Fighting On TV

On cartoons, whenever there's a big superhero fight, someone will usually run up to Superman and say "Superman! Are you ok, Superman?" (For some reason when you talk to Superman, you're supposed to say his name as much as possible. I reckon it's so he doesn't forget who he is.) Anyway, whenever he gets knocked down, someone (usually a child) runs up to him and says "Are you ok?" This is something I would never do. I figure, if I'm in a situation where I have to ask Superman if he's ok, I probably want to be as far away from it as possible.

People on TV don't think this way, I guess, for a number of reasons.

First of all, on TV, people get in fights all the time. If a character goes into a bar who doesn't usually go into bars, there's going to be a fight. Especially if anyone in the bar is wearing a cowboy hat. If a character is a kid and a bully is picking on him (or her) there's going to be a fight. On TV people fight for any reason, or no reason at all. Fights are almost always followed by an object lesson that fighting doesn't solve anything, even though there was just a fight and it just did solve something. This is because Hollywood is run by these artsy pacifist hippys who want to be "responsible" by not promoting fighting as a means of resolving conflict; at the same time, Americans love to watch people getting their asses kicked, esepcially when its someone they think deserves it.

Second of all, when people fight on TV, it's either 1) over in one punch, or 2) more like a ballet than an actual fight. On TV, people make little wisecracks and smart comments while they swing from chandeliers. In real life, grown men cry and cuss and squeal like pigs, saying things like "I'm...gonna...kill...you..." It's actually kind of pathetic. And just as funny. The closest thing I've seen to real fighting on TV is Bruce Willis in the first "Die Hard" movie.

It's convenient that on TV bad guys get knocked unconcsious all the time, and that no one hurts his own fist when he punches someone. It's also fortunate that when someone is knocked out, they never suffer any neurological damage like a concussion or convulsions.

Of course, these days it seems like you never hear about fist-fights anymore anyway. All you ever hear about are kids with automatic weapons and drive-by shootings. Some folks say that people are just afraid. I know I am. I'm always afraid someone's going to pull out a gun. In the old days, when I was a kid, I hardly remember ever backing down from people, I mean, unless I was way outnumbered or the guy was clearly twice my size. Partly that was because I watched too much TV, and partly because I was young and I didn't really understand how badly I could get hurt, but mostly it was because I was really really stupid.

I'm not quite as stupid now as I was then. I like to think so, anyway. At least I don't get in fights anymore. At my age, I figure, if I don't get shot I'll get my ass kicked, or I'll just get sued. So I've decided to embrace pacifism.

Aquaman Part II

Well, I started off today talking about Superman, and that was because I was watching Superman on TV. Superman is part of the new Justice League on the Cartoon Network.

Here I am in my element, and I can show what a geek I really am. I remember things about comic books and cartoons, as I watch this and think "O, that little blue-skinned guy looks like one of the Guardians of the Galaxy from the planet Oa" and "That bug-eyed fellah there looks like Kanjar Ro". I don't know how I remember it all. I don't remember who Kanjar Ro is, but I know that guy looks like him. Anyway, if comic books were a religion, I would be a holy man.

This is kind of like the old Super Friends cartoons. I mean, it is in the sense that they're all super, and most of them are friends. There are a few pretty big differences though.

For one thing, in the old Super Friends cartoons, they always said out loud whatever they were thinking. "Great Scott! A heat ray is being beamed from that spaceship! I'd better deflect it with my X-Ray Vision!"

The characters in this one have a little more depth. "More" in the sense that you can at least tell the characters apart by more than just their costumes.

Let's use Aquaman as an example. The first thing you notice about Aquaman is that he's not even a member of the Justice League, which in itself makes him more interesting. He has long hair and a beard, too. In this cartoon he's kind of arrogant and beats people up for no reason. So he's obnoxious, kind of like a real person would be if they had superpowers. Now, this is interesting: Aquaman cuts off his own hand to save his baby's life, and in the end he drops his brother off a cliff. Pretty cool.

Also, Aquaman doesn't wear a shirt. This is a huge step for cartoons. When I was a kid they didn't show nipples. On the Superman cartoons that they made a couple years ago, Lois Lane wore really short skirts, but up til now that's the most skin I've seen. Well, not counting Wonder Woman's patriotic bathing suit. I'm not all for censoring, but when Wonder Woman starts going around with no shirt, that's when I think they've gone too far.

A River Runs Through It

I have nothing interesting left to talk about. I'm watching this Brad Pitt movie. You know how sometimes you watch a movie and for the first ten minutes or so nothing interesting happens, but you pay attention anyway because you know something interesting is bound to happen soon and you want to be able to follow what's going on? That's kind of how this movie is. I mean, that's how this entire movie is: It looks like it's just about to get interesting. It's the kind of movie you need some artsy poetry guy to tell you what it means.

And so I'm sitting here through a hundred million commercials every ten minutes to watch a movie that's not even holding my interest, because I have nothing else to do.

Brad Pitt's brother is concerned about him, but I'm not sure why. And then this guy and his girlfriend had a big fight, but it wasn't clear what they were fighting about. And then the girlfriend started crying and, again, it wasn't clear why. I just don't understand why these people are doing what they're doing, and what's worse is that I'm starting to suspect that it all means something. I mean, like that big ol' fish wasn't really a fish, but a symbol of virility or mis-spent youth.

I wish this movie had some of those VH-1 pop-up things to explain what's going on. What this movie could really use, though, is a Klingon. Klingons are alien and their motivations are different than ours, but at least I understand them: Honor and death. A Klingon doesn't need a reason to fight with his girlfriend: He's a Klingon. Whatever he's fighting about, and whatever he's concerned about, it has to do with honor or death. I get it.

What's really deceptive is that this looks like a guy movie. There's fishing and they live in Montana and they're drinking and everything. But all they're doing is feeling and relating. I think this is the end of the movie because Brad Pitt just died. They didn't have a big fight or anything, in fact they didn't even show it, but they did talk about what happened while they showed a panoramic view of the river. And now they're emoting about it.

Ok, I just now got it. This is a "Coming of Age" movie. Click here to read about that from last September.