Biting for Bucks

Day four of this particular back spasm and I don’t give a shit if famine and pestilence, death and the other horseman come riding. These things have lasted up to two weeks on the ugly side of the bell curve and two days on the pretty side. Every time I go past two days I get pissed and hopeless, powerless.

I was thinking the other day of how many superhero tv shows and movies there have been in the last decade and how many werewolf/vampire/general supernatural shows. I’ll qualify with in America, though I watch foreign films, I don’t watch much foreign TV except British, Canadian and Australian. If I were Shrink Shaming America I’d suggest that nationally they must feel very powerless. Just because shrink shaming sounds negative (it’s possible I just made that up, maybe not, in either case we both know what it means) doesn’t mean it’s not accurate.

There is a kind of interesting trend with the supernatural shit. Whereas those type of stories were told around campfires and the like for centuries, shit, whereas is the wrong word. The stories of werewolves and vampires have been told for centuries but always with a component of bi-nary morality; Villagers are gods children, monsters are the devils children. Some shows and movies want to remove the morality from the tales, well, the instant morality (like instant coffee it resembles the real thing but just plain old isn’t the real thing). The bloated overrated franchise of Twilight, for instance, was basically a teenage hormone/angst with fangs, powers and special effects. In a show like, for instance, the Strain, one of the main protagonists worked for CDC and his best ideas were treating vampirism like a virus (though others did not).

I’m thinking, though I really don’t know, we are at a high-water mark for atheism these days. I know and/or knew a number of folks who during the last three elections used the fundamentalism of their supporters to denigrate Trump, Romney (well his running mate, whatshisface) and Palin. It’s a weird stance. Those folks sucked on their own merit and though I’m an agnostic, I don’t think theists are dumber than I am or more conservative or, you know, evil. I do think there are some atheists who believe that and that’s why I occasionally grill an atheist on their belief system, not to the point of hypocrisy, more like the integrity of their belief system than a comparison contrast.

Shit, I lost where I was going with the third paragraph here. Supernatural powers seem to be entertaining, in some cases comforting, but the idea of god is ludicrous. Bears some reflection. I’m an agnostic when it comes to God, I’d need to get bit by a human sized bat to even begin to consider the existence of vampires. I wonder if God would be easier for Americans to consider if he had a singular weakness like a stake to the heart, silver, kryptonite or an Achilles heel. My intent here, however, is not to make a case for god or against monsters, just pointing it out.

I’m willing to concede that part of all this are my own picadilloes, given a search for genre I always lean toward science fiction which, much to my chagrin, has fantasy lumped into it these days. In my mind the best of both are a far cry from one another. I’m not inclined to read or watch past the first few minutes of anything that has a wizard, goblin and dwarf going on a quest. Replace anyone of those with any other fantasy mainstay and my inclination doesn’t even blink. I like most of the stuff Marvel Studios puts out, but, you know, I collected comics for two decades, and we can do really cool special effects these days. The TV channel CW has put out a lot of DC comic tv shows. It feels like they are all written by the same guy and the choreography is exactly the same for every fight in a DC comic show. It’s like their demographic is the pre-pubescent whose parents don’t mind violence, or, the violence lacks enough credulity to be marginally in it’s message.

When I was working in Juvenile corrections, my partner and I would never show the kids a martial arts movie. It wasn’t because of the message, most of those things had no message any deeper than WWF. It’s because the little fuckers would act out kung Fu moves in the break room. I hope no one is acting out CW superhero moves, they are going to get their ass kicked.

Going back to the shrink shaming; WTF and WTD (what the Duck is what my smartassphones auto-correct thinks I mean)? The CW is a good example; the shows aren’t even good and they have enough fans to get multiple seasons. Always pisses me off when a show I don’t like gets more episodes than Firefly did. My standards aren’t overly high at all, especially with a back spasm. Monsters used to fall under the category of horror. Now it’s mostly under fantasy, or, rather, the majority of new to new-ish shows are under fantasy and rightfully so. Even the old monster horror shows from the thirties had an element of horror to them; fear of losing ones’ immortal soul. Shit like Twilight wasn’t even trying to be scary and the only risk to ones’ soul was purchasing a ticket to see those.  Agnostic or not I lean towards the idea that mankind has a spiritual side, I just haven’t been convinced of the purpose of it. Being mentally or physically crippled, shit, again, bad word choice; being spiritually crippled is as frightening as mentally or physically crippled to me, must be really frightening to a theist.

Shit, back is complaining about this position. I’m pretty sure I didn’t get to where I was going but I’m going to post this nonsense anyhow.