Lens Decay: Our Obsession With Imperfection

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is a meticulously put together homage of 50′s creature features, with all requisite cliches in place.  Aliens crash-landing in a rocket ship.  Farmers eaten by mutants.  Talking skeletons.  Mad scientists.  Made up elements with -ium at the end.  Space age weaponry made out of caulking guns.  Aluminum foil.  So for nerds like me who like old cheesy sci-fi, it’s right up my alley.  But there was something that kept bothering me as I watched.  A question.

Where did this obsession with imperfection come from?

I’m as guilty as the next fake-nostalgia-ridden guy.  My Netflix queue is full of Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento films (with a sprinkling of 80′s sci fi), I’ve damn near memorized every MST3K movie, and I think Ray Harryhausen did better special effects than all of Industrial Light and Magic put together.  Gojira trumps any modern-day Godzilla remake with one rubber-suited arm tied behind his back.  I don’t go to the movies anymore, but I’ll sure as hell pay $10 when the little art theater has another midnight showing of The Room.

I know I’m not alone on this.  The popularity of B-horror films, the resurgence of vinyl–hell, even the whole quasi-ironic Journey revival–indicate we are growing more and more addicted to imperfect art.  Sure, I don’t storm the Louvre and demand they hang the poster to Plan 9 from Outer Space by the Mona Lisa and throw the Manos cloak over the Venus de Milo (…actually, hold that thought), but I’m entertained.  I can pop on a shlocky flick and reasonably enjoy the next hour and a half.

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