Tag: geek culture

New at 123ish: Why Horror Is Dominated By Catholic Tropes

Director William Friedkin last week complained the sequel to his ground-breaking 1973 film The Exorcist sucks runny demon eggs. I can’t disagree, but I will point out that he is responsible for breaking the horror genre in two and dooming us all to a lifetime of rehashed exorcism cliches.

Here, I tackle the meaty subject of why The Exorcist dominates horror culture right to the modern day, and ask if we will ever move on past Satanism, Ouija boards, priests clutching crucfixes, and nuns-nuns-nuns.

UPDATE – BONUS BUCK: I ran out of space in that article to talk about the “Satanic Panic” movement in the ’70s-’90s, a scare-tactics campaign by the American Christian church that grew more shrill by the year with shock media. Satanic Panic was one of the biggest contributors to turning American Christianity, originally more left-leaning, into the movement of Neocon bigots we know today. But I ran across this video preserved on the channel of the excellent archivist Josh Hadley which gives you an adequate taste for the atmosphere of the time. Feast your eyes and ears on the hilariously paranoid conspiracy theorists at Jeremiah Films, with “The Pagan Invasion – Devil Worship – The Rise Of Satanism.” No, this is not a parody.

New at 123ish.com: Let Comedians Say What They Want – That’s Their Job!

Are you offended by what Louis C.K. says? Or Aziz Ansari, or Kathy Griffin, or, for another example I forgot to include, Bill Maher and his ill-timed rant about comics right after Stan Lee passed?

So am I! I’m offended every day, but I have discovered a wonderful secret to cure perpetual offended syndrome! It’s a hard cure, you have to work for it. Here’s a meme to pass around social media and help others find this path to enlightenment:

Continue reading “New at 123ish.com: Let Comedians Say What They Want – That’s Their Job!”

New Post at 123ish.com: Why Do We Force-Feed Dystopian Literature To Students?

Presenting one of my most dangerous opinions. I hereby yell out loud the words nobody on the Western Internet dares to say: THE WORLD IS NOT ENDING! And we need to stop shoving George Orwell down everybody’s throat.

We are not living in a dystopia. We are not approaching a dystopia. We are not just around the corner from approaching anything like a dystopia. You can tell you’re not living in a dystopia if you’re able to read this, and you’re well-fed, clothed, warm, relatively safe at the moment, and free to reply with whatever babbling pops into your head.

In the herein linked post, I debunk Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (I refuse to express it numerically) and all the other dystopian literature along with it. Let us stop the paranoia and focus on the real world problems right in front of us for a change.

BONUS BUCK: The obligatory link that stayed hidden from my research until after I posted the article: “Why I’ve Had Enough of George Orwell”

UPDATE Ye Gods, they actually hand out copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four in hotel rooms in place of Bibles now. An organized theocracy based on Orwell is going to be really, really weird.

ADDENDUM: It’s an election year coming up in the states, so the dystopian mob frenzy is boiling over on the web more than usual. This post allegedly by Aldous Huxley is making the rounds lately:

In the first place: Huxley NEVER said any such thing. Debunked by these quote detectives at MetaBunk.

Now that we have that out of the way: This bit of text is a perfect example of a logical fallacy. It tells you that you are always living in a dictatorship no matter what. Even if you are perfectly happy with no problems anywhere, by this quote’s circular reasoning, that’s all the more reason why you’re “enslaved.” No one can postulate any state of being outside of open anarchy (which can also be defined as a “prison without walls”) that does not match this quote’s definition of a dictatorship. If you have walls, open shutdown of democracy, and do dream of escaping, that’s a dictatorship too.

Lovely Humpty-Dumpty reasoning, isn’t it?

 

New post at 123ish.com: We Always Need A Black Mirror

Netflix’s Black Mirror has been critically acclaimed and widely praised, but also gets its share of fan hate? The new episode “Bandersnatch” gives us a great opportunity to re-examine the series’ cultural position.

Join me as I illustrate why Black Mirror isn’t just any TV anthology series. Along the way we revisit some classic genre anthology TV series from decades past, including the one that used to scare me silly as a kid!

 

New Post At 123ish: Leave The Star Wars Holiday Special Alone!

You judgemental, mean-spirited geeks pushed me and pushed me year in and year out. And I finally snapped. This is one of those nerd-rage rants that have been kicking around in my slush folder for years, and it’s finally found a home.

Leave The Star Wars Holiday Special Alone! If it’s that bad, it’s still no worse than the rest of Star Wars.

UPDATE Called it!