Toys For Men

Just for kids? Doubtful. I hear the old folks complaining “kids” movies are more for adults these day. Good. I’m glad we adults get to have fun again.

America is still behind the times. I’m not talking about universal health care or acceptance of nudity, either. I’m talking about America’s habit of taking everything fun and giving it to kids. Toys. Cartoons. Games. What is the deal with that?

Don’t get me wrong. We’ve come a long way. But I think we all know there is still quite a disconnect between the growing population of young and middle-aged adults who still like the fun stuff, and the aging population. There are still a lot of people out there who think anybody past their mid-twenties who still watches “kids” movies, thinks super heroes are cool, and plays video games has something wrong with them. A lot of people still don’t consider people interested in these things “grown up”. This doesn’t make much sense to me for a very good reason.

These things weren’t originally meant  for kids, and a lot of them still aren’t exclusively for children.

Borderline Racist

Recently, I had an interesting conversation about this Ms. Magazine article by Kathleen Richter. We were talking about how difficult it must be to create something for the any screen, big or small,  in a society where everything is completely over-analyzed by a million watchdog groups and individuals representing every race and creed  under the sun.

Things went bad when I mentioned how I always get annoyed when a character’s race is arbitrarily changed just to placate these groups. By “bad”, I mean I realized how much of a racist I am when it comes to this sort of thing.

My argument is this;  Hollywood “race lifts” are done for a variety of reasons, and none of them good, unless you count the studio not getting sued by some special interest group “good”. The counter-argument; race lifts are done to include different races when they might not otherwise be represented, and if it doesn’t change the character, what difference does it make.

Sooo bad.

I can concede that if a race-lift doesn’t change a character, it shouldn’t matter at all, and most of the time they don’t change. Kingpin was still Kingpin in the Daredevil movie. Nick Fury is still Nick Fury, even though Samuel L. Jackson is now sporting “the patch”. Sokka and Katara were still Sokka and Katara in the awful  The Last Airbender movie, which I will never watch.

However, even if its only on a visual level, race-changes still bug me. As a very visual person, a race-lifted character just doesn’t seem quite right.  In the case of the The Last Airbender and the Spawn movies,  it was downright horrendous. Dear God, is it awful when Caucasians replace non-Caucasians.

Also, as somebody who has created a lot of characters (who will likely never see light of day), I think it is unbelievable to change a character’s race and not change anything else about them. All but the most one-dimensional characters are changed simply by changing their race. Color doesn’t matter, but culture does, and people of different races have different cultures. People from different cultures experience life in different ways. It is a fact. It makes people who they are. I know we all love the melting pot idea, but it is very unrealistic to think we’re all ever going to think as one.

I think my biggest “beef”, though, is creators create characters the way they are for a reason. If  a character was meant to be Caucasian, they would have been written Caucasian. If a characters was meant to be African-American, Hispanic, Asian or undead, they would have been written as such.

Now, this is where it gets sticky. Does this mean I adhere to stereotypes?  Does taking in account of a races traditional culture and subsequent behavior when creating a character mean the author is painting said race into a corner or accurately portraying reality?

Either way, I don’t think it is doing anybody any favors by arbitrarily changing colors to “reflect reality”  or encourage cultural diversity.  Not being a racist dick, not excluding or not representing people simply because you don’t like them and realizing different people have different cultures and respecting them does far more for that cause.

Extra Credit:  I would like to know where the line on race-changing is drawn. When is it applicable? Does it have to be a major motion picture or does it affect lesser films? Are books and other written media subject to race changes?

I Hope You all Choke on Your “Electronic Books”

Really, I do. I know it is kind of extreme. I don’t even know if people “reading” books on gadgets is the cause of the “local” Borders going down.  I’m sure it didn’t help. Besides, I will really miss that bookstore, and somebody has to pay for my inconvenience.

For those of you who don’t know, Borders is a Michigan based all-encompassing bookstore chain like Barns and Noble. It is going out of business. I used to frequent the Borders in Traverse City, and now I will have to go downtown to a much, much smaller bookstore. Except I probably won’t because I hate downtown traffic and the store is 75% smaller. I don’t think they even have a  section for comic books.

While I probably won’t know all of the reasons the chain is closing, the usual culprits, online booksellers and “eBooks”, were implicated. Since their arrival, both have been viewed as potential bookstore assassins. Some even suggest “eBooks” might eventually make print books obsolete.

The online bookstore “threat” is certainly real. No single store could ever, or would want to, have the sheer selection of Amazon.com. You can buy almost anything from Amazon; usually cheaper. It is hard to compete with that.

I would argue that online booksellers are great if you know what you want, but not very fun to browse. Amazon and other sites give you lots of suggestions based on what you’ve looked at and purchased, but you’ll never find that “odd” book you’ve never heard of before unless you’re doing some very serious clicking. I can’t count the number of books I’ve bought and series’ I started reading that I’d never heard of until I saw it on a bookstore shelf.

As far as the “eBooks” go, let me tell you something, chumps. Electronics become obsolete. Books don’t.

Think of how soon that Nook or Kindle will have to be replaced to continue downloading books in the next 10 years?  How soon will “book” formats change, making your old books unreadable on new readers? Do all readers read all “eBooks”; no.  How many “eBook” sellers carry more than the classics and currently popular books? How does a nice tabletop art book carry over to digital format?

I’ll concede there are situations in which “eBooks” are very handy. I can see people who travel an awful lot (i.e. for a living) finding them very convenient. However, there are way, way too many reasons why they can’t replace books.

Good luck finding a copy of this on your Nook.