BW Media Spotlight

This seems to be my week to put up with the culture war. Well, it was either this, Netflix losing She-Ra being a non-issue but a good time to explain the problems, or the trailer for We Put He-Man On Earth Again Because We’re That Unimaginative. Might save the She-Ra one for a filler, and I’m not interested in live-action He-Man, but since I’ve already gone through Star Wars and Nintendo, I guess we can complete the near-trifecta since this is the only time I have to mention Kathleen Kennedy all article. At least I get to talk about Autobots tomorrow and Godzilla on Saturday. That’s more my wheelhouse.

So let’s talk about “cultural appropriation”. You know, the idea if you’re of the wrong geographic ancestry you aren’t allowed to wear a kimono or get a certain hairstyle…though nobody complains if a Japanese person wears blue jeans. (Especially if they look hot in…oh wait, now we complain about a blond in blue jeans.) It’s stupid, it’s divisive (exactly what the demographic obsessed power mongers want because we’re easier to control if we’re fighting each other and not watching them), and it defeats the whole purpose of “The Great American Melting Pot”, the idea that we can come together, share our cultures, and grow stronger and closer as a species. As I tried to state with the blue jeans reference, however, cultural appropriation is fine if the “right people” do it. You know, like the folks trying to tell Japan how to run their media.

So-called “geek culture” is fair game as well. It’s not bound by any one geographic location. Anybody of any race, creed, color, gender, and species who finds a home here is welcome. At least until it becomes popular, and then the cool kids and activists all want to claim it for themselves because heaven forbid those silly little geeks have anything that’s popular. The everything for meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee crowd won’t stand for it, even if they aren’t interested in it themselves. Dungeons & Dragons isn’t safe, so of course something like Star Trek isn’t. The appropriators also aren’t happy when you aren’t in lockstep with their clearly superior tastes. It’s not enough to see something popular and ask for their version. They need that Brand to be about and for them and them alone, accuse the fans of the same gatekeeping they’re now doing, and just making a mess of something they didn’t care about last Tuesday.

At issue here is a recent op-ed by The Mary Sue going off on YouTube reviewers Gary Buechler of  “Nerdrotic” because he started this wave of embarrassing Starfleet Academy with a just-under one hour live stream, half of which was just a Spock action figure sitting on his computer chair, that got more views than the free full episode preview live premier of the first episode on YouTube. (I think he should have played audio clips MST3K Yule Log style with inspirational speeches from the good shows.) The thesis is basically “if you don’t like Starfleet Academy then you don’t like Star Trek and never understood it”. I like Starfleet Academy. Nog’s journey to join Starfleet, the crossover with the Dominion War…oh, the recent TV series, not the 90s Marvel/Paramount Comics thing. That show has problems. Gary’s chair stream was more interesting than the last time we discussed a chair stream because it was shorter and was part of an experiment, which it succeeded at…and that’s why writer and site founder Rachel Leisman was so upset.

For the record, Buechler doesn’t need me to defend him. His website and numerous YouTube channels get more hits than mine. (Would help if I had time to make videos again, but he does beat my articles. You don’t see me complaining.) This is about the current state of geek culture in the hands of people who spent high school ignoring geek stuff and their adulthood taking them over.

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