{"id":177,"date":"2012-08-20T15:48:14","date_gmt":"2012-08-20T22:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/monicanolan.jayuen.com\/pulppep\/?p=177"},"modified":"2012-08-20T15:48:14","modified_gmt":"2012-08-20T22:48:14","slug":"flowers-for-aaron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/2012\/08\/20\/flowers-for-aaron\/","title":{"rendered":"Flowers for Aaron"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m always on the look out for traces of past pop culture in contemporary offerings. Perhaps in honor of The<\/em> Bourne Legacy<\/em> I should call this DNA or something, but I don’t know enough science to work the term into an apt metaphor. Anyway, it was when super soldier Aaron revealed that if he didn’t get the green pills he’d revert to a mental retard that I had the insight: The Bourne Legacy<\/em> is merely Flowers for Algernon<\/em><\/a> done as a thriller. Did screenwriting brothers Tony and Dan Gilroy read the Bantam classic as it was being passed around in class, the way I did? If I recall correctly, we read it on the sly because of the racy part where the mentally challenged\/genius Charly has an affair with the beautiful woman running the experiment, just like in the movie.<\/p>\n

My other flash to the past went back even further. It’s when the super-assassin is being introduced, and some CIA flunky exposits in voice over that he has been genetically modified to have less empathy. Where have I heard that before? I thought, and then it came to me: an episode from a Dick Tracy<\/em> serial, circa 1930s. Dick Tracy’s brother has been kidnapped by an evil scientist who declares, rubbing his hands: “By a simple operation of the glands, he will be unable to tell the difference between right and wrong!”<\/p>\n

I remember at this line the entire audience (college students, a Northwestern University film series screening) burst into uncontrollable laughter. The Bourne series is now officially asking, practically begging, to be parodied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m always on the look out for traces of past pop culture in contemporary offerings. Perhaps in honor of The Bourne Legacy I should call this DNA or something, but I don’t know enough science to work the term into … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[31,52,69,130],"class_list":["post-177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pulp","category-thesilverscreen","tag-bourne","tag-dick-tracy","tag-flowers-for-algernon","tag-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}