Editorials - Turn Your Brain Off

[Copper]

In a world where the best selling teen series is about "pretty little rich girls with no consequences" (Gossip Girl, It Girl, Clique) and we have to endure crap like the OC and The Hills on TV it really makes you think how much *dumber* the world is getting. Seriously. Or the fact that the sheep have to rush out and buy the newest Oprah book for the soul reason being "It was on Oprah!" You can't tell me what it's about, you can't tell me the title, but you can tell me "It was on Oprah yesterday!" Yeah, that tells me how much you got out of that program. *shakes head* I like stupid humor, but only to an extent. Meet the Spartans? Funny! Yes, it had stupid humor in it, but they knew when to end the joke so you didn't have to "work" on laughing at it after 10 minutes. Things that are just one long "dick and fart joke" after another, not so much, and I can handle that kind of humor. To an extent. If it gets to the point where I'm laughing *at* the movie instead of laughing *because* of the movie, there's something wrong. I read "Vampire Smut" as my boss had dubbed it, but it's not "Swoon swoon woe is me, take me to bed tall dark fanged stranger." It's got humor, action, and some fan your face moments. I'm not 'switching off' to read it because the characters are well developed enough to make me *care* about them. They're not cookie cutter stereotypes of the ideal that we're supposed to portray. I'd rather give one of *those* to someone looking for a good read for their daughter than a copy of Gossip Girl.

I think part of the problem is, we settle, and that lowers the standards. They keep making the shows like that because people settle for them. They let their brains be turned off when they shouldn't even be watching it in the first place. In theory, the only way to stop the crap is to stand against the crap, but like I said, it's just a theory.

And...going to stop babbling now. I'll end with two thoughts:
1. I absolutely positively *refuse* to watch the new Transformers movie. My reason: It's not historically accuate, heh.
2. In the immortal words of Bowling for Soup: When did reality become T.V.? What ever happened to sitcoms, game shows, (on the radio) Springsteen, Madonna, way before Nirvana, there was U2 and Blondie and music still on MTV!

[executioneer]

Originally Posted by Copper

Meet the Spartans? Funny!

you are going to have a lot of trouble getting people to relate to what you are saying if you say shit like this

[Copper]

Originally Posted by executioneer

you are going to have a lot of trouble getting people to relate to what you are saying if you say shit like this

Removing those two lines from the rest of the context around them does not immediately nullify everything else in the rest of the post, especially since I preceeded them with how I like stupid humor "to an extent." I'm not claiming the stuff is Oscar worthy and should be the basis for all movies yet to come. No, I think it's funny because he kicks the American Idol judges panel into the Pit of Death because I *hate* American Idol. It's not a moment where I need to "switch off" to enjoy it because I'm thinking the exact same thing. It's short and to the point. The joke is done, they move on to the next one. It's not carried on for half-an-hour and then come back to later in the movie, nor is it the basis of the whole movie and yet there's stuff out there were one running gag is all that seems to carry what passes for a plot.

And, to Dr. Boogie: Well said about Indy and the suspension of disbelief. I think it was you or Proto that said it: In that one scene, the Indy as Everyman was shattered. If he could survive that, then anything they threw at him later would be a cakewalk. Granted some of the earlier stuff required suspension of disbelief, too, but, as you pointed out, there was still some part of it that made sense. There has to be some small amount of believability for the illusion to seem real, otherwise you fail in your attempt at fooling the viewer.

And I still refuse to watch Transformers, awesome giant robots aside. There's just certain things that don't set well with me which will make the movie ultimately not enjoyable.