Porky’s Pathological Altruism

Author: Brandon Adamson

“I never seen so much wool. You could knit a sweater.”

So, on a nostalgic whim I decided to revisit the movie Porky’s (1981,) which I hadn’t seen since my childhood. Don’t ask me how I was ever allowed to watch this film as a kid. We had HBO in those days, and I was basically always off quietly doing my own thing by myself (when I was six I spent weeks attempting to build an airplane out of cardboard boxes and other random crap in the basement.) Anyhow, I pretty much watched whatever I wanted, and no one cared. It was the early 80’s after all…when toy machine guns still looked real and helicopter parenting hadn’t yet taken off.

Porky’s is a screwball coming of age teen comedy set in a 1950’s Florida town. I’m not going to write a full review here, but it’s another of those “80’s nostalgia for the 50’s” movies that were so prevalent at that time. The film basically chronicles the misadventures of a group of horny teenage guys. A lot of the gags haven’t really aged well, but there are a few memorable funny scenes if you can appreciate bottom of the barrel toilet humor. The movie also is notable for featuring a young Kim Cattrall in one of her sexiest roles.

The most annoying thing about this movie is the way they shoe horn in an unnecessary anti-racist subplot. The way it is done comes off as utterly forced. It’s also ironic in how in its anti-racist message it manages to reinforce stereotypes of Jews, Blacks and southern Whites by caricaturing pretty much every type of person in the most archetypal depiction possible. Even the “racist” teen in the film conforms to every cliche. Of course he couldn’t be “racist” because of something like noticing patterns of behavior that he perceives to appear disproportionately among certain groups or due to a string of unpleasant encounters or experiences when engaging with hostile people from other races. No, in the film, the character’s racism is a result of him being physically and verbally abused by his drunken white trash father. Give me a break. Even openly anti-white propaganda films like “American History X” at least made some effort to illustrate some of the legitimate concerns of whites that lead them down this path. Then again, Porky’s is not meant to be a serious film on any level, so it’s understandable but also kind of a boner killer that this was thrown in to an otherwise fun movie.

There is a significance to why I bring up the anti-racist subplot of Porky’s though. The director and writer of Porky’s, Bob Clark felt he needed to make a point to take a swipe at the bogeyman of racist southern white rednecks. Tragically, Clark and his son were killed by an illegal alien drunk driver in 2007 in California. The very sort of white nativist people he railed against as dangerous and misguided were the ones advocating the restrictive immigration policies that could have prevented his own child’s death (sounds familiar.)

From Wikipedia:

Clark and his son, Ariel Hanrath-Clark, 22, were killed in a head-on car crash on the Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles on the morning of April 4, 2007. The crash occurred when an SUV crossed the median and struck Clark’s Infiniti I30, causing the closure of the highway for eight hours. Police determined that the SUV’s driver, Hector Velazquez-Nava, had a blood alcohol level of three times the legal limit and was driving without a license. He initially pleaded not guilty to two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter, but changed his plea to no contest in August. On October 12, 2007, Velasquez-Nava was sentenced to six years in prison under the terms of a plea agreement. In addition, he may face deportation to his native Mexico, as he entered and was living in the United States illegally.

Wow, 6 years and he may face deportation. One wonders what it actually does take to get deported, if the above horrific crime only results in a maybe.

In Bob Clark’s quest to virtue signal and show he was “one of the good whites,” did he kill the wrong pig? Porky’s a fun throwback to both the 80’s and the 50’s. It spawned a couple of shitty sequels like Porky’s: The Next Day, and Porky’s Revenge. It’s a shame Clark never to see Porky’s Pathological Altruism, the final chapter he wrote for himself and his (our) descendants.