Monday Chat #3 – Kid Shows Take on Reality

While this is not what I promised the next episode of Monday Chat would be about, but I did go on one hell of a weird tangent this week. For these past seven days I have been looking up a bunch of cartoons and advertisements from my childhood, seeing if I recall anything that I’ve forgotten or gotten some nostalgia boost out of it. For the most part, I didn’t – I did get Heroscape, though.

And while I did not discover anything crazy from my childhood, I did discover something else… something that I could have only discovered as an adult now. And that’s the way kid show’s try to take on serious topics in order to teach kids about them.

From what I’ve seen the greatest example of this – and the first example I’ve found – is Sesame Street. Sesame Street deals with so many topics like these at the onset its kind of hilarious. I mean, canonically within the Sesame Street Universe, Elmo received PTSD at a very young age. Also, his Uncle Jack died “in the war” (what the war is we’re never actually told) which then later causes Elmo’s dad and his neighbor Ricardo (Eduardo? I don’t actually remember his name) to join “the war” and when they come back Elmo and his father’s relationship is stunted not to mention that Ricardo doesn’t have fucking legs anymore. And beyond the deployment trilogy, there’s also other small tidbits here and there – Gina is apparently given death threats for being in a mixed-race relationship, Mr Hooper (who’s store burned down, thus giving Elmo PTSD) is later found dead, and Lil Oscars father is apparently incarcerated. These revelations just lead to more questions – what is this so called war? What are its combatants? Does that mean there’s a greater world outside of Sesame Street? Is there prosthetics in the Sesameverse? What about funerals? What is Sesame Street prison like? If there’s racism and incarceration, does that mean that there’s a Sesame Street Aryan Brotherhood? Sesame Street, however, leaves these questions up to the imagination.

But when you take the videos into the context which they are actually meant to be taken, it is equally interesting. The method of trying to teach a kid about things like death or war or racism are hard for anyone to do, so it is interesting that these cartoons and other children shows have decided to step in and help in describing such things in a way kids will understand.

Sometimes they aren’t so blatant as Sesame Street, though, and are instead worked into the plot of the show itself in which the characters directly are impacted, and their responses are used as guidelines for the children watching. Such is the case in Why, Charlie Brown, Why?, where Linus’ playmate Janice is diagnosed with leukemia.

I prefer this method (though it is more difficult) because you’re enhancing the narrative while still giving people – including kids – something to think about. These serious moments in children’s TV can help teach people how to cope when dealing with a troubling situation like this while also help develop characters and story that will engage the audience.

Of course, Janice never actually appears outside of that episode. A more appropriate example in this case would be in Doug, where Doug’s crush Patti ends up falling into an eating disorder due to constant media outpouring on how the ideal female body is unnaturally slender – a problem that was very real at the time that the episode came out.

Throughout the episode Doug struggles to get help for her from other adults, though merely throw it off, also falling into the ploy of the media. This all escalates when Patti actually passes out during a track and field match, in which the previous satirized adults now take the topic very seriously. Doug in itself is full of moments like these – which may make it good for a full analysis on its own.

And, of course, this topic as a whole has more to be discussed as well. These are just three examples of such introspection in kids shows that I find the most poignant. Of course, there’s always the lighter side of cartoons to – what makes the best ones accessible to kids and adults alike – and that might be a topic for later as well. I know I’ll probably continue this binge into next week, so there might be some sort of continuation then, but for now this has been this week’s topic for Monday Chat.

Currently listening: I have spent about 90% of my listening time this week dedicated to Scum Fuck Flower Boy and my honest opinion is that it’s just as good as any of Tyler’s other albums. I’m one of the music rogues who really did heavily enjoy WOLF and Cherry Bomb (not Goblin though, we don’t talk about that) so I’m mostly just glad that most other people now have the respect for him that I already had. I honestly can’t really tell the quality difference between this and other albums he’s done, other than that the songs are much more catchy this time around. A solid 8/10, as always. Favorite songs: See You Again, Pothole, Boredom, I Aint Got Time, 911.

Currently watching: Uh… late 2000s ads? Honestly I had a bit of an existential crisis when I found out my childhood years happened then. 2007 still seems real damn recent – I mean, I guess it was, in the grand scheme of things – but I still feel pretty comfy watching them, so I guess I’ll keep doing that. In other news, Twin Peaks and Game of Thrones is tomorrow (I am once again writing this not actually on Monday). I honestly would have dropped GoT by now since the episode was in fact exactly like the leak, but the action sequence brought me up just enough that I felt some weird purgatory state with the episode itself (which really can describe my entire feeling with the show), so this time I’ve decided if I hate the next episode OR feel “meh” about it I’ll probably drop it. I also think I watched like, half an episode of House of Cards before I remembered why I dropped it.

Currently playing: Mostly been Skyrim and Age of Empires II this week. Not that I dropped Rome Total War, but as fun and hilarious as the elephants are to use it does kind of get old of being so easily able to wipe out a massive enemy army. There’s also the fact that the game crashes 66% of the time with them in it. Mistakes were made.

Currently reading: Nothing new. I am a very slow reader and all the books that I’m reading are 500+ pages – what did you expect?

Monday Chat #2 – Perfect Blue: The Avatar is an Illusion

I suppose this is a bit of a spoiler for my “Currently Watching” segment, but last Tuesday I saw Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue for the first time, and it left me a lot to think about. So much, in fact, that I’ve decided to write about it here.

I’ll try to stray away from spoilers to the actual movie as much as I can here (though there’s plenty to talk about when it comes to the actual movie as well). Instead, I want to crack open the themes of Perfect Blue – more specifically, that of the avatar.

The idea of the perfect version of oneself never really hit me that hard until I saw this movie. In this Internet Age, we really do live double lives – the life we live and the life we want people to see. I try my best not to make them too different, but often I can see myself trying to frame things in a way that make me look better than I actually am.

It’s an interesting concept. The avatar is really a shell of the person – the tweets, instagram photos, facebook statuses, and even likes/favorites are all meticulously designed either consciously or subconsciously to hide the flaws of the person who uses it. In this way the fantasy of the screen is different from the reality.

Though Perfect Blue does not really touch on how our virtual selves effect us (the movie was released in 1997, right before the internet received mainstream uses. Though a few years later Serial Experiments Lain does in fact dive into this conundrum), but it still keeps to the main theme of the avatar in a different, also still very relevant way. Mumi is torn when she decides to leave her job as a pop idol singer in order to pursue an acting career that holds more maturity. Firstly there’s the clear difficulty in the act of switching professions like that – especially someone who already has minor celebrity. But on top of that, there comes doubt – does she want to be an actress, or a singer? This creates a horrid complication where she must keep up the guise of her loving the acting world while in reality being completely distraught over who she is, until it finally consumes her.

Many times people insist on holding in their greatest problems and doubts in order to make the outside – the world the rest of us see – as clean and orderly as possible. But this habit – an ultimately self-destructive habit – only continues to fuel the fire of suffering. For when everyone acts like they are perfect, its hard to see imperfections; and in this way, it makes many believe that they are much weaker, because they do in fact have these imperfections. Then, the cycle continues. Just as Mumi turns down multiple offerings of help, the person behind the avatar often does as well – the show must go on, whether it be for a young actress or for the average person and their snapchat account.

Still, more could be uncovered here. I admit that I have only really dug into this idea at the surface, and there is much more to talk about – especially in our modern, digital world. That’s why Perfect Blue I feel would be one of the few movies to really benefit from a reboot conceptually; given the right amount of everything else (director, writers, budget, etc. etc..), a new Perfect Blue could really expand upon the ideas inlaid in the first one while still staying true to Satoshi Kon’s original ideas.

Anyway, that’s all I wanted to discuss for the topic of the day. Now for the highlights:

Currently watching: In addition to Perfect Blue I also saw Baby Driver in theaters. It was pretty damn good – especially with that second half – but I felt like I got underwhelmed by certain aspects. I feel like a lot of my disappointments of the movie came from knowing so much about it before watching (such as watching the trailers, reading reviews, etc. etc.). The soundtrack was also pretty underwhelming throughout, which was kind of sad speaking that it was pretty much the most advertised part of the movie. Still it surprised me with how well the tense scenes were developed so that managed to get all it’s points back, and I still gave it a 9/10 (remember to check out my letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/astuka/ !). As for TV watches, I’m continuing on with Twin Peaks, and if episode 2 for GoT is exactly how its described in the leak (which you’ll know by the time this blog comes out), I’ll probably just drop that show entirely. Honestly I’m tired of its stand still plot and boring characters, and with Twin Peaks on at the same time it’s a pretty obvious choice of what I’m gonna watch instead.

Currently playing: For the most part, this week I’ve only really been playing Rome Total War and Guild Wars 2. GW2 has got me back into action by re-enticing me into WvW, So I think its safe to say I’ll probably put another decent chunk of hours into that before I’m done. Also, since I’m back into MMOs, I thought now might be a good time to start up FFXIV again. When it became (partially) free, I got up until about level 8, then I was bored. But with the massive amount of people saying they’re super into it, I figure it deserves another shot. As for Rome Total War, my game keeps crashing because apparently it can’t handle elephants. And my army has a lot of elephants. Like, a LOT of elephants. Don’t ask why that is, it just… it is.

Currently reading: Nothing new, though I feel like dropping House of Leaves since nothing has really happened in it for awhile. I’m still reading the excerpts from my English book, as well as more on battle history. A particularly good excerpt written by Feynman in the English book has got me reading his Lectures on Physics series, though as of writing I’m not that far into it.

Currently listening: Since Tyler’s new album Scum Fuck Flower Boy just came out I’ve mostly been listening to that in terms of new music. I’ve only done one complete listen to that album, so I don’t really have anything to say about it just yet. As to what I was literally listening to while writing this, it included some classics such as Hope Sandoval’s On The Low and Billy Joel’s Where’s the Orchestra.

Monday Chat #1 -- Introduction to Monday Chat

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve written anything of real substance on either of the blogs, and I’ve an itch to write more as of recent. Yet, as my free time becomes smaller and smaller and yet my interest in writing more increases, I had to form somewhere a compromise. This is where Monday Chats come in.

The format of Monday Chats are similar to my political posts of late 2014 + 2015, but shorter, across a variety of topics, and once a week. While the tone of these are much more conversational (a tone that I’m terrible with) I will be able to save the real good stuff for more short stories while still retaining a lot of my skill by writing regularly about important topics. It will also help in wrapping my mind around certain things.

So here is the structure: I’ll start off with the discussion of the “topic of the week”, going in depth into what I feel and hopefully making it fun enough to read on your end. I’ll also end it (because I know people like knowing this and I know it helps me stay on track) with what I’ve been doing recently, ie what I’ve been listening to, playing, watching, reading, etc. etc. Something you can expect from a person who actually keeps a log of every movie/book/game they’ve ever consumed (which apparently is not popular at all? What? Potential Monday chat topic??).

So, let’s run a practice round. This post’s topic will be the old conversational pieces I used to do on Astuka’s Blog. What do I think of them now? How have my thoughts changed?

Easily what I’ve written about the most (and subsequently what I’ve been known for the most) is my series of blogs on Gamergate (the hilariously stupid named video game scandal) and the later national debate that came out of that which dealt with radical feminism. Well, the Gamergate crew – which I left pretty early on due to both my own changing focuses and also the incredible stupidity among its ranks – ended up taking new people under its wing, including religious conservatives and white supremacists. As it got bigger it left a huge snail trail of outraged media and unfunny memes, eventually being renamed by the media “The Alt-Right” and following under the footsteps of their new political mastermind, Donald Trump. Then, Trump got elected. So I guess in a really roundabout way I was somewhat deeply responsible for getting Trump into office. Whoops! Won’t happen next time – I promise.

Still, have any of my opinions changed in terms of how I defined equality and feminism? Looking back at old posts (though I admit some of the older ones are pretty cringy to read), not much has changed. I still believe there is a clear distinction between radical feminism (which really is a dangerous ideology) and “actual” (???) feminism. And I still believe that there needs to be better attempts to differentiate between the too – I mean, it’s gotten so bad that we accidentally got a retard elected because of it. I don’t really need to explain this part anymore, do I?

Still, I suppose there is definitely still room for political talk on Monday Chat. I think one of the main pros to blogging like this – at least to me – is that you can make an impact on the world however small based on what’s currently happening right now. Instead of being a spectator to current events, you get to be apart of them – and that’s pretty cool.

Anyway, that’s about all for this first post. Hopefully this does become its own regular thing. I’ll try to keep each entry fairly brief so they’re both easy to read and easy to write. Anyway, let’s end this off with what I’ve been doing:

Currently playing: A lot of stuff. My second attempt to limit the amount of games I have playing at once to one has failed again. Just today I reinstalled Rome Total War for the first time in forever, hoping to go through the games in chronological order til Napoleon (the last one I own). I’m also halfway to completing Shadow of Mordor, and given how easy that game is I’ll probably go for beating it. Guild Wars 2 is also back on the menu, surprisingly – though my concerns involving why I stopped playing in the first place are still there, there’s also plenty of new cool stuff (WvW reward tracks!!!) that have lead me to giving it a second chance. Finally, seeing that the game is shutting down only after a year, I decided to pick up The Tomorrow Children… only to drop it. Yeah, I can see why it’s shutting down. It is kind of sad though – the concept of being a worker in a collective commune all trying to build a town together isn’t bad, it just doesn’t hold attention for long. I’m also not even sure how this game made money in the first place.

Currently reading: Also a lot of stuff. I’m up to the weird part of House of Leaves now, and my feelings for it still are pretty mixed. On one had the writing isn’t bad, and the concept is still interesting… but on the other hand, its filled with a whole lot of nothing. Weird, postmodernist, intentional nothing. I’ve also gotten back into being interested with military history (as evident by me playing Total War again) so I’ve been reading up on some old battles as well – though the book is written in such a way that I’m not sure if it’s made for kids or not? But who makes a kids book about famous military battles? I don’t know, it’s probably just me. Finally, I’ve been reading my textbook for English next year since it has a couple of pretty interesting excerpts in it. Except now I feel kind of scammed since the entire book is filled with these excerpts and I’m pretty sure all of them are free. Shit.

Currently watching: I’ve gotten a bit farther into Black Mirror – now onto Season 2 episode 3. While I still don’t really find myself enjoying it, I’ve found the episodes in this season are much easier to watch in one sitting. Their plots are still pretty uninteresting, but as I’ve begun to appreciate the cinematography and actual storytelling methods more and more I’ve used that to deal with the story itself. I’m hoping that by the time I’m finished I’ll at least be able to say I enjoyed at least some of the episodes. As for currently going TV, Twin Peaks is still kino and Game of Thrones is still a snoozefest (and, based on those leaked episode summaries, it appears that Game of Thrones will continue to be a snoozefest). And in the film department, I’m hoping to see Baby Driver in theaters relatively soon, though I’ve been too busy to find a chance and do it.

Currently listening: XXL freshman cyphers. Because I enjoy suffering and do not long to be in this world.

Well, that’s all for now. Remember to follow Codex of Aegis on Twitter and Facebook for more updates.