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Showing posts with label TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TV. Show all posts
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Sunday, March 13, 2016
America According to South Park
I saw a story in my Facebook sidebar about Ariana Grande saying "shit" on SNL and thought "are we turning into South Park?" That led to this:
Monday, November 23, 2015
Dear Science Fiction Fans: You Need To Let Things Go
You'd think that since science fiction* is all about exploring new ideas and seeing the world in a different way, science fiction fans would embrace change, but that's not entirely true. Sure, they're open to new ideas and are always willing to give the latest movie, TV show, or book series a shot (as long as it has spaceships/vampires/guys with swords, at least). The problem happens later, when they've decided they like that new thing. Once a science fiction fan's decided a thing is "theirs," they don't want to let it die.
In and of itself, that isn't a problem. Science fiction "fictons" (to use a word stolen from Heinlein that the Hex Games crew has been trying--and mostly failing--to popularize for years) are by their very nature ripe with possibilities for new premises, new characters, and new stories. The problem is that sci-fi fans don't want to see creators exploring all these possible stories, they want to see the exact same thing that made them enjoy the thing in the first place. They want to see the same characters doing the same shit over and over again, even when it's gone on for so long that it can't possibly be fun for anyone anymore.
I understand the nostalgia thing. Hell, I almost missed out on the Buffy TV series (which turned into one of my favorite shows of all time) because Kristy Swanson was "my" Buffy, which may be what forced me to re-evaluate the resistance to change that makes science fiction fans complain whenever there's a remake or sequel that's different than the one they grew up with. I promise you that even though we all know that Harrison Ford and Mark Hamil and all the rest will at best be doing long cameos in the new Star Wars movies, there will be fans who complain that Abrams spent too much time on all the new characters instead of focusing on "the real heroes." These people would honestly rather see a geriatric Han Solo lumbering around shooting at storm troopers than something new and (shudder) different.
As an aside, this insistence on a "right" way of handling things is even sadder when it comes to comics, because the "right" way to do a comic is always the way it was done when the person doing the talking started reading them. People who started reading comics during the Frank Miller years will completely discount the decades of Batman not being a grim psychopath to insist that Batman should always be a grim psychopath.
There are people who still hope for more Firefly. It's been over a decade, everybody's moved on, and thanks to Serenity they were able to give the story an ending, but if somebody suggests that there might be a reunion in the works, thousands of fans will piss themselves in joy. I was right there with them for a while, but there's a point when you just have to accept that Firefly was a thing and that thing is over now. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see more stories set in that universe, maybe even with some of the characters from the original show. I'd love to see (most of) that group of actors work together again, and look forward to watching Fillion and Tudyk's web series. But I don't want anyone to try to make more episodes of Firefly.
Why? Because there's no way for it to be Firefly. For starters, at least two of the characters are dead, and based on what Whedon's said a third one would have died in the interim unless they try to pretend that everyone aged prematurely from the stress of stuff that happened on Miranda. Also, as much fun as it was to watch Adam Baldwin being a terrible person as Jayne, I've got a feeling it would be less fun now that we know he's a right-wing asshole in real life. The main reason I don't want to see a Firefly reunion, though, is because I've seen Red Dwarf: Back To Earth.
I loved Red Dwarf. We used to rent the VHS tapes of the show at the comic shop I worked at, and it was one of my go-tos for background noise. A few years ago, someone sent me a DVD of Back To Earth, which I hadn't even heard of. It was a 3-episode reunion show made in 2009, ten years after the show had ended. The crew ended up on modern-day earth where they had to meet their creator, and it was full of Blade Runner references and fourth-wall breaking and stuff I'd normally really enjoy, a starbug made out of a Smart Car, and lots of other good stuff. If they'd made it ten years earlier, it would have been great, but it wasn't.
What was wrong with Back to Earth? You know that really awkward scene in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back where they show up at Holden MacNeil's door and Affleck stiffly repeats some of Jay's lines from Chasing Amy and it's just weird and awkward for everyone? Back to Earth was like that. You could tell that the actors really wanted to recapture the magic of the old episodes of Red Dwarf, but it just wasn't there any more. Even the bits that worked came across as sort of stilted and sad. It was depressing to watch.
That brings me to the thing that inspired this blog post: They're making more episodes of Red Dwarf. Here's a picture from it:
Even without the example of Back to Earth, this picture should tell you why this is a bad idea. Look at how old Craig Charles is today. The other guys look older, too, but even though they're the characters that shouldn't age (being a robot and a hologram), it's Lister looking old that's the real problem. If you had to boil down the character of Dave Lister to three words, they would be "young and stupid." He's the trickster archetype of the group, the untamed id who makes things interesting for everyone else, and that's not a character that ages gracefully.
I'd love to see more Red Dwarf, but I'm pretty sure that this series, which looks like more of the same Red Dwarf, is going to be as uncomfortable to watch as Back to Earth. And if anyone claims that the premise of the show doesn't allow doing anything without these characters, they weren't paying attention. Despite the "last man alive" premise, they ran into all sorts of other characters during the show, and that's before you remember that they regularly traveled through time and to parallel dimensions. There are ways to keep the Red Dwarf ficton alive without making us watch Dave Lister go from young and stupid to old and pathetic.
*I'm using the term "science fiction" in its most imprecise form to represent sci-fi, fantasy, super-heroes, horror, and the whole spectrum of geeky shit.
In and of itself, that isn't a problem. Science fiction "fictons" (to use a word stolen from Heinlein that the Hex Games crew has been trying--and mostly failing--to popularize for years) are by their very nature ripe with possibilities for new premises, new characters, and new stories. The problem is that sci-fi fans don't want to see creators exploring all these possible stories, they want to see the exact same thing that made them enjoy the thing in the first place. They want to see the same characters doing the same shit over and over again, even when it's gone on for so long that it can't possibly be fun for anyone anymore.
I understand the nostalgia thing. Hell, I almost missed out on the Buffy TV series (which turned into one of my favorite shows of all time) because Kristy Swanson was "my" Buffy, which may be what forced me to re-evaluate the resistance to change that makes science fiction fans complain whenever there's a remake or sequel that's different than the one they grew up with. I promise you that even though we all know that Harrison Ford and Mark Hamil and all the rest will at best be doing long cameos in the new Star Wars movies, there will be fans who complain that Abrams spent too much time on all the new characters instead of focusing on "the real heroes." These people would honestly rather see a geriatric Han Solo lumbering around shooting at storm troopers than something new and (shudder) different.
As an aside, this insistence on a "right" way of handling things is even sadder when it comes to comics, because the "right" way to do a comic is always the way it was done when the person doing the talking started reading them. People who started reading comics during the Frank Miller years will completely discount the decades of Batman not being a grim psychopath to insist that Batman should always be a grim psychopath.
There are people who still hope for more Firefly. It's been over a decade, everybody's moved on, and thanks to Serenity they were able to give the story an ending, but if somebody suggests that there might be a reunion in the works, thousands of fans will piss themselves in joy. I was right there with them for a while, but there's a point when you just have to accept that Firefly was a thing and that thing is over now. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see more stories set in that universe, maybe even with some of the characters from the original show. I'd love to see (most of) that group of actors work together again, and look forward to watching Fillion and Tudyk's web series. But I don't want anyone to try to make more episodes of Firefly.
Why? Because there's no way for it to be Firefly. For starters, at least two of the characters are dead, and based on what Whedon's said a third one would have died in the interim unless they try to pretend that everyone aged prematurely from the stress of stuff that happened on Miranda. Also, as much fun as it was to watch Adam Baldwin being a terrible person as Jayne, I've got a feeling it would be less fun now that we know he's a right-wing asshole in real life. The main reason I don't want to see a Firefly reunion, though, is because I've seen Red Dwarf: Back To Earth.
I loved Red Dwarf. We used to rent the VHS tapes of the show at the comic shop I worked at, and it was one of my go-tos for background noise. A few years ago, someone sent me a DVD of Back To Earth, which I hadn't even heard of. It was a 3-episode reunion show made in 2009, ten years after the show had ended. The crew ended up on modern-day earth where they had to meet their creator, and it was full of Blade Runner references and fourth-wall breaking and stuff I'd normally really enjoy, a starbug made out of a Smart Car, and lots of other good stuff. If they'd made it ten years earlier, it would have been great, but it wasn't.
What was wrong with Back to Earth? You know that really awkward scene in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back where they show up at Holden MacNeil's door and Affleck stiffly repeats some of Jay's lines from Chasing Amy and it's just weird and awkward for everyone? Back to Earth was like that. You could tell that the actors really wanted to recapture the magic of the old episodes of Red Dwarf, but it just wasn't there any more. Even the bits that worked came across as sort of stilted and sad. It was depressing to watch.
That brings me to the thing that inspired this blog post: They're making more episodes of Red Dwarf. Here's a picture from it:
Even without the example of Back to Earth, this picture should tell you why this is a bad idea. Look at how old Craig Charles is today. The other guys look older, too, but even though they're the characters that shouldn't age (being a robot and a hologram), it's Lister looking old that's the real problem. If you had to boil down the character of Dave Lister to three words, they would be "young and stupid." He's the trickster archetype of the group, the untamed id who makes things interesting for everyone else, and that's not a character that ages gracefully.
I'd love to see more Red Dwarf, but I'm pretty sure that this series, which looks like more of the same Red Dwarf, is going to be as uncomfortable to watch as Back to Earth. And if anyone claims that the premise of the show doesn't allow doing anything without these characters, they weren't paying attention. Despite the "last man alive" premise, they ran into all sorts of other characters during the show, and that's before you remember that they regularly traveled through time and to parallel dimensions. There are ways to keep the Red Dwarf ficton alive without making us watch Dave Lister go from young and stupid to old and pathetic.
*I'm using the term "science fiction" in its most imprecise form to represent sci-fi, fantasy, super-heroes, horror, and the whole spectrum of geeky shit.
"Love us with money, or we'll hate you with hammers"--Milk & Cheese
Friday, September 5, 2014
Currently Binge Watching: Raising Hope
A friend told me I'd like this show a few years ago, but I forgot all about it until I was looking around on Netflix earlier this week. Turns out, she was right. The show is about a guy named Jimmy (some dude I don't recognize from anything else), who's kind of a loser but wears a lot of R. Crumb T-shirts, so he's got that going for him, which is nice. Jimmy and his equally loser white trash parents (Martha Plimpton and that creepy whore-killer guy from Deadwood) live with his senile great-grandmother (Cloris Leachman). One night Jimmy sleeps with Bijou Phillips, which I think most of us would do given the chance. He manages to get her pregnant, but since it turns out she's a serial killer she gets executed right after the baby's born and Jimmy gets stuck with the kid, Princess Beyonce. In one of the few displays of good judgement shown by the show's characters, they decide to change the baby's name to Hope. That's pretty much the premise, though they do throw in a love interest (the daughter from The Riches).
Yeah, I know, sounds like once you get past the pilot it's a pretty standard sit-com, but it's got that same kind of so-weird-it-seems-authentic poor white trash vibe as My Name Is Earl. Given the fact that Jason Lee, Ethan Suplee (who Plimpton describes as looking like a skinny version of that fat guy from Mallrats), and Jaime Pressly have all had cameos and Crabman shows up whenever they need a random dude with a job who has lines (the joke is that he works everywhere because he has 12 kids), I'm guessing some of the key people behind the show were also involved with Earl. Like My Name Is Earl, Raising Hope is filled with characters who consistently make terrible decisions, oddball bit characters (instead of Patty The Daytime Hooker, they've got Dancin' Dan), and a kind of skewed version of reality that's simultaneously surreal and completely believable. Also, Oates from Garfunkel and Oates has a recurring role as the woman who runs the dog/baby/old people day care, and most episodes with her include a song.
So basically, if you like off-the-wall white trash sit-coms, you should watch this.
Yeah, I know, sounds like once you get past the pilot it's a pretty standard sit-com, but it's got that same kind of so-weird-it-seems-authentic poor white trash vibe as My Name Is Earl. Given the fact that Jason Lee, Ethan Suplee (who Plimpton describes as looking like a skinny version of that fat guy from Mallrats), and Jaime Pressly have all had cameos and Crabman shows up whenever they need a random dude with a job who has lines (the joke is that he works everywhere because he has 12 kids), I'm guessing some of the key people behind the show were also involved with Earl. Like My Name Is Earl, Raising Hope is filled with characters who consistently make terrible decisions, oddball bit characters (instead of Patty The Daytime Hooker, they've got Dancin' Dan), and a kind of skewed version of reality that's simultaneously surreal and completely believable. Also, Oates from Garfunkel and Oates has a recurring role as the woman who runs the dog/baby/old people day care, and most episodes with her include a song.
So basically, if you like off-the-wall white trash sit-coms, you should watch this.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Takei, Trek, and Tolerance: A Feeble Attempt At Investigative Reporting
Sulu Wedding Dance
George Takei, best known as Mr. Sulu on the original Star Trek series and movies, recently announced that he would marry his long-time partner and business manager Brad Altman. The couple's decision to tie the knot in one of California's first high-profile legal celebrity gay weddings just seems right on a number of levels. For starters, ever since Takei made his sexual orientation public in 2005, he has been a tenacious yet exceptionally good-humored advocate for gay rights. As both a gay man and a prisoner of a Japanese interment camp during World War II it seems only fair that at the age of 71 the actor is finally able to enjoy all of the rights he is entitled to as an American citizen. Finally, his association with Star Trek, a show purported by fans to represent a better future where prejudice and inequality are things of the past makes Takei a perfect representative in the ongoing struggle for truly universal civil rights.
Roddenberry's Legacy
There is little doubt that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry had a political agenda when designing the show. The racially and ethnically diverse crew of the Enterprise--not to mention TV's first bi-racial kiss--showed us that in the future we really would, in the words of Rodney King, "all get along." Or at least that's what Trekkies (or Trekkers, to use the "politically correct" term) would have us believe. In reality, there was still a very real "other" on the show in the form of the Klingons, and it's not hard to see them as a stand-in for godless commies that we were supposed to fear during the Cold War era. The fact that the Klingons became Federation allies in the perestroika-era Next Generation series seems to further enforce the Russian connection.
Peace, Love, and Utopia?
While I do believe that Roddenberry had the best of intentions when creating Trek, I have never been convinced that the show is the great teacher of tolerance and diversity that Trek fans claim it to be. In part, this is because, as a game designer and former comic book store manager, I have met a lot of Trek fans over the years. While many do pay lip service to Roddenberry's Utopian dream, most Trek fans, like most members of the more general fan community, tend to be somewhat sheltered and naïve. While they may believe themselves to be tolerant and worldly, most Trekkers have had little experience with people who are not very much like themselves (which is to say middle class white males). As a result, they are frequently guilty of racist, sexist, or homophobic comments or actions without even being aware that what they're doing could be considered offensive. In addition, they often exhibit an obvious nervousness or change in attitude when interacting with a person of another race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.
Trek Fans And Gay Marriage
Getting back to George Takei, I have little doubt that some Trek fans will point to the community's support of Takei's lifestyle as yet another way in which Trek fandom encourages tolerance. The question, in my mind, is “do said fans have any right to make this claim?” Knowing that Takei's wedding announcement offered a perfect chance to get an idea of whether Trekkers practice what they preach, I Googled up some Trek forums and looked for discussions of Sulu's nuptials and the gay marriage issue in general.
What I Found
Oddly, I didn't find much. Of the five or six boards I looked at, only one (www.trekbbs.com) contained any significant discussion about Takei's upcoming wedding, and many boards (all on the first page of the Google search for “Star Trek forums," and therefore theoretically the top Trekkie discussion forums) didn't contain a single post about gay marriage. In general, posts that were specifically about Takei were mostly positive, containing congratulatory words for the couple. While there was the occasional homophobic post, most of the controversy within these threads involved the guest list—specifically the fact that William Shatner isn't on it. The Trek BBS did, however contain one general thread about gay marriage in California, and the discussion was not as genial without Sulu as the focus. The thread was 670 posts long, compared to an average of about 20 posts for Takei/Altman wedding announcements. While the majority of posters were in fact pro-gay marriage, there were still enough homophobes (most citing Christianity as the reason for their anti-gay views) to keep the discussion going.
Conclusion
When I started this little experiment, I expected to find that Trek fans were in fact generally (but not universally) tolerant. While the thread on the Trek BBS was slightly more accepting of homosexuality than I expected, it was reasonably close to my hypothesis. Of course, that was one thread on one board. The fact that so many Star Trek fans are seemingly not talking about Takei's upcoming wedding may be more interesting (and frightening). Is it really possible that hardcore Trekkies are so isolated from everyday world that they simply haven't heard the news?
George Takei, best known as Mr. Sulu on the original Star Trek series and movies, recently announced that he would marry his long-time partner and business manager Brad Altman. The couple's decision to tie the knot in one of California's first high-profile legal celebrity gay weddings just seems right on a number of levels. For starters, ever since Takei made his sexual orientation public in 2005, he has been a tenacious yet exceptionally good-humored advocate for gay rights. As both a gay man and a prisoner of a Japanese interment camp during World War II it seems only fair that at the age of 71 the actor is finally able to enjoy all of the rights he is entitled to as an American citizen. Finally, his association with Star Trek, a show purported by fans to represent a better future where prejudice and inequality are things of the past makes Takei a perfect representative in the ongoing struggle for truly universal civil rights.
Roddenberry's Legacy
There is little doubt that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry had a political agenda when designing the show. The racially and ethnically diverse crew of the Enterprise--not to mention TV's first bi-racial kiss--showed us that in the future we really would, in the words of Rodney King, "all get along." Or at least that's what Trekkies (or Trekkers, to use the "politically correct" term) would have us believe. In reality, there was still a very real "other" on the show in the form of the Klingons, and it's not hard to see them as a stand-in for godless commies that we were supposed to fear during the Cold War era. The fact that the Klingons became Federation allies in the perestroika-era Next Generation series seems to further enforce the Russian connection.
Peace, Love, and Utopia?
While I do believe that Roddenberry had the best of intentions when creating Trek, I have never been convinced that the show is the great teacher of tolerance and diversity that Trek fans claim it to be. In part, this is because, as a game designer and former comic book store manager, I have met a lot of Trek fans over the years. While many do pay lip service to Roddenberry's Utopian dream, most Trek fans, like most members of the more general fan community, tend to be somewhat sheltered and naïve. While they may believe themselves to be tolerant and worldly, most Trekkers have had little experience with people who are not very much like themselves (which is to say middle class white males). As a result, they are frequently guilty of racist, sexist, or homophobic comments or actions without even being aware that what they're doing could be considered offensive. In addition, they often exhibit an obvious nervousness or change in attitude when interacting with a person of another race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.
Trek Fans And Gay Marriage
Getting back to George Takei, I have little doubt that some Trek fans will point to the community's support of Takei's lifestyle as yet another way in which Trek fandom encourages tolerance. The question, in my mind, is “do said fans have any right to make this claim?” Knowing that Takei's wedding announcement offered a perfect chance to get an idea of whether Trekkers practice what they preach, I Googled up some Trek forums and looked for discussions of Sulu's nuptials and the gay marriage issue in general.
What I Found
Oddly, I didn't find much. Of the five or six boards I looked at, only one (www.trekbbs.com) contained any significant discussion about Takei's upcoming wedding, and many boards (all on the first page of the Google search for “Star Trek forums," and therefore theoretically the top Trekkie discussion forums) didn't contain a single post about gay marriage. In general, posts that were specifically about Takei were mostly positive, containing congratulatory words for the couple. While there was the occasional homophobic post, most of the controversy within these threads involved the guest list—specifically the fact that William Shatner isn't on it. The Trek BBS did, however contain one general thread about gay marriage in California, and the discussion was not as genial without Sulu as the focus. The thread was 670 posts long, compared to an average of about 20 posts for Takei/Altman wedding announcements. While the majority of posters were in fact pro-gay marriage, there were still enough homophobes (most citing Christianity as the reason for their anti-gay views) to keep the discussion going.
Conclusion
When I started this little experiment, I expected to find that Trek fans were in fact generally (but not universally) tolerant. While the thread on the Trek BBS was slightly more accepting of homosexuality than I expected, it was reasonably close to my hypothesis. Of course, that was one thread on one board. The fact that so many Star Trek fans are seemingly not talking about Takei's upcoming wedding may be more interesting (and frightening). Is it really possible that hardcore Trekkies are so isolated from everyday world that they simply haven't heard the news?
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