Spandex is a right, not a privilege.

December 5, 2020 1:00 PM

For the 25th anniversary of the release of Hackers, London's Horse Hospital is hosting an exhibit of the costumes that Robert K Burton designed for the film. Dazed magazine features an interview with Burton as well as previously-unseen set Polaroids of the actors in costume.

If you're willing to do some light hacking to navigate a very 90's web interface, you can also read an earlier
interview with Roger Burton about working on the film (click the 7th portrait from the left, and then "Launch Interview").

Previously 1 2 3 4

posted by subocoyne (43 comments total)

How screen villainy worked in the 90s.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:09 PM on December 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

Jolie. Haircut.
posted by bartleby at 1:37 PM on December 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

Something weird going on with the pager on the Polaroids link.

Looking at this stuff doesn't feel as much like time-travel as I think it should. Maybe that it's the idea of a future fashion that didn't really come to be? Like Grunge and Rave were going to combine rather than become more-concentrated versions of what they already were. Maybe that was a marketing decision though. Two birds, one sewing machine!
posted by rhizome at 2:26 PM on December 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

When you gotta meet up with your street dance crew the minute you are done hacking into the central database
posted by NoMich at 3:52 PM on December 5, 2020 [6 favorites]

Jolie. Haircut.

...from the planet VULCAN.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 5:30 PM on December 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

When you gotta meet up with your street dance crew the minute you are done hacking into the central database

I mean, let's be honest, Hackers was just the Flashdance version of WarGames.
posted by valkane at 7:05 PM on December 5, 2020 [27 favorites]

Have to stop you there, sorry, beg to differ.
I think you'll find that Hackers was the VR Five version of BMX Bandits.
It was Sneakers that was the Cocoon version of WarGames.
posted by bartleby at 8:16 PM on December 5, 2020 [34 favorites]

Horse Hospital is an amazing venue, a former 19th century (edit: built 1797) hospital for horses with cobblestone floors and spiral ramps inside. They have been battling an extreme rent increase since last year.
posted by larrybob at 9:05 PM on December 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

I have a special place in my heart for Hackers, not because it's a great film, but because it has a great soundtrack that greatly expanded my horizons and made me much less snobbish about what counts as music.
posted by wierdo at 10:24 PM on December 5, 2020 [7 favorites]

Only in Europe could a venue called Horse Hospital not explicitly mention it used to be a horse hospital on its About page. Alan Moore gets a lot of good horse gags in when describing it, though.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 10:39 PM on December 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

I have a special place in my heart for Hackers because it's a great film. Not 'Oscar winner' great. It cost $20M and the box-office was $7.5M. Not Oscar material there. But Universally Smart.

It was very timely cyberpunk. It arrived just 5 years after Steve Jackson Games was raided by the Secret Service because (they said) GURPS was 'a handbook for computer crime.' A clear inspiration. 4 months after the raid, the EFF formed.

Instead of getting all serious; it (like hackers) and the clued-up soundtrack had a ton of fun with the whole idea - demarcating the line between pop counterculture and the whole Edgar Poe/Tell-Tale Heart culture of angsty-paranoid federales swooping down on the White-Hat kiddies while entirely clueless about The Plague. Sort of like the past 4 years?

It's antidotal. Watch it yearly, always will.
posted by Twang at 11:09 PM on December 5, 2020 [8 favorites]

San Francisco, 1994. Desmond Crisis and the Otaku Patrol Group.
posted by bartleby at 12:04 AM on December 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

Twang: while entirely clueless about The Plague

That’s Mister The Plague to you, you hapless technoweenie.
posted by gelfin at 6:48 AM on December 6, 2020 [9 favorites]

I think you'll find that Hackers was the VR Five version of BMX Bandits.
It was Sneakers that was the Cocoon version of WarGames.

I am both impressed by this framing and mortified by how well I understand it.
posted by mhoye at 6:58 AM on December 6, 2020 [12 favorites]

I also want to remind you of this beautiful gift, the seamless transition from the end of Mean Girls to the beginning of Hackers.
posted by mhoye at 7:03 AM on December 6, 2020 [11 favorites]

Hack the planet!
posted by Ragged Richard at 7:40 AM on December 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

I was expecting horses in Spandex and I am disappoint
posted by The otter lady at 11:52 AM on December 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

Got you covered, otter lady.
Hidez; for your fetishist equine (not equine fetishist) needs.
posted by bartleby at 12:03 PM on December 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

San Francisco, 1994. yt Desmond Crisis and the Otaku Patrol Group.

Richard Hart in an Einsturtzende Neubauten shirt, now I've seen everything.
posted by rhizome at 1:58 PM on December 6, 2020

Count me in as another defender of Hackers. I was deep into my local BBS scene and while we did of course make fun of some of the technical stuff, there was so much that it got right. I mean, of course it was a cool fantasy version, but they nailed the timbre of the fantasy.
posted by desuetude at 4:55 PM on December 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

The only truly unbelievable plot point in the otherwise-perfect Hackers is Margo Wallace agreeing to hook up with the Plague.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 5:59 PM on December 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

I love Hackers, unabashedly. There's very little realistic about it, but it leans in hard on a fantasy of a culture I wish I'd had at that age. It's power fantasy for nerds. At the time, I can't remember too many movies that really celebrated being creative and smart over tough and macho. It made me feel like it could be cool to be into tech, and I have an entire career in tech now. It's a cyberpunk culture that never existed, but would have been pretty cool if it did. It's also cast perfectly. I still want to see the world where Johnny Lee Miller got the part of Neo in The Matrix.
posted by mrgoat at 6:30 PM on December 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

Yeah, it definitely made me want to be a hacker and almost certainly led to my getting into tech culture and ultimately working in tech. I have a lifetime subscription to 2600.

But really, it was much more formative for me than that. My sexuality: Hackers.

Now I have the soundtrack in my head.
posted by limeonaire at 7:17 PM on December 6, 2020

Have to stop you there, sorry, beg to differ.
I think you'll find that Hackers was the VR Five version of BMX Bandits.
It was Sneakers that was the Cocoon version of WarGames.

Wait, where does Strange Days fit in to this topology?

What about Hardware?
posted by loquacious at 7:55 PM on December 6, 2020

Eh, I was pretty happy with a life that was more WarGames than Hackers. Had it come a couple of years earlier before I found my people on IRC I'd probably feel differently.

I will say that the buffoonery of the cops and corporate security was totally on point, and there were certainly some things about it that were very prescient, but hadn't quite happened yet.
posted by wierdo at 8:38 PM on December 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

Strange Days is the New Rose Hotel version of Brainstorm.
[You can tell that the young James Cameron was trying to make a 21st century Chinatown-cum-Blade Runner, but failed.]

Wow, I'd totally forgotten Hardware. I'd have to rewatch it, but off the top of my head, I'll take a stab at...Re-Animator via Metalstorm: the Destruction of Jared-Syn (in 3-D!)?

At first I thought you meant the recent Upgrade.
Which is just Deadly Friend mixed with that scene in Real Genius where they broadcast the voice of God through Kent's braces.
No wait, Deadly Friend meets All of Me. (Edwina. Back in bowl. Go fix bowl.)
But serious, and shot in Melbourne as if it were Venom II.
posted by bartleby at 9:27 PM on December 6, 2020

I am still mad that the pager wasn't attached to the hip-holster.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:13 AM on December 7, 2020

This post inspired me to dig out and watch my VHS copy of Hackers today! Thanks! (I copied it from a DVD, run through time a base corrector of course to fix Macrovision analog copy protection, though apparently either the tape is messed up or there are still some issues that result in random screen blanking on a modern digital TV that didn't show up on old analog TVs, so that's interesting and I'll have to check it out...)

HackersCurator also has a youtube channel with interviews of some cast and crew members as well, check that out.
posted by thefool at 10:01 AM on December 7, 2020

Is it taken for granted that the "Spandex is a privilege..." line is an awful statement that promotes body shaming? Am I missing some redeeming context here, or is it just declaring that women need to dress for men's approval?
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 10:24 AM on December 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

I would hope so, Cereal is depicted as pretty classless, and Hackers absolutely has problematic elements, but upon re-evalution it probably would have been better to subvert the quote as simply "Spandex is a right, not a privilege."
posted by subocoyne at 1:31 PM on December 7, 2020

Spandex is a right, not a privilege
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:38 PM on December 7, 2020

Yeah, the phrase was said in admiration of a particular woman's figure (which is at least better than using it as an insult, I suppose) but it's because Cereal is crass af. I presume the OP used it as a pull-quote because it's a rare reference to clothing/costume in a film where the distinctive sartorial choices of the main characters go largely unacknowledged in the actual script (as is right and true for these characters.)
posted by desuetude at 10:19 PM on December 7, 2020

I would humbly propose as an alternate title: "There is no right, or wrong. There is only fun, or boring."

Oh why yes I am rewatching Hackers right now.
posted by desuetude at 10:43 PM on December 7, 2020

Mod note: Switched the title, as per request by OP.
posted by taz (staff) at 10:59 PM on December 7, 2020

I feel like pointing out that, in a movie sprinkled liberally with queer subtext, the complete “spandex” line has no gendered language, the characters are looking out-of-frame at someone never seen or otherwise identified, and this is definitely a movie where dudes wear spandex, and also where dudes notice other dudes’ appearance.

Otherwise it clearly is body shaming, though I don’t think the movie means to imply that anybody ought to be going out of their way to impress Cereal when he’s opining about their “pooper.”
posted by gelfin at 11:38 PM on December 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

The only truly unbelievable plot point in the otherwise-perfect Hackers is Margo Wallace agreeing to hook up with the Plague.

I always got the impression that Margo was pretty much using The Plague as shown in the "lose all your toys" exchange.
posted by Mitheral at 7:15 AM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

I presume the OP used it as a pull-quote because it's a rare reference to clothing/costume in a film where the distinctive sartorial choices of the main characters go largely unacknowledged in the actual script

Well, there's when the Phantom Phreak is asked by Dade what Kate's boyfriend does and he memorably replies "that's it, you're lookin' at it, he just looks slick all day".
posted by lefty lucky cat at 4:59 PM on December 8, 2020

Also this statement by Phreak to Joey: "Now I'm trying to save you from yourself but you gotta stop letting your mama dress you, man!"
posted by Mitheral at 5:34 PM on December 8, 2020

Yes I do have this movie essentially memorized. Why do you ask?
posted by Mitheral at 5:36 PM on December 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

> Well, there's when the Phantom Phreak is asked by Dade what Kate's boyfriend does and he memorably replies "that's it, you're lookin' at it, he just looks slick all day".

I always laugh at this line because he doesn't even look that slick and we barely get enough of a look to even recognize him anyway. Meanwhile, the rest of the main cast (sans Joey) are nonchalantly sporting avant-garde streetwear looks that, 25! years later, are STILL fresher-looking than most of what recent "Project Runway" contestants put forth.
posted by desuetude at 8:00 PM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

I suppose you can wedge body shaming in there, but I always thought it was meant as fashion shaming.
Along the lines of 'aw baby, just because you can afford patent leather jeans, doesn't mean you can get away with wearing them'.
This said between Ramon, who I think spends the whole movie wearing leopard AND cheetah print at once? and Matthew Lillard, wearing (waves one hand up and down, twiddling fingers) whatever all that is.
On me, it's advanced fashion; on you, it's...just No.
That's its own catty judgemental bullying, doesn't have to be body shaming.
posted by bartleby at 8:39 PM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

> I suppose you can wedge body shaming in there, but I always thought it was meant as fashion shaming. Along the lines of 'aw baby, just because you can afford patent leather jeans, doesn't mean you can get away with wearing them'.

"Get away with wearing" is so intertwined with "having a particular body shape" and/or being "attractive in a particular way" that it's pretty difficult to tease it apart from body shaming. There is a theoretical variant meaning "bold looks require absolute confidence and panache" but in practice it tends to go along with whether one's physical assets fall within certain parameters.
posted by desuetude at 9:15 PM on December 8, 2020

The Phantom Phreak is, in many ways, the star of this film. So many good lines, always looking great, and there's never a moment where he doesn't seem utterly at ease, even when he gets arrested!

Also, nobody's yet mentioned Marc Anthony as the lowkey hacker FBI agent?
posted by lefty lucky cat at 12:59 PM on December 9, 2020 [3 favorites]