The scourge of science fiction/fantasy/horror franchises and geek culture?

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

http://www.tcj.com/everything-sells-everything/

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

I was feeling a bit tired of my routine in recent weeks and I just immersed myself in fairly trashy stuff for the past few days and I enjoyed some of it quite a bit.

One of those things was the Netflix series The Toys That Made Us. I really didn't like the music or editing and sometimes it seems quite dumbed down, even for what it is. But the stories and interviews are fascinating to me. I have actually always wanted to know things like this about my own favorite toys. I doubt Mighty Max and Monster In My Pocket will ever get an episode but maybe Boglins and Ghostbusters.

I already knew that there was a lot of collaboration across countries and between the toy companies, cartoons, comics and often more than that, but the sheer number of creative decisions from every side of production and the number of people who could arguably be called co-creators is still quite surprising and complex.

I was mainly interested in colorful varied action figures so I watched the GI Joe, He-Man, Ninja Turtles, Transformers and Power Rangers episodes. The latter two had the most complicated overseas story.

I liked hearing about the term "toyetic", hearing designers talk about how sexy their character designs were.

The series creator says a possible fourth season might have Matchbox, Cabbage Patch Kids, Smurfs, NERF, Dungeons & Dragons, Hotwheels or DC/Marvel.
He also talked about how strange it is that America and Japan utterly dominate the list of highest grossing franchises.
List of highest-grossing media franchises - Wikipedia
Very pleased to see that Fist Of The North Star is above James Bond.

I looked around for videos on other toys and old trashy comics I'd liked and it's quite disconcerting to me the extent of peoples boundless untempered enthusiasm for them and how all their entertainment seems to be large franchises that they can just collect endlessly. It's never "cool, interesting things I'm into", it's "franchises I'm into".

I'm hoping for more artists like Fort Thunder, Panos Cosmatos, and good low brow artists (there's too many of them just drawing Garfield with a bong).
Keeping my fingers crossed for a wave of people who can turn Lady Death, Verotik and Mortal Kombat into something completely great.
There's a lot of metal bands who do this kind of thing but it rarely reaches outside there.
Franchise-leaning fans tend to put things too much on a pedestal to evolve them.

Was interested to find that Boglins were so successful in UK that it went on longer there than it did in America.
Mighty Max was from UK and so was Pocket Shockers (which I dont think ever came to America) and I think there were a bunch of other UK monster toys.

Boglins creator kept his copyright and is still making them.
http://www.totims.com/
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Quote Originally Posted by Justin Isis

James's persistent anti-capitalist rants are the sign of a good upbringing and basic personal integrity.

This is the only nice thing anybody has ever said about me.

I stand by everything about corporate media I posted in this thread, but due to naivety I had a blind spot in 2016 about the problem of neo-reactionaries in small press culture during my rants about liberal small press culture, which I'm obviously still critical of as an opponent of liberalism, but the neo-reactionaries are worse, and I severely underrated their threat -- falsely believing it to be a trivial and barely existent one. Nazis were gone, right? We didn't need to worry about them too much? Turned out we were, uh, wrong. The British small press horror scene has done a worse job of routing them out than the Americans. You need to be careful of the dog whistles or you find yourself brushing shoulders with Oswald Moseley fanboys and Dark Enlightenment dorks. In the fight against capitalism it is important not to pick an alternative that is even worse.

I still really hate liberals lol. Half of my Twitter game is talking #### about them for being capitalist bootlickers. Just good to be aware that the fight for progressive social values isn't over and that fascists are out there with their silly euphemisms about western (white) civilization vs Cultural Marxists (the Jews). Imagine coming up with something worse than neoliberalism.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

There's a wrestling episode of this series you might enjoy. I haven't watched that one yet myself.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

More thoughts on Toys That Made Us-

I was interested/amused by Larry Hama saying it was morally bankrupt to write war stories in which nobody died. It seemed like he was complaining specifically about the cartoon but was it also about him being constrained by not being able to kill characters in the GI Joe comics he was writing?

The wrestling episode was boring, mostly just business deals and the editing was a real pain; the technology to get more realistic toys was the only thing that interested me.

Star Wars episode was also a total bore (apart from the detail about the socks), possibly because I'm tired of hearing about Star Wars and Star Wars mania neatly represents everything wrong with the toy and collectors world; this episode and a few others could have done without the mawkish ending.
Star Wars and the Star Trek episode show how little respect their fans were shown in the early days and arguably later on too. Most interesting thing in the Star Trek episode was the idea that limited editions and rarities alienated completists rather than exciting them.

Barbie episode probably made me laugh the most, in large part due to the writer who did the book on Barbie being very funny.

Hello Kitty episode was interesting and it seems slightly anomalous because the toys didn't seem a big part of it. It might have been the episode where I felt most unpleasantly drowning in artificiality.

Lego episode was one of my favorites. It was the only one where the repetitive editing made any kind of sense (to emphasize the philosophy of Lego) and being a Danish product made it refreshing. I felt a little sad that they needed to license other IPs and do stories to stay afloat because I thought they were at their best when they were about building things and experimenting with electronics.

I'm a bit conflicted about toys because of the landfill waste and excessive collector aspects. I used to like trading cards and sticker sets too; just like toys, they often came in mixed up packets so you would'nt know what you were getting and you would get tons of redundant toys, cards and stickers. I prefer that things are sold in complete packs but that undeniably takes some fun out it but it is more responsible and fun isn't everything.
I also think most toys are just unimpressive sculptures and toys in the likeness of real people hardly ever look inspiring.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Watched The Power Of Grayskull which is much like the Toys That Made Us episode up until it gets in depth to the cartoons and film. I didn't know that William Stout or Moebius worked on the film and I hadn't heard of Claudio Mazzoli. There's some amazing work in there.
https://www.he-man.org/cartoon/genar...p?id=51&mid=75
Masters Of The Universe (The 1987 Film): Production Art
There was one amazing Mazzoli piece in the documentary that I can't find online, sadly.

The other biggest highlight was the interview with Frank Langella. He said he had wanted a costume that showed off his body more, because he was in great shape at the time and that Skeletor was still one of his favorite roles, he written a lot of his own lines and talked about how he wanted to take that type of supervillain as far as he could.
I recently listened to a podcast that noted how good he is in the film and that there was an odd trend in films like this, Flash Gordon and Hawk The Slayer of getting properly upmarket actors to play the villains.

Like episodes of Toys That Made Us, the documentary ends on an annoyingly mawkish tone.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

The awfulness of Disney, part 2564872
#DisneyMustPay Alan Dean Foster - SFWA

I forgot about this thread. I only saw the "scourge of science" opener on the forum list and thought it was one of those Dark Enlightenment threads. Geek franchise culture is bad, but people who enjoy media from it aren't committing a moral failure and a small minority of it is genuinely good. I'm very much over bashing people for liking popular things. That sort of elitism is shallow and unearned vanity.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

I've still got plenty of Marvel/DC comics, the GI Joe animated movie is still one of my favorite films and the cartoon porn I look at would embarrass most people. I've been trying to keep thinking about cultural shame and insecurity, brow divisions etc and I still think people are crippled with shame over such things, it certainly cripples artists.

There's still a little part of me that is disappointed when authors I like post gifs of celebrities because I still haven't completely let go of the idea of great artists floating above us, only interested in refined things but I know it's unhealthy and a lot of them probably secretly enjoy things they wouldn't admit to.

Like I said on another thread, I've spent too long feeling bad about looking at art that doesn't meet a certain standard but now I've more properly learned that even amateurish and in many ways bad artists are sometimes worth following if they feed your interests, even if it's just for fetish reasons it can be good for you as long as you're not spending most of your time on weak work.

What does worry me is that I feel like I see lots of intelligent people whose diet seems to consist almost entirely of the poppiest pop culture.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

I've come to find a lot more value in lots of things I've undervalued because they weren't in finely executed works.