Entries Tagged 'being a consumer of media' ↓

Y’ever been on Facebook (duh, of course you have) and done an honest-to-god double-take because one of your staunchly Liberal friends posted a link for a Tea Party rally, or your born again Christian brother made his status: “Strippers and Jager seemed like a good idea at the time”?  Only after looking closer do you realize that one of two things happened:

1) With all that information crammed together on one news feed, you accidentally transposed said link or status with the friend appearing immediately above or below.

or

2) A combination of similar first names and vague profile pictures caused you to apply the statement to the wrong “Jennifer”.

What’s even more disconcerting than the immediate double-take is when you come back to the post a few minutes later (after, say, other people have posted comments and you realize, “Wait, Mom isn’t friends with Hamstring Timmy from work!”) and wonder why you didn’t question the clearly out-of-character statement in the first place only to realize that, just as the naysayers have been naysaying, you really aren’t friends with any of your Facebook friends.  Then you feel lonely and drink.

We really need an Urban Dictionary term for such moments.

Am I ridiculously shallow or something?  Whenever I read a book that depicts what is meant to be an ironically utopian future, one where everyone is happy, I fail to grasp the irony.  Books like “Brave New World” and my most recent read “Uglies” or even a more familiar piece of art to most of you, “The Matrix” trilogy, simply fail to make me believe the overriding morality that the author seems to be making, which is that even if there are no discernable drawbacks, it’s bad to use artificial means to ensure the happiness of the masses.

In “Brave New World”, briefly, everyone is bred into classes.  Reproduction is accomplished in labs and chemicals are introduced that will determine if you’re an Alpha (the highest most beautiful class with the most privileges, who are encouraged to have fun, buy lots of toys and have insane amounts of sex with as many people as possible) on down through the Epsilons (who are the squat ugly “worker bees” of the future).  At the outset that sounds sick.  Great for the Alphas, but what a horrible existence for the Epsilons.  But here’s the thing: EVERYONE is happy.  Their brains are designed to automatically accept and ENJOY their station in life.  And whenever somebody does manage to get depressed in a life that is biologically designed to feel perfect, there’s always “soma” a relatively harmless drug that puts you into a blissful little coma until you’re ready to be happy again.

In “Uglies” when you turn sixteen you undergo an operation that makes you the absolute pinnacle of physical perfection.  It makes you “Pretty.”  But not just pretty.  (SPOILER ALERT.  SKIP THE NEXT SENTENCE IF YOU DON’T WANT A MINOR PLOT POINT REVEALED)  The operation also puts a lesion on your brain designed to stop all jealousy and anger and capacity to rebel against authority.  You are sublimely happy, spending your days and nights partying and having fun with other Pretties.  There’s no war.  No unhappiness.  Why should there be?  Everyone has plenty to eat and every day is as fun as the one before.

And of course you know “The Matrix”.  While it’s not a utopian world by any stretch, the world you “wake up” to when Morpheus gives you the red pill is worse than any drug trip gone bad.  You live in a dark, cold cave, constantly at war with sentient machines, the mere sight of which would drive any normal person insane.  Yet it’s considered a victory whenever they can pull somebody out of their comparatively blissful digitally created dream state.

WHY?

What is supposed to be so bad about any of these circumstances?  Now, mind you, “Fahrenheit 451” explored a similar theme where the entire world is kept in line by a neverending series of toys, TV shows and mindless entertainment.  But in THAT utopia, all that happiness was merely used to distract the public from an impending nuclear war.  So in THAT reality, yes, the happiness was all a farce designed to keep the public in line to their ultimate destruction.  But in “Brave New World”, “Uglies” and “The Matrix” there was zero downside to all this happiness.  Sure it was artificial, but so what?  If you’re happy (ignorantly but sincerely happy) and this happiness doesn’t actually pose a danger to you or cause the suffering of others… why are we supposed to think that’s a bad thing?  Frankly the more I read stories like these, the more I wish we had those capabilities in this world.  Yet each of these stories seems to indicate that happiness is actually a prison and that every person should have “the freedom to be miserable.”  Nobody wants to say it, but the real hero of the Matrix films was Joe Pantaliano who, after making a deal to be plugged back into the system, say, “Ignorance is bliss.”

I suppose this whole mentality goes hand-in-hand with other aspects of the way my brain works.  You all know I lost my faith in God about two years ago now.  It wasn’t a willful decision, or even REALLY a decision.  It was simply a matter of not being able to believe what I now understand to be a happy and comforting but wholly artificial fairy tale.  And yet I’d be lying if I said this “freedom” of thinking has actually made me a happier person.  In fact for a solid year after my initial realization it made me a downright miserable sonofabitch.  I honestly went through those five famous stages of grief with a very long and punctuated ANGER phase.  Man was I angry.  Angry at God, which was pointless because He wasn’t even there to be angry at.  So that meant I was angry at anyone who came from that same faith I’d just left.  It was irrational, I know.  But goddamn it I was angry and the one person I wanted to yell at wasn’t even real.

I still go to church.  For my wife.  For the kids.  And as I look at the people around me, people singing with their hands flung in the air, lost in the rapture of devotion and worship, you’d think my knee-jerk reaction would be to scoff at and make fun of them.  But I don’t.  Well sometimes I do.  But mostly I envy them.  I KNOW they are wrong.**  I KNOW there’s nobody really listening to their praises and supplications.  I KNOW they are trusting their faith and future to the metaphysical equivalent of Santa Claus and unicorns.  And yet I wish I were like them.  I wish I could take such deep comfort in something so clearly artificial.  I wish I could find that pure “Brave New World” happiness.  So what if it’s not real?  It’s real to them.  Like genuinely real.  As far as their senses are concerned it’s as real as the heat of the sun is to me.  And if it truly makes them happy, and isn’t actually hurting them or anyone else, who on earth wouldn’t want that? (Yes, I know there is a whole discussion involving Prop 8 and denial of other people’s rights and happiness brought on by religion that we could get into, but lets leave that for another time)

Is artificial happiness (whatever that means) really a prison? Is the freedom to be miserable really such a noble virtue?  As far as I’m concerned this life is all we have, so why spend it whiling away in misery just because it’s more “free” and “natural”?  If faith in an imaginary friend makes someone happy, great.  If some future society develops an alternate reality machine that allows you to spend all your days in perfect bliss, yet somehow still allows productivity and the human race to go on and endure, how awesome would that be?  And if you can safely become drop dead gorgeous and enjoy every shallow pleasure in sublime happiness without ever needing to think deeply, and this didn’t lead to yours or somebody else’s harm, holy crap, sign me the hell up!

Anyone else with me?

** This isn’t intended to ignite an argument over whether God does or does not exist.  For anyone who has religious faith, just understand that I “know” God is fake in the same way that you “know” He is real.  In my head, my certainty is equally as certain as your certainty is in yours.  I mean and insinuate nothing more or less than that.

As I pulled into the Philadelphia International Airport the other day, I had the radio cranked to the local awesome rock station WMMR, who happened to be in the middle of a block of Pink Floyd.  And as I drove slowly down the Departing Flights avenue, chock full of people getting out of cabs and checking luggage, the song “One Slip” came on.  It’s a rather obscure Floyd song, though I of course knew it, having gone through a lengthy (yet somehow completely drug free) Floydian phase in college.  The song, like a lot of Floyd creations, begins with a series of sound effects which I guess are supposed to evoke the image of a factory switchboard or mission control or something.  Basically you hear a series of beeps and boops like the sound of  a computer monitoring something.   Then, without warning the machines just go  absolutely apeshit and alarms start sounding before a heavy drum cuts them off and the song begins.

Well I just so happened to be driving past a big crowd of people when said machines shit said apes and as you can imagine, the sound of any kind of alarm in or near an airport situation is enough to make people turn and look and wondering just what the heck is going on.  I was just thankful that no cops were around or I might have gotten pulled over for some terror suspect questioning and missed my flight.

Actually, the radio wasn’t even all that loud and nobody so much as turned their head in my direction when it happened.  But it would have been pretty funny if they had.

On a recent Saturday night, Lauren was at work and I let Allison stay up late with me on the couch.  As we watched the Graham Norton Show on BBC America, Allison took note of their English accents and wondered why they “sounded funny.”

I told her that the people on this show were from England so even though they speak the same language as us, they speak it with an English accent.  “That’s why they talked different than us in Mary Poppins too, because they were from England.”

“Right,” Allison said, processing it all. “They must sound that way because they’re from the future.”

Love that kid.

I should come clean right off the bat.  I freakin’ LOVE Miley Cyrus.  I think her music is catchy.  I think her TV show is pretty damn hilarious.  I think she’s a cute kid and, if her performance a few weeks back on Dancing with the Stars is anything to go by, she’s going to be a smokin’ hot woman.  So I’m clearly coming from a bit of a biased standpoint here, but…

I can’t help but crack up at people who make fun of Miley Cyrus.  Well, let me clarify.  I kind of get people busting on her for her silly personal life trials, her controversial photo shoots, and that Twitter rap she did which embarrassed even ME vicariously.  But when it comes to her MUSIC, what is there to make fun of?  First of all, you’d really have to be made of stone not to AT LEAST tap your foot to the bubblegum pop beats of at least some of her songs.  (I’m looking at you “Ice Cream Freeze“).  But beyond that, guess what grownups, THESE SONGS AREN’T INTENDED FOR YOU!  Not sure if you’ve noticed, but Miley tends to get most of her airplay on a little station called Radio Disney.  Her target market is tweenage girls who are still too young to have discovered how to be musically pretentious.  So to mock and belittle the “overproduced, mindlessly peppy” music (which, by the way is earning her MILLIONS) is kind of like that loser sixth grader who made fun of Kindergartners for watching “Mister Roger’s Neighborhood.”  Of COURSE you think it’s stupid.  It’s intended for people HALF YOUR AGE!!!

So please, for the love of your own dignity, if you’re over the age of 25, leave Miley alone. LEAVE HER ALONE!!!

For several years, I thought Obi Wan Kenobi was describing the destruction of Alderaan as “millions of OYSTERS crying out in terror and suddenly silenced.”  For those three of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, the real word is supposed to be “voices.”

Now, what’s weirder to me, weirder than the fact that I actually misheard this line for, near on 20 years, is that for all those 20 years, I never questioned the sanity of that line.  I guess i just pictured kind of an Alice in Wonderland scene with the Walrus and the Carpenter.  Either way, I never really found this line weird.  I guess I simply trusted implicitly in the genius of George Lucas.  I think the first time I realized what the real line in that scene, was somewhere around the second prequel.  I suddenly realized that George Lucas was, in fact, fallible.  And suddenly that line hit me with the full insanity that it rightfully deserved all those years.

So, thanks, I guess, Jar-Jar.

Allison and I have been reading “The Tale of Despereaux” before bed for the last few nights. First off, it’s an amazing book so far. I find I’M getting to the ends of chapters and saying to Allison, “You wanna read just one more?”

But the name of the human Princess in this book’s name is Pea. Which, when you’re reading visually, is a very cute name. Princess Pea. You can almost picture her, a tiny little girl, dressed in green, maybe sitting on a royal chair that looks like a pod. But when you’re reading it out loud to a kid who can’t really follow along with the words, she’s just hearing it phonetically, so she can’t keep a straight face every time an exchange happens like this:

“Her name,” said Despereaux, “is Pee.”
“What?”
“The person who loves me. Her name is Pee.”
“Nevermind her name. Did you allow her to touch you?”
“Yes sir,” said Despereaux, “I let Pee touch me. It felt good.”

It’s amazing how your kids will just randomly give you new and completely amazing reasons to love them.  And new and amazing examples what unique individuals they are.  The girl received the movie Dumbo for Christmas and has watched it several times since.  But when she asks to watch it, she doesn’t ask to watch Dumbo.  She says, “Can I watch Jumbo Junior.”  Because if you remember the movie, “Jumbo Junior” is what the elephant’s mom originally names him.  It’s only after everyone sees his giant ears that they start calling him “Dumbo.”  It’s meant as a derogatory nickname.  And yet even his best friend, Timothy Mouse calls him that.   That’s like making friends with that fat pie eating kid from Stand By Me and still referring to him as “Lard Ass.”   Okay so you made friends with him, but you’re still killing him a little every time you don’t call him by his real name.  Apparently this never struck anyone in the Dumbo audience as weird.

Well it struck the girl that way.  She understands that even an elephant has feelings and recognizes how blatantly wrong it was to keep referring to Dumbo as Dumbo.  So she has decided to do the right thing and call him by his real name.  And not only that, if one of us forgets and says, “the D word” she will actually correct us.  “Jumbo Junior, dad.”

I seriously love that kid.  She’s only four, but she gets it.  Sometimes I forget how much.

A couple years ago, armed with three juice boxes and a Ziploc bag full of Cheerios, Lauren and I took our niece to see Piglet’s Big Movie.  It was cute and fun and all.  The only thing that bothered me was that about five minutes from the end, there’s a point where you think Pooh and Piglet are dead!  Seriously, the entire cast cries for like thirty seconds because they assume Pooh and Piglet have just plummeted over a waterfall to their deaths.

I couldn’t believe they would put something that intense and traumatic into a kids movie.  But then I had a conversation with my sister about the movies we loved growing up, and it occurred to me that if kids were traumatized by Pooh and Piglet’s temporary demise, they would get royally screwed up by the things we used to watch.

Take for example Charlottes Web.  What a depressing ninety minutes that was.  A pig who fights to not be slaughtered only to have his best friend die in the end.  Now I know the movie was based on a book so I can’t really blame the filmmakers.  But then again, in E.B. White’s version you didn’t actually see Charlotte die.  It was just kind of understood.  But in the cartoon she sings the saddest most nostalgic song ever, and then on the last note, exhales her terminal breath and wilts.  Cut to a close up of Wilbur crying.  “Charlotte?  Charlotte?  CHARLOTTE!”  Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, all of Charlotte’s children run away!

Dot and the Kangaroo was about a little girl lost in the Australian Outback who is befriended by, you guessed it, a talking Kangaroo.  Kangaroo protects Dot from dingoes, the weather and even a freaky monster called the Bunyip.  When Dot finally finds her way home, she’s eager to introduce Kangaroo to her family.  But by the time she runs back to the forest, Kangaroo has run away.  The entire ending credit sequence shows Kangaroo hopping through the forest while over the soundtrack you hear little Dot crying, “Kangawoo… Kangawoo…  Oh Kangawoo…”  Luckily for my sister and me, our parents didn’t keep a gun or straight razors in the house.

E.T. abandons Elliot.  Willy Wonka yells at Charlie.  Amalthea becomes the only unicorn to know regret.  Atreyu’s horse dies and Fantasia is destroyed.  The rats of N.I.M.H. were just plain dark and depressing.  And Luke realizes that the love of his life is actually his sister.  Seriously, was it some kind of massive, collective cocaine withdrawal that inspired Hollywood to depress the crap out of us kids in the seventies and early eighties?

Or were they trying to do us a favor?  Maybe we needed that sense of reality.  Maybe Hollywood knew there were lessons we needed to learn.  People die, endings aren’t always happy, and friends will screw you over the second something better comes along.  It’s probably easier to learn about death by watching a cartoon spider wilt in a barn than by watching Grandma wilt in her bed.  Are we doing our kids a disservice by making every movie unrealistically happy with singing bears, dancing vegetables and big red dogs?  Maybe Pooh and Piglet should have gone over that waterfall.  Maybe Nemo should have stayed lost.  Maybe rather than singing cheerfully alongside Pocahontas’s people, the white men should have stayed true to history and slaughtered them.

Hey, maybe this is the answer to ending school shootings.  Not less violence in movies—more violence.  More depressing, horrifying, make-you-afraid-to-cry-in-front-of-your-friends violence.  Let’s have less vegetables dancing and more spiders wilting.  That’s what me and my friends grew up on, and you know what—none of us ever shot one of our buddies.  We knew what death was.  It wasn’t a glorified spectacle to us.  It was a loyal spider wilting!

Will I let my daughter watch the movies I grew up with?  I may have never killed anybody, but I sure had a lot of nightmares that I apparently never got over.  I don’t know if she should have to deal something as heavy as watching Charlotte wilt or listening to Dot cry for three straight minutes.  Maybe I’ll just edit the last four and a half minutes out of Piglet’s Big Movie then take her out for ice cream to mourn.

The Girl and I were just chilling out tonight, listening to the Happy Feet soundtrack while we cleaned up her room, when she suddenly says: “This is the one where they don’t beat baby girls.”

That made me stop for a second. I was trying to remember a place in the movie where the penguins beat up the baby penguins. I know there was a part where the dad was worried that he’d drop an egg. But I don’t remember him actually beating one of them.

“When do they beat the babies?” I ask.

“No they don’t beat the baby girls, I said.”

I crinkled up my forehead trying to think what the heck movie she could possibly be talking about when I realized which song was playing. It was Nicole Kidman singing the Prince song, “Kiss.” And that’s when I realized what the first line of the song might sound like to the unfamiliar brain of a three-year-old: “You don’t have to be rich to be my pearl,” becomes:

“You don’t have to beat the baby girls.”

Now my question is this: Is it weird that The Girl understood that as a completely innocuous line?