Newspapers / Methodist University Student Newspaper / Sept. 14, 1998, edition 1 / Page 5
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Pride ENTERTAINMENT Monday, September 14,1998 5 Music Review Korn, Follow the Leader Immortal / Epic Movie Review Dead Man on Campus By Dan Bridges Contributing W riter Children oftheKom rejoice! The band at the forefront of the new Hard Rock movement, Korn, has returned with Fol low the Leader. Jonathan (vocals), Fieldy (bass), Munky (Guitar), Head (guitar), and David (drums), have devised another fresh batch of heavy-duty, in-your-face, funky tunes with a dash of hip-hop. After starting the album with 48 sec onds of silence the boys break into “It’s on!” and carry you on a screaming journey until the last notes of Cheech and Chong’s “Ear ache My Eye” (which is not listed). Korn has several friends featured on the album. Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit ex changes insults with Jonathan on “All in the Family” and rapper Ice Cube lends some rhymes to “Children of the Korn.” Other instant Korn classics include “Dead Bod ies Everywhere,” “Reclaim My Place,” and “My Gift to You.” Even though this band has had little ra dio or video airplay with their previous al bums, Follow the Leader still debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart and sold 268,000 copies in its first week of re lease. Come get it! It^s not Gravy Train®... it^s your yearbook stupid! Sept. 16&17 in the Berns Student Center. By Michael C. Molter Staff Writer When talking with a colleague of mine on the paper about movies, the new movie “Dead Man on Campus” came up, and she had a very interesting insight. In this movie, two failing college guys (played by Tom Everett Scott and Mark-Paul Gosselaar) search for a roommate who will commit sui cide, and thus, by a rule in the college’s charter, grant his roommates straight A’s. I thought this was a rather absurd no tion until my colleague explained how she almost benefited from such a policy at a major university. I was quite surprised that there would be a real-life precedent for this movie’s premise. A few years ago, an au tomobile accident left her roomate in a coma. Had her roomate died, my colleague would have had her grades taken care of for the semester! Fortunately, her room mate did not die, and as any sane person would agree, that would have been a greater tragedy than my colleague’s loss of a 4.0. That is not the case in the world view of the creators of “Dead Man on Campus.” In the real world, exchanging a person’s life for good grades would be horrifying. Struggling to find a theme in this movie produces equally perverse notions—a posi tive theme is not possible. Is it arguing that desiring someone’s death can advance one’s career? That self-absorption and system atically targeting individuals for death is acceptable? You would not think this movie’s creators to be so irresponsible. We could just shrug this off as just an other dark comedy, in the vein of “Serial Mom,” the John Waters film in which a sub urban housewife turns serial killer, acting on her petty vendettas. “Serial Mom” il lustrates the chaos of reacting to the fullest extent to the feelings we get when some one gets under our skin, and satirizes how the media can make anyone a hero. While serial killing is no joke, it is nowhere near as common as suicide, something which has touched every community, every town, no matter how small. One such community is the Methodist College community, which last year lost a student to suicide. Is it any wonder that you can’t enter a building on campus nowa days that does not have a large sign, not merely hung, but bolted down, reading “Counseling and Psychological Services Available.” Coincidence? Hardly. This shows that there are caring people right here who will help the desperate student— lonely, overwhelmed by the college experi ence, or convinced they are social, aca demic, or athletic failures, perhaps even clinically depressed (a very treatable situa tion). Suicides claim thousands of lives each year, and thousands more are sorely tempted. Many are young adults, many of those not out of the teens. This movie is way out of line in its choice of humor. “Dead Man on Campus” delivers only stereotypical collegiate titillation (sex, drugs, beer), immaturity (for acting on the notion to have someone kill themselves on their behalf) and irresponsibility (giving “suicide hotline” callers bad advice) on a grand scale. Maybe even reckless endangerment...but you could make a laun dry list of the crimes Scott and Gosselaar commit in their quest. Therein lies the fun damental theme of this movie: the end is all that matters, regardless of the means. All this movie will leave you with is a feeling of disgust.
Methodist University Student Newspaper
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Sept. 14, 1998, edition 1
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