My dad can out dumb your dad.

The Simpson family formula works well for a lot of Fox's animated series.  That is, a dad, mom, son, daughter, baby, and pet of some sort.  It's worked for over twenty years for the Simpsons.  Family Guy uses it.  As far as I can tell (because I don't actually know), American Dad and the Cleveland Show also use it.  In my opinion, it's getting kinda boring - which is another reason to love Futurama!

Combine that with the fact that modern comedy's love to designate one or two stupid characters  (even Futurama) and we somehow get a growing stereotype of dumb dads on television.  The two most prominent are obvious - Homer Simpson and Peter Griffon.  However, the list goes on and on.  Ray Romano (Everybody loves him), Gob Bluth (Arrested Development), and Arthur Spooner (King of Queens) all make the list.

Whatever happened to the days of Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver?  Are fathers now portrayed as stupid because society gives them less credit or is it the other way around?  What do you think?

How would the "Prince of Persia" feel about the death of Osama Bin Laden?

Would the Prince of Persia support the Iraqi war? Some would lead us to beleive he would not.

You may have heard several people draw comparisons of the movie “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) with the Iraqi war. This article is not exactly about that, although it is not too far removed. To read more about the comparisons with the Iraqi war, you can go here: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/05/28/james-p-pinkerton-prince-persia-conservative-islamic/

More obvious than the comparisons with the Iraqi war was the anti-government tone carried by the Hollywood film. I wasn’t even really looking for hidden messages; it was just there – one more side story that found its way into the movie between epic battle and time travelling daggers.

The character bringing the anti-government message was Sheik Amar, who was subtle about his message only in that he was a side character.

“The film’s greatest gem however is Alfred Molina as Sheik Amar, a self-described unscrupulous small businessman. He waxes moderately and eloquently about a great evil that plagues the empire: taxes. His exasperation over government attempts to control his business, and later over the secret government-run, tax-funded assassin organization that is after Dastan, left the audience I watched with laughing and even clapping.”

(http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/dmiller/2010/06/05/prince-of-persia-recognizes-evils-of-taxation/)

His initial introduction to the movie is as a “thief” who turns out to actually be a self-described businessman who is doing everything he can to avoid paying taxes. He repeatedly brings up his conspiracy theories that echoed all too well with many conspiracy theories of today.

 Take this poorly constructed YouTube montage for example (I dislike the addition of background music).

 

After the assassination attempt on the group, Amar attributes it to the work of a secret government killing operation – which turns out to be exactly what it was in the movie’s plot.

I liked the movie, and I thought it was pretty good. What I want to know is if you think that these anti-government comparisons were intentional by the producers or not? Do you think that they carry anti-government tones for the sake of being anti-government, or is it a satirical attempt to poke fun at the conspiracy theories themselves?

Please let me know what you think!!

TNT Subtly Admits Exploitation.

This one isn’t so much a stereotype as a hidden message – only this time it wasn’t so hidden. Gerbners Cultivation theory proposed that violence on TV, although disproportionate to the actual amount of crime in the world, lead viewers to believe over time that TV depicted reality. This meant that viewers began to believe that crime was much higher in the real world than it actually was.

So this is my story – I will try to keep it short. I find myself finally on a plane after a 5 hour delay. Yeah, I know it’s a long delay – I was there. So I am finally on a plane and we all know what happens next (this was a three hour flight from Salt Lake City to Atlanta, by the way). I settle in my seat, take a quick nap, read some sky mall that tells me to buy things that nobody needs, and then I again have nothing to do for the rest of the two hours. It is at this point that I turn on the TV on the back seat of the chair in front of me (quite the luxury), and find myself watching an episode of “Bones” on TNT (Hey, don’t blame me, you know how airplane TV’s are). So the episode is starting and then the main character, “Bones,” (I confess I don’t know her character name) begins to argue with her counterpart about why she refuses to consume mainstream media. It is during this argument when she declares what soon became an epiphany to me:

Bones: “Or perhaps I should develop an interest in the mainstream media's exploitation of crimes for their entertainment value.”

            At first I merely think it’s funny because we just talked about the same thing in my communications class, but then it hits me: This is exactly what the series “Bones” does!

            I guess I wasn’t so surprised that TNT exploits the entertainment value of crime in order to drive success of the network, but I was surprised at the gaudiness of confessing the shows ploy during the show itself! Then, to make it worse, I realized that I almost didn’t make the connection myself, and I am sure that most people watching the show never thought twice about the casual statement.

            Really though.

            What I want to know is: What does this mean for our society? Are we really that naïve as to what these TV shows are doing or is it that we don’t care?

Which is worse?

(Please comment. I didn’t mean it as a rhetorical question.)