Just don't let the kids get any ideas from "Logan's Run."
Craig Furguson has a thesis he'd like to share. He might have a point. Now, before everyone notices I'm well over thirty and thinks I'm ready to sit on the porch, waving a broken bottle at some teenager with baggy pants, I want to set the record straight that I find quite a lot of stupid in all age ranges. So I'm not just going to tick you off, but probably everybody. :)
It's true that we worship youth. Youth something people are nostalgic for, it's full of potential and (comparative) freedom to the (comparative and debatable) restraints of adulthood. I have seen amazing levels of stupidity from all age ranges (a lot of it on YouTube or cable news), and I think Craig is correct that we should value cleverness and experience, no matter the age. The costs of patronizing the younger demographics, however, also drives me nuts (as it did when the Boomers got all of the attention).
"But wait, you draw a comic for kids, who are you to talk?" I draw that comic for everyone, and I try to get as much out of it for the grown-ups as the kids. I hope to be kind of like the old Warner Brothers cartoons, where the kids grokked the slapstick, the adults liked the wordplay, and everyone liked seeing where Daffy Duck's bill would wind up after he mixed up rabbit season and duck season.
But here's a small and random list of things that (in my humble opinion, and I freely admit I could be wrong) have been made worse by catering to the young out of all proportion:
Star Wars: Making the prequels "for kids" gave us Jar-Jar Binks, "fun" dialogue for Anakin, and thanks to rumored pressure from George Lucas, these allegedly appealing ideas were set in a series of films that featured decapitation and the destruction of robots that die like people (i.e. with "funny" last words before they're blown to bits, lamenting their fate). Oddly, in an attempt to adapt the series to tabletop gaming, they made "youngling" figures, and they have stats.
Horror movies: PG-13 ratings mean a larger potential audience, so toning down what makes a horror movie scary often results in a non-horror horror movie. A lack of R-rated films is also depriving the next generation of war stories about bluffing your way past the "guards" in the theater. But these days, a lot of parents take their toddlers to movies they probably shouldn't be seeing, so this might be one where you really can't invoke a facepalm on a single group. I could also go on about how sometimes real horror can often have nothing to do with buckets o' blood, but that's another rant. :)
Newscasters, actors, and other people who talk on TV: By desperately trying to sound hip and cool, we've got people uttering catchphrases and tossing slang around that comes off about as natural as using artificial turf for a hairpiece. Ironic use of tropes and pop culture that your own demographic isn't associated with can be funny, but when a person in a suit reading me the news says that someone "is the man now, dog," a part of my soul dies. When a company tries to invent slang or catchphrases, another alien race decides to not give us warp drive.
Kiddification of otherwise appealing things: The gaming industry has learned and forgotten this lesson more times than I can count. Making a cute version of a game that kids are already interested in is often insulting to the kids in question and a fast road to bankruptcy while using boxes of unsold games as furniture in the office.
So I guess what I'm rooting for are more things that are great no matter how old or young you are. Some examples (I think) include: "Schoolhouse Rock," the "Lego" video games, most (if not all) "Pixar" movies, and I'd include the "Harry Potter" novels in there as well (though I thought the last one was a tad long in spots and Harry got very wordy in what was supposed to be the climax of the book). Now turn down that noise and get off my lawn. :)
But enough ranting, let's have some good news: It looks like Futurama will keep its original voice actors, which is a huge step towards it not getting canceled along with Fox executives receiving unspeakable things in the mail. So I look forward to at least one more season of (language warning) mind bending future-stuff in animated form. In other TV news, it looks like SifFy is going to take another crack at Riverworld. It's got Alan "Nightcrawler" Cumming in it (and he's blue again), so it ought to be worth a look-see.
And I promise, no "Jonas Brothers" are present in the linkdump:
- We take you now to the theater for a little culture: "I Can Haz Cheezburger: The Musical.
- If you've ever wanted to have a guide to dancing like the characters from "Peanuts," your dreams have come true.
- I'm a big Annie Lennox fan (hey, she did the LOTR song, "Into the West," so that's some geek points right there), and she recently gave DJ Earworm her studio masters and he's remixed something pretty amazing.
- Even if you never plan to play the Star Trek MMO, this cache of screenshots are still very, very pretty.
- Here's an odd little puzzle game: Saunavihta. Try to get the little guy into the "sauna smoke" by clicking away white shapes.
- How much comfort and prestige is your comic collection worth? How about some hand-crafted hardwood furniture to store them in? His homepage has a lot of other pretty nifty woodworking products.
- I'm really having a hard time remembering to use all the social networking available to me. I think my lacking this timepiece is to blame. :)
- Here's a sequel to a fun game we've previously posted: Splitter 2. Cut and slice various parts of the level to allow the ball to reach the coal.
- What more needs to be said other than pie on a stick?
- Zippo lighters have been made with just about every design possible, including ones with comic book characters, but they finally made one I'd like to carry around.
- It's like "Smash TV," except with Wall Street zombies: Day Traders of the Dead has you shooting up the financial forces of darkness for goodies and weapon upgrades!