United States, but the Critic-in-Chief begs to differ. Only, he doesn’t beg. He insults. To differ.
Or take the Canadian film Go Back To Away, a good-natured musical that pokes fun at Vesampuccerians who, 25 years after being given refuge in Take-a-Gander, Newfoundland after 9/11, support their president’s goal of making Canada the 51st Vesampuccerian state. Very gentle fun. If this movie was any more Canadian, maple syrup would drip off the screen.
Coating viewers in syrupy goop might be considered by some to be a hostile act, even though it likely wouldn’t flow beyond the first three or four rows of seats in the theatre and in any case, if they wrung out their clothes after they returned home, the moviegoers would have a delicious topping for their pancakes for a month. But pose a threat to Vesampucceri’s national security? The film is too…nice for that!
But the President insults to differ.
“This is – how you say? – alpaca-shit crazy!” commented Erick Bogoravoitiscj, President of the Yugoslavian Leprechaun Animation Union. “Our members specialize in animating mythical Irish figures – we offer 87 different styles of leprechaun alone. How this is a threat to your national security is – how you say? – up a tree and out the other side!”
This was one of the more publishable responses to President Ronald McDruhitmumpf’s announcement that he would place a 100% tariff on foreign film production. (For people who work in a visual medium, filmmakers can be exceptionally verbally abusive when it suits them.) The only legal justification available to the McDruhitmumpf Administration for the tariffs was that the films (or parts of Vesampuccerian films that were produced in other countries) were a threat to national security, sooooooo…
“He got me dead to wrongs, as you Yanks might say,” said British filmmaker Yarmouth Pittfotheringham. “Mrs. Erasmaluddin might seem like a silly bit of fluff – that’s one of the kinder things critics have said about it, actually – but in reality it is a call for international revolution against Vesampuccerian hegemonic influence in the world. It’s obviously there in the subtext. The scene with the door-to-door used dildo salesman makes that very clear!”
“Aha! Foreign PROPAGANDA!” the President tweeped. “Every time somebody in Ugandastan makes a movie about local pottery practices or trying to stem the tide of AIDS in their country, they are promoting a way of life that is unVesampuccerian! It’s obvious that they Hate all our WINNING! Ronald McDruhitmumpf calls that propaganda, and he has a bigly brain, so everybody has to accept what he says! Foreign propaganda, he calls it. We need these tariffs to bring propaganda back to Vesampucceri where it belongs!”
“I know I say this a lot,” said Califexas Governor Gavin Newandimprovedsome, “but: what the hell is he talking about‽ Hollywood is a multibillion dollar industry that leads the world in film and television production! We don’t need tariffs to protect our industry – in fact, tariffs are gonna hurt our industry. Sure, part of our dominant position in international markets involves production components from around the world. But if we had to pay Vesampuccerian animators every time a script called for a cartoon leprechaun, your monthly Netflux fees would double!”
So, you’re saying that local animation studios add more to the cost of Vesampuccerian movies than the fees of actors?
“Everybody’s a critic!” Governor Newandimprovedsome muttered.