Dukes Of Hazzard Phenomenon Analysis

A friend of mine tells me that Tom Wopat, the heroic family-man protagonist in this Sci-Fi Channel original movie, was once the hunky Bo Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard. This seems appropriate since Meteorites is an instance of what I call the The Dukes of Hazzard Phenomenon: to wit, a cultural event-be it a film fad, a television show, or a famous scandal-enjoys massive popular attention even though any particular person will tell you he or she has no interest in it whatsoever. In my experience, The Dukes of Hazzard was this curious phenomenon's prototype; for several seasons the show enjoyed fabulous ratings even though, at least publicly, everybody said they thought it was stupid.

So too with the recent spate of asteroid movies, the anchors of which-Deep Impact and Armaggedon-both suffered horrible reviews and much popular derision in this remarkable year 1998. These movies nevertheless did well enough commercially to earn the flattery of t.v. and direct-to-video filmmakers, who wooed them with Asteroid (a terrible film targeted to Blockbuster's shelves) and our current offering, Meteorites.

"None," is the answer. Meteors don't hit the Earth by definition, the astronomer explains. But meteorites are a different question altogether. This game of semantics underscores the fact that both of these made-for-the-living-room movies are named after the celestial rocks themselves, whereas their cinematic inspirations take the central event-the rock's ultimately-averted act of hitting the Earth-as namesakes. This semantic game also covers up the fact that names don't matter. The point is that enormous rocks might be hurtling toward Earth to end our way of life in a fiery cataclysm. Call them what you like, you blind