Nerding Day: Zero Zero (Patreon)

This is not a LaserDiscs In The Rain column. God, how I wish it were. That would imply that my father showed me Mike Batt’s Zero Zero, on purpose, as a child, and then his soul would carry the terrible burden of that unholy transgression, rather than my own. But, alas and goddammit, I stepped in this one myself.

If you’re familiar with the Batt name at all, it’s probably because of his '80s synthpop Brit-hit “Railway Hotel.” But you aren’t. You aren’t familiar with him. As a pop culture ninja, I was aware of Mike Batt, primarily because he did a full-on musical album of The Hunking of the Snark that actually kinda rips. I recommend it and listened to it a ton growing up. But even cramming that much twee synthesizer music into my young ears couldn’t prepare me for Zero Zero, the 1982 Mike Batt TV movie the YouTube algorithm fisted its own asshole for and placed lovingly before me mere hours ago. Now I sit here in the night, rictus grin, brow agleam with a waxy sheen of yellowed perspiry, pouring out this column like a Lovecraft protagonist penning a suicide note about how they saw a big squid one time.

In a mere forty-five minutes, Mike manages to dispense three songs, plus thirty-six minutes of diffuse layers of synthesizer pretending to be an orchestra and failing the captcha test hard. The story follows a man identified only as a number in a system, struggling to break free from a sterile, dystopian future where love is illegal. It’s like THX-113SHIT! Also, emotions are chemically suppressed in the whole population, so it’s kinda like Fecalibrium, too.

Our setting is a piece of graph paper, or possibly a poorly-built chessboard. We hear a baby’s cry split the air, and two “proud” parents emotionlessly go through the process of naming him Number 17 of Generation 26 (Romeo Delta-59) of System 605 - Unit 91. That’s not a joke, although it is pretty funny how if that guy and Elon’s kid X Æ A-12 Musk started dating, their celebrity couple name would be [strokes out, swallows own tongue].

With a sudden surge of atonal keyboard, the barren landscape is populated not by actors, but rather shades that wander left and right like Hamlet’s ghost roams the castle walls. Then a little person in a onesie swings into frame, and the brief sense of relief you felt when it seemed like this was just going to be graphics and V.O. is cruelly ripped away.

Of course, in Mike Batt’s Brazil, the system oppresses all equally, and thus each kind of white British person must be represented, as if we’re assembling a team of animated ghostbusters. This is called intersectionality. The point is to symbolize humanity in all its diversity, from the short, to the tall, to the grandmothers knitting additional onesies of indeterminate size.

In this dark future, strict order is maintained by stripping everything joyous and human from the middle and lower classes. Emotions are outlawed and suppressed, and any dissension is brutally quashed by a fascist army of… four school crossing guards doing finger guns? I fucking guess?

These horrible bird-faced women roam the cramped halls, ensuring that the populace only engage in approved activities that serve the needs of the state. Nothing fun or emotional, that would totally blow up the premise and muddy the symbolism. The first one is that the little guy rides a rocking horse and goes “weeeeeee!” You know - STERILE.

I kid. That’s what they pay me for, I’m like sixty percent sure. To be fair, it’s quite clear the actor was at least directed to do the action emotionlessly. I guess I just don’t understand why that’s the action. A rocking horse literally has no purpose outside of imparting joy, like watching David Zaszlav fall down a ladder. Let’s hope the next one makes a little more sense.

Oh, she’s back! Hi gran! Out of budget already, are we? This carousel of conformity continues as we track laterally Wes Anderson-style, revealing all the sorts of things you would still do day-to-day even if emotions were outlawed.

Brushing your teeth, yep. Nothing emotional about that. Everyone’s gotta swab those chompers.

Fistfighting, the physical manifestation of anger. So if we count knitting as a hobby rather than an emotion, we’re Mike Batting .500 so far. Hey, we could still come out of this with a dim understanding of what the fuck you’re trying to say, if we’re lucky.

We’re unlucky. This is a barbershop trio, which is both not a thing and at the same time one of the most pure expressions of human joy possible. It’s friendship plus music. Is the point that the emotionless people still do emotive stuff, but without emoting? What does this society produce? What’s the economic system?

Fine, be like that.

I feel like you’re fucking with me at this point. How long is this hallway? Did you blow all the budget on hallway and grandmas? When will this torture end?

Just when you think you can bear no more, a balding man ties his shoelace and camera finally settles on our protagonist, played by Mike himself - Number 17. (of Generation 26 (Romeo Delta-59) of System 605 - Unit 91)

Someone in the Discord suggested I write a third Chuck E. Cheese column this week. It didn’t have to be this way. Please let those be finger guns, for the love of ska. In this first song, we find out a bit about our protagonist, including - no shit - that whole string of numbers that identify him again, but sung instead of spoken. Then…and this is hard for me to type…then he has the GALL to lean into camera and say:

“But you can call me Ralph.” I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU MIKE BATT. I will roofie you, deposit you on a jungle island and hunt you for sport. I don’t care if, as the lyrics continue, your “Mum makes a great hamburger.”

Forget that this has nothing to do with the premise, I’m past that. Dude, she’s reading a menu! Why is she reading a menu if she’s making the burger? Why is the finished burger there if she’s still perusing the menu? Why is the burger not on the plate I WILL KILL YOU THIS IS A CREDIBLE THREAT AGAINST THE LIFE OF MIKE BATT SEAN DO NOT CHANGE THIS BEFORE YOU POST.

Just to settle us back into the “sci-fi” of it all, we then see 17 checking out a book of art, troubled but curious about the faint emotions they seem to kindle in his breast. Extremely futuristically, he does so on a touchscreen, or at least a mirror that’s reflecting an image of someone reading a book, which is essentially the same thing. It’s practical! Like how the T-Rex in Jurassic Park still looks good, like that.

Yeahhhhhhh. Lookin’ goooooood. Of all the forbidden emotions, 17 is naturally interested in the most taboo of all: Love. Despite the chemical suppression, he starts to feel flickers of affection lick at his heart whenever in the presence of a particularly nice young woman. I’m not sure what exactly attracts him to her specifically, but she just seems nice.

Nice.

After that, we shift into an interpretive dance sequence where Mike gets to indulge in his favorite pastime, looking very closely at the faces of elderly veterans who clearly want to stomp him into the pavement.

“I killed four men on Trafalgar. Now this.”

“I hope they have beans and ketchup on toast for lunch because I’m British and gross, pip pip.”

He also gets to know 36, a woman with what can only be described as “chess-dreds,” and a man whose number is never legible but whose mustache can be seen nightly on display at the Mustache Hall of Fame.

Yeahhhhhhh. Lookin’ goooooood. Nothing zhuzhes up a '70s ‘stache like a fisheye lens smeared with engine grease. What follows from this point is an interminable panoply of paper cutouts, weird dance moves, and a single frame where Mike Batt kind of looks like Colm Meaney and is therefore rendered briefly likable.

At one point I woke up again and there was a giant smiling face floating in the air. I think it was a Batman reference, but I can’t be sure.

“I’m the Joker, maybe!”

Eventually, 17 is confined to a mental institution by those red lady-cops and put in restraints, by which I mean a straightjacket with holes cut out so the arms can move freely. Savvy readers will notice that this makes it not a straightjacket.

Batt, a consummate director, cleverly takes your mind off this small plot hole by gently directing the viewer’s eye to something more compelling and immediate. See if you can spot it.

He’s eventually labeled “incurably in love” and sent to live out the rest of his days in the nuthouse, where they plan to lobotomize him as soon as they can coax the head surgeon off his rocking horse. Other unfortunate victims of the system include…

Knitting Granny, which is sad and cost-effective. We also finally get her number, 13, which is fitting because if my grandmother wound up doing something like this at her age, I would take it as proof that God cursed our family line. Hey, okay, now let’s meet the rest of 17’s fellow dispossessed - perhaps they will harbor their own illegal emotions, as primal as love and equally vital. For example, one emotion I have a lot is playing the flute.

Of course, I also experience the other three emotions that we all do: cleaning the floor, sitting, and being weird triplets.

Wait a minute...computer! Isolate the guy with the beige decals on top of his onesie. Zoom and enhance.

Oh god, they’re cutouts! It’s flesh and there’s a face painted on his thigh and he’s rhythmically pulsating his quad to make it move to the music! Dehance! Dehance! What emotion does this represent, genocide? Landlords?

Yeah, no, I’m pretty upset too buddy. Following this clear homage to One Poo Over the Poo-poo’s Turd, they finally do lobotomize poor 17, a disturbing ordeal that looks like this:

This leaves his face a literal blank, a white expanse of nothing where his love once resided. What’s fun is, they leave him shitty little eyebrows for no reason!

This is, of course, an open invitation to draw in your own face. Whatever you really think about Mike Batt and his turn as 17, here’s the place to make it known. It’s a really fun way to end the viewing, honestly. Here’s mine.

Guest Starring: James Cromwell as a Jay-Z song.

Okay, see you soon, Mike! Jodie, if this doesn’t impress you, I don’t know what will. And to my family, by the time you read this I will have already shot myself in the head with a flintlock pistol. I saw a big squid once.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: David Shull, the emotionless rocking horse-kata master secretly leading a rebellion in the name of "Whee!"

You can read this article and every other one on the much better in every way 1900HOTDOG.COM.