As time goes by, I get less and less comfortable with the culture in which I live.
This morning, got an unsolicited alert from the Realplayer folks inviting me to check out a link called "Big Brother live video feeds!"
I thought it was an Orwell reference (which, I suppose, in a tacky-distant-relative kind of way, it is — just not the way I was thinking). I figured maybe it was live feeds from one of those observation cameras so many communities have been putting up in public places. I thought it would lead me to a lively discussion between privacy advocates and those of us who are just fine with such augmentations of law enforcement capabilities.
Hey, it’s not that I’m some sort of culture snob or anything. I hate opera, and I like action movies. Last night, I kept groaning because the womenfolk in my house wanted to watch some sort of "reality" show involving a dance competition, just when I was getting into a Firefly episode that I hadn’t seen before. I own the series on DVD, and have been making my way through it slowly. The ladies made the perfectly valid point that I could find out what happened to Capt. Reynolds later, so after griping for a few minutes, I just went to bed early.
We all have our tastes in junk. It’s just that the stuff I like gets canceled before it completes its first season (I will admit I only became a fan after the fact, when my son persuaded us to go see "Serenity"), and the gorram "reality" shows go on and on and on.
As Jayne would say, "Where does that get fun?"
Related Posts
As the father of small children, I can’t tell you when I last went to see a movie without talking animals in it.
Brad, you are a truly conflicted person. On one hand, you seem to enjoy libertarian movies and Turtledove. On the other hand, you continually write in this big-government/anti-people vein. What gives?
My first reaction would have been,Big Brother and The Holding Company!! Guess I’m living in the past,but I agree with you about our current culture(I fancy myself a “liberal” but think rap music is the spawn of Satan,maybe opera too)The only thing I watch on TV is The Weather Channel(well,that is unless I can find a Green Acres rerun).
Whoa! I sort of got whiplash there, bill. You’re talking Big Brother and the Holding Company, and then you zip in a Jethro Tull reference!
Interesting point, there, LexWolf. I’ve wondered about it myself.
The Alliance is for the most part hardly an evil empire. Sure, there’s the awful thing they did to River, and there’s the scandal of Miranda, but you get the impression that most folks loyal to the Alliance would be shocked to learn of such things.
Mostly, the Alliance is just meddlesome and priggishly moralistic (sort of like the Southron stereotype of Yankees). And authoritarian. You often get the impression that the Feds chasing Serenity are genuinely disgusted at Mal’s activities because they are criminal and antisocial. They’re hardly Darth Vader, serving the Dark Side. They think they’re doing what’s right.
Whereas Mal simply rebels against their notions of what’s right, and wants to be free to be left alone and do his own thing (the classic Southron excuse for the Confederacy).
But if you’re looking for escapism, that’s the way you want to go. It appeals to the adolescent (rebelling against rules just because they ARE rules, and they’re made by someone else) that dwells in each of us.
If I’m looking for moral and intellectual improvement, I’ll watch "A Man for All Seasons." If I want to forget responsibility for awhile, I’ll watch "Firefly."
Or "Office Space." I’m not a cubicle dweller. I have a corner office; I’m a V.P., etc. I’ve been a manager since 1978. For that matter, I almost never stop working for a moment. I’ve been running a fever of about 102 (last night, anyway), and rather than lying in bed I came to my office to pick up a couple of things I left here yesterday, and now you see I’m typing away.
And yet … I enjoy a movie that identifies with a guy who has a "dream of doing nothing."
Isn’t this typical? Isn’t everybody like this? Maybe not. Maybe other people like only those things that reinforce them and their world view. Maybe that’s what makes so many people partisan. I don’t know.
Now, when I take this to an extreme, I realize there are limits. If I tried to watch a movie about some tight-fisted upward climber who lives in the ‘burbs, sends his kids to private school, thinks he has accomplished everything on his own (an idiotic notion, since people who make a lot of money are probably the most interconnected and dependent people on Earth), and asks nothing of society other than it give him some money and go the hell away and leave him alone… Well, that would get old fast.
But free-spirited, charming rogue types are a different matter. Mal doesn’t need a nice house or two SUVs or tuition tax credits. He truly DOES ask nothing of the ‘verse except that it leave him alone. And somebody like that can be fun to watch — expecially when you know he cares about other people a whole lot more than he lets on. He’s not a me-first kind of person (Jayne is, but not Mal). Maybe that’s because he knows responsibility, and in his own way is an absolute authoritarian — be brooks no insubordination from his crew. At the same time, he’ll give his own life for any one of them. So as much as his story may appeal to the adolescent urges that give rise to libertarianism, he’s hardly the libertarian archetype.
But then, so few people are, thank God.
I think libertarians live in a separate reality(see Carlos).A reality that normal humans cannot penetrate.They’re almost as scary as Alex and his droogs from A Clockwork Orange.With that movie you get action and art.
Sorta like reading Elmore Leonard.
Did you ever viddy any veshch at the sinny more horrorshow than that, oh my brothers?
It’s always fun to watch the musings of a newly converted Serenity fan. Welcome to the fold, Warthime.
Quick thoughts: The Blue Sun corporation would be more akin to Wal Mart or Big Oil, rather than the north, wouldn’t you say? Also, Vader thought he was doing right, too. He didn’t INTEND to be evil. He’s more analagous to Bushbaby in my eyes. The twisted and inevitable results of a religious zealot and all he reaps…
Upon my first viewings and in response to the character of Malcolm Reynolds, all I could think was, “Gorrammit! How did Josh Whedon follow me around and take notes about my behavior without me ever seeing him?” This is one of the few modern characters I’ve come across who mirrored my feelings of being an outcast Southerner in the South for the very fact that I hold truer to the supposed Southern ideals than those who make such public hoo-hah about being Southern. Yes, I’m referring to most Southern republicans and conservatives.
I think the best title for this code of living is “Chaotic Good” (Thanks, Gary Gygax!). Sometimes you do have to do “societal wrong” to achieve a “human right.” Like Mal, I certainly trust my inner voice more than I do some of the interpretations and rules of modern society.
Yea, I feel like a “man out of time,” but then so is a cowboy in space.