Good Music In Bad Movies: Smart or Sacrilegious?

It’s a formula frequently used in Hollywood: Make up for a mediocre movie or TV show with hip, obscure tunes and attempt to gain a little cred for music taste (if not artistic vision).

We’ve seen it in the once-popular teen drama The O.C., which introduced artists like Spoon, Pinback and Imogen Heap to the masses. We’ve seen it in flicks like Marie Antoinette, Catch and Release and In The Land of Women, largely forgettable films that got by mainly on their soundtracks.

And then came Twilight.

Despite my aversion to the wildly (and quite sickeningly) popular vampire saga, I was pleasantly surprised by some of the film’s music choices: Iron and Wine, Mute Math and Blue Foundation all made appearances. Which, of course, made me hate Twilight that much more.

How dare you put my music in your crappy vampire movie? How dare you?

Just imagine what went through my head a few days ago when I read that Bon Iver was penned to write a song for the second Twilight installment, New Moon. If my parents weren’t in the room, I think I might have cried a little.

Filling a blah movie with a killer set of indie tunes might be a smart aesthetic move, but is it really fair? Good music, like all art, deserves to be treated with respect — not thrown to the masses in the context of something as degrading as a teen vampire flick.

Here’s the thing: No matter how hard you try to mask a mediocre, mainstream movie with cool, lesser-known music, you’re not fooling anyone. Twilight isn’t a profound or artsy film; it’s cookie-cutter mush targeted toward a demographic that most likely never heard of Mute Math or Blue Foundation until their names popped up on the soundtrack of their “OMG-favorite-movie-ever!”

Good music can’t make a bad movie good, but a bad movie can make good music bad — and that’s a scary thought.

What makes it all even worse is that the Twilight soundtrack has taken the world by storm. It’s the best-selling movie soundtrack in America since Chicago. And it’s been the No. 1 soundtrack on iTunes for, well, what seems like forever. Which is great news for the Twilight folks and terrible news for me (and loads of other devoted Iron and Wine fans).

To be fair, thanks to Twilight, a few underappreciated bands are getting some more well-deserved attention.

But is it selfish of me to be protective of my tunes? I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face when I hear my favorite songs played in a movie that doesn’t deserve them. Or when I see them on some 13-year-old’s iPod, joined by the likes of Britney Spears, the Jonas Brothers and, god forbid, Miley Cyrus.

If that’s not sacrilegious, I don’t know what is.