Gimme Some Candor

So it’s closing in on summer and another Transformers movie is heading our way. Now, I've never cared too much for the franchise, and I snickered aloud first time I saw the latest preview, but truth be told, I probably will be seeing it. Being honest, this is mostly because I am, at heart, 12-years-old, and there will always be an itch that only giant robots bashing each other into explosions can satisfy. But a small part, I will say, is the candidness of Michael Bay. You see, the last installment was widely derided for being a montage of mindless explosions. So when it came time for a third movie, no amount of aping the Inception noise for the new trailer would placate the audiences who were starting to doubt that there would actually be a little plot to go along with the robot fight scenes.

To allay our fears, the director was primed to take the stage to tell us that this sequel would indeed be better, but to do that would require admitting the previous one needed improvement. Would he be willing to make that admission? Bravely, Bay did just that when he point blank and without sidestepping, said “that was crap.”

I appreciate that. He’s right, the movie was crap. You know what else was crap? 80% or more of what the rest of the media has been feeding us, completely unapologetically. I appreciate that for once, a director took the time to essentially apologize for what he’d done and promise to do better next time (and have that apology actually be about the movies themselves and not some sort of drunken fiasco). My biggest question at this point is why aren’t there more people doing that?

Seriously, it’s a legitimate question. I sat through Wolverine: Origins, I played Metroid: Other M, I read Brightest Day, and I still have yet to receive an apology for any of those. The time and money I spent on those went off into a black hole of wasted resources, and I have nothing to show for it but disappointment. At this point, I’m not even angry that these things sucked, but that their makers show no sense of reprehensibility for the sucking. I understand sometimes things go wrong. Deadlines need to be met, creative differences arise, certain risks are made that don’t always pay off. I am more than willing to forgive a cook a few broken eggs it means he’ll learn to make the omelet. But I walked away from these instances, and have no indication that an omelet is coming; all I can reasonably expect is more broken eggs and blank looks as to why I’m not enjoying this.

And I’m not the only one who’s hurt by this lack of candor: these makers are hurting themselves. As with addiction rehabilitation, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Without this admission, they will never learn from their mistakes. That’s why honest disclosure is so important. Think about Superman Returns (or don’t, if you prefer). Bryan Singer, who’d been so successful in adapting the mopey, edgy X-Men, dropped that franchise in order to jump to Mr. Bright-and-Shiny superheroes himself, Superman, in what should have been recognized as the most inappropriate pairing of director and material since they tried to get Tim Burton on Superman. As a result, he ruined both franchises.

What we should have gotten:

What we got instead:

If ever an apology was overdue, this would be it, yet when Singer finally addressed the issue, the most he faults the film for is being “a bit nostalgic and romantic”. Seriously, the movie refused to delve any deeper into Superman’s vast mythology than “Holy crap, this guy has super strength”; they cast Lois Lane as a pouty banshee; and they gave the big blue boy scout an illegitimate son that he abandoned, but the most the director said was wrong with it was that it was too respectful to its successful predecessors, and that the big thing he would fix would be to ‘tighten up the first act’? If the fates were to frown upon us and Bryan Singer got another shot at Superman, apparently he would make the same mistakes, just without the exposition.

And here we get to the crux of the matter, the fact that this lack of candor not only can, but has and is still leading to the same mistakes being repeated. Take DC Comics. Once upon a time, they were more than willing to not just admit mistakes, but to take action with the audience’s express desires in mind. When they paired Batman with the much maligned new Robin Jason Todd, they heard the cries of anguish at how terrible a character Jason was. Time kept going, and so did the complaints, so eventually they did respond, and how: the audience was polled on whether this new character lived or died. This was not only an admission of guilt in creating a truly unlikable character, it was offering the audience to be a part of correcting the matter, while simultaneously adding a touching new layer to the Batman mythos. In terms of creative penance, this is the gold standard. Fast forward 22 years, and what do we have? The latest Robin is as unlikable as the original Jason, is the illegitimate spawn of Batman and someone-who-is-not-Catwoman, and also Jason’s been brought back too. (Though to be fair, in a bizarre twist, the story that brought Jason back is actually so good it makes it hard to complain). They’re not just not apologizing for current mistakes, they’re actively taking back previous apologies and seeing how many times they can make the same ones again. Last September, they drastically altered Wonder Woman’s costume and back story to something terrible enough to offend just about everybody. A year later, they still haven’t said they’re sorry, and instead they’re going to do the same thing with every other character (including Wonder Woman, again, for good measure). The costumes are even being designed by the same guy who made the much hated last one; they actually picked the guy who thought Wonder Woman needed a leather jacket with football player shoulder pads, showed him the entire collection of DC superheroes and said, “Do your worst.”And he did.

"And don't come back until you've ruined everybody."

Seriously, Hollywood, and TV Land, and Comics World, enough is enough. I really want to like what you have to give me. Without you I’ll have to spend my free time talking to my family or doing something productive, and neither of us want that. But if you don’t admit your mistakes, then I can’t help you. You’ll keep doing the same things wrong over and over, and I’ll give you the cold shoulder for a while and try to pretend nothing’s wrong. We’ll just keep growing more and more distant until we don’t even know each other anymore. Then one day you’ll wake and look for me, but it will be too late, and I’ll be long gone.

I'm not enjoying this any more than you.

Your Princess(es) are in Another Castle

We live in a constantly changing world. New societal orders and continual communal upheavals are the order of the day, so it’s never a surprise to see certain age old traditions fall by the wayside. But one of these recent casualties has struck a nerve with me, so I’m here to lament the loss of princesses.

Certainly you’ve noticed the drop in princesses in the last few decades. Royal stations in the real world are quickly becoming a thing of the past, and even the ones that are left are totally unlike the ideal version of the station. And as the world of fiction steadily marches on into the more realistic and modern reaches, even imaginary princesses are feeling the sting, and their numbers are sadly dwindling. The problem we face is two prong: not only is there a very low supply of princesses, but there’s also a sad and distinct lack of demand.

Perhaps no better indicator of this is Disney’s recent announcement to outright abandon princesses from here on out. Their official release seemed to imply a certain sorrow on the subject, and pointed an accusatory finger in the direction of all boys everywhere, because they stink and have cooties and just suck in general. But let’s face it, Disney is a huge conglomerate company that runs with property based on what’s in demand. If princesses were on enough of the paying public’s mind, then no matter how much these boorish boys bullied them, like the fetid troglodytes they are, Disney wouldn’t have given in to their constant demands for robots and aliens and basic “boy stuff”.

Because this is totally something all boys would want to see.

Case in point with Disney, you can check out their Rapunzel, which despite heralding from the studio’s very princess-centric roots, was adapted closer to release to be more boyish and Shrekified, even being renamed to Tangled, removing that unsightly “princess” name from the title. Similarly retitled is their forthcoming project A Princess of Mars, now called John Carter of Mars just so none of these princess enthusiast upstarts got any ideas. Now I’m not necessarily complaining about the new name, or even the prospect of a new name. After all, the book upon which it was based was only published under the Princess title after being changed from the original Under the Moons of Mars. But Princess was the title that truly said all you needed to know, relating to the audience who was the character that served as the entire purpose of the tale, the catalyst and reason for all the events, even if she wasn’t the main character or had the most screen time. But, sadly, the public’s desire for that character’s importance has waned, and Disney’s chance to successfully marry epic sci-fi action with the princess theme has been passed over for a chance to get with the times.

Again, Disney isn’t just doing this because boys told them to (no matter how much they want you to think this is the case), they’re doing this because princesses are just not that popular today. Girls don’t even want to be princesses when they grow up anymore, they want to grow up and be president or something stupid like that (note: I’m not being sexist; I don’t trust any child that wants to grow up to be president. In a perfect world, every girl wants to grow up to be Princess Leia and every boy wants to grow up to be Batman.) Used to be, there was princess stuff for girls and action stuff for boys, and that was perfectly fine with everyone. Boys got their Ninja Turtles and Transformers who would gladly beat the crap out of each other all day, and girls got Disney princesses who were wholesome and nurturing and had armies of fiercely loyal animal friends who were ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. But then one day, animal friends just weren’t enough.

And sometimes, they’re too much.

I don’t know if it was too many boys going “eww” at all the pink frills and singing, or too many girls growing up, or feminism or communism or whatever, but everyone started focusing on all the bad parts of princesses while overlooking the great parts. They started looking at how weakly docile and pretty much useless Princess Aurora is, and forgetting just how awesome Princess Leia is, or how morally courageous Cinderella is, or how much of a firecracker Princess Jasmine is, or how powerful She-Ra is.

She is after all, a Princess of Power.

People started decided that everyone being equal meant everyone being exactly the same, so our female cartoon characters that girls could look up to had to stop being so royal and be more like all the male action heroes. Now they absolutely must have all sorts of villains and action and gadgets, just like all the boys. Dejah Thoris, the earlier mentioned princess of Mars, in the original books possesses power and strengths stemming and gained from her royal standing; she is a powerful diplomat, a brilliant scientist, and clever strategist. These attributes make her a perfect compliment to her counterpart, the sword fighting wunderkind John Carter. Wonder Woman, perhaps the greatest princess of them all, owes everything she has in terms of strength, power, weapons, and allies to being the Princess of Themyscira, and heir to all of its vast wealth of resources (physical, mental, emotional, and philosophical). But modern audiences and writers just can’t see the greatness of princesses through their modern tinted glasses, and feel forced to strip away this aspect in favor of making them more like the guys. If script rumors are to be believed, Dejah Thoris now grabs a sword and “blitzes” enemy soldiers, foregoing the peace seeking diplomat and the planet saving atmosphere scientist she was in the original to make her good at exactly what the main character does for the whole book. Wonder Woman in the comics is now forced to be less mythological princess and more Street Fighter rip-off, and now on TV she’s forced to be less mythological princess and more CEO turned urban vigilante.

Pictured from left to right: “Hadouken!”; “I am Batman.”

Well, I for one stand by my principles that women should not be made to be more like guys. I say it’s high time we celebrated princesses and action heroes alike for the unique merits they both bring to the table, to create a more balanced world for our children.

For our children.

Hope for the Future Yet

I don’t like to describe myself as cynical, but I'll readily admit I'm secretly a fairly pessimistic person. It's one of my genetic gifts, and it's something I grapple with from time to time. I developed the sense of a hopeless romantic from my mom, and the two battle it out non stop, evenly matched save for those awful moments when watching the un-hopeless romantics in the world around me acting the way they do seems to prove the Pessimist right. It’s at these moments that the Hopeless Romantic goes to him, not really ready to admit defeat, but at least to acknowledge the definitive losing fight that makes his struggle so valiant a one. There is an inherent pessimism to the Hopeless Romantic, hopeless being the key word here. But every once in a while, I come across something so wonderful, so beautiful, so indescribably glorious that the Hopeless Romantic need do nothing but point and smile satisfactorily. "Well played, sir" smirks the Pessimist, and goes back to his isolation, sitting in an armchair smoking a cigar in a large empty mansion.

This morning I stumbled across one such overwhelmingly beautiful epoch. I passed by a house that was privy to the TP-ing of a lifetime. I really want to go back and take photos or something, so that I can remind myself years later that I was blessed enough to see that good of a job in my life. They hit everything: three trees (we’re just now coming out of winter, so they were still bare of leaves), the bushes, the wooden bench, some on the roof, and even around and in the mailbox. The house and yard were fairly small, so they hit the neighbors’ gardens and trees as well, subtly enough that the focus was still on the one house. Lastly, the best part was a shining emblem of the reason behind it all: posted in the middle of the yard, and accentuated with ribbons of two-ply, was a poster board sign on a wooden stake that proudly said "I ♥ U!"

It's nice to see someone of my generation with a little pride in tradition, and a knowledge of the past. You see, this is a lesser known fact anymore, but historically speaking, the meaning and inherent symbolism of TP-ing someone's house was as a grand and chivalrous act of love. Only a love true enough, pure enough, brave enough could summon the courage in the heart of the male to declare his passion to the world by TP-ing the house of the object of his affections. Over time, this aspect of the task has slowly disappeared, and now what once was an important step in the order of courtly love, has now been accumulated into the collective arts of the base and soulless vandal. Now a days, the passionate art of TP-ing is performed almost exclusively by vagabonds and villains, whose sole intent is to quench their lust for adrenaline. Usually, too, these kinds of performances are mere trifles; poor, unfinished jobs that are more of an embarrassment to the vandal in question than an annoyance to the owner of the unfortunate residence. There doesn't seem to be any more TP-ings worth even slowing down to gawk at. Gone are the days when true love held its sway; when a man could target his beloved with an array of flying rolls, either to prove the steadfastness of his love to the disapproving guardians of the girl, or perhaps to melt her icy heart and prove the strength of his loyalty to her. I look around in shame at the disheartened yards with but a single roll or two, ashamed at its own inadequacy to attract better artisans of the craft. I sigh wistfully to myself, and sometimes piteously ask aloud, "What has become of France?"

But here, holding its head high, this yard could display both the crystal clear majesty, the utter completeness of this monument, and it's even clearer message of passion. I only hope that I myself will have the courage, skill, and heroism to one day pay the due honor to my beloved with such a gift. I hope and pray, every night that I too can leave this kind of romantic impression upon her.

This is the most romantic thing I think I've ever seen.

There is hope for the future yet.

Please Answer the Questions in an Orderly Fashion

The word on the street that I’ve been hearing is there's a remake of The Black Hole coming up. Now, I’d perk up in attention if any movie titled something like The Black Hole was being made, but in this case I’m actually familiar with the original. It was a Disney movie from the 70’s that was basically a vehicle for Maximilian Schell to play the greatest, crazy, space Captain Nemo ever seen, and as much as that speaks to everything in movies that I enjoy, I’ll be the first to admit the movie had some distinct flaws. Sure the special effects are dated now, but they were pretty good for the time; granted they had terrible robot sidekicks, one of which inexplicably had a bad southern accent, but you have to keep in mind it was marginally a kids’ movie. No, the gravest mistake that they made with this film was in the ending. (I’ll go ahead and warn you now: there will be spoilers aplenty ahead.) The movie’s big question throughout is what lies on the other side of the black hole. A daunting question for any film, let alone Disney’s live action department in the 70’s, but the movie builds up that question for 90 mostly awesome minutes. Closing in on the end, the gravity macguffens are failing and the giant mystery space station and its crazy German space captain and his killer robots and hypnotized space crew are being dragged into the black hole, and everything seems so cool that we can’t possibly be disappointed, we find out the answer to the film’s ongoing question, and it ruins everything.

This movie is just one in a long line of films, television shows, books, and other things that belong to a burgeoning new subgenre that I really, really want to like, and thus far have found incredibly few satisfying examples of. As the first person to have noted this (at least without researching the matter further), I take the right to name this discover, and I have called it The Impossible Question. The basic point of any example in the genre is to set up a question, similar to a murder mystery, except that the question pertains more so to the reality in which the characters live (Lost’s “What is the island?”; The Black Hole’s “What lies on the other side of the Black Hole?”; Muppets from Space’s “Where did Gonzo come from?”; etc). It seems like a new form of mystery, mostly a subgenre of sci-fi, though it definitely carries elements throughout of fantasy, horror, maybe even religious, but really anything that adds to the mood and intrigue. While there have been examples of this popping up throughout the history of fiction, as far back as I can tell to Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, it’s suddenly had a resurgence which has made it more popular and common than ever, with several new attempts at the genre coming out within the last few years. And, by and large, all these recent attempts are terrible.

The problem with the Impossible Question is partly due to its own biggest selling point; the questions are really interesting. To make a really cool, cosmic feeling, truly epic and impossible question, you need a fantastic build up. The build up, it turns out, is not that hard; you just keep asking increasingly bizarre questions and having increasingly illogical events happen.

“Oh my God, polar bear attack!”

But that turns out to be something of a problem where the writers in question seem to stand back and look at the situation and say, “Well, that build up was fantastic, it sure got the audience hooked and loving this. Wait, why are you still looking at me? What? Crap, you want more?!” They seem to forget that the more questions you ask, the more complex the answer(s) is going to have to be.

There seem to be three major cop-out answers that writers are willing to give, and have begun to rely on.

First off, and starting with the worst, some people will just not answer the question at all. Like, flat out refuse. It’s almost as if you asked someone on the street what time it was, and then they did an elongated song and dance routine before finally (breathlessly) telling you they didn’t have a watch the whole time. It might have been entertaining at the time, but the entire purpose of the interaction was voided within the last few moments. Take Cloverfield. Anyone who knows me as a person knows that I hate and loathe Cloverfield, and consider it the absolute bottom on my list of movies I’ve seen. And while I have many, many reasons, pretty high among them is the movie’s absolute refusal to answer even the most basic of questions pertaining toward its apparently nonexistent plot. “What is the monster?”; “Where did the monster come from?”; “Why is it attacking?”; “What does the monster look like?”; “Why should I care about any of these vapid, banal teenagers when I went to see a giant monster movie?”; and “Can I see the damn monster now?” are all questions that J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves just opted out of answering, despite the fact that the potential for answers was the absolute only thing getting me through the shaky camera. Another example is the upcoming Vanishing on 7^th Street (it’s not even out yet, but I Wikipedia’d it after an early release). Basic plot is people are vanishing and the literal darkness is what’s taking them. This leads to some very important questions like “What is the darkness, and why is it taking people?” but if you’re going into the movie wondering things like that, you’d best forget expecting an answer because that’s something for another day. The movie ends with everyone in the world disappearing, and there’s no real reason why. If we’re comparing this new Impossible Question genre to the Mystery genre, this is like a murder mystery that you watch for two hours, and then the detectives take one last look at the corpse before calling it quits and deciding they’ll never know who the murderer is, and then the credits roll.

The second option, somewhat less bad, but possibly more groan inducing, is that it’s been a trick question all along. Take for instance the 2009 movie Exam. The basic plot is 8 people on a job interview for a mysterious company, they’re told they have 80 minutes to answer the question, except they're not given a question. As movies who have those little wheat stalks on their posters are wont to do, human emotions swell to the breaking point, and a seemingly simple event becomes a bottle movie of epic proportions which likely shines a light on the darkest aspects of modern man.

Is this what most job interviews are like? I’ve only been on 3.

Well, how can this go wrong, we’ve already delineated exactly what the question for the film is (there’s two, really: “What’s the question again?” and “Psst, guys. Does anyone know the answer to question number 1?”) There’s a mysterious corporation involved, and hey it’s got those little wheat stalks on the poster again, how can this go wrong? Turns out that right before the clock started ticking and the emotions started swelling, the guard that brought them into the interview room asked them “Any questions?”. The one who figures it out responds with, “No.” End of movie. The entire mystery of the film is a trick question. It’s almost like there was no mystery at all, given how trivial and unimportant the answer turned out to be. I’m actually surprised there wasn’t a classic comedy drumbeat and symbol clash. It’s only a couple steps above a pun.

Which is odd, seeing as how puns have turned out so much better in this situation before.

In murder mystery terms, this is like earnestly watching a 2 and a half hour movie before they climactically reveal that the cause of death wasn’t murder at all, but only a tragically placed banana peel.

Lastly, we have what is probably the most common answer: let’s get Meta-Physical. The thing with this one is that it’s secretly what you want the answer to be, it just turns out that you didn’t really think it through that much. When these kinds of stories get really, intensely complex, and they involve these ever growing questions that are so cosmic and profound, you want to the answer to be equally cosmic and profound. But there’s a lot of trouble in trying to make it so. For starters, meta-physical, somewhat spiritual answers deal more in the mystical than in the science fiction realm. This means the answer is going to be kind of a hackneyed catchall, like “this character is special because he is The One”, or “the deal with all the craziness is that this is a cosmic battleground between the absolute forces of good and evil”. Even if they attempt to go for a science fiction backed answer, it will inevitably turn into some kind of catchall answer that is just advanced and misunderstood enough at the time the story is written, like nanites, neutrinos, the super-collider, or electromagnetism. But in either case, they will still be trying to marry the science fiction with the quasi-mystical, and the effect is way too simplistic of an answer to cover the multitude complexities of the questions asked.

Secondly, cosmic is different to every person. Taking into consideration the set of religious beliefs that each audience member subscribes to is difficult, and this difficulty is multiplied by the extremely personal attributes every person ascribes to their set of beliefs on their own accord. To make things mystical and cosmic that work for every audience member, without alienating anybody, means that you have to take what was already a disappointingly one word answer like, “God”, and rework it until it's acceptably faceless, like “an anthropomorphized image of all things good in the universe”.

Someday, we’ll all end up in that big, diverse, politically correct safe haven in the sky.

This is probably the most widespread of all answers to the impossible question today. The Black Hole is one of the earliest that I can think of. Have you figured out what was on the other side of the black hole? Yeah, it’s heaven and hell. 2012 decided that the end of the world was caused by Neutrinos doing something science-magic, and yet it still turned into the Biblical flood, complete with arcs. Though "John from Cincinnati" was cancelled before it managed to tell us what it was about, it was stated by its creators that it was somehow about finding God through surfing. Easily the best example of this was Lost, which basically had everything I talked about up there as their ending. Everyone who ever wondered what kind of an island had so many weird things on it waited 6 years to find out that it was the battleground between anthropomorphized Good vs. Evil, and that electro-magnetism was magic, and that in the end it was all okay because everyone died and went to heaven (eventually).

I’d like to say that the murder mystery equivalent is watching a 3 hour movie to find out that the killer was the Devil, but it doesn’t really matter because the victim went to heaven, except that comparison would be incorrect. It’s really more like watching something for 85 hours, and then finding out that the killer was the Devil, but it doesn’t really matter because the victim went to heaven.

For anyone, like me, who sincerely wants to like this genre, do not give up hope. There are good examples in the past, there are a few good ones out there right now, and that means that there will be some, however few, in the future. By delineating what makes the bad ones bad, and pointing out some good ones, I hope to make a small difference in this genre myself. So here’s some good examples: "The Twilight Zone", and to a lesser extent, "The Outer Limits". The anthology format really allowed you to ask multiple questions, and get a great answer every time, every single episode, and even better, if you don’t like one, the next episode is a fresh start! Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, possibly the progenitor of the entire sub-genre, is one of the first and one of the best. And then there’s "Doctor Who". Old and new, most episodes of "Doctor Who" follow this format, except where they ask a bizarre series of questions, they answer them better than you ever thought possible. I’ll go ahead and give you a small spoiler, the answer is almost always aliens, but that’s the beauty of it: in basing a show in a world where technology and alien species make just about anything possible, the answers can literally be anything, and thus they don’t have to rely on cheap tricks like nanites (and even if they do, there will be much more to it than that.) Not to mention that the British are largely a Godless nation, so you don’t have to worry about the answer turning out to be a literal Deus Ex Machina. So, go out to your nearest (British) video store today and rent all the seasons of "Doctor Who" you can. There are questions to be asked, and they will answer them with aliens.

They also do this a lot, too.

Property Claims

I want to ask a question here, and I hope I don’t end up sounding like a bigot; how come gay men can claim heterosexual women as their representatives? I’ve recently become a big fan of Wonder Woman comics, and while my reasons for enjoying them stem from their propensity towards superpowers, sword fighting, beautiful and ageless warrior women, and mythological creatures, I’ve found out that Wonder Woman is also considered a gay man’s superhero.

Nothing says male homosexuality like a hot chick punching demons at the Lincoln Memorial.

I don’t understand this, for the same reason I don’t understand why that demographic is so attached to Judy Garland and Julie Newmar. I suppose Garland I can kind of get, what with “Over the Rainbow”. It’s a bit of a stretch, almost a pun, like when Stephenie Meyer used Arcade Fire’s “My Body is a Cage” for her book about Bodysnatcher aliens. It’s a tenuous connection, but I suppose it’s there. But really, how do you make the leap from the hottest Catwoman ever (no offence to Eartha Kitt, Lee Meriwether, Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry, and Anne Hathaway), to movies about men in drag? Same goes for Wonder Woman. I’m honestly at a loss at to where the logic lies in making the leap from a superhero clad in the American flag who represents a pinnacle of the perfect womanly behaviors of peacemaking and nurturing to male homosexuality. If Wonder Woman has to be used as a representative for one specific demographic, I’d just as soon assume the obvious one: women.

But really, this is a wider phenomenon. How can any one demographic really lay claim to one particular character or celebrity? Sometimes it seems simple and makes sense. John Wayne, Jackie Chan, and Bruce Willis are seen as men’s kind of actors, and that makes sense: they specialize in cool and manly things like shooting people, kicking people, and blowing people up (in some cases, all of the above). But when you really stop to think about it, couldn’t they just as easily be women’s kind of actors? Aren’t they physically attractive to women? (I’m honestly asking here, because I’ve come to realize I really don’t know. I just found out that the three closest women to me at work all think Nicolas Cage is, quote, “Hot!”, so my world view has been turned entirely upside down and I don’t know who to trust anymore.)

Sexy!

Gone With the Wind gets a rap as a women’s movie, but why? At it’s core it’s about war and the Confederacy; you don’t get much more manly than that. I’m pretty certain you’d be hard pressed to find a man who didn’t find Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, and Minnie Driver attractive, and yet ohmygodtheyreallinthesamemovie and it’s considered only for women.

Sometimes the ones who get claimed by one group or another don’t make any sense between the two of them; Samus Aran, interstellar bounty hunter in a robo suit and one of the first female video game heroes is played mainly by boys it seems, yet Lara Croft, reigning queen of polygon assets, is a feminist icon.

From left to right: chick with a gun, chick with guns

Now, sometimes a celebrity is particularly outspoken for a certain demographic, so I can understand when Buddhists claim Shirley McClain, or blue collar workers with fancy cars claim Bruce Springsteen. But I don’t think that any person or piece of fiction should belong to any one race or religion or gender or creed. I don’t have to work at an automobile factory in Michigan to jam to “Thunder Road”, nor should I have to.

I have a dream. I dream of a world where men can enjoy Wonder Woman and women can enjoy Power Girl; where chicks can play video games and dudes can enjoy baking; where white people can love watermelon and fried chicken and black people can eat mayonnaise and free range brown eggs; where Americans can appreciate soccer while baseball and apple pie are products of the world instead of one country; where you don’t have to be a poindexter to like edutainment and you’re never to old to watch a Saturday morning cartoon. If we as a people can learn to see ourselves beyond social labels with preset lists of allowable likes and dislikes, then we can finally learn to like all things indiscriminately. This, this is my dream.