David Foster Wallace F/X Porn Sparknotes

David Foster Wallace brings forth an interesting point in his essay, “F/X Porn.” He immediately starts his essay out with a list of movies that were influenced by T2, as he refers to “Terminator 2” (1). These movies took a page out of James Cameron’s book and had a significant amount of special effects with a weak story-line. Wallace leads the reader to believe throughout the beginning of the essay his thesis is that watching movies such as Terminator 2 takes the same amount of brain power as watching porn; however, he later reveals his real thesis. Sequels or movies that were produced with the same director, with more F/X than the previous ones, which had an interesting story-line and a moderate budget made for a movie with an increased amount of special effects and thin story-line. Wallace’s thesis is

an ineffective one due to the fact that throughout the essay he flip-flops between calling Terminator terrible, but also, not so bad. Wallace also diminishes his credibility with logical fallacies and by focusing on the Terminator series by attacking T2 and not bringing forth enough movies as an example to back up his thesis.
Throughout Wallace’s first paragraph, he describes some of the scenes from T2 that required an immense amount of special effects such as, “That incredible chase and explosion in the L.A.

sluiceway and then the liquid metal T-1000 Terminator walking out of the explosion's flames and morphing [1] seamlessly into his Martin-Milner-as-Possessed-by-Hannibal-Lecter corporeal form. The T-1000 rising hideously up out of that checkerboard floor, the T-1000 melting headfirst through the windshield of that helicopter… ”, etc. (1). The list goes on a little bit longer as Wallace builds credibility by presenting scenes from the movie that doesn’t require much brain power to watch, but keep the viewer’s attention off the poor plot that is hidden behind all of the explosions, shoot-outs, car chases and fight scenes. Wallace then says, “But there were at most maybe eight of these incredible sequences, and they were the movie's heart and point; the rest of "T2" is empty and derivative, pure mimetic polycelluloid” (1). However, Wallace says that T2 was not completely plot-less and embarrassing, but instead it is far better than the other movies that are rife with special effects

(1).
Throughout the essay, Wallace is constantly bashing F/X saying that it takes away from the story-line and it causes the director to focus purely on scenes with a large amount of F/X rather than acting. However, when talking about T1 Wallace says, “There is the dense, greasy, marvelously machinelike look of "The Terminator"'s mechanized F/X” (2). While he is constantly bashing T2 because they use more F/X than the first Terminator, but then Wallace compliments T1 on the F/X involved in creating it (2). Wallace continues on by bringing up an interesting point, “"T2" is thus also the first and best instance of a paradoxical law that appears to hold true for the entire F/X Porn genre. It is called the Inverse Cost and Quality Law, and it states very simply that the larger a movie's budget is, the shittier that movie is going to be” (2). He brings up this point, but throughout the rest of the essay he doesn’t even bother to bring up enough movies to back up his ideology behind this “law.” He brings to the reader’s attention four movies, including the one he focused on through the main body of the essay which was T2, in the first paragraph, he mentions “The Lost World” “Twister” and “Volcano.” These four movies, depending on which critic or fan is asked, may be a good example of movies that back up the Inverse Cost and Quality Law, but just four movies is nowhere near enough evidence to make Wallace’s thesis a plausible one. Also, Wallace only presents significant evidence of a big-budget movie being shitty with all the evidence he presents pertaining to T2. However, he does bring forth the fact that Schwarzenegger demanded that his character in T2 be somehow turned into the good guy which in turn makes writing of an interesting and non-cheesy story-line quite difficult.
Wallace doesn’t help his case by making a common logical fallacy in the third page of his essay. He starts the paragraph off by pointing out what he has already addressed a couple of times throughout the essay. Wallace brings up the fact that Skynet’s time travel ability is not as limited as they claim. However, when he discusses the new and more advanced T-1000 being sent to eliminate a ten-year-old John Connor, “…this time to kill the ten-year-old John Connor (played by the extremely annoying Edward Furlong [13], whose voice keeps cracking pubescently and who's just clearly older than ten)” (3). Wallace commits an ad hominem by outright attacking the actor that plays John Connor by calling him extremely annoying and insulting his voice cracking. Wallace diminishes his credibility by using such a logical fallacy in an attempt to prove his thesis.
“The point is that head-clutchingly insipid stuff like this puts an ever heavier burden of importance on "T2"'s digital effects, which now must be stunning enough to distract us from the formulaic void at the story's center, which in turn means that even more money and directional attention must be lavished on the film's F/X. This sort of cycle is symptomatic of the insidious three-part loop that characterizes Special Effects Porn” (4). Wallace starts out one of his conclusion paragraphs with a slippery slope logical fallacy. Wallace states that because of the weak storyline behind T2 the special effects become more important than they were before, which then leads to the need for more money to be put into F/X and the director must then pay more attention to it. This then creates a cycle of a weak storyline, leading to more stunning digital effects which then leads to more money being poured into the movie and the director not focusing on the acting or storyline. Wallace also manages to commit a circular argument fallacy while doing this, instead of actually proving his point in the excerpt that has been shown above, he restates what he said at the beginning of the paragraph, at the end of the paragraph. Wallace then restates what he said in the above excerpt in a list format in order to push it into the reader’s head more and supply evidence to back up the “law” he calls the “Inverse Cost and Quality Law” (4). However, he did give us the same information in a different format if that is any consolation.
In essence, Wallace’s entire essay is a hasty generalization fallacy. Wallace basis his essay off of “Terminator 1” and its sequel “Terminator 2.” He neglects to bring forth any kind of evidence to back up his thesis other than the fact that T2 contains more F/X and a weaker plot, in his opinion, nor does he bring forth any more sequels to prove his point. Wallace is a writer, not a movie critic. That’s not saying he does not possess the skill to critique a movie, but he doesn’t possess the credibility nor the experience in critiquing movies. Movie critics usually focus on just critiquing movies, Wallace explores a number of fields in which he writes over. Most of which he has more credibility in; however, in this particular subject Wallace does not contain past experience in critiquing movies. His essay is based on opinion, not fact. Therefore, his thesis that sequels with a higher budget are shittier is ineffective due to his lack of evidence, experience in critiquing movies and lack of credibility.