I totally agree that it was a relatively "honest" depiction of that kind of thing, but the question becomes whether or not we need a visual depiction of it. This isn't a movie for children, it's a movie for people who listen to "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me" on NPR (if the audience I saw the movie with was any indication). So, if it's a movie for adults, then it is (actual for real) children pushing boners into each other for adult eyes. And THAT is the part that makes it a little weird. This isn't a particularly subversive paragraph in Bridge to Tarabithia or whatever. This is fetishized childhood for people who haven't been children in decades.
For the record, "Cronenbergian" body-horror, if that's even a thing, was established AFTER Alien because Alien came out in 1979 which was pre Scanners, Dead Zone, The Fly, Dead Ringers and most of Cronenberg's real films. But that's not the point you were trying to make so forget it.
One of the main things all astronauts hate is having to wear those goddamned helmets and they always take them off the very first opportunity that they get. #SPACEFACT
Well, except that Old Many Weyland came to the planet to get cured of being old or whatever. So poisoning a crew member doesn't really have anything to do with that (and neither does forcing a young woman to carry an aggressive 24-hour octopus baby to term). And everyone picked up on his "how far would you go" stuff, which was about as clear as his oedipal stuff about being mad that your creator doesn't care that he made you, but that's not permission nor is it an explanation of his motivation. (If, for example, David just wanted to kill everyone, he had multiple opportunities to do so.)
I'm going to respond to you now!
I'm sorry that you feel like YOU PERSONALLY have somehow come under attack for caring about the future of a show that you love. Honestly, that was never the intention. Everyone is entitled to their opinions and should go ahead and enjoy whatever they want to enjoy in the world of entertainment (and MARRIAGE!), which is not only an obvious truth, but is also a thing that Videogum has worked hard to state outright since its very beginnings. We support a woman's right to choose...what she watches on TV! (Gotcha! Also: good abortion "joke"!) So, please, obviously, yes! Community! You love it! That's great!
But, so, what's the problem? I'm not telling you not to love it. Love it! We shouldn't be arguing even. I guess the thing that I am making fun of, if we need to go back to that and unpack it a little bit, is everyone's moral outrage at a thing that is inherently built into the system to which Dan Harmon signed on for employment. Like, you can think Hollywood is weird or gross or lame or stupid because it definitely is. But Dan Harmon of ALL PEOPLE knows how that game is played. That dude has been working steadily for years and finally got his own show on network television, which is not a thing that most people get. So, he had tacitly agreed to play by the rules. And one of those rules is that if you don't earn the network a certain amount of money by getting enough people to watch your show, they will either cancel your show or fire you. Most shows actually get canceled, as you well know. The fact the show is even going to be on still should be of some comfort to you. It's a suggestion that the network agrees with you that there's something good about it that's worth working on. (You could also make the argument that the network simply sees a syndication finish-line approaching and want to cross it for purely financial reasons, which again, see above, is pretty standard and who cares. Go for it!) I don't know Dan Harmon. I don't care either way. I mean, it's always sad when someone is out of work or has their feelings hurt. Those are ultimately negative things. But he'll almost certainly be fine. He's going to live to fight another day, I bet. But this fixation on him as The One True Person Who Ever Had Something Happen To Him In Showbusiness is ridiculous and not worth everyone's time. There is actual stuff to talk about in the world, and someone's TV writing job isn't one of them.
Moreover, the whole thing to me just reeks of this creeping sense of entitlement that fans of things have. Let's pretend Community got canceled whole cloth: you still got three seasons of a very convoluted and relatively unpopular show that you happened to love. That's a lot of seasons! And no one can take them away from you! You can buy the DVDs and watch them until your hover grandkids are like "what are those weird plastic things you keep watching? And why did you allow the Earth to become covered in water? And why do you smell like rotting vegetables all the time?" You don't DESERVE more episodes of a show just because you like it. That's just not how things work. If you take Arrested Development as the perennial example, a show that I personally LOVE much much more than I ever even liked Community (no offense, Dan Harmon), I was never surprised or sad that the show got canceled because NO ONE WATCHED IT. It has become this cult hit, but no one actually watched it when it was on, and this was in a pre-DVR world when you couldn't even make the argument that people were just watching it on their own schedule. The fact that FOX allowed it to go on for three seasons was actually kind of INCREDIBLE and a true act of generosity towards the show's very vocal fans. Just because you like something doesn't mean someone else has to funnel millions of dollars into it with poor rates of return on their investment. This might sound like I am arguing in support of The Man, which I guess I kind of am. I think we should all treat each other with kindness and generosity and I think there should be more financial equity in the world, not to mention basic human rights, but when it comes to a business wanting to earn money, I think that's just how that works and if it didn't work that way we wouldn't have had any episodes of Community to begin with. This is not about big people fucking over little people. This is about big people being big people. The little people don't even come into it.
Finally, I completely and whole-heartedly reject the dichotomy you have set up where everything is either Community or Two and a Half Men. That's just utter bullshit. We have never in the history of television had as much good television on at one time as we do now. That's actually WHY this Community stuff happened in the first place. The current economic structure of television and movies no longer really makes sense, or at least not the sense that it used to make, and so everyone is scrambling to figure it out. The highest rated programming among the "lucrative" 18-24 year old market is actually Adult Swim. No one knows how to make sense of the DVR ratings combined with the Hulu ratings combined with the broadcast ratings because ratings is simply a system for selling to advertisers and most people don't watch ads on DVR so how do you figure it out? But people are trying, and they're trying in creative ways. 10 years ago, NBC wouldn't have bothered even trying to develop Community. And if you don't like what they end up replacing it with, they know that you're just going to go watch something else on FX or HBO or AMC or any of the other niche cable content providers that are cutting into their business. But you know for a FACT that there's lots of great TV, so please don't throw this Two and a Half Men business in my face. There is clearly room for other stuff in addition to that. And to make your own point, MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS OF PEOPLE genuinely ENJOY that show, and by pointing to it as the worst thing that could possibly happen, you're basically doing the same thing that you accused me of doing, which is making people feel bad about themselves just for liking something. You shouldn't do that.
I hope this helps.
Haha. Usually when people complain about the popularity of a movie like this it's because they just don't like superheroes in general, which makes sense, but I like that you just hate THESE superheroes. X-Men are cool but Iron Man can go fuck himself. I'm not making fun of you, I genuinely appreciate that you feel this way. Good luck!
Well, wait, no, it doesn't mean that. I mean, if you're going to be the Grammar Police then you should at least recognize that the comma makes it very clear that the headline isn't referring to Zooey's asshole but is calling the reader an asshole. Looks like someone has to throw THEMSELF in Boring Jail.
I have a lot to say about this but I am 100% certain that it would only make you MORE upset, so let me just say that I am sorry if what I wrote bothered you and/or "oh, wow."
Comedian Pete Holmes had a very funny bit about the argument that the advertising company wins because we're all talking about it, which is really only true if we are also running out and buying Honda CR-V's by the handful. Which we aren't. Talk is, as they say, cheap.
Wait a second, FaceTaco. I mean, I appreciate your viewpoint because that is exactly the viewpoint I was curious in hearing about, but if you think that Barack Obama doesn't take his position seriously, you are out of your mind. Like, disagree with any of his politics, and find in him any number of personal characteristics that you dislike (arrogance, condescension, aloofness, whatever) but if there is one thing that guy takes seriously it is his position? Not only has his entire first term been dedicated towards winning a second term, but there are any number of first-hand reports of the seriousness and gravity with which he treats the specific responsibility of "being president."
Also, you are wrong to say that his job is not to win over a crowd. You might find this way of doing it annoying, and that makes sense. But giving a dry, humorless policy speech is actually just a different strategy for winning a crowd. All of politics is performance art and play-acting. So, like, you can hate the way he goes about it (the way people hated George W. Bush's joke about finding WMDs under the oval office couch) but it IS actually part of the job.
Also, if you think that he personally hired Kal Penn to work in his youth outreach communications office, again, come on. That is such a low-level non-issue.
Also.
I have some things to say about this, but with this post in particular, I think I have written myself into a corner and will just have to keep it to myself. CARRY ON!
You know how a lot of people will talk about hitting a rough patch in their lives where nothing seems to be going their way, but then they find that one movie, album, TV show, podcast, Etsy seller, or whatever that they can hold onto through the darkness and then later they will tell you that this movie, album, TV show, podcast, Etsy seller, or whatever saved their life because it helped them get through a really dark time? Well, I haven't seen Mirror Mirror yet, but I have been in a really dark place, so I am so excited for this movie to come out and for me to get to hold onto it as the faintest glimmer of hope in a hopeless world. And I can't wait to one day meet Tarsem Singh and tell him that he saved my life. With his movie Mirror Mirror. That I saw when I was sad.
THANK YOU, MIRROR MIRROR TRAILER. (Posted to Yelp.)
Wait. I'm totally willing to accept that someone could find this type of usage of the question mark to be affected or annoying, but all of the other stuff you just said is nonsense. If you're reading that much weird intentionality into the psychology behind simply trying to get the reader to uptalk a sentence because it does seem (at least to the writer at times, even if he is wrong, which he very well might be, and he is going to take all of this into consideration) more conversational, into some kind of deep-seated neediness and/or some kind of eschewing of responsibility of his/her own opinions, that seems very far-fetched and like it probably says a lot more about you the reader than him/her the writer.
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