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I just wish they hadn’t given him Barry Allen’s job. Barry was the crime lab guy. Wally was a mechanic, which puts him even closer to the average person. That’s one of the many things I like about the DC heroes. Even their civilian occupations are about helping other people, even if it’s just using their wealth to help others like Bruce and Ollie.
samples of Frank Malec’s art
There are as many different forms of art as there are different forms of media and genre. Whether your a writer, a drawer, a painter, a sculptor, an actor (voice or physical), or even a singer we may not know much about art but we know what we like, and what we like often tells a story however minor. Not all art is storytelling but all storytelling is in some sense art. Just some of it is terrible.
In this article by Deacon Lawrence Klimecki, posted to The Way Of Beauty, we see how art brings us closer to God but also how it makes the creative a sort of god as well. After all, we storytellers are creating a form of reality and bringing it to life. Obviously a deacon is going to look at it through the lens of Christianity but it’s still an interesting look into art and why we need it in our lives as part of our culture even if we don’t appear to need it to survive. It’s why good storytelling matters.
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Next week, when I get back to regular article writing, you know I’m going to talk about this.
Look at that smug little punk! Ferris Bueller is a villain, and it takes a villain to know one. Granted I’ve only worked for a supervillain (or possibly two given a couple of my later bosses) in my Reviewers Unknown days. So I found another one.
In the video below, the Spoony One’s mad scientist nemesis/roommate Doctor Insano takes a shot at reviewing Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I figured since I’m doing a backlog slowdown (and I’m off to a good start on that, by the way) I’d do a theme of trashing this two-bit con artist who only cares about himself and his own fun, manipulating the love and support of others and ruining lives of anyone not him without any concern even for his supposed friends…and he gets away with it because the movie thinks he’s a hero for doing what the audience wishes they could.
For some reason this video isn’t up at Noah Antweiler’s YouTube channel and I even checked his Counter Monkey YouTube channel of tales from the RPGs he’s played in, so I have to use a third-party upload. Note that there is swearing.
I’m taking two shots at this movie during my slowdown. The first comes in the usual daily quickpost spot where I link to this article by Bleeding Fool’s Spoot Lepidus (is that a screenname?) going over how big a jerk Ferris actually is. If that’s not enough, either because you don’t like his worldview or something, come back tonight as I thrown on a video by a supervillain with an opposing worldview that should confirm it.
Why trash a supposed 80s classic? Because I hate this movie’s “hero” as well, and for the same reasons seen in this article and tonight’s video. For now, back to the backlogged projects.
Remember when Star Trek actually taught this?
Diversity. What should be just another part of writing something resembling our world, just with monsters, aliens, people in spandex flying around punching each other, mad scientists, wizards and sorceresses, and people who have and probably never will exist has somehow become a buzzword or sometimes even a shield against proclaiming a story bad. At the same time it can feel like a buzzword for “this is going to be ‘woke’ garbage”, even by members of the group the story claims to be representing. Surprisingly nobody is part of a hivemind based on race, gender, or even shared values. Not every Christian agrees with each other on every topic, even the big ones like abortion.
So how do we get good representation AND good storytelling. Can we? Since I’m doing a slowdown this week to get some backlogged projects caught up (and my apologies to the new subscribers that just started following me this weekend–I promise if I’m not back by Friday there will be a Saturday Night Showcase and return to form on Monday) I’m not going to leave you without articles to read. I’ll just tap other people’s articles, like author James Harrington discussing how to do better diversity in your stories, so you have representation AND good writing. Don’t you think these groups that supposedly are underrepresented deserve to have good stories instead of garbage that wouldn’t work if the protagonist was a straight white male?
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I’d also like to point out that toys were made based on TV shows, even in the 1980s when shows based on toys were finally allowed. The reason kids wanted a Star Trek or Six Million Dollar Man toy was because they really liked the show and wanted to play those adventures, long before there ever was an adult collector market for such things. Meanwhile shows like ThunderCats and The Centurions were show first and the toys were intended to help fund the show. So the only way those shows would sell toys is if the show was so good kids wanted to play further adventures with or as those characters or in that world. If anything a quality show should be more important to those shows than if they weren’t “toy commercials”. It’s why we remember MASK and not Vor-Tech.
The Clutter Reports (my other site) Atop The Fourth Wall Crisis On Earth Prime Lean Into Artcast Bully Says “Comics Oughta Be Fun” Siskoid’s Blog of Geekery
Cartoon Hero’s Lair SF Debris Four Million Years Later
BW Media Spotlight 