Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Isn’t it exciting to think about, if you had super powers, you could avert some sort of disaster that would otherwise bring bodily harm to one innocent, or many? Or, that you could do something amazing that might simply have a positive effect on their lives? Make their day? Give them a thrill? Advance the cause of science, technology, peace, love, understanding…?
And all that stuff?
I guess the answer to that nowadays is “Not only no, but hell no.” This permeating theme that used to be de rigueur in comic books, from Action Comics #1 on through decade after decade after decade, has given way to a different one: What if the super-powered being turns against us? And ya know what…that started out as an intriguing thought. You have to welcome any & all intriguing thoughts into the superhero genre, provided they truly are intriguing. And new. But by now I have to put together some sort of a PSA, for the benefit of writers of superhero movies and comic books.
This is not new.
Also, it’s bad story-telling. It might not start out that way, but it’s bound to end up that way. It has zero potential. You can’t take it anywhere.
“[blank]-Man, with his powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, constitutes a threat.” Alright…what do you do with that? You can do two things, you can neutralize this threat or not neutralize him. Those are your two options.
How do you make this reasoning even appear mentally balanced? You can’t. Batman gave it a good try in Dawn of Justice, but he did not succeed. And I suppose the writing staff intended for him to fail at this…although they don’t seem to be too sure about that. How do we even summarize the theme so it seems somewhat appealing to someone who isn’t either working in a security-related industry, or completely off his nut? Let me give it a good-faith try: “If any one among us has powers not shared by everybody else, then not one among us is truly safe.” Ooh. That’s quite good, if I dare say so myself.
Let’s slip it one notch further toward the brink of insanity: If we can make a world where not one person can do anything everybody else can’t do, we’ll all be completely safe. Whoops! That one toppled over the edge. Looks like we never had too far to go…
Which is kind of the point I’m making here. Not only can you not take this idea anywhere in fiction, you can’t take it too far in real life either.
It does form the basis of sensible enterprise security. I remember one time management wanted to know if someone on the team could conceivably be a threat…not sure how that question came about, but the answer we provided was far more sensible. YES he’s a threat, the same way everybody on the whole damn team is a threat, we have administrative privileges that are required for us to do our jobs.
It boggles my mind, knowing that there are people out there who never get tired of this boring theme. It boggles me even more knowing, after they’re all done watching the latest movie that uselessly cogitates upon the idea-that-can’t-go-anywhere “Golly, what if Iron Man decided to take out downtown?” — will lose no time in solemnly intoning, goodness gracious here’s ANOTHER problem, so we’d better give President Barack Obama more power to do something about it.
I had high hopes for Suicide Squad. The Harley Quinn actress looks like she’s turning in one of those memorable performances, of the “great acting, because it’s not that much of a stretch for her” variety. But, the first line of the first scene, crapped all over my hopes for it…
What if Superman decided to do that? Dunno…file it under “If a frog had wings, he wouldn’t have to bump his ass on the ground all the time.”
Stop it already. I liked it in The Incredibles, because it wasn’t a serious thought, except when the storyline was showing how flawed the reasoning was. Since then, it’s been done to death…and it started out tired. Now it’s an irritant. Stop. Now. Please. Thank you. ThatIsAll.
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If I were a historian of modern culture…. well, if I were, I’d probably be suicidal at the thought of how far we’ve fallen, but I’d also have one hell of a research project: When did everything in pop culture become a revenge fantasy?
That’s all this “is Iron Man a threat?” stuff is: Revenge porn. As you say, superheroes used to be aspirational figures — if I were the Man of Steel, I could do so much good (and get lots of chicks, of course, but I’d earn the chicks by doing good). Now it’s all about beating down anyone who is better. I know comic books aren’t supposed to be realistic, but c’mon — if I were a superhero these days, I’d be Captain Drop the Mic. As in, “why am I bothering to try to help you ingrates when all you do is hound me because I’m actually able to accomplish something? Sayonara, you’re screwed”…. drops mic, flies off to fortress of solitude, never to be seen again.
Tv, movies, all same. I don’t watch tv, so whenever I see something advertised, it looks way different from me. Big Bang Theory, I take it, is supposed to show the humorous “real” side of nerds. The trailers all look like “hey, let’s all laugh at the freaks!” to me. So does pretty much every movie — the ruthless, brutal enforcement of mediocrity.
When did that happen? The 90s? Later?
- Severian | 04/17/2016 @ 07:45The Mother of Unfinishable Stories has, over time, morphed into taking on exactly this topic.
I had written an essay meant for my old blog (I don’t remember if I ever published it) defending my little stories, and one point I tried to make was that of all Spider-Man’s villains, the worst wasn’t Green Goblin or Kingpin or Doc Ock… out of his entire Rogue’s Gallery (second only to the Caped Crusader’s, really), the one that was the worst was actually his boss, J Jonah Jameson himself. All those other baddies were, in some sense, part of the recognized structure of “good v. evil” – IOW, all of them recognized on some level that Spidey was in fact THE HERO. Jonah rejected all such as nonsense. To him, there is no such thing as heroism at all, at least not the costumed crusader kind. If Spidey’s an angel fighting various demons, Jonah’s the atheist who scoffs at both as equally absurd.
What I didn’t see at the time is that all the sophism and post-modernism infecting the traditional heroic narrative – be it superheros, space epics, fantasy, what-have-you – are, in effect, like reading J Jonah Jameson’s Daily Bugle reports about Spider-Man. The hero skeptics have taken over the Church of the Heroic Adventure and their antipopes are all penning the missives that the faithful are supposed to accept as canon.
Sev’s right. Especially when it comes to a guy like Zack Snyder – here’s a guy whose entire visual storytelling language is dull colors, grim choices, slo-mo violence fetish… why is he trusted with telling stories about the Big Blue Boy Scout? Maybe it was somewhat innovative in 300, and it was fitting enough for Watchmen since it is the High Holy Book of the Cult of Jameson. But now that we’re telling actual hero stories, the limits of this approach are apparent. Snyder has no friggin’ clue what these guys are supposed to be doing so they growl impressive-sounding tough-guy lines. Ugh. Even 80’s action flicks had more depth than this.
(I mean, it’s fun to see HISHE mock the whole blessed thing in video after video… if I ran a studio I’d let Daniel Baxter write and direct the next superhero movie for DC – for real. But it doesn’t help our current predicament.)
If there’s a personal silver lining, all of this has come together for me, and the MoUS now finally has a clear focus – putting paid to this malarkey, giving the Anti-Hero Tropes the post-modernist scrutiny they used on the adventure genre. Let’s see how they like it.
- nightfly | 04/19/2016 @ 08:12When did that happen? The 90s? Later?
I have a Facebook friend who says it happened here.
I think it happened here, or maybe as late as here. Now, maybe I was out of touch at the time, but when they were making fun of it here I was thinking…well, that’s good parody. Manages to make itself just a tiny bit more insane than real life. But maybe I was wrong, maybe real-life was already several orders of magnitude more removed from the plane of sanity.
Everyone’s special Dash…aw…that’s just another way of saying nobody is.
- mkfreeberg | 04/19/2016 @ 17:22Snyder has no friggin’ clue what these guys are supposed to be doing so they growl impressive-sounding tough-guy lines. Ugh. Even 80’s action flicks had more depth than this.
I agree about the gaps in Mr. Snyder’s understanding. But you’re being a bit harsh, aren’t you? It was a fun flick, in its own way. We’re making plans to snatch our copy off the shelf when it becomes available, and I expect it’s going to land in the player a lot more often than Man of Steel.
That having been said, a return to the good old days, with rescuing bus loads of children teetering precariously on a cliff or a bridge, and little kitty cats from tall trees, and good guys & bad guys, would probably make as much money as the very first Star Wars movie, for much the same reason…a stark divide between good & evil, and an audience hungering for that. It is truly a mystery why Hollywood continues to forsake this, given the daunting demands of invested capital in every big-ticket movie produced, and the high levels of risk involved…
- mkfreeberg | 04/19/2016 @ 17:27a return to the good old days…would probably make as much money….
Sure, but since the latest Batman vs. Wonder Woman vs. Iron Man vs. Thor-who-is-now-a-chick-for-some-reason already makes a zillion dollars, why not push The Narrative, too?
Anyone who thinks Hollywood only looks at the bottom line should consider The Passion of the Christ. Says here that it’s the 31st highest-ranking domestic gross of all time (inflation adjusted), beating out Dark Knight, two of the Star Wars prequels, Terminator 2, Transformers, a whole bunch of Harry Potter…. and that’s a movie which is nearly 3 hours long, insanely violent, and performed entirely in languages that have been dead for 1,000 years. It seems to me that an accessible Christian movie with decent production values and a bankable star would make at least as much as CGI Blobs Fighting: The Revenge, Part VI…. but nobody has ever even tried.
Which also highlights how fundamentally wrong The Narrative is. We don’t watch Everyone’s a CGI Bad Guy because that’s what we want; we watch it because it’s the only thing on offer. Given a choice between traditional values and The Narrative, the vast majority of Americans pick values, almost all the time. The only way The Narrative remains dominant is by cutting off all other choices. In any cultural arena where we have a choice, it seems, “conservatives” do just fine — indie publishing, indie movies, I assume indie comics (I know nothing about this, but I know some of y’all are PhD-level experts), music….
- Severian | 04/20/2016 @ 05:33Yeah…I just don’t think of superhero blockbuster movies as huge cash cows. I’m sure they’re breaking all sorts of records with box office revenue, but when you cost-benefit the effort as a whole, you see the studios are watching their second-weekends, third-weekends, and beyond, then adding in the overseas revenue — just to see if they break even on it.
That’s not the “Holy crap, we had no idea what we had here” explosion that happened to the first Star Wars movie. Or, with Passion of the Christ.
So I agree with you. There is something going on here that has nothing to do with the bottom line. And it’s not an ulterior motive. It’s laziness and immaturity. If they had the maturity to say “Let’s put aside what I want to do, and find out what the audience/customer wants/needs”…they would very likely not be in that business.
- mkfreeberg | 04/20/2016 @ 05:48There is something going on here that has nothing to do with the bottom line
You’ve talked about this before, and there’s an academic term for it that escapes me — one of the “contradictions of capitalism” that the Marxists never anticipated, something like “production, not consumption, drives the market.” A kind of mutant version of (the common misunderstanding of) Say’s Law, that supply creates its own demand.
The example I think you used, or I saw somewhere, is smartphones — nobody wants all that shit on a phone. It’s actually counterproductive, and if you look at it from a traditional economic standpoint, the first company that comes up with a streamlined, yet expansible, smartphone would make a killing. But nobody does, because “what the customer wants” doesn’t factor into the design process. At all. The marketing guys decide what their plan is, and they tell the engineering guys, and that’s that…. or, occasionally, the other way around, where the engineers decide that because this or that can be done, it will be done, and marketing’s job is to figure out how to pitch it as the latest and greatest thing to the customers.
As with movies, they’ve figured out that “just not buying it” isn’t an option for most people. Given a $500 smartphone that has a zillion features that everyone hates, and not having a smartphone, people will just suck it up and take the iCrap 7.2.2. If the only other option is not going to the movies, people will shell out their $21.50 for Battling CGI Blobs VII: The Rendering. It’s like the “consumerism” all the goodthinkers complained about in the 80s and 90s has become a weird kind of OCD.
- Severian | 04/20/2016 @ 08:29Heh. Check out #22 on this Cracked Photoplasty Contest. I love serendipity.
- nightfly | 04/20/2016 @ 11:08Broken link, alas.
- Severian | 04/20/2016 @ 11:57Drat. That’s what I get for trying to post from the Mobile Command Unit. Stupid mobile sites.
- nightfly | 04/20/2016 @ 14:14Ah, but there’s money to be made, and misinformation to be dealt to INCREASE the size of that wad o’ cash. Both examples have their incomes down to a science. There’s a reason that bloatware keeps being put on PC and phones…they can “sell” that $500 dollar phone to you for $100 bucks, because aPple gets $300 in reverse-royalties from the installed bloatware that will strangely brick your phone when removed, and $300 from T-mobile for the mandatory two-year contract. Now they’ve pulled in $700 for the phone they claim is worth $500, and it cost them $150 to make. Who cares if you don’t like it? Screw the customer!
As for movies, I can’t tell you how many schemes are…excuse me…lines are crossed…er t’s are crossed and i’s dotted to make the books look right. Royalties in Hippiewood are almost never paid out, because they will make a movie that made a billion dollars in profit look like it LOST money. If your agent takes gross instead of net you fire him. Then there are the various union operatives to make deals with, product placements that never appear on the books but end up in pockets, political deals that don’t end up on the books…(you do realize that crapping all over Conservatives, whites, the military, Christ, etc. SOUNDS great but doesn’t pay out in middle-America unless you get some sort of tax-breaks from your local elite liberal politicians…right?)
Anyhow…I love my Android, but they still manage to load it with bloatware, some of which I’ve had to use all my professional expertise to disable, yet they still manage to reinstall themselves with every “upgrade”. Seems like our choices everywhere we turn nowadays are douche or turd.
- P_Ang | 04/20/2016 @ 15:46