[HN Gopher] The Superhero Industry Hates Children (2019)
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The Superhero Industry Hates Children (2019)
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 158 points
Date : 2022-04-22 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hmmdaily.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hmmdaily.com)
| photochemsyn wrote:
| THe 1950s are calling, and they want their talking points back...
|
| https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/scare-tactics-...
|
| > "On April 21, 1954, Dr. Frederic Wertham strode into the U.S.
| Senate hearing room in a white lab coat, a symbol of the same
| authority he wielded while writing _Seduction of the Innocent_ ,
| his condemnation of the comics industry, especially the horror
| genre, as corrupting America's youth. The Senate Subcommittee on
| Juvenile Delinquency, led by Senator Estes Kefauver fresh from
| his victory over organized crime, put comics on trial, which
| Trombetta explains became more of a show trial. It was a foregone
| conclusion that comics would never be the same again. An entire
| industry of horror comics disappeared literally overnight. Words
| such as "horror" and "terror" were banned by the new code, and
| even "crime" faced heavy restrictions. "It was, in true Orwellian
| fashion," Trombetta writes, "as if the government thought bad
| things would vanish if they couldn't be read or thought about.""
| dharbin wrote:
| Yeah, they're old, but are the talking points wrong?
| bombcar wrote:
| 1950? It goes back further than that:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Socrates
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| It's not clear to me how these two are the same?
| asciimov wrote:
| The great thing about comics is there is one for everybody.
|
| Instead of heading to your local comic book store, which is
| geared toward people with disposable income, you head to your
| local library or children's section of a large bookstore, you
| will find way more age appropriate content for your seven year
| old. I'm willing to bet your seven year old will understand and
| relate better to these comics than anything on the wall at the
| comic book store.
|
| Depending on the maturity level of your child, you are just a few
| short years away from them being able to handle the nitty gritty
| comics of today.
| einpoklum wrote:
| The superhero obsession of US culture is quite strange to me.
|
| > A seven-year-old has a clean, first-order appreciation of
| superheroes. They like hero comics because the comics have
| heroes: bold, strong, vividly colored good guys to fight off the
| bad guys and make the world safe.
|
| This too is somewhat artificially created. It's not false, but...
| what analogy shall I use here? I guess it's like how kids, and
| not just kids, love sugar, and sugary-sweet food. Refined sugar
| is problematic as its prevalence in your diet increases; it's
| also somewhat of an addiction; and also, it's out of its original
| context in sugarcane (or honey, fruit, etc.). US superheroes are
| a bit like that: A particular refinement of an aspect of stories
| of heroism and adventure.
|
| Like refined sugar, superhero films (and to a much lesser extent
| comics) are actively pushed by large corporations. And while
| neither is a conspiracy to poison people, they both need to be
| well enough aligned with what corporations want to habituate
| people to, diet-wise and culture-wise; and that should also be
| kept in mind.
| irrational wrote:
| This reminds me of the C.S. Lewis quote " When I was ten, I read
| fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been
| found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I
| became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of
| childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
|
| This also reminds me of finding boxes full of superhero comic
| books from the 1950s and 1960s in my grandparent's basement. They
| had belonged to my father and his siblings when they were
| teenagers. I loved reading those old comic books where every
| story had a complete story between two covers. Where it was
| always clear who the good guys and who the bad guys were (and if
| the good guy was acting bad, you knew that by the end of the
| story it would be revealed that they were pretending or being
| controlled by a bad guy). The stories were plain fun and
| uplifting. Such a joy to read. Decades later I tried getting into
| the modern comic books. I was disappointed by them. They were all
| serial stories that required reading multiple volumes to get the
| whole story. The themes were ones of depression, cynicism,
| bleakness, sadness, hurt, pain. I simply couldn't relate and
| yearned for the comics of my youth in my grandparent's basement.
| But, I still really enjoy the marvel movies ;-)
| xahrepap wrote:
| I can relate to that quote (as I'm sure most people can).
|
| When I was in middle-school, Pokemon TCG was still really new
| and popular ... "with children". Me and my friends played
| together, but I was horrified of the idea of anyone else at
| school finding out. I remember walking to a friends house with
| my cards and ran into some of our school friends walking the
| other way, and I did everything I could to hide my box so they
| didn't ask what I was carrying.
|
| What a childish thing to do ;P
|
| Now that I'm older, I hang my most prized Pokemon cards behind
| me like a poster. I don't care if my webcam picks them up
| during work. And I love to tell people about it.
|
| I make sure to never show shame around my kids about "little
| kid things". Or even "girly" things or "boy-ee" things. When my
| son started to show shame for liking "pink" things, I slowly
| started including pink and purple as my favorite colors when my
| kids asked. I gently yet swiftly squash any "barbies are for
| girls" type of comments when they're spoken around me.
|
| Sometimes I'll walk in on my young teen son shamelessly playing
| Barbies or other dolls with his little sister. I say nothing
| except things like, "Looks like you're having fun!" It makes me
| sad to think of the day when the wrong friend finds out and
| teases him for it. Hopefully by then he's gained enough self-
| esteem to not listen.
| mech422 wrote:
| >>Where it was always clear who the good guys and who the bad
| guys were
|
| As I get older, and the world gets more chaotic, I find I like
| this more and more.. When you have to vet the weatherman saying
| it's raining, its nice to have something
| simple/straightforward.
|
| As a kid, I always had a softspot for 80s spiderman - nothing
| ever went right for the poor guy :-P
| itbeho wrote:
| I remember the days when a superhero would fight an army of bad
| guys, against overwhelming odds, and win. Now it's an army of
| superheros (Avengers as an example) against one bad guy and
| their win is often ambiguous. It just doesn't have the same
| payoff for the time spent consuming the entertainment.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Fully agree. When I watched The Boys, which was highly rated and
| marked as a comedy on IMDB, I was honestly disturbed by all the
| blood and gore. And there wasn't anything funny in it.
|
| Comedy and Satire should be different categories. And we should
| split 18+ into "18+ because of violence" and "16+sex".
| thomasahle wrote:
| > My seven-year-old really wanted to see that last Avengers
| movie, and he really wanted not to see it; that is, he wished it
| were a movie he could see, but he understood that it was,
| instead, a movie designed to scare and sadden him--a movie
| actively hostile to people like him.
|
| I'm sure he understands.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I was never into comics as a kid, but started reading some after
| a podcaster I like sold me on how good they can be. I subscribed
| to Marvel Unlimited, and started reading the older comics (from
| the 40s, 50s, and 60s)
|
| They are a lot of fun once you understand the art form, but there
| are a lot of problematic things with them, just like any work
| from 80 years ago.
|
| I got into reading some of them with my 5 year old daughter, and
| she loves the old ones. I sometimes have to explain some things
| to her, and why some things we read aren't ok, but she likes
| them.
|
| We also found quite a few more modern comics that are perfect for
| kids her age. We love reading Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur
| together, and we also love reading Squirrel Girl comics. We stay
| away from some of the more dark comics that feature the most
| popular super heroes.
|
| I guess my point is that there are a lot more super hero comics
| than just the MCU ones, and some are much more kid appropriate
| than others. I appreciate a world that has adult and kid comics.
| Why can't we have both?
|
| One other thing I noticed with my two kids (6 and 3 now) is that
| what scares and traumatizes them the most aren't the things that
| scare adult me the most. For example, I am way more disturbed by
| death than my kids. Characters dying don't bother my kids like it
| does me. I think it is likely due to not really understanding
| what death is, exactly. They have not lost people and don't
| understand the permanence.
|
| On the other hand, random things that don't seem scary at all can
| scare the crap out of them. My 3 year old will want to watch the
| fight to the death between sharptooth and little foot's mom in
| Land Before Time over and over, but freaks out over the opening
| montage in Moana.
| dleslie wrote:
| I think I disagree with the fundamental premise that children
| shouldn't be exposed to, or don't enjoy, grim characters and dark
| stories.
|
| I remember being not much older than the author's seven year old
| and gleefully flipping through Spawn #1. At the time, I was
| already a fan of Judge Dredd and TMNT comics. (If you're unaware,
| the TMNT comics were _violent_). My favourite films were
| Roadwarrior and Evil Dead 2!
|
| It seems odd to me to suggest that death and misery aren't
| experiences kids encounter or should encounter. Perhaps its
| uniquely modern, but it seems to me that even the sheltered
| children of the west must encounter a passing of a pet or a
| family member from time to time. It would certainly help to allow
| them to explore those concepts through art and entertainment, in
| order to process the feelings they're trying to understand.
| munificent wrote:
| Something I heard once that has always stuck with me: "They can
| take everything from you except your contempt."
|
| The idea is when so much of our agency is stripped from us, often
| the last thing we can hold onto--which we hold onto tightly
| _because_ it is the last thing--is comtempt. You can crush me
| under your boot. You can make me sing the party 's songs. But you
| can't make me _believe_ them. You may own my body but not my
| mind.
|
| We in the US are living in a time of deep cynicism and distrust
| of all of the institutions Americans used to hold dear. The
| degree to which that distrust is misplaced is an open question
| but the distrust itself is unequivocal.
|
| I look at the current culture of anti-heroes and dark superheroes
| as a reaction to that. We are so distrustful of anyone or thing
| claiming to be good that a brightly-colored positive superhero
| today would earn only contempt from us. We'd assume it must be a
| deceitful facade.
|
| All that leaves us is morally corrupted dark anti-heroes that are
| least openly flawed and whose contempt for the other institutions
| of justice mirrors our own.
| krapp wrote:
| >All that leaves us is morally corrupted dark anti-heroes that
| are least openly flawed and whose contempt for the other
| institutions of justice mirrors our own.
|
| Except most modern superhero movies aren't like that at all, if
| anything much of the genre seems to be a tonal rejection of the
| cynicism and nihilism you're describing.
| jimbokun wrote:
| With properties like The Boys, Bright Burn, and Batman movies
| and spinoffs like Joker, it's starting to sneak back in.
|
| There was a similar cycle in the late 80s and 90s, when there
| was a rush of "mature" super hero comics.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I don't think it's much of a cycle, there has been a
| constant undercurrent of "mature" cynical superhero comics
| and movies for decades now. In the '00s we had the
| Christian Bale Batman movies, and adaptations of V for
| Vendetta and Watchmen. In the '10s we had Deadpool and the
| Zack Snyder DC movies with their unprecedented cynical take
| on Superman. It all continues today with Venom and Batman
| spinoffs.
| dspillett wrote:
| I'm more than old enough to have a 13-year old offspring without
| any age-of-consent laws being broken1, and I distinctly remember
| there been dark tones in comic books and2 related cartoons back
| in my youth. It isn't a new thing.
|
| I suspect that either there is some selective memory going on
| here, or the writer's parents were very careful about what parts
| of the comics world they were exposed to.
|
| [1] old enough to have a 26-year-old one even
|
| [2] though much less so as the grimier ones didn't get the TV
| treatment, or the grime was mostly washed off
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Gargoyles, Batman, Spiderman cartoons from the late 90s... they
| were dark, compared of Power Rangers, which was on at the same
| time.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Those comics were visually dark and had some darkish themes
| but they weren't much darker than Power Rangers or anything
| else on at the time. If anything they were more sophisticated
| shows than Power Rangers.
|
| That's not to say Power Rangers was _bad_ , but Spider-Man
| and Gargoyles were interesting in that they used multi-
| episode storylines with multiple acts. Outside of their
| visual motifs they weren't dark series. They were just
| offering narratives for older kids that were reading books
| and comics and playing video games.
| rebuilder wrote:
| As a kid, Daredevil was my favourite. It was pretty bleak,
| didn't seem to bother me.
| kerblang wrote:
| Yes, the transition is really an 80's-90's thing. A lot of
| films are basically using comics from that era as storyboards.
| The few superhero films of that era were generally lightweight
| fare based on much older comics.
| batman-farts wrote:
| For me, this brings to mind two examples I can remember of
| superhero comics failing even their now-core audiences of adults,
| or adolescents developing towards adults.
|
| I quit reading Marvel comics towards the end of the first Civil
| War storyline (wow, exactly 15 years ago!). Peter Parker, as
| Spider-Man, becomes Tony Stark's poster boy for superheroes
| revealing their secret identities and registering with the
| government. But after a crisis of conscience, he defects from
| Stark's program and goes on the run with Aunt May and Mary Jane.
| A bounty goes out, and Aunt May takes a sniper bullet meant for
| Peter. In order to save Aunt May, Peter and Mary Jane make a deal
| with the conveniently Marvel-branded, IP-protected version of the
| Devil. The cost is that history is altered so that Peter and Mary
| Jane were never married, and neither they nor anyone else would
| remember them ever being married. I believe some of the writers
| at the time came right out and said that it was easier to go back
| to writing angst-ridden, "will they or won't they" romance
| storylines than to try to write two adult characters maintaining
| a successful marriage. For me as a young adult, Peter the
| successful husband was a much more desirable hero figure than a
| less mature Peter who struggled with women. That caused me to
| drop Marvel comics, and I have seldom gone back since, even
| though I understand they've done a number of better-written and
| more impactful storylines since.
|
| DC Comics, on the other hand, has seemed absolutely desperate to
| catch up with the Disney-Marvel juggernaut during the past
| decade, and one of the ways that's manifested is trying to market
| the Joker's girlfriend Harley Quinn as some kind of perverse
| equivalent to a Disney princess. Since that means Harley can no
| longer be a straight villain, they recently introduced the
| Joker's new girlfriend, Punchline. Punchline's super-villain
| origin story is that she was on a high-school field trip to a TV
| station when the Joker broke in, took everybody hostage, and
| forced her to read whatever insane screed he had prepared live
| on-air. As a result of this, over the years, she became more and
| more obsessed with the Joker, and by the time she was a young
| adult, was putting out a podcast tracing the Joker's most famous
| crimes. The Joker caught wind of it, recruited her as a new love
| interest and protege, and off the storyline goes. If my kids were
| reading this, I would need to sit them down and explain that it
| is reinforcing strongly negative stereotypes about how women
| respond to trauma and abuse. The writers and editors fail to do
| so within the context of the story, as they're mainly looking for
| a new anti-hero to market, since that's what's sold so well for
| years now.
| sremani wrote:
| Comics are mythology minus wisdom.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| Comics are often created with a greater idea in mind, and then
| continued by someone else without that idea.
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| The author says they loved superheroes as a child, but assumes
| that was because the content back then was kid-friendly. In
| reality if you look at comic books from decades ago they were _a
| lot_ more "adult". There was an order of magnitude more death,
| blood, gore and general adult themes. Heck the PG-13 rating
| didn't even exist before the 80s.
|
| The difference was that there was a lot less supervision those
| days, and no one would blink at a 7 year old browsing through the
| aisles alone at a bookstore. Groups of kids sneaking into an R
| rated movie was perfectly routine.
|
| So it isn't the superhero industry that changed but our own
| treatment of children.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| The kids grew up and the corps figured it was easier to sell to
| the already hooked than compete in the even more vapid trinkets
| world of the newly young?
|
| Young adults used to migrate from teen pulp to more in-depth
| fiction. Nowadays they just seem directed to cuddle in
| infantilized cultural substitute.
| juve1996 wrote:
| Is there any evidence of this, at all?
| jeffwask wrote:
| The problem IMO is deeper than this superficial take. My view is
| that the hopelessness that has invaded much of modern life is
| soaking into all aspects of media. Star Trek which was a Utopia
| is now a dystopia. The most recent Batman was grim dark and even
| the Marvel stuff with it's coating of Disney sprinkles isn't
| super positive.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > a movie designed to scare and sadden him--a movie actively
| hostile to people like him
|
| Superhero hater jumps a shark? I'm pretty sure there's nothing in
| marketing-driven Marvel or DC about intentionally being hostile
| to an audience.
|
| This theme pervades the piece, a sort of self-created victimhood
| combined with a sense of entitlement.
| nimbius wrote:
| true story: my coworker gave away her sons comic book collection
| because she found out one of the batman books portrays the caped
| crusader in a homosexual relationship, So id say the superhero
| industry doesnt hate kids per-say, it just has an unfortunately
| callous ability to expose which of your formerly well-intentioned
| parents is secretly an insufferable child.
| robocat wrote:
| Bizarre: persumably she thought the comics were bad for her
| child, however they are okay for another child?
| rnd0 wrote:
| Well, yes -it does.
|
| Children have not been the primary demographic target of comics
| since the mid to late eighties.
| Multicomp wrote:
| Agreed. There's even a trope[1] named after the phenomenon,
| though I'm sure the trope itself was around before it was
| widely applied to comic books in said 80s.
|
| [1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarkerAndEdgier
| ineedasername wrote:
| It doesn't hate children. It created content geared towards the
| most lucrative audience, which skews older, that's all.
|
| Batman in 1989 showed that superhero movies could still be
| extremely popular & attract an older audience. It also sold so
| much merchandise-- consumed primarily by younger members of the
| audience-- that by the time the 4th movie "Batman & Robin" came
| around merchandise & its design was driving movie creation rather
| than quality content and the genre went into hiatus for a few
| years.
|
| When the genre reemerged with the 2002 Spiderman movie and
| subsequent hits & creation of the MCU, movie makers seemed to
| realize that they had to appeal to the older audience as well as
| those on the younger tween+ spectrum, even if it meant giving up
| ticket sales on for the youngest. And the extreme popularity of
| the movies made them enough of a cultural phenomenon that they
| still sell tons of merch to younger kids anyway.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I took my son to see the first Iron Man movie when he was around
| that same age (maybe a little younger). He's 18 now, and has yet
| to become a burned-out, drug-addicted misanthropic serial killer.
| Maybe, just maybe, you're being a little unreasonably
| overprotective.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| Maybe read the article again. The author isn't saying they're
| some kind of "bad influence" that are gonna turn kids into
| serial killers.
| seoaeu wrote:
| All these referenced movies are rated PG-13. No rating system
| is perfect, but I think there's at least a very reasonable case
| to be made that they're not age appropriate for 7 year olds
| cm2012 wrote:
| I'd guess that 80% of 12 year old boys are watching hardcore
| porn/whatever else they want on the internet, so it becomes a
| farce I think in any case.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Well that's not good for them either.
| paxys wrote:
| Huge difference between ages 7 and 12. If your 7 year old
| is watching hardcore porn on the internet I'd say that is a
| problem.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Yes, but the point is that PG-13 isn't hardcore porn. If
| 12 year olds are watching porn, _maybe_ , _just maybe_ ,
| most 7 year olds can handle a PG-13 film.
| paxys wrote:
| Like I said above, it depends. PG-13 is the default film
| rating these days. PG films that have a few extra
| mentions of "fuck" or R-rated films which cleaned up some
| of the blood and gore both qualify. A large chunk of them
| are absolutely not appropriate for 7 year olds.
| paxys wrote:
| PG-13 has a wide enough range these days to be entirely
| meaningless. There is no harm in taking a 7-10 year old to
| see an Avengers film, IMO, but of course I wouldn't say the
| same for the Dark Knight trilogy.
| tombert wrote:
| Doesn't Endgame literally have Thanos being decapitated? I
| don't think it'll scar most kids but I don't remember any
| decapitations happening in the Dark Knight movies.
| thomasahle wrote:
| I still remember Simba's dad falling and being trampled
| to death by gnus, when I was 5. I don't think that
| traumatised me or my friends. It can be good for kids to
| see sad things happening in movies, so they know it's not
| weird if something sad happens to them.
|
| A quick, clean decapitation of a bad guy is hardly going
| to set a permanent mark. Nobody cared when Scar also died
| at the end of said movie.
| dleslie wrote:
| Not to mention Scar being _eaten by a mob of hyenas_ at
| the end...
| tombert wrote:
| You know, as a kid I didn't really realize _what_ the
| hyenas did to Scar. I just knew they were mad at him and
| he wasn 't in the movie anymore.
|
| It wasn't until I watched it again when I was 17 or so
| and I realized how completely dark that actually was.
| dleslie wrote:
| My seven and four year old girls definitely understood
| what the hungry hyenas were doing; but then, I've never
| really sheltered them from the horrors of nature.
| thomasahle wrote:
| I wonder how it works psychologically. Even in Avengers,
| the "good people" turning into dust clearly affected the
| audience much more than "the bad people" being killed in
| various ways during the movie.
| robonerd wrote:
| Media that highlights this dynamic is interesting, though
| it implies some fourth-wall breaking. _Funny Games_ did
| it (and I hated it, but it was interesting.) Sometimes
| video games do it too; Metal Gear Solid criticizes the
| player for enjoying all the killing.
| robonerd wrote:
| When I was a young kid, I hated Disney movies. The
| villains were always too mean and scary for me (I still
| hate Ursula), and besides that, those movies had too much
| drama that made me feel extremely anxious. My aversion to
| violence and sadism in media wore off eventually, but is
| that good? Maybe I was just excessively sensitive as a
| kid and needed to be exposed to even more stuff like that
| even earlier on. I'm not sure about that, but I don't
| have much fondness for those movies even in retrospect.
| dleslie wrote:
| American PG-13 movies regularly include hyper-violence, human
| torture, and gore.
|
| But yes, the rating shelters children from women's nipples,
| everyone's genitals, and naughty words.
| D13Fd wrote:
| Parents can just watch the movies themselves and figure out
| whether their individual kids can handle watching it.
|
| That's what we do. It works great. I know our kids and what
| they can handle. Some PG-13 movies are fine for our 5-6 yr
| olds, some are not.
| Permit wrote:
| > I think there's at least a very reasonable case to be made
| that they're not age appropriate for 7 year olds
|
| What is the case? What is the bad outcome that happens to a 7
| year old who watches a PG-13 movie? (Or more generally, a
| population of 7 year olds who watch PG-13 movies)
|
| Like, what's the bad "thing" that we should be able to see?
| kbutler wrote:
| Nightmares, crying through the night, anxiety about fantasy
| monsters and apocalyptic destruction.
|
| Yes, these can happen without the movie. Yes, some children
| will be fine with them. No, you won't always realize what
| the child is having a hard time processing.
|
| The counsel for "parental guidance" is literal.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| When I was 7, my mom thought it was a good idea to buy me
| a Batman comic book (not realizing it was meant for
| adults). There was a particular scene where the Joker
| knocks on the door of the police commissioner's house.
| His daughter opens the door, and the Joker shoots her in
| her stomach, while smiling. [1]
|
| The next 2 years, I was terrified of any doors that would
| open to dark rooms.
|
| [1] https://marvballrutodc.quora.com/When-the-Joker-
| shoots-Barba...
| saint_fiasco wrote:
| The bad thing is that the 7 year old will get bored and
| fall asleep halfway through the movie.
|
| The PG-13 movies are optimized for an older audience, and
| that leaves children with fewer, lower quality options for
| entertainment.
| binkHN wrote:
| > The bad thing is that the 7 year old will get bored...
|
| This. There's enough adult content in these films that
| even my 12-year-old nephew gets bored.
|
| > The PG-13 movies are optimized for an older audience,
| and that leaves children with fewer, lower quality
| options for entertainment.
|
| I think there's still plenty decent kid-focused content,
| you might just need to go back some years for the more
| wholesome non-big budget stuff.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| They might think it's OK to say "fuck", as long as they
| only say it once every 120 minutes!
| apozem wrote:
| You should read the article. You're arguing against a position
| the author does not take.
|
| I know this is the internet and everyone just reads the
| headline, but comments like this are frustrating.
| whiddershins wrote:
| But isn't the first iron man movie more like the old school
| comics than what he describes?
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| People are exposed to all kinds of things when they are kids
| and they grow up just fine. I've scarcely met anyone who felt
| that _they themselves_ were negatively affected by or unable to
| deal with something in a popular TV show they wanted to see as
| a child--but then they have kids and go into this weird
| neurotic state of hyper-vigilance.
| notpachet wrote:
| I was pretty scarred by the first Saw movie, even though I
| only made it about halfway through the first torture scene. I
| don't understand why people want to subject themselves to
| that kind of psychological violence.
| docandrew wrote:
| I enjoyed the first Saw, but to me it played out as more of
| a murder mystery than "torture porn" ala Hostel. It was
| dark in the same vein as Seven, but what made it
| interesting was the "whodunnit" aspect, not the horror.
| filoleg wrote:
| Probably because different people could process the same
| thing differently, and derive enjoyment from different
| feelings.
|
| For example, i like movies with really convoluted/branching
| multi-timeline stories where you dont really have much of
| an idea of what's going on, and you have to uncover it as
| you go (e.g., Inception). It makes my head "hurt" in a good
| way, and i like it because of that. I know plenty of people
| who dislike those movies for the exact same reason I like
| it for. And i hear the same "why would anyone want to
| subject themselves to this" critique about those movies
| from them.
|
| I couldn't make it through Saw either, and I am not into
| those types of movies at all. But i can totally see plenty
| of valid reasons for why a person would enjoy it. It is
| essentially a really twisted escape room story with death
| games. And all that violence and gore just ups the stakes
| of the death games, thus making it feel more grotesque and
| intense. They might like how uncomfortable that movie makes
| them feel, similarly to how I like intensely convoluted
| multitimeline mystery stories that make my head "hurt" in a
| good way.
| fattless wrote:
| Off topic, but you might enjoy aovie called primer. Super
| short, low budget film about time travel. It's got a
| convoluted, but consistent timeline and the fun of the
| movie is going back and watching it over and over to
| fully understand what's happening. It's really good
| notpachet wrote:
| I am not sure that this comparison justifies people being
| capable of enjoying something like Saw. It's like
| comparing yoga with, well, actual torture. They both make
| your body hurt.
| filoleg wrote:
| It's like saying you don't understand how someone could
| enjoy playing Call of Duty or any other FPS videogames,
| because it involves killing people in the game, which is
| a terrifying and horrible experience that pretty much no
| one would want to go through irl. So it must be that they
| enjoy murder irl, right?
|
| They don't enjoy the torture parts of Saw, they enjoy how
| that movie overall makes them feel (terrified,
| contemplating certain moral dilemmas, etc.). Like, the
| point of Saw, from what I gathered, was that it put
| people who did terrible things to others into those death
| game circumstances. Which adds a whole other sub-theme of
| "but does it make it less terrible, if they were a
| horrible person?" type of a dilemma. And overall, the
| grotesque nature of the visuals in the movie just serves
| the purpose of highlighting how horrifying it all is, not
| to make people enjoy the torture and think "wow, this is
| kinda fun and lighthearted".
|
| Mind you, I am saying that as someone who cannot really
| stomach horror movies in general. That doesn't mean that
| I cannot see plenty of valid reasons for why people might
| like those movies.
| notpachet wrote:
| Heh, despite being in the prime market for games like
| Call of Duty, I am not able to stomach those either, but
| I take your point. That level of gore just feels like
| such an indelible blot on the whole rest of the
| enterprise that I don't see how anyone would be able to
| taste anything else on the palate, but suppose people do
| have pretty different palates.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I was thinking about something similar recently: I was raised
| in a very christian household, and while I've lost faith in
| divinity, I still look back fondly at being raised that way
| and believe it did instill valuable life lessons that just
| don't require the existence of a god to be valuable. Having
| said all that, I've been finding myself a bit uncomfortable
| with religious books and stories and such which our families
| share with our own young children. The kids seem _so_
| impressionable and religious stuff seems like such overt
| brainwashing from my non-believing adult perspective. But
| these two instincts are in conflict! My children will
| inevitably be less influenced by this than I was (we aren 't
| going to church and Sunday school every week...), and those
| years of constant exposure didn't keep me from developing my
| own views and opinions when I grew up. So my conclusion is
| that maybe I don't need to worry so much about my kids being
| impressionable now because they aren't going to get stuck,
| they're going to keep taking in and incorporating different
| influences for decades, maybe what I need to do instead is
| work hard at answering their questions in a way that keeps
| them curious and gives them room to grow.
| mirntyfirty wrote:
| It's profound the amount of effort that goes into
| influencing and seems as though if the influencers believed
| what they were saying to be true, that they wouldn't feel
| the need to perform so many mental gymnastics. What bothers
| me about these organizations is the overt levels of
| monetary greed and psychological abuse they inflict.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I mostly agree with the first part. But the second part
| is not universally true: my (mainline protestant) church
| growing up was not at all a vehicle for monetary greed,
| and like I was pointing out in my comment, I certainly
| was not psychologically "abused". But some churches are
| vehicles for the greedy and some people are abused; it's
| just not universal.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| Ah yes, the weekly article from a new parent wanting the world to
| be changed to better cater to their children and what they've
| decided is "appropriate" for them.
| apalmer wrote:
| Comics just are too expensive to target a young child audience,
| and as such their story lines reflect that... basically only
| comic hero with big money behind them aimed at kids is spider
| man...
|
| On the other hand I don't know anyone under 20 into American
| comics, but almost all the kids I know read tons of manga and
| watch a bazillion anime joints. And most of them got into it off
| shonen dragon ball and Naruto style cartoons that most have
| childish themes of friendship and hard work
| torginus wrote:
| I generally don't get the outcry about the brooding and dark
| themes in works meant for moody teenagers - which is a constant
| trait of them across space and time.
|
| If we didn't single out superhero comics, we could mention a
| great number of young adult works with dark themes - Harry
| Potter, Hunger Games, Huckleberry Finn, Arthur Gordon Pym, Jack
| London's works just to give some examples of the top of my head.
|
| I'm not a developmental psychologist, and I don't want to
| speculate why teens are this way, but they certainly always have
| been.
| johnyzee wrote:
| It's the infantilization of the newer generations of adults. We
| are now kids until we are in our forties, still playing with Lego
| and Star Wars and hankering for the next Marvel episode. In the
| process, as the article points out, we have co-opted these
| categories and imbued them with a discordant set of adult
| sensibilities which makes them wholly unappealing and
| inappropriate for actual kids. Not even My Little Pony is safe.
|
| Some will probably argue that it's wonderful, finally we allow
| ourselves to let the inner child blossom and bloom into
| adulthood. It just seems to me that it is the worst parts of the
| inner child that we indulge: Escapist, shirking responsibility,
| partial to instant gratification rather than deeper pursuits. I
| know it's a value judgement, it's just sad to me to see grown men
| spend all their time on video games and comic books - not because
| of the formats themselves but because the content is usually
| rubbish. Cultural junk food.
| Fidelix wrote:
| You angered the neckbeards, look at the other comments...
|
| Look, I consume all of this cultural junk food you mentioned.
| But at least I recognise it as such.
|
| The fact that others are in a so vehement denial about it just
| shows EXACTLY how right you are. Minds of childs.
| braingenious wrote:
| I agree that adults engage in all manner of pointless,
| infantilizing ways to waste their time.
|
| The only enormous time and energy sink I've seen that's
| completely universal and worse than marvel movies or funko pops
| is Posting -- random grown adults online that have been told
| that their opinions should hold sway over other random adults
| online because of the sheer value of their opinions. For every
| sad weirdo with a room full of expensive anime figurines, there
| are hundreds of sad, weird Facebook Aunts espousing "the
| importance of traditional values and maybe urine therapy"
|
| It's like we've all got a new commonality. It used to be
| eating, shitting, pissing, fucking and sleeping. Now it's that
| _plus_ "screaming into an uncaring void"
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Star Wars is hardly the first time adults have enjoyed a
| pastime that isn't a "deeper pursuit" or sufficiently thought
| provoking. Heck, "America's pastime" is a game of people
| hitting a ball with a stick, and has drawn millions of viewers.
|
| If you had a time machine and went back a couple thousand
| years, I think you'd find that people already did unproductive
| things for entertainment.
|
| And people have probably been disapproving of younger
| generations enjoying the wrong entertainment for about as long
| as we've done things for entertainment.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| I remember comics in the 1980's and they weren't pure escapist
| fantasy written for children. They tackled very adult subjects
| like reparations and slavery through the Genotia series in the
| X-Men and how the mutants were the stand-ins for the African
| Americans, where Genotia (a fictitious nation) enslaved them
| and America stripped their rights away, using the force of the
| Sentinels to do so. I was maybe 12 during this story line and
| it was foundational on how I treat and view people.
|
| Then there are the comics written by Alan Moore, including The
| Watchmen. Again, I read these during my formative years but
| they are most certainly not aimed at children. They do show
| that these heroes of men, stand ins for the adults of children,
| are fallible. It was door opening in its literary literary
| narrative, not just its illustration (which is not the best, as
| far as comics go - I say to much disapproval).
|
| Many of these comics, which often get maligned as literature
| for children, are very much written for adults by adults,
| tackling adult themes and adult sensibilities. Well, they were.
| Modern comics have lost me, chasing an audience is not a way to
| sell to the audience, I'm afraid. If you want to capture an
| audience, it isn't with focus groups and charts and data, it's
| with story and vision... if you have a real story to tell, you
| hope there's an audience for it. It's an artistic process, not
| one grown in a lab =(
| LegitShady wrote:
| I will agree there were some comics that talked about social
| issues, but even those tended to not hit you on the head with
| the message so hard, and they weren't the majority of comics
| books - they were a small minority of books. Now everyone
| wants to be Alan Moore, or they don't understand why Alan
| Moore is important and they want to dress their heroes up for
| party instead of make interesting stories with cool action.
|
| Comics are alive and well in non-western comic traditions.
| It's the big two (Marvel,DC) as well some some smaller
| companies like IDW that can't produce stories people want to
| read on a regular basis.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| I was never a DC fan, so I can't speak to them, but Marvel
| used to give their writers much more freedom in the 80's
| and early 90's (coincidentally, when comic sales were doing
| great) as well as owning smaller "independent" publishers,
| to let their talent publish small, offbeat, "risky" comics
| with subversive themes. It was GREAT. That's what Image
| Comics was (owned by Marvel). It was like how Large movie
| studios would own small art house film studios in order to
| entice good directors (like Spielberg and Lucas) to make
| blockbusters for them.
|
| Besides, good literature isn't supposed to hit you with
| their message so hard. Good literature isn't a blunt
| instrument to be wielded like some dullard wielding a
| sledge hammer in a slaughter house. It's a gentle and
| subtle poison that changes your mind from the inside. V for
| Vendetta is a great example. On the outside it just shows
| how government is corrupt, but it also shows the risks of
| human experimentation, the problems of corporate and
| government cooperation, how easily people are swayed by a
| compliant media, how easily small things in the beginning
| can have huge consequences far down the line that were
| never suspected, even in a time of conflict and rage the
| need for human connection is important... and all of these
| things are laid out in the sub plot of a comic book. Again,
| from the 80's /sigh ... it was a freer time, when risks
| could be taken =)
| LegitShady wrote:
| >That's what Image Comics was (owned by Marvel)
|
| Image comics was never owned by Marvel - it was founded
| when 7 of the big marvel/DC artists realized they didn't
| need marvel to publish them and left to do their own
| thing. Each artist had his own company (like Silvestri's
| Top Cow, Liefeld's Extreme Studios, Todd Mcfarlane's Todd
| Mcfarlane Productions, Jim Lee's Wildstorm, etc). Image's
| job was to act as a publisher that took minimal financial
| value from the project away from the creators, and didn't
| own any of the IP.
|
| DC comics did have some smaller publishing houses -
| Vertigo comics, Wildstorm Comics after they bought it
| from Jim Lee, etc. Vertigo owned IP so it wasn't creator
| owned stuff, and I think Wildstorm was a mix. Vertigo
| imploded after a woke reboot that lasted from 2018-2019,
| and DC consolidated its adult oriented lines to DC Black
| Label.
|
| Marvel had Icon Comics with creator owned stuff like Kick
| Ass (that later got a movie) but it was really about
| stopping Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar (netflix
| acquired Millarworld Limited in 2017) from shopping those
| IPs out to other places.
|
| >good literature isn't supposed
|
| 99.99% of comic book writers today don't know how to
| write good comics, let alone good literature. DC has
| imploded and gone through multiple rounds of layoffs and
| there are very few of the people who were involved with
| the comics you remember left there anymore. Marvel is
| happy to make garbage if it hires people with the right
| diversity checkboxes (see Vita Ayala, who somehow keeps
| getting more work while being completely unable to write
| stories people want to read).
|
| >V for Vendetta
|
| Originally published in the UK, later put out by Vertigo
| Comics (DC) in its hayday. But Alan Moore is better
| writer than almost everyone left at either of the big
| comics houses these days, and he was writing in a time
| where it was less culturally acceptable to write blunt
| propaganda into comic books.
|
| >Again, from the 80's /sigh ... it was a freer time, when
| risks could be taken
|
| This is because our society has switched. In the 80s the
| left was fighting right wing christian censorship and
| largely winning. Today we have inverted.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| >>Image comics was never owned by Marvel - it was founded
| when 7 of the big marvel writers realized they didn't
| need marvel to publish them and left to do their own
| thing<<
|
| No kidding! Today I learned. Thanks... I really thought
| they opened this up to hold on some of these artists
| (specifically McFarland, who was notoriously hard to work
| with). =)
| JangoSteve wrote:
| Are you sure? The entirety of the comic book genre is
| almost 100% based in social issues. Even going back to the
| first superhero, Superman, in the first issue of Action
| Comics #1, the protagonist rescues a woman about to be
| executed for a wrongful murder conviction (wrongful
| convictions and death penalty), rescues another woman being
| beaten by her husband (domestic abuse), rescues Lois Lane
| who was kidnapped by a gangster for rebuffing his advances
| (sexual harassment), and investigates a senator suspected
| of corruption (political corruption). It also acknowledges
| topics like media propaganda with the Daily Planet editor
| wanting to stir up the news. That's not even to speak of
| later super heroes like the X-Men whose entire existence
| was an exploration in marginalization of groups based on
| genetic differences. If those aren't main plot points based
| on social issues, I'm not sure what is.
|
| Maybe it's just that as kids, we didn't recognize these
| things as being so politically charged as we do in our
| adulthood. Perhaps it's because as kids, it just seemed
| like common sense that these things shouldn't even be
| controversial so much as just being obviously bad things
| against which a hero would fight. It's hard to maintain a
| kid's perspective on things when we leave our kid years.
|
| Edit: wording.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Yes, everything the author describes started in earnest with
| 80s comics.
|
| The trouble is that after Moore completely deconstructed
| super hero comics with Watchmen (and Miracle Man, and Miller
| with Dark Knight, etc.), a new generation thought that's how
| comics were supposed to be.
|
| But Moore demonstrated that if you extrapolate how super
| humans would operate in "the real world", it would quickly
| devolve into a nightmare no one would want to live in.
|
| So "dark" "gritty" "realistic" comics post-Watchmen are
| really kind of pointless. Watchmen did it better than any of
| the current authors, and reading them just leads to getting
| depressed about the depravity of our fantasy worlds, on top
| of all the things to be depressed about the real one. It's
| simultaneously indulgent and self defeating.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The deconstruction era didn't last forever. There was also
| reconstruction, with the likes of Astro City, Marvels,
| Kingdom Come, etc. That was certainly more upbeat and had a
| sense of wonder.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I have been ruined for most "cape" films for the last
| decade or so by reading a brilliant reconstruction of,
| well, the vast majority of cape concepts, tropes, settings,
| powers and such in a web serial called _Worm_ , which is an
| enormous work set in an Earth where "powers" began to
| appear in certain people, called parahumans, around 1982.
| The sequel, _Ward_ tackles even the more abstract concepts,
| like identity against the Revolving Door of Death in
| comics.
|
| Probably the best cape thing I have come across since
| Watchmen.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| How's it compare to _Planetary_?
| LegitShady wrote:
| Worm starts as the story of a bullied girl in high
| school. Some people in the world of worm have the latent
| 'capability' to 'trigger' and get powers when placed in
| extremely stressful situations. The main character
| suffers a prolonged bullying campaign and is stuffed into
| a locker with used feminine hygiene products by her
| bullies.
|
| She triggers, not with super-strength or flying or
| lasers, but with the ability to control all bugs in a
| large radius around herself.
|
| The world is darker than in planetary in that society is
| trying to cope with supervillains (people who trigger are
| often in bad situations that don't lead them to becoming
| superheros) as well as the Endbringers, three seemingly
| unstoppable monsters who alternate attacking a city every
| ~3 months and thus society needs supervillains to help
| combat them.
|
| It's a long read, and I haven't read it in recent years
| so I can't remember how good the writing was. I enjoyed
| it. Never read the sequel since its about a different
| character that I didn't really care about.
|
| Planetary is not really in the same vein of story.
| MrPatan wrote:
| Link? it's not an easy google.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
| jerf wrote:
| "So "dark" "gritty" "realistic" comics post-Watchmen are
| really kind of pointless."
|
| Reminds me of the sheer number of times I've seen "clever"
| people give a dark, gritty take on Alice in Wonderland. The
| weird thing to do with that material is give it an
| unironically bright, sunny, upbeat interpretation. If the
| surface of the original material isn't "dark", it sure
| isn't hiding very deeply under the surface.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >on top of all the things to be depressed about the real
| one. It's simultaneously indulgent and self defeating.
|
| That's one take. When I got into comics as a young adult,
| it wasnt depressing, indulgent, or defeating. It was a
| window look at some of the darker aspects of reality and
| explore and form opinions on them. I could have
| conversations with friends about the totalitarian state
| depicted in V for Vendetta or zero-sum politics and fascism
| in transmetropolitan.
|
| It let me experience exaggerated possible worlds that I
| would not want to live in and that I was sheltered from in
| real life. It helped me form ideals and ideas about what I
| don't want in life.
|
| Probably the only comic that I had a negative impact on me
| that I wasn't over able to overcome reframe as a cautionary
| tale was cerebus the aardvark. It certainly colored the
| world view of several of my friends, sending some into
| levels of mild depression. It contained some seriously
| unsettling takes on life, relationships, and women that
| were hard to shake, and I'm still not sure I have 15 years
| later.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I don't think maturity is a function of one's hobbies, and I
| believe that to do so is to use a poison-the-well fallacy,
| where the poison is the emphasis on the association of the
| hobby with children as a means to argue that there exists a
| common component (=immaturity) shared between the two classes
| of people that has a causal relationship with the hobby in
| question.
|
| Maturity is, in my opinion, a function of one's perception of
| the consequences of their actions and how they weigh said
| consequences. An immature person, regardless of their hobbies
| behaves like a child when they don't consider e.g. the feelings
| of other people or the harm they impose onto others. As we get
| older and accumulate more experiences through interactions with
| other people, we tend to take into consideration a far longer
| and wider horizon. This usually happens by increasing one's
| responsibilities as they become older.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The easy explanation for this is that adults, with the
| disposable income that they never had as children, are good
| consumers of products they couldn't previously afford.
| Nostalgia sells.
|
| You bemoan the consumption of video games and superhero fiction
| as low value content. And you don't blame their formats, but
| their content. But is that right? Past generations were
| dominated by all sorts of cheap, disposable entertainment- soap
| operas, radio shows, pulp fiction. What do yearly superhero
| films resemble? The serial films that arrived at the beginning
| of cinema. Is this base content really so much baser than the
| entertainment of the past?
| thfuran wrote:
| It surely is. After all, how could any modern cinema hope to
| be even half as profound and meaningful as the three stooges?
| openknot wrote:
| I know a few people who spend hours doing intensive work a day
| (PhD program for one, medical school for another), and don't
| want to become involved in more intensive hobbies (e.g.
| literature study, art films). The deeper pursuits are left for
| the career, and hobbies are an easy way to get your mind off it
| during rest periods.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| My dad's favourite hobby was tinkering on cars. I don't
| honestly see much difference between me playing video games and
| tinkering on my PC than him driving and getting his hands
| greasy. My grandfather's was walking around in the woods
| hunting or sitting in a boat fishing. Why are those mature and
| virtuous, while my love of games infantilizing? Are video games
| innately childish due to their medium? Is a comic book movie
| actually that much more childish than Die Hard or James Bond?
| xattt wrote:
| My assumption is virtuosity is explained by the associated
| crowds of said activities.
|
| Playing video games is occasionally associated with the NEET
| crowd, likely because of the low barrier to entry in terms of
| experience.
|
| Exploring nature and working on mechanical things requires
| some prior knowledge, experience and/or space to get started.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| It would seem in this case the bad stereotypes are doing
| the infantilizing. The activities of the past had the same
| low barrier to entry as the current ones - my dad started
| working on cars in high school, and my grandfather started
| hunting and fishing as a child and never graduated high
| school.
| xattt wrote:
| Regulatory requirements around insurance for cars, for
| example, are likely to be higher and more expensive now
| than they were decades ago. Therefore, someone young is
| unlikely to go a used car lot and pick one up and tinker.
|
| Likewise, access to uncontaminated nature in large
| population centres is harder than it was when rural
| populations outnumbered the people living in urban
| environments.
|
| Bikes, on the other hand, are great for tinkering and
| also small enough to be compatible with modern living.
| These, however, might not be accessible for someone with
| a low level of fitness and willpower to attain that
| fitness.
| ragingrobot wrote:
| Technology in late model cars makes tinkering more
| difficult as well. Back when our parents were tinkering,
| you didn't have to reprogram a computer when changing
| heads or a cam. All you needed was hand tools, for the
| most part. My toys are an '88 and a '90. Both would
| require creating a new program for major changes-
| requiring EEPROM chips and a programmer. Newer cars are
| simpler, but not as simple as needing just a screwdriver
| to tune a carb. Quite honestly it does take some of the
| fun out of it.
| jimbokun wrote:
| A lot of research shows time spent outdoors protects against
| depression and other mental illness.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| Playing videos games directly improves my depression.
| jdsully wrote:
| I don't know about virtuous but the clear difference is
| fishing and fixing cars produces useful byproducts: food &
| working transportation. Playing with the PC may do that but
| usually video games do not unless you are making them
| yourself.
| em-bee wrote:
| the useful byproduct of my interest in computers is that i
| understand what my kids are doing with the technology and
| what the technology is doing to them.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Fishing is mostly an excuse to sit on a boat and drink beer
| all day (a high quality activity I fully support in
| moderation)
|
| Car enthusiasts are mostly about making something look cool
| and have certain stats, it's about fun not utility.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Cars are about fun but you can learn a vast amount of
| practical engineering from the process that is applicable
| in Broad aspects of life.
|
| I won't tell others how to live their lives, but I think
| this has more value than how to optimally crush candies
| for example
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Saying that fixing cars or fishing as a hobby "produce
| useful byproducts" is like saying playing video games and
| PC tinkering produces useful byproducts of programmers and
| content creators.
| gnufied wrote:
| Most people whom I know - do fishing as a hobby in local
| lake or something similar - actually return the fish to the
| Pond/Lake after catching it. There is no food to be had
| from these activities.I am not saying that is what parent's
| grandad did but just a data point.
| chucksta wrote:
| I can't tell you how many times historical knowledge from
| age of empires has come in handy. And I know my way around
| parts of DC due to fallout.
|
| All 4 examples main benefit is knowledge to be used later.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| The hunting and fishing byproduct was only the pretense, it
| was to spend an afternoon in the woods or on the lake. And
| the cars weren't exactly practical, they were impractical
| muscle cars that broke down often and were a mess of
| upkeep. If we're looking at useful byproducts that tells me
| factory working is the best past time one can have.
| jenny91 wrote:
| I don't think this is a compelling argument. It's an
| extremely inefficient way of producing those "useful
| byproducts". A person fixing and tuning the same old car
| for years?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| If the car isn't your daily driver, then working on it is
| superfluous.
|
| People who fish with a pole rarely catch more than the
| investment made into their gear and bait.
| munificent wrote:
| This is a great question.
|
| I'm sure others will disagree but I believe playing video
| games for hours _is_ more infantilizing than hunting,
| fishing, or tinkering on cars.
|
| The former is content designed by humans (generally working
| under the aegis of giant corporations) whose goal is to
| completely capture and dominate your attention to the
| exclusion of other things. While videogames certainly can be
| and often are art that tells interesting stories about the
| human condition, they also often function psychologically
| much more like junk food and drugs. They give you _just
| enough_ serotonin hit to get you to keep playing but rarely
| enough to leave you truly sated. Many games don 't _want_ to
| satisfy because then you 'll stop consuming the content.
|
| Hunting and fishing require you to be in nature which has
| been proven in study after study to be profoundly valuable
| psychologically and emotionally. They are both boring in a
| deeply useful way that gives you time to reflect and process
| your own thoughts. Instead of doom scrolling social media
| which constantly fills your brain with new information,
| stressors, and problems that you never have time to sift
| through, hunting and fishing give your brain the idle time it
| needs to finally start defragging its memory.
|
| Tinkering on cars forces you to solve difficult challenges.
| Unlike playing videogames where the stakes are by design
| relatively low--all you can lose is time--working on a car
| forces you to confront difficulty and failure where that
| matters. You can break parts that are expensive to replace.
| You can fail to find a problem and be left with a car that
| won't run. That's very helpful for training resilience,
| problem-solving and equanimity.
|
| All three of these engage our entire bodies, senses, and
| hands in an integrated, much deeper way than a controller and
| rectangle of pixels does. The smell of oil or seaweed. The
| flash of a bobber. The way you feel the pull of the fish in
| your arms or the recoil of the rifle in your shoulders.
|
| This is something _we all know_ intuitively and it 's the
| constant onslaught of capitalism and the ease of consuming
| media at home that makes us forget. Videogames can certainly
| have moments of meaningful joy. But ask yourself this: How
| often after sinking an hour into a game do you find yourself
| thinking, "Wow, that really felt like living!" Now how often
| do you feel that when you go fishing, or hike, or cook a meal
| for a friend?
|
| For me, 80% of the time I spend playing videogames or
| watching dumb social media leaves me with the same lingering
| regret I feel when I eat a bag of chips instead of preparing
| an actually nutritious meal.
| ragingrobot wrote:
| > You can break parts that are expensive to replace.
|
| Both in the process of tinkering, and out of frustration
| when stuff goes wrong. So, also developing a bit of anger
| management skill. :)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > All three of these engage our entire bodies, senses, and
| hands in an integrated, much deeper way than a controller
| and rectangle of pixels does.
|
| I think this very well might be the major difference
| between those pursuits and screen media. The latter can not
| yet both simulate those experiences and stimulate the body
| at the same time.
|
| This distinction between physical experiences from those
| that solely stimulate the mind, I feel, is the only way you
| can prioritize the worthiness of one over the other.
| Certainly it feels exhausting to have consumed a bunch of
| content that stimulated the mind while the body was
| immobile the entire time, yes. But I think any further
| value judgments between the two are subject and based on
| one's own moral philosophy. In many cases, examples of the
| "real" can be as morally judged against. For instance, the
| idea of billionaires and politicians buying lavish ranches
| and then mugging for the camera while they're playacting as
| farmers and cowboys when they are just living out a
| caricature of real labor.
|
| If the key difference between the physical and the purely
| intellectual is the lack of effects on the former, one
| wonders if the end goal will be to be able to stimulate the
| body while the mind is being stimulated (even if only by
| simulation), or deeper and invasive forms of mind
| stimulation that make it _appear_ as if the body has been
| stimulated as well. Rest assured, our top giant
| corporations are working on this problem even as we speak.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| This is not something we all know intuitively. This is a
| conclusion you have come to and decided is THE truth
| instead of just YOUR truth. History is full of people like
| you and all we can do is hope that they never gain any
| power over the rest of our lives.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| History is also full of people like you who claim a moral
| authority to say X is your truth, not my truth, and that
| there are not objective truths. An example is slavery.
| Good luck objectively saying "it's _your_ truth that
| slavery is wrong, but in the south where I come from, it
| is _my_ truth that it is OK, so stuff it! "
| munificent wrote:
| _> History is full of people like you and all we can do
| is hope that they never gain any power over the rest of
| our lives._
|
| Wow, that escalated quickly. TIL I'm Hitler.
| docandrew wrote:
| Really well said. I think a big difference too is how far
| one takes a hobby. I can enjoy a comic book every now and
| then, or watch the Simpsons, or play a video game. But I've
| known people who plastered their cubicles with comic books,
| or displayed their massive collection of cartoon figurines.
| It's when something becomes an obsession that I think it
| becomes infantilizing. This could go for "grown up"
| pursuits too. Wasting hours upon hours watching
| SportsCenter on ESPN doesn't strike me as being more mature
| than reading comic books all day, and even someone whose
| whole life revolves around fishing or some other hobby
| might fall into that category. I think the key is to keep
| hobbies as hobbies and not make them your whole identity.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > The former is content designed by humans (generally
| working under the aegis of giant corporations) whose goal
| is to completely capture and dominate your attention to the
| exclusion of other things.
|
| So all of modern TV is the same? Is watching cable news
| infantilizing? I feel like we're watering down to
| "infantilizing" to mean "things I don't feel good things
| towards".
|
| > Hunting and fishing require you to be in nature which has
| been proven in study after study to be profoundly valuable
| psychologically and emotionally.
|
| Again, this whole paragraph is unrelated to the question,
| right? Physical activity is related to those things a well,
| but people would argue that playing a game of hopscotch is
| childish. As well, my grandfather isn't what I would
| describe as the picture of mental health.
|
| > You can fail to find a problem and be left with a car
| that won't run. That's very helpful for training
| resilience, problem-solving and equanimity.
|
| I mean, you just described computer tinkering and problem
| solving as well.
|
| > The smell of oil or seaweed. The flash of a bobber. The
| way you feel the pull of the fish in your arms or the
| recoil of the rifle in your shoulders.
|
| Again, the topic is infantilizing. You're romanticizing.
|
| > "Wow, that really felt like living!" Now how often do you
| feel that when you go fishing, or hike, or cook a meal for
| a friend?
|
| Never? I sincerely hated fishing growing up and have found
| I'm not much of a hiker.
| munificent wrote:
| You're right that I didn't make the connection explicit.
|
| I believe that spending significant time on things that
| aren't meaningfully enriching and tend to leave you
| feeling regretful _is_ immature. Obviously, everyone
| needs some time to veg. I 'm not saying everyone's gotta
| be trying to level up and hustle 24/7.
|
| But if you're spending hours every day watching superhero
| shows you don't really care about or grinding videogames
| alone with little sense of accomplishment, I think that
| demonstrates a lack of maturity that I would consider
| infantile. And I deeply believe that the aforementioned
| media _is designed to make you do that_. These shows and
| games are deliberately structured for binging and
| grinding. They want you to turn off your executive
| reasoning and get you to make short-term selfish choices
| around comfort and complacency. They want _consumers_.
|
| So, in that sense, yes, I believe that media is
| infantilizing.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| > This is something we all know intuitively and it's the
| constant onslaught of capitalism and the ease of consuming
| media at home that makes us forget.
|
| I don't think this is at all "something we all know
| intuitively". It also applies to basically any kind of
| content consumption, including reading books, listening to
| opera, or watching any kind of cinema. These don't "engage
| our entire bodies, senses, and hands", and yet they can be
| valuable activities that enrich us greatly. At the same
| time I don't get a lot out of sitting around in a boat for
| hours; if I want to be left alone to my thoughts I'd rather
| be on a walk (which I'd argue doesn't necessarily engage my
| entire body either -- I'm generally lost in thought and
| have no idea what my body's doing while on a walk).
|
| There's really nothing special about an activity being
| _tactile_. I can solve a problem in my own head without
| touching a damned thing. And watching good movies, or
| playing good video games, can engage my imagination and
| help me be more empathic or a better problem solver.
|
| Also, I can play video games without brutally murdering a
| living creature that feels pain, so that's nice.
| munificent wrote:
| _> I don 't think this is at all "something we all know
| intuitively"._
|
| I really do, in the same way that a satisfying nutritious
| meal _feels_ different after you 're done eating it than
| a meal of junk food does.
|
| _> It also applies to basically any kind of content
| consumption, including reading books, listening to opera,
| or watching any kind of cinema._
|
| I was pretty careful to say that not all "content" is
| like this (though anything that we'd naturally refer to
| as "content" instead of a "work of art" is probably
| telling us something). It's certainly the case that there
| are books, films, shows, and videogames that are
| meaningful and enriching. There's also 50 Shades of Gray,
| whatever Michael Bay's latest thing is, Jersey Shore, and
| Candy Crush.
|
| The form of the media isn't the point, it's the merit of
| the actual content.
|
| _> These don 't "engage our entire bodies, senses, and
| hands", and yet they can be valuable activities that
| enrich us greatly._
|
| Sure, not every meaningful activity has to tick every
| box. But it's good to spend your time on things that tick
| at least _some_ of them. Binge watching completely
| forgettable superhero series or grinding pointless quests
| on an MMO are doing little more than fast-forwarding
| someone towards their death. I of course respect their
| choice to do that, but my opinion is that choosing to
| spend signicant time doing that _is_ infantile, just as
| eating chicken tendies and soda for every meal is.
|
| _> At the same time I don 't get a lot out of sitting
| around in a boat for hours; if I want to be left alone to
| my thoughts I'd rather be on a walk (which I'd argue
| doesn't necessarily engage my entire body either -- I'm
| generally lost in thought and have no idea what my body's
| doing while on a walk)._
|
| I only used those specific examples because those are the
| ones the parent comment used. Find whatever activities
| are meaningful and rewarding to you. I just hope you're
| able to find _some_ instead of burning your free time in
| a mindless fugue of media consumption which is all too
| easy to do these days.
|
| _> I can play video games without brutally murdering a
| living creature that feels pain, so that 's nice._
|
| If you've ever seen me fish, you'd know that harm to fish
| is rarely involved. In fact, most days there is no fish
| participation at all.
| forsythe_ wrote:
| > I believe playing video games for hours is more
| infantilizing than hunting, fishing, or tinkering on cars.
|
| I prefer video games over most outdoors activities but
| still largely agree with you.
|
| One minor critique is that I would substitute
| "infantilizing" for "psychologically beneficial." I also
| think the gap in inherent value between the two groups of
| activities could be summarized into the tendency of screen-
| based activities to produce instant gratification with
| minimal discernible gain. The latter group activities
| involve aspects of mindfulness and require a degree of
| active physical/mental labor over time, therefore you could
| argue less "outdoor-sy" creative efforts like painting,
| long-form writing, or sewing could all provide the same
| benefits.
| munificent wrote:
| _> the tendency of screen-based activities to produce
| instant gratification with minimal discernible gain._
|
| I believe they're designed to do that, which is why I
| think they're infantilizing. They encourage us to do
| adopt an unhealthy short-term gratification selfish
| comfort mindset.
| spelunker wrote:
| I'm curious to know what you would consider better or at least
| not-rubbish pursuits, just as a comparison.
| beefield wrote:
| This should be the top comment for the GP. To a _very_ good
| approximation _all_ pursuits of _all_ adults are
| fundamentally rubbish in a childish level. Just as an
| example, I think it is widely accepted that following sports
| is a decent way for a proper adult to spend their time.
| Like... _what_? Seriously, you call e.g. _watching other
| people driving in circles competing who is fastest_ as a
| serious, non-rubbish adult-like way to spend time? (Okay, I
| agree, it may be fun. But so are all the other pursuits to
| whoever pursue them, so no difference there.)
| jimbokun wrote:
| Of course not. Devoting yourself to watching sports is
| equally a waste of time.
|
| But playing sport leads to all kinds of benefits like
| getting exercise, socializing and developing bonds with
| others, overcoming adversity, fresh air, a feeling of
| increasing mastery over time.
|
| I imagine writing and drawing comics would have similar
| mental health benefits (if not the exercise and fresh air).
|
| The problem for many of us (myself included) is consuming
| vs. producing.
| giantrobot wrote:
| I produce enough shit when working. I don't need to
| constantly produce. The idea that I should always be
| doing something "of value" is toxic and soul crushing. If
| I _want_ to produce something in my non-work time that 's
| my choice. It's also my choice if I just want to read a
| comic book. I work to live, not live to work.
| beefield wrote:
| Frankly, I personally and subjectively agree with you
| more than you might guess. But objectively... I do not
| quite see why our "feeling of increasing mastery" of
| kicking around a rubber ball is somehow more "adult" or
| "beneficial" or otherwise superior to the thrill of
| reading a comic book.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Creating instead of consuming.
| [deleted]
| bin_bash wrote:
| considering the alternatives are likely sports, celebrity
| gossip, and reality TV--I think superheroes are fine.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| > I know it's a value judgement, it's just sad to me to see
| grown men spend all their time on video games and comic books -
| not because of the formats themselves but because the content
| is usually rubbish. Cultural junk food.
|
| So you think they should move on to an "adult" hobby like stamp
| collecting or model trains?
| smiddereens wrote:
| agentultra wrote:
| > it's just sad to me to see grown men spend all their time on
| video games and comic books
|
| Why do you care what other men do with their spare time?
|
| Maybe spend less time thinking about what other people ought to
| enjoy and find something that makes you happy.
| gilbetron wrote:
| Ugh, please, attitudes like yours is the infantile one.
| Enjoying Lego and Star Wars isn't in opposition to being a good
| adult. Especially being a good parent. Creativity and
| imagination are hugely important in the modern world, and those
| endeavors require a playful mindset to excel at. It's sad to me
| to see that you find other's enjoyment as "sad". But I'm sure
| you have "proper" grown man pursuits, why don't you share with
| us what I, as a 50+ year old man should spend my time on? It
| might be shocking, but I spend my time on whatever it is you
| think I should be doing as well.
|
| Here's an idea: being an adult shouldn't be one dimensional. I
| can play with legos, play video games, read scifi and fantasy,
| and also raise my son, renovate my house, and, I dunno, wrestle
| bears? Conquer nations? Drink beer and yell at the TV about
| sports? Or maybe it is denigration of others that you think is
| the hobby real men do. If so, you're correct, I'm just a child
| then with my silly belief that people getting joy from
| activities is a good thing.
|
| Also, there's plenty for kids to get into these days, including
| comics, books, video games, and whatever. More than I had when
| I was a kid.
| frereubu wrote:
| As Bill Hicks said, "I think a lot of people could do with
| discovering their inner _adult_. "
| colechristensen wrote:
| Mozart also produced a lot of rubbish low brow humor,
| Shakespeare is full of cheap dirty jokes.
|
| What you have is a value judgement of the golden age
| conservatism nonsense imagining the past as so much higher
| quality. The truth is that superhero movies are the latest
| incarnation of a type of entertainment which is as old as the
| oldest human culture we know about. The Iliad is the same kind
| of entertainment in a different format. Commentators said the
| same about gladiators chariot races in the Colosseum. There are
| dick jokes scrawled on the walls of Pompeii.
|
| The childish attitude is making a dichotomy between childish
| and adult things and criticizing the childish things pretending
| the latest incarnation is somehow a new kind of thing.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| You seemed to have missed the author's point.
|
| Superhero stories were _supposed_ to represent an escape from
| the old, adult-focused form of entertainment. Where they
| ended up was of course just another form of it.
|
| The money quote is: "Wallowing in death isn't a sophisticated
| leap beyond the superhero concept; it's the failure to
| imagine what it means not to die."
|
| You can liken this to the sitcom. Storytellers had to
| envision a platform upon which an endless number of stories
| could be told in a particular format, without getting boring.
| The setting, including the characters, have to remain static.
| Breaking the sitcom mold doesn't make for an evolved sitcom,
| it makes for a devolved one. One that brought back all the
| problems that the sitcom format resolved.
|
| Superhero comic books had to appeal to seven year-olds, while
| still retaining enough in there to keep the teens and then
| adults they grew up into entertained. You need a story that
| can live forever, and still remain interesting. The bad guys
| have to get handled with a minimum of fuss, and understated
| magic, such as Batman never killing anyone, is an appropriate
| storytelling device. The morality play, good beating evil,
| and all the whimsy and silliness that conjuring it entailed,
| is just part of the superhero format.
|
| Without all that, they're not superheroes, they're just story
| protagonists with special powers that are sometimes heroic.
| That's the argument the author's making.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Your points are true, but you're responding to a response
| to a comment condemning superhero comics as infantile,
| rather than a response to the OP, which condemns modern
| superhero comics as not childish enough.
|
| And I think the latter point is fair but it's just the
| cyclical nature of the medium. In the late '80s comic books
| grew up and got all serious with _Watchmen_ , _The Dark
| Knight Returns_ , and other works that deconstructed the
| genre. And the early '90s had an unrelated trend where
| heroes had to be all gritty and edgy, overly-muscular and
| toting tons of ammunition pouches and automatic weapons.
| But the genre swung back from the excesses to more
| optimistic and child-friendly versions.
|
| So maybe we're at a moment in history where superhero
| comics are a certain way. But it's just a trend that will
| change.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| Hmm. I think the person I responded to had a pretty
| critical take on the author's essay, misrepresenting it
| as "golden values conservatism", when the author made
| very clear illustrations of what was better about the
| older CBs. It's not conservatism when the old stuff
| really was better.
|
| To your point about the comic book medium, I think it's
| worth separating the superhero concept from the format it
| was presented in. I don't think it would have been
| impossible to bring superheroes into the 80s and 90s,
| same as we had incorruptible heroes like Robocop. What
| makes them kid-friendly isn't the artistry or the
| goriness of the setting, as author pointed out, both
| Spider-Man and Batman were borne out of death, it's the
| undying nature of their commitment to fight evil. When
| you start messing with that you get outside of the
| capacity of a seven year-old to follow, relate with, and
| fall in love with it. Has nothing to do with cutesy
| graphics.
| colechristensen wrote:
| No my response was squarely towards the parent comment
| not the linked article.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| But unlike any superhero movie in the past 10 years, the
| illiad is a wonderful LGBT love story...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles_and_Patroclus
| colechristensen wrote:
| Have you actually read the Iliad? Much of the plot revolves
| around Achilles being sullen because a woman given to him
| as a slave and spoil of war was taken away by Agamemnon.
| Projecting modern ideas of gender on to an ancient Greek
| epic and then calling it a wonderful love story is quite
| misguided.
| anm89 wrote:
| I listen to a lot of high brow and low brow humor. I probably
| hear 20 fart and dick jokes in a given week. I'm not against
| or above it.
|
| That has nothing to do with infantilization in our culture.
| The fact that they also had fart and dick jokes in the past
| has no bearing on this.
|
| The fact that adults in our culture form their identity
| around low quality super hero movies in a desperate attempt
| to recapture their youth and seem fun and then run off to buy
| the little toys from the ads is the infantilization.
| dwringer wrote:
| I've only seen a couple of MCU movies and a few (mainly
| Batman) DC ones, never much cared for the comic book medium
| but for a few exceptions; however, I don't really see what
| you're describing as a problem among my friends who do
| really get into that stuff. You can find obsessive fans for
| anything, I don't think most people who get into the MCU
| are particularly obsessive though.
|
| Also, while the franchises have moved away from being for
| young kids anymore I can tell you that my friends who have
| kids in the teenage bracket certainly bond with them over
| their shared interest in such movies.
|
| Disclaimer, I don't really sort humor into high brow and
| low brow per se, and probably listen to a whole lot more
| than 20 bawdy or indecent jokes in a single day. There are
| plenty of comedians who are too mean-spirited for my taste
| though.
| blockwriter wrote:
| What separates The Iliad from superhero movies cannot be
| reduced to a difference of format.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"What you have is a value judgement of the golden age
| conservatism nonsense imagining the past as so much higher
| quality."
|
| I know every generation feels like things are on the decline,
| but I can't help but think _some of them_ had a point. There
| 's some incredibly trashy, low-brow, and downright racy
| entertainment being consumed today that never would have been
| acceptable decades ago. Or at the very least, it was still
| being produced back then but you had to go looking for it and
| it wasn't mainstream.
|
| It's easy for us to look back at the moral panic elders had
| about Elvis and the Beatles but part of me wonders if they
| were on to something because we went from "I wanna hold your
| hand" to Cardi-B's WAP. (It's vulgar, looking it up is an
| exercise for the reader).
| HoppedUpMenace wrote:
| "we went from "I wanna hold your hand" to Cardi-B's WAP."
|
| You must not have been around for what the 80's/early 90's
| had churned out. Any number of songs from 2 Live Crew and
| Too Short make WAP seem tame by comparison.
|
| Despite the moral panic at the time surrounding those
| groups/artists, we still managed to survive and grow as a
| country, and especially with regards to free speech.
| krapp wrote:
| Yes, WAP is only controversial because it involves women
| rapping about sex the way men always have, but it isn't
| unique.
| colechristensen wrote:
| People thought the Simpsons was vulgar, they thought Elvis
| dancing was vulgar, they thought girls dancing to jazz in
| the flapper era was vulgar, thought that women exposing any
| skin beyond their hands and face was vulgar.... you get the
| picture.
|
| Y'all are a bunch of prudes and artists and the leading
| edge of culture are using that shock people experience in
| their art and have been for a long damn time. There's this
| burned in mythos that sex is bad which was brought in by
| Christianity and despite the goalposts of what is vulgar
| and what is acceptable there continues to be the
| undercurrent of "this is awful because it's too explicitly
| sexual" even though what was too much has shifted from
| exposed ankles to whatever people are offended by today.
| Hopefully we're close to running out of things to be
| offended by and people will just be comfortable with people
| expressing their sexuality as normal... but I doubt it.
| em-bee wrote:
| _it 's just sad to me to see grown men spend all their time on
| video games and comic books_
|
| high quality comics targeted at adults have existed in europe
| for decades. there was no infantilization there. and the fact
| that i enjoy playing videogames occasionally allows me to spend
| quality time with my children in ways that my parents never
| could.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > the content is usually rubbish
|
| There is a fair amount of good content, in both video games and
| comic books. Both are fairly reasonably considered art. I don't
| see a lot of people saying we should destroy art museums
| because they're escapism.
|
| Yes, there's a lot of bad video games and comic books, too. But
| I dare say exactly that is true of arts, books, and a variety
| of other things people widely consider worthwhile forms of
| entertainment.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| bravo sir! It is only the opera and the delicate art of croquet
| that hold any moral character. The rest of these ragamuffins
| are filling their heads with nonsense like philistines instead
| of reading through the classics 24/7 like anyone sensible
| would.
|
| What-ho!
| rndmize wrote:
| Not really sure how it's infantilization. Do super powers make
| a movie more infantile than not having them? Does it change the
| moral challenges and difficulties encountered? Is an action
| movie or heist movie better or more mature without such things?
| Are sitcoms and reality TV somehow less rubbish? Perhaps people
| should only spend their time reading and discussing serious
| philosophers and political policy.
|
| I have a liking for the current crop of superhero stuff because
| its light-hearted. The tone is hopeful. (It's ironic, honestly,
| that the article goes on about the mature/miserable nature of
| current superhero stuff when the flagship Marvel stuff is all
| pretty positive, with the exception of the ten-year culmination
| of the Avengers storyline they cite). It's a nice break from
| worrying about the real world, which these days seems to have
| this constant, vague, oppressive feeling of inevitable doom.
| (An exaggeration, perhaps, but the universal problems around
| corruption, collective action issues, personal wealth above
| general good, etc. is tiring and depressing.)
| time_to_smile wrote:
| The real problem with rampant neoteny isn't adults playing
| video games, it's the very revulsion at the idea (and I hate
| this phrase) of "adulting".
|
| The entire point of the transition from childhood to adulthood
| is that you become responsible for yourself and others which is
| a transition from you being the responsibility of others.
|
| The idea that responsibilities are somehow an injustice has
| dominated thinking of my generation and latter. I really enjoy
| playing a round of Elden Ring _after_ I 've gotten all my house
| work done and taken care of the things that people rely on me
| for. Just on the basic standards of household maintenance I'm
| shocked how often my friends apartments look like they are
| lived in by a teenager.
|
| The whole idea of "ghosting" is another example of this bizarre
| inability to just do the things you need to do. Being an
| "adult" in just about any culture, means you do somethings that
| are uncomfortable because those things need to be done. Sure it
| can be hard to tell some people "no" but ignoring them
| completely because you can't stand a bit of discomfort is the
| very essence of "childish" behavior.
|
| I grew up in a dysfunctional household, where I was _not_ taken
| care of as a child, so I was very eager to become an adult.
| Taking responsibility and taking care of myself where things I
| looked forward to because I 'd be taken care of, even if I was
| the one doing it.
|
| Now that climate change is starting to show undeniable
| consequences it's a bit hard for me to take demands for climate
| action seriously from people who just a few months ago
| complained about "adulting" when doing their own taxes in their
| late 20s.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| Did you just say "a round" of Elden Ring?....now I have a
| suspicion that I'm replying to a bot haha.
|
| What if I told you I ghost people because I don't care and it
| has nothing to do with maturity.
|
| I experience 0 discomfort cutting ties and relationships with
| people that I've moved on from or didn't see myself
| interacting with in the first place. I find no grace in
| extending interactions to make some people feel better that
| feel like they're owed conversation or an explanation. What's
| so wrong with just moving on? If someone doesn't gel with you
| or reply, you should really just take the hint. Or would it
| be better for me to be honest and say something like, "Sorry,
| I just find you intolerable once I got to know you, so I
| think it's better if you don't talk to me anymore, thank
| you!"
|
| I think it's childish to expect everyone to give you the time
| of day in a world where we are busier than ever before. I'd
| prefer to be ghosted by people who decide to ghost me.
|
| Most people complain about "adulting" do it in jest or use it
| as a device to insult the job their parents did of teaching
| them important skills. I raised myself and I never complain
| about "adulting" but find it fun to groan about becoming
| older.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Modern superhero movies have replaced the old pulp fiction
| stories. Pulp fiction was targeted at adults.
| notpachet wrote:
| That infantilization you describe is also on rank display in
| the form of the "mah freedoms" protests against measures that
| require an ounce or two of self sacrifice for the good of one's
| larger society. Life is best spent in service to others. But
| that's not a well-articulated viewpoint in the media you list
| (because it doesn't pay to articulate it).
|
| Moral fiber.
| pohl wrote:
| It makes me sad that we (the United States) have entirely
| lost our _e pluribus unum_. In some quarters, folks consider
| the mere idea to be communism. Of course they 're not exactly
| deep thinkers, those folks, but that's the dominant POV in
| the deep red state in which I live.
| dbbr wrote:
| I would argue that, to this day, in most quarters, e
| pluribus unum is deeply engraved. It's presence can be
| considered a true test of one's metal. Any newly minted
| ethos just won't do.
| notpachet wrote:
| > newly minted eth
|
| Cryptocurrencies make their inevitable appearance in the
| thread! :]
| StevePerkins wrote:
| In the _other_ quarters, I 'm not sure that the _e pluribus
| unum_ melting pot concept is any less obsolete. All of our
| various factions seem headed in the direction of fracture
| and balkanization, we just vary on the details.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > In some quarters, folks consider the mere idea to be
| communism.
|
| And in other quarters, they believe we have permanent,
| irreconcilable differences based on race, sex, and
| sexuality making the whole idea of "out of many, one"
| unthinkable.
| pohl wrote:
| At bare minimum, one would think we could all agree that
| it's a good thing to honestly teach our nation's actual
| history -- rather than trying to ban teaching it so that
| we can pretend that systemic racism is not and never was
| a thing.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| Externally, America had never looked as united as America
| has liked to project. Segregation, Jim Crow laws, "No
| Irish, no Italians" signs in windows, rife religious
| sectarianism and a law enforcement system with a long
| history of directed violence.
|
| It probably seems like America is getting divided more
| starkly, but to outsiders its just more of the same from a
| country that had a civil war over slavery. It waxes and
| wanes but it never really goes away.
| jimbokun wrote:
| It was meant as a goal to strive for, not an end already
| achieved.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yep and the sad thing is to see it most apparent in
| "conservative" voices, when traditional conservativism was
| most specifically about this moral fiber, community service,
| and something "greater than yourself" in one's church, town,
| nation, etc.
|
| I'm not a conservative, myself, but it's kinda crazy to watch
| from a distance. Especially in the current context of
| watching Ukrainians fighting on the battlefield, Poles giving
| up half their homes, etc. to refugees from Ukraine, etc.
|
| EDIT: also, it isn't restricted to the USA. It has been on
| full display here in Canada, and in Europe as well.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Well the Canadian government decided to suspend the charter
| over a protest, so if anything to me that just shows the
| opposite of what you are saying (that people are supposedly
| just hysterical about a loss of rights that doesn't exist).
|
| And before you say that it was nothing out of the ordinary,
| remember that even during the Oka Crisis the federal
| government did not take such extreme measures. That was a
| multi week armed standoff with hundreds of armed
| combatants, killed police officers, led to a very damaging
| blockade around montreal. Yet, no charter was suspended and
| the federal government did not do everything to antagonize
| the Mohawks. Pretty crazy compared to what happened in
| ottawa.
|
| So there is definitely a reason to be worried, and saying
| that it's worse somewhere else is irrelevant. Or do we just
| dismiss any social justice movement too since wow, they are
| complaining about trivial stuff compared to the sacrifice
| ukrainians are making?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| lol, a "protest". Please.
|
| Listen, I'm 48 years old and have been protesting since I
| was a teen. I've been teargassed, pepper sprayed, charged
| by horse mounted police, faced a line of riot cops.
| Mostly after said protest went, maybe, I dunno, one hour
| past what its permitted time was or beyond some fenced
| area, or encroached near where a gov't figure was. I
| wasn't at it, but for kicks some time, google "g20
| kettling toronto" and see what happened to protesters
| peacefully sitting in the middle of an intersection in
| Toronto in a vaguely festive atmosphere when the police
| decide to go completely apeshit and actually really
| violate people's charter rights.
|
| These anti-vax "protesters" blocked two international
| border crossings, harassed people in downtown Ottawa,
| blasted horns, kept stores closed, displayed hate speech
| and flags, threatened public officials, kept illegal
| firearms, the list goes on. For _weeks_. Many weeks. 24
| /7.
|
| "supend the charter" -- much more extreme measures have
| been taken against myself and others I've protested with
| -- they just didn't bother to "suspend the charter"
| officially before doing it. They just did it. Threw
| people in detention, searched their crap illegally,
| whatever they felt like doing. Because that's what police
| do to actual protesters, as opposed to wanky
| authoritarian far-right neo-fascists that they publicly
| sympathize with.
|
| They didn't suspend the charter in the Oka crisis because
| they didn't need to. They just tear gassed, used
| concussion grenades, arrested and beat people (Ronaldo
| Casalpro) in captivity. Or used bayonets on them (Waneek
| Horn-Miller).
|
| The charter had to be "suspended" and governments were
| forced to intervene because the police refused to do
| their job... a job they are far far too eager to exercise
| when it's people they don't agree with.
|
| Charter is a piece of paper.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Amazing that you were a protester that faced abuse yet
| you still use the same exact dismissive rhetoric the
| government uses to excuse every abuse and crackdown
| against protests. The G20 protests weren't protest, they
| were just riots from wannabe terrorists. See how easy it
| is to just do what you did?
|
| And yeah sure the charter is just a piece of paper, but
| again I'm not sure what's your point. You are basically
| arguing that we might as well not even try. Remember that
| that piece of paper will be used against you and I'm not
| sure how far that "it's just a piece of paper!" Argument
| will go with a judge. The Charter is extremely weak, but
| this is still an unprecedented reaction in the post war
| western world. Over a bunch of truckers and 0 violence.
|
| Also, you are repeating literal fake news. The guy with
| the nazi flag lasted for a few minutes before getting
| kicked out by the rest of the protesters. Again, if you
| participated in the g20 protests and cannot see how easy
| it is to plant agitators or use one off events to justify
| discrediting a whole protest...
|
| My point here is that no matter what's your stance on the
| vaccine (and I'm extremely pro vaccine, I probably went
| in person with more than a dozen of my friends and co-
| workers to get them vaccinated if they were
| afraid/hesitant), the rhetoric around the trucker rally
| is extremely dangerous. It is setting a precedent, and
| next time we get a first nation protest/blockade, or a
| BLM protest (both of which I usually support) under a
| more conservative government, let's hope that the charter
| won't be seen as just a piece of paper again.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| > Life is best spent in service to others.
|
| Maybe for you, not for me. I live life to serve myself above
| all else. It so happens that helping people I care about also
| serves me, because it makes me happy. But "for the greater
| good" is an incredibly toxic, near cult-like mentality that
| should absolutely not be encouraged without nuance.
| notpachet wrote:
| I don't want to die feeling like I took more from the
| universe than I gave back, I guess is what I'm trying to
| say. I'm not advocating cult-like asceticism or pointless
| self-deprivation. You could argue that those are the dark
| side of selfishness anyway.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Self worship is also incredibly toxic and should not be
| encouraged without nuance. Selfishness can lead to a lack
| of empathy for others and a lack of awareness of how one's
| actions can affect other people.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| That's a ridiculous strawman. Your comment amounts to being
| mad that people do no do what you think they should do.
| That's it.
|
| You can literally use that argument for everything.
|
| "Why don't gay people just shut up and stay in the closest
| for the benefit of societal cohesion? So egoistic."
|
| "People who are afraid of covid are so self centered and
| would rather shut down entire societies than to self
| sacrifice a bit!! Why should we accomodate the
| hypochondriacs"
|
| And as a muslim your comment, ironically enough, reminds me
| of how some neocons excused discriminating against Muslims.
| "Wow I mean there are terrorists out there and we should care
| about "muh freedomz" for Muslims? After 9/11? Well
| discriminating and targeting all Muslims is just a small
| sacrifice for the greater good of our society, it's just the
| rational thing to do."
|
| There's absolutely no merit to that type of argument.
| _obviously_ anyone fighting for "mah freedum" as you call it
| will always be ridiculed and not taken seriously by everyone,
| by definition. The only thing different and unique this time
| is the honestly troubling trend of mocking and belittling the
| concept of freedom or rights _in general_ , just to "own the
| other side". I'm sure that normalizing such a dangerous
| rhetoric won't turn against you eventually.
| notpachet wrote:
| > Your comment amounts to being mad that people do no do
| what you think they should do. That's it. You can literally
| use that argument for everything.
|
| Well, if we're going to go reaching for the fallacy labels
| -- that's a pretty textbook appeal to extremes.
| Discrimination against any portion of the population is
| reprehensible. But the big moral challenge is determining
| what exactly constitutes discrimination. Where is the line
| between just punishment under the law, and discrimination?
|
| Society's laws are designed to protect the interests of
| everyone in that society (without discrimination!) from
| those around them that would hurt them, whether through
| malice or negligence. Implicit in those laws is the idea
| that you seem to be protesting: that in certain situations,
| Person A knows better than Person B what's good for Person
| B. Or, as it may be, what liberties to withhold from Person
| B to protect others from them. That's prison. And as fucked
| up and inhumane as I think the American prison system is, I
| don't know whether it's really possible to have a society
| without _some_ sort of way of withholding certain rights
| from people for the protection of others.
|
| And yes, that line of thinking absolutely can (and does)
| slide down the hellchute into totalitarianism. Avoiding
| either extreme of that spectrum is the challenge of living
| in a democracy (or what masquerades as one these days).
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I mean I agree with most of your comment! My whole point
| was that as you said, the entire discussion is not black
| and white and the debate of what are the limits is far
| from settled (and never will Be, imo). But that's exactly
| what makes the whole "Wow muh freedumbz man children
| should just man up" so ridiculous and completely insipid.
| It does not acknowledge any of that nuance and basically
| aims to discredit even the notion that there is a debate
| to be had.
|
| Obviously my comment was an appeal to extremes (though
| honestly, the part about discriminating against muslim
| was literally was a common talking point). But that was
| exactly to show how smug and dismissive the argument was.
| naoqj wrote:
| > Life is best spent in service to others.
|
| [citation needed]
| jimbokun wrote:
| You can't get from an is to an ought.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| I think this is one of those things that is learned through
| experience (wisdom) and will never be proven with any
| citations (i.e. peer-reviewed, rigorous collective
| experience).
|
| Not that I have that wisdom myself. I only _think_ I might
| arrive at that conclusion eventually.
| [deleted]
| psyc wrote:
| It matters a lot whether self-sacrifice and service are self-
| chosen, or whether they are forced by the state, or under
| threat of retaliation.
|
| Many people who are individualists advocate for self-
| sacrifice and service as virtues, freely chosen.
|
| Virtue under threat of punishment or retaliation is not
| virtue at all.
| greggman3 wrote:
| Wat? Superhero movies are all about sacrifice. Almost every
| superhero is practically dedicating their life to serving the
| public good. Half the superhero movies are about how things
| only work when we come together and cooperate. Maybe I mis-
| understood your point?
| notpachet wrote:
| I think they're only superficially about sacrifice. Look
| what you gain in exchange: apotheosis. The child-god in all
| of us wants to be recognized as special, exceptional,
| unique.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Go read the Superman stories from Action Comics #1 - #10. Tell
| me how kid-friendly they are.
| paxys wrote:
| Fantasy sports is perfectly acceptable as an adult hobby. So is
| reality TV. Or gambling/playing the lottery. Or just getting
| drunk every weekend till all sense of reality is warped. All of
| these (and lots more) are perfect examples of escapism. But as
| soon as we start talking about superheroes or sci-fi suddenly
| it becomes "infantilization" because those are associated with
| nerds. There's no deeper logic here than decades worth of
| social stigma.
| fullshark wrote:
| Almost all of the things you listed as acceptable hobbies are
| looked down upon at least in my social circle and I'd argue
| in general. Reality TV is a guilty pleasure even among fans,
| gambling and drinking are clearly vices, fantasy sports can
| involve gambling and even if it doesn't it's seen as a pretty
| nerdy thing to be into.
|
| The only hobbies that aren't looked down upon are things that
| involve creation instead of consumption or are major class
| signifiers really (Opera, skiing, etc).
| gnulinux wrote:
| > The only hobbies that aren't looked down upon are things
| that involve creation instead of consumption or are major
| class signifiers really (Opera, skiing, etc).
|
| This does not sound like what people think in general in
| the US. This sounds like you live in a social circle and
| assume their opinions as general opinion.
| paxys wrote:
| So your social circle looks down on all forms of
| entertainment unless you are creating something of value?
| That is definitely not the case for society at large (and
| sounds pretty miserable to me personally).
| fullshark wrote:
| That's a bit reductive and I don't agree with the
| characterization so maybe I overstated my point. Point is
| in general I find even purely consumption based
| entertainment hobbies are usually framed in a way that
| it's constructive (e.g. prestige TV and how it shapes
| your world view, consuming fine arts that heal the soul
| and inform, etc) in conversation when trying to impress.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| No, but looking down on gambling is definitely common.
| And that was mentioned in the parent comment
| jimbokun wrote:
| All of those are bad when indulged to excess.
| mech422 wrote:
| what isn't ? to steal an example from fullshark... 'skibum'
| definitely wasn't compliment where I grew up.
| paxys wrote:
| Everything is bad when indulged to excess. That's the
| definition of excess.
| _jal wrote:
| > There's no deeper logic here than decades worth of social
| stigma.
|
| Oh, there is. There's a whole school of thought that is
| basically non-stop hand-wringing about how superheroes are
| displacing religion, and We Must Take Back Our Media from
| those Hollywood heathens and so on.
|
| Stupid, yes. But dangerous too - book-burning season looks
| like it is just getting started, they already are going after
| Disney, and those people seem geared up for a serious push.
| LegitShady wrote:
| > they already are going after Disney
|
| They aren't going after Disney because of adult
| infantilization, but the opposite - introducing kids to
| adult concepts in a particularly politically motivated way
| that makes them not a good source of kids entertainment in
| the opinion of many adults.
|
| The comic books that Disney Marvel has produced are 98% low
| quality poorly written poorly drawn trash, and their movies
| mostly ok until now (except we seem to be getting into the
| girl-boss post success phase of the MCU and I expect a
| downturn).
|
| The issue with Disney is their attempt to become a source
| of propaganda for social policies aimed towards people's
| kids, and their choice to be vocal about wanting to
| influence laws being passed the government in Florida.
| Their choice, but they also reap the consequences.
| _jal wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| That's the culture-warrior's way of saying, "we're
| cancelling Disney because they protested that we were
| cancelling gay people."
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| The Florida bill never even mentions the word "gay". As
| for what the bill actually says:
|
| > Classroom instruction by school personnel or third
| parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not
| occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that
| is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for
| students in accordance with state standards.
|
| That's not cancelling gay people at large. That's
| preventing the schools from talking to third-graders or
| younger (8 years old or younger) about these things and
| letting their parents do it if they choose.
|
| You might disagree with the bill, but Disney is taking a
| political stance, and does not deserve to have special
| political privileges if they take any form of political
| stance, regardless on what the political stance is.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| > but Disney is taking a political stance, and does not
| deserve to have special political privileges if they take
| any form of political stance
|
| Wait, who said this? Corporations lobby the government
| all the time. They absolutely have political stances.
| Sometimes these stances are transparently about making
| them money, and sometimes they're (ostensibly) not, but
| it would deny reality to claim that they _shouldn 't_
| have political stances. Maybe you feel that they
| shouldn't, but it's tilting at windmills.
|
| This is beside the point of whether they should have
| "special political privileges". Maybe no corporation
| should have "special political privileges". But in a
| world where they do, it's strange to confer them
| conditional on what has never been the case (companies
| not taking political positions).
|
| edit:
|
| "The Florida bill never even mentions the word 'gay'."
|
| That statement does not make you sound very serious. The
| bill obviously involves -- at a deep level -- the concept
| of "gay" whether or not it uses that particular word.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Preventing schools from talking about "gay" to people who
| are generally 5-9 years old is a political choice that is
| _very different_ than excluding gay people from society
| as claimed.
| larkost wrote:
| I disagree. What is really trying to be banned here is
| things like talking about families that have two dads (or
| two moms). No-one is talking to kindergartners about sex
| in schools, homosexual or heterosexual. But they are
| talking about why one kids'd parents do not line up with
| another, and how that is ok.
|
| As a side note: I have an 8-year-old son. I tried to
| explain a bit about this sort of thing, but just
| explaining about how adults are attracted to each other
| is something he is simply not ready to understand. Trying
| to explain sex to him at this point would just be
| confusing.
|
| The problem is that some parents do not think that it is
| ok that someone has two dads, and really want to go back
| to the days when "those people" would be socially shamed
| and that shaming was supported by what is taught in
| school. And the governor of Florida, and his compatriots
| in that states legislative body agree with them (or are
| at least willing to play this for political points).
|
| I happen to think that we should accept people's choices
| about who they think are family (there are extremes on
| this, and I am less certain about my stance the farther
| you go). And to some degree our laws and the court's
| interpretation of that have solidified that as the law of
| the land. Once we are there, pretty much the only thing
| that schools can reasonably do is to teach these "new"
| forms of family as normal. Yes that is against what some
| parents want, but if they want their kids not to be
| exposed to this then they better be taking care of their
| kids education themselves (homeschool or paying for
| private schools).
| [deleted]
| ineedasername wrote:
| _> the girl-boss_
|
| Do you mean female lead characters, or female leadership
| on the movie project itself? Or something else (or
| mixture of those trends?)
|
| Apart from that, I'm not sure Disney really cares about
| social policies themselves one way or another. I think
| it's much more mercenary than that. A large part of their
| audience really wants to see them (and corporations in
| general) take a stand on certain issues, and Disney
| doesn't want to lose them by keeping silent.
| Unfortunately for Disney, a different part of their
| audience _doesn 't_ want to see them take a stand on
| issues. Or if they do, that it should be a different
| stand. Disney is finding out right now that it simply
| can't satisfy everybody.
| LegitShady wrote:
| >Do you mean female lead characters, or female leadership
| on the movie project itself?
|
| Female leadership on movie projects isn't an issue.
| Female lead characters aren't an issue. I think girl-boss
| is a type of narrative in a film where they write
| unlikeable women that don't register as real people for
| the purpose of creating "powerful" female characters that
| aren't interesting or successful.
|
| Examples - Rey/Admiral Holdo/ from Disney Star Wars,
| Wonder Woman 1984, Captain Marvel, the female terminator
| reboot, the female ghostbusters reboot, the ocean's 8
| female reboot, etc etc etc
|
| I fully expect the newest Thor movie with new female thor
| to be another girl-boss film, and from the trailer same
| thing with the upcoming Miss Marvel movie. The new
| Indiana Jones movie is at risk since it seems to be about
| Indy passing the torch to a young woman and Kathleen
| Kennedy is involved - we've seen her record on star wars.
| We'll see if any of that happens.
|
| >Apart from that, I'm not sure Disney really cares about
| social policies themselves one way or another. I think
| it's much more mercenary than that
|
| I disagree. The leadership and many of the creatives in
| Disney are the people who want to push particular
| political opinions on to other people.
|
| https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1508912865293619
| 202
|
| >Unfortunately for Disney, a different part of their
| audience doesn't want to see them take a stand on issues.
| Or if they do, that it should be a different stand.
| Disney is finding out right now that it simply can't
| satisfy everybody.
|
| Disney thought there was nothing anyone could do about it
| - since they're a private company and they can do what
| they want. They forgot the government they were picking a
| fight with also had the ability to take back privileges
| disney had that allowed them to be their own government
| in their district.
|
| They don't need to satisfy everyone, but they want to be
| political activists with a direct line to your kids eyes
| and ears in your home. Disney is a platform for their
| politics.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _" >They don't need to satisfy everyone"_
|
| I'm not so sure about that. They faced backlash over
| their attempt to mostly stay out of the issue with
| Florida's HB 1557 bill. That initial reaction tells me
| they (leadership) probably didn't want any part of it.
| That had its own backlash & so they tried to appease
| their critics, but I still think their initial reaction
| was as "honest" a response as we would get from a massive
| global corporation.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| Most of those female characters you mentioned are just as
| "real" to me as the male superheroes. I don't like the
| Marvel movies or give a crap about any of those
| characters, male or female. Terminator 3, 4 and 5 were
| creative disasters on every level yet apparently
| Terminator 6 was a problem because of *something
| something girl boss*.
|
| The Star Wars sequel movies were all written and directed
| by white men but _something something girlboss_ ruined it
| for you.
|
| It just seems to me you have some ideological grudge that
| has little to do with the movies.
| invalidOrTaken wrote:
| >It just seems to me you have some ideological grudge
| that has little to do with the movies.
|
| This is a very strange statement. Movies are media.
| Ideology has a _lot_ to do with media.
| [deleted]
| ineedasername wrote:
| The ideology can be "whatever content makes us the most
| money". Whether that content happens to coincide with a
| particular political or social issue may simply be a
| function of determining what will make the most money.
|
| I'm not saying that's how all movies are made, it's not.
| But for a massive global mega corp like Disney I don't
| think that a particular political or social ideology is
| the driving force behind the content. If leadership
| thought that different content would make them more
| money, they'd find people willing to make that content.
|
| Taking Disney as an example, if they actually wanted to
| push an ideology-- let's say one that's in line with
| their statements against HB 1557, then they wouldn't be
| running tours in Egypt or other countries that have anti-
| LGBT laws, or at least would be making similar
| condemnations of them. [1]
|
| They say & do-- or don't say & do-- whatever they think
| will keep the money flowing. If they can't avoid being
| drawn into a social or political issue, they'll say
| whatever they think will best mitigate the damage of
| being involved. It's little different than the
| significant rise of greenwashing over the last couple of
| decades. That's as much of a social & political statement
| as well, but I don't actually believe the company _means
| it_.
|
| [1] https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/disney-
| expanding-operat...
| rfrey wrote:
| > unlikeable women that don't register as real people
|
| I'm curious what you consider likeable or registering as
| real. As compared to, say, Batman.
| krapp wrote:
| It's frightening how so many of the same people that have
| spent the last few years hollering about cancel culture
| and free speech absolutism and insisting the government
| regulate social media platforms also support the
| government punishing a corporation for legal political
| speech with which they disagree.
|
| Frightening, but not at all surprising.
| orangecat wrote:
| As opposed to the people who in the last 15 seconds have
| suddenly realized that it's great when megacorporations
| use their power to influence the political process.
| LegitShady wrote:
| The corporation that decided it would intervene in laws
| passed by the government loses special privileges and now
| must act like every other corporation isn't cancel
| culture.
|
| Once they became intentionally political they entered the
| political arena.
|
| And they're free to talk and also free to catch the
| consequences of their speech - isn't that what I keep
| hearing?
| mfringel wrote:
| > in the opinion of many adults.
|
| How many?
| juve1996 wrote:
| > The issue with Disney is their attempt to become a
| source of propaganda for social policies aimed towards
| people's kids, and their choice to be vocal about wanting
| to influence laws being passed the government in Florida.
| Their choice, but they also reap the consequences.
|
| What is wrong with this? Plenty of private corporations
| lobby the government.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| As a radio ham you're not supposed to talk about religion
| but I got away with running an APRS beacon that said "It's
| Thorsday!" every Thorsday
| agiacalone wrote:
| As an Amateur Extra myself, I 100% approve :D
| johnyzee wrote:
| > suddenly it becomes "infantilization" because those are
| associated with nerds
|
| I think you may be on to something. Perhaps it's because it
| feels worse when it is highly intelligent and otherwise
| reasonable people wasting their time.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Your original comment condemned superhero entertainment
| specifically for their content, but _not_ "the formats
| themselves". Independent of this discussion, I've been
| thinking lately about how, especially in the most closed-
| off months of the pandemic quarantine, so many of our
| pastimes consist of indulging in simulations. Everything
| from the loftiest performance of a Shakespearean play to
| the most throwaway TikTok, from the most true-to-life non-
| fiction narrative account of a real event to the most
| escapist of comic books, they're all about bringing out
| minds to a different place.
|
| And I wonder what it all means. As a species we've been at
| this since the first cave paintings, the earliest oral
| traditions. And what we're doing now with modern
| hyperstimulating computer-generated mediums is in that same
| tradition. But from a biological standpoint, what do these
| intellectual forms of recreation really mean for us? Is the
| final goal of our society to automate away all of the hard
| physical stuff, and then place our bodies in comfortable
| pods where our only stimulation is the simulated and safe?
| To play out stories and to experience emotions where we
| have minimized our vulnerability and maximized our
| enjoyment? "All necessities provided, all anxieties
| tranquilized, all boredom amused."
|
| This isn't meant to be a condemnatory dystopian vision or
| anything. I just wonder if the ideal end state of luxury
| existence is to live in stories, so the mind and passions
| can work, but the body is satiated and at peace. So when
| people indulge in leisure now, is that truly "wasting their
| time"? Perhaps they are only capturing a fleeting glimpse
| of the final future of our species.
| jimbokun wrote:
| The nerds won. Nerdy forms of entertainment dominate our
| culture.
| Fricken wrote:
| What dominates our culture is by definition not nerdy. It
| was taken from the nerds. The nerds lost.
|
| Now they have to go find some still obscure interest to
| invest their time in if they hope to retain their nerd
| status, otherwise they're just into mass culture like the
| rest of the lowest common denominator.
| krapp wrote:
| You seem to be confusing hipsters and nerds. Nothing
| about the definition of being a nerd requires a constant
| search for ever more obscure pursuits to maintain a sense
| of elitism.
|
| Nothing was "taken" from the nerds, except social stigma.
| They're still reading comics and watching anime and
| superhero movies, and playing D&D and video games, etc.
| They're still nerds even if what they love is more
| popular than it ever was.
| Fricken wrote:
| You have to be into nerdy things to be regarded as a
| nerd. Mass culture doesn't count. Their nerdy interest
| isn't a nerdy interest anymore, it's been taken from them
| and changed into a popular interest. A hipster is just a
| type of nerd.
| robonerd wrote:
| What does a prototypical hipster do? Dresses up in
| anachronistic clothing. Listens to music on vinyl and
| plays video games made 20 years before they were born.
|
| Hipsters are nerds.
| folkrav wrote:
| The mere categorization of entertainment as "wasting their
| time" is a judgement call in and of itself.
| more_corn wrote:
| This comment is funny. The article complains that comics are
| not for kids anymore because they treat adult themes.
|
| This comment complains that adults are somehow children because
| they engage with entertainment formats that were traditionally
| geared towards children.
| TillE wrote:
| > the infantilization of the newer generations of adults
|
| I think when you reach the age of like 25, you realize that you
| don't have a clue, and the "adults" around you mostly don't
| have a clue either.
|
| But it's always been like that. It is in fact a childish view
| to conceive of adulthood as some fundamentally different stage
| of life where everything changes and you've got it all figured
| out.
|
| The real difference with past generations is that you were
| expected and able to slot into a rigid social order, to fill a
| certain role. That rigidity has partly been rejected, and is
| partly simply out of reach due to economic factors.
| tengbretson wrote:
| It's really eye-opening to go shopping for clothing for a 3 year
| old and see that half of the clothes are covered in characters
| from media that won't be age appropriate for the wearer for
| another 10 years.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| The reason I can't stand the superhero films is a combination of
| them being shallow and taking themselves so seriously. Even the
| humour is shallow and manages to take itself seriously.
| Apreche wrote:
| Comic books were only infantilized for a brief period. Have you
| ever read the original Dick Tracy, which was perfectly fine
| entertainment children in the '30s? It's hardcore. There are
| scenes with Tracy torturing gang members with fire. Pulp,
| western, romance, and horror genres dominated. All would be
| deemed in appropriate by this author. Children read them anyway.
|
| Then came the Comics Code Authority, which it seems this author
| would like to see return. It started in the '50s and didn't
| officially end until much more recently. But even under the CCA
| in the '70s and '80s you were seeing plenty of material
| "inappropriate" for children. In the US kids could be found
| reading Claremont's X-Men, a run of comics absolutely boiling
| over with everything that makes conservatives angry. In Japan,
| where the CCA did not exist, you could find children reading
| things like Fist of the North Star.
|
| Those children Are now in their 40s and 50s. Purely anecdotal,
| but I've never heard of even one person who was traumatized or
| devastated because they read such a comic book at a young age. I
| have heard _many_ stories of people who 's lives were
| dramatically positively influenced by those books such that they
| still remember and revere them to this day.
|
| Let your kid read (almost) whatever comic book they want. It's
| not hard to avoid what truly XXX-rated material that's out there.
| jrm4 wrote:
| This is _exactly_ right. At the risk of going super specific;
| Joaquin Phoenix 's Joker's popularity just strikes me as the
| weirdest thing, if not harmful. You're tackling serious grown up
| things in a child's format. Give me that Leto Joker because he
| seems fun and cartoony.
| gandalfian wrote:
| I flicked through a book on inside Marvel comics in the 90's. It
| really made them sound a bit predatory saleswise, I felt a bit of
| a sucker having bought them then. Holographic covers, pah.
| Herodotus38 wrote:
| This was a great article. This is probably one of the reasons why
| my son only reads comics that are about Minecraft characters. Why
| would he want to read superheroes? That is grownup stuff. The
| Minecraft comics are often odd, have to weirdly combine school
| age kid concerns with crafting things and wearing pumpkins on
| your head to hide from endermen, but nobody is nihilistically
| killing everyone.
| bombcar wrote:
| Everyone thinks of "comics" as "superhero" but we used to have
| comics other than superheroes.
|
| The Disney Duck comics used to be moderately popular in the
| USA, though they remain popular outside the country they're
| basically moribund here.
|
| Archie comics continues to publish but they're nowhere near as
| common as they used to be.
| screye wrote:
| I think this might be the best moment on HN, to talk about my my
| love of 'One Piece'. The highest selling comic-book by a single
| author of all time.
|
| The joy of exploration, 'cool' moments, downright insane attacks,
| friendship and slapstick humor appealed to 10 yr old me. 20 years
| from then, it is still the best work of fantasy fiction I have
| ever read. Oda has managed to preserve all of those moments of
| childlike joy and unbridled creativity, while injecting
| societally relevant themes of authoritarianism, discrimination,
| the complex nature of morality and art that moves the genre
| forward, in a manner that is superior to a lot of grim-dark works
| meant to do exactly that. The current arc exemplifies that
| quality, 25 years since it started.
|
| Calling a manga with 500 million sales underrated is ridiculous,
| but I find that it is still not appreciated enough in American &
| 'critic' spaces.
|
| Here in the US, it is common to ignore manga because of the
| stereotypes that come with certain genres within it. However, I
| find that Japan's best artists & story-tellers find manga as
| their medium for expression more often than western counterparts.
|
| I find that American culture tends to invade American media in a
| way that demands attention until the next 'big' issue is
| identified. Every community is forced to comment on the one
| issue, in a manner that kills all diversity and 'magic' from
| creative works. It feels lazy and repetitive. To some degree, it
| might do some good for American culture and American media to
| reorient towards more localized concerns, and not care so much
| about what is ruling the 1st-page of the new cycle.
| thomasahle wrote:
| If the author thinks Avengers is too dark for their son, they
| definitely won't like One Piece. The manga has a man eating his
| own leg from starvation, a man getting half his head blown off,
| genocide, human experimentation, people being sold for slavery,
| a man being boiled alive. I love One Piece, but if the author
| wants their son to be free of "stunted impersonation of grownup
| sensibilities" I'm not sure it's the right thing.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| The Superhero Industry diversified and comics are expensive. They
| went from being pulp to full gloss at the same time that
| companies started spending less and less on print advertisement.
| You can totally find books suited for children, with all the
| characters you grew up with, but the main line books today are
| for the people who grew up with them, because they can afford it.
|
| The economic argument continues: comic books get turned into
| comic movies and comic tv shows and comic action figures and that
| gets creators paid, even if they work for the big two. Nobody is
| making BIFF, BAM, POW movies. Why should they work against their
| own financial self interests?
|
| You're not going to walk out of a comic shop with 4 new comics
| for less than $20 when accounting for tax. Kids don't HAVE to be
| focused on superheroes, anyway. There are all sorts of comics out
| there, and most of the youth trade paperbacks are vastly better
| reading material for kids, because they try to present the
| material at their level of understanding instead of just dumbing
| down the mainstream to whatever was popular 50 years ago.
| bitwize wrote:
| I consider the MCU to be biff bam pow. Except these days it
| tends to be "Quip! Snarky riposte! Aptly descriptive nickname!"
| ljp_206 wrote:
| Patrick H Willems has a great video where he discusses how
| superhero media has moved away from it's core audience of
| children and teens. He does a good job of discussing what's lost
| and presenting a pretty good and fair 'hot take':
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dfI_2dscGE
|
| Best part: In anticipation of rabid comic book/superhero fans
| attempting to gatekeep his opinions, Patrick opens the video by
| sharing his large - very large - comic book collection and 'nerd
| credentials.'
| moonbug wrote:
| American culture is so impoverished, and doesn't even. realise
| it.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| If that is true, why does the rest of the world want it so
| badly?
| sfink wrote:
| How are those even in conflict? Humans are humans. American
| culture skews heavily towards wish fulfillment and impulse
| gratification. Why wouldn't people want that?
|
| Sugar is quite popular too. It is quite possible for people
| to want sugar, yet notice that people who have excessive
| access to (not to mention advertising and peer pressure
| towards) sugar often lose the ability to appreciate or even
| distinguish other flavors.
| gilbetron wrote:
| Shallow, dumb hot take. I was given stern looks as a kid going
| into hobby stores as a kid, too. The only comics I got to readily
| touch was at a supermarket, and even there I'd get chastised by
| adults from time to time if I got too kid-like. Turns out stores
| don't like kids destroying merchandise.
|
| Find a store that is more friendly to your kid, or just ignore
| the silly store person and teach your kid to respect items and
| the value of some things and let them look around. There is
| plenty of comics - a massive amount, really - aimed at kids. My
| son has read a bunch of them, far more than when I was his age.
| Flatcircle wrote:
| This is a good point, people used to say, "I wanna make a dark
| and gritty comic book film" like it was something original. Now
| EVERYONE says that.
|
| Like so many things today, what was once cliche 20 or 30 years
| ago would now feel wildly original.
| throw7 wrote:
| "phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny"... what is this dude going on
| about?
|
| I will agree with him later in the article: the "superhero
| industry" is basically soap-opera for nerds, stringing them
| along, all the way to the bank. I don't play that game.
| fullshark wrote:
| I recently rewatched the Adam West Batman movie, it was very fun
| and a good watch with kids, crazy what that character has now
| become.
| mordae wrote:
| Check out the new Harley Quinn.
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7658402/
| torginus wrote:
| I wonder if this has to do with superhero comics being popular in
| a particular era, let's say the 80s-90s, and most of it's fans
| getting into comics around that time, and sticking around.
|
| I admit, I did try to get into comics a few years ago, during the
| peak MCU craze, but I found both Marvel's and DC's offerings,
| with hundreds of characters who stories run in parallel and
| intertwine in a confusing fashion over hundreds of issues over
| decades to be impenetrable.
|
| I suspect newcomers struggle with the same issue, while for die-
| hard veterans, it's part of the core appeal.
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