Sunday, January 29, 2012

Starship Troopers: Fear

SPOILER WARNING

I just saw Starship Troopers for the first time. Granted, the Arachnids were pretty terrifying and trying to kill all of humanity and would suck people's brains out, which is all pretty gross, but towards the end when there is a raid on one of the Arachnid lairs, the humans manage to capture one of the brain bugs.

image credit: Paul Verhoeven (Director)
Neil Patrick Harris (he's pretty young in this movie) apparently has some telepathy powers and can tell what these things are thinking. There is a great moment of silence among the soldiers as he reaches out and touches the brain bug, feels it's body heave as it breathes, and then declares "It's afraid."

At this point, from the tone of his voice and maybe just because I'm naive, I'm thinking that they're going to let it go, to begin peaceful negotiations, and show that we have some shred of reasonableness within us... But no. Everybody there cries out in joy and starts shooting the air, celebrating as the brain bug cowers from the gunfire. They then take it back and proceed to run experiments on it, in the vein of "know thy enemy," which includes drilling into the side of it's body and other things that would probably be equated to torture on a human.

It saddened me to see that they show such hatred. I accept that hatred exist but in the name of greater morality, in the name of finding a naturally space faring species, why couldn't they have pity?

Monday, February 7, 2011

Dragon Ball Z: Patience

SPOILER WARNING
So I'm still only at the beginning of Buu's badassery, but some recent developments have brought up the value of patience, something that is often quite difficult for children.

So Buu is not patient, plain and simple. This is looked down upon because it doesn't allow for Gotenks to get ready and Piccolo points this out quite tactfully. Buu tries to wait, but can't, yells and screams, and gets his way because he is super powerful. I don't think that this is such a good example for our children, but truth be told if a greater-than-heaven powerful monster wanted something done immediately, I would probably hop to as soon as possible.

image credit: Funimation and Akira Toriyama

On the other hand we have Gohan, who's waiting for the oldest of Supreme Kais to power him up. He has to sit for upwards of 24 hours. This is well rewarded, but the rewards are not apparent along the way and the Supreme Kai is messing around all the while. This is quite frustrating but pays off in the end.

The portrayal of patience and impatience are done in parallel, with a lot of switching between Gohan waiting and Buu waiting, and then between Gohan waiting and Buu fighting. Since both sides are rewarded for their (im)patience, it seems to level itself out.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Dragonball Z: Friendship

SPOILER WARNING

So I started the last season of DBZ yesterday, and there has been a wonderful example of the relationship between how people are treated and how they treat others. Buu has become a joyful (if demanding) child with the help of Mr. Satan's friendship. As Dende noticed, all Buu needed was a friend. He only goes back to being bad when angered by "The Cruelty of Man" (how's that for a title of a cartoon episode, by the way).

DBZ has shown some very profound if simple things about the concept of friendship. There are things that one does to protect the bond of friendship. Gohan and Piccolo's friendship comes up quite a bit, and it's not often that you see close friendships between people of such drastic age differences. The concept of doing something for somebody because they are a friend is such a beautiful idea and I'm happy to see it in this show.

image credit: Akira Toryama and Funimation

GTA San Andreas: Carjacking

So when walking to class this morning I thought about hijacking a car. I don't believe that I ever would, my ethics and self-control (though not perfect) could not mesh with an action such as this. However, it got me thinking about people who used the excuse of "being influenced by video games" for their real life actions. I had always dismissed this as simply a sad excuse, but having the thought today made me question just how much of an excuse it is. I do not believe that it should excuse somebody of their actions, but might it also put some blame on GTA and Rockstar Games? I've never been one to blame companies for this type of thing, but I've also never had a thought like the one that I did today.

image credit: Rockstar Games
note: I googled "carjacking" and this came up... talk about pop culture

Well, that's not entirely true. Sometimes I think about what it would feel like to be hit by a car. Not for the purposes of suicide or anything of that sort, but just to see what it would feel like.

Playing GTA recently: CJ got hit by an 18 wheeler on the highway, and simply fell over with damage that could be fixed by eating a slice of pizza. What the hell?

Thursday, January 27, 2011

GTA San Andreas: Characters

So I never played GTA until this week. It's all that the media said about it, all that the overwhelmingly positive reviews said about it, and more in a melting pot of fantasy life. The main characters are wonderfully fleshed out, rounded, full of character and life, believable, and unique.

This is not the case for the people on the street. At the beginning of the game, Sweet talks about how messed up it is that several of your homies have been killed. Of course then you procede to kill hundreds if not thousands of other people throughout just the early stages of the game. Are these deaths not just as messed up? The people that you kill are not shown to have connections except their one-track status as a member of the eses or another gang. Officer Tenpenny and his henchmen (so to speak) show the only reaction to your killing people, except that he's nonchalant about it (e.g. "Oh Carl, try not to kill any more respected police officers. Please?").

image credit: Rockstar Games and IGN

So it's all about you and your homies. Everybody else amounts to jack shit on the emotional scale.

That's the most disturbing thing. I find myself not caring about killing people in this game. Death should cary weight, particularly in a game as socially oriented as this.

Dragonball Z: Action vs. Reaction

So the characters in DBZ face a wonderful little decision several times every episode. Do I make an audible reaction to what's going on such as a gasp, exclamation, or comment, or do I actually do something productive (e.g. dodge the attack or save the innocent person at risk)?

Unfortunately... they all too often choose the former. There is almost never time for both, and they get punished for their choices. Basically, action and thought take up too much time. Act on reflex is a sort of lesson here, though it really isn't enforced strongly enough for me to consider it an actual reflex.

image credit: copyright Akira Toriyama and Funimation

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Dragonball Z: Status of Women

All of the women in Dragonball Z are insanely annoying. They don't wait for a response before asking for one repeatedly (e.g. Bulma asking Piccolo to hear about Trunks' battle because she can't sense the fight). Chi Chi henpecks Goku to no end, won't let Gohan save the world (because apparently saving the world is less important than homework), and will not yield (except on a few occasions).

image credit: MajinPlatypus26

Is the goal of this show to get people to disregard anything said by a woman? Because it's done a pretty good job. Actually, in the later seasons (7 onward), with the addition of Number 18 and Videl to the gang and the re-imagining of Chi Chi and Bulma, the women are much more reasonable and listening to what they have to say is no-longer painful. Plus Number 18 is kick-ass.

Also, the characters also often completely disregard what women say. Bulma had the brilliant idea of destroying Dr. Gero's lab before the Androids are completed but Nooo, the only way to defeat them would be to let them be free and then fight them.

Of course then there's Master Roshi's take on women, which is to ogle like a dirty old man at every opportunity, grabbing boobs as often as possible, and looking at nudie magazines all day.

Although, the status as a mother is quite important. Gohan listens to his mother, Trunks and Goten listen later on, and "mother knows best" comes in fairly often. Listen to your parents. This is a good message, I think (especially when compared to the others).

So yeah, from the perspective of a youth watching Dragonball Z, women suck.