Monthly provocative, drunken, idiotic ramblings from the North…

Illustration by Andreas Hykade. Courtesy of Chris Robinson.

Touch wood. No one close to me, except a dog and maybe a cat or two, has died. There was a sort of momentary grade 9 gal who I tried to ball once whose family and best friend kicked it in high school. When Alzheimer’s took over my grandmother, I was devastated, but she’s still, technically, alive. Death scares me to no end, less because I’m at HOPEFULLY the half way mark (35) than because I’m a parent now and I want to make damn sure I’m here for my son until he’s ready to go it alone. Just writing that makes me quiver with fear. Naturally there’s an element of arrogance that’s connected with the rise of the industrial age and the shift from state to individual control. And the notion of NOT being assumes being is essential -- important. Every once in a while I slip into BAD FUNKS. Standard dark stuff…that often involves an INCREDIBLE head buzzing PANIC that I could die at any moment. The last time it hit me was mid-June. And right in the middle of the damn death funk…this St. Louis baseball player goes and dies. He’s 33. Clogged arteries. FUCK. I slept so poorly that weekend. By Monday I managed to crawl out of the dark, demons momentarily gone, back to writing…then later that week I hear that the Who’s bass player, John Entwistle died (ironically his few song contributions often dealt comically with death). It’s silly to you, but The Who were the bible of my youth. (I felt better when I later learned that despite a heart condition ol' Thunderfingers was snorting coke) So…right back into the dark. Now Socrates helped me a bit. As he was about to drink poison, he talked about death and the stupidity of fearing what you don’t understand. Hey, a valid point, but maybe it’s a fear of losing what we have/are. Then again…hopefully...it’ll be so quick that it’ll be a moot point.

Violent Toons
Meantime I was watching this new Justice League movie from the Cartoon Network and suddenly noticed that despite guns, villains, ships, bombs and all manner of crazy violence, there was an absence of death…and ya ya ya…I KNOW OKAY…t’aint nothing new. That’s the nature of Hollywood…all the MEANS without ENDS…all the CAUSE without the EFFECT. Just do it. It was the same thing with The Powerpuff Girls Movie (another Cartoon Network production). The girls violently and swiftly destroy an entire city (with apparent pleasure), but miraculously they manage to avoid murdering anyone. And okay sure…it’s probably some latent adult release via the creator, but these movies are made for and aimed at kids. Ironically, the films of Plympton and Don Hertzfeldt, which regularly feature pretty gruesome violence, at least SHOW the results (hell, they slobber over it!) and are probably BETTER for kids than these other hypocritical cuds.

We seem to have devolved into a world of fuggin TOYS (bizarre given the, “Oh people like us do die,” reality of September 11th)…I cannot remember one action animation series (let alone live-action -- and as a chum reminded me -- remember those A Team shows where Murdock would fire a huge bazooka into a jeep and not manage to kill anyone!?) where people are shown dying -- the natural friggin desire/result of firing bullets AT people. Now mark this down folks, cause you won’t hear it often, but I’ve always respected Disney for Bambi and Dumbo and even The Lion King because death is at least addressed, confronted, out and open. Beyond animation…Homicide had a brilliant episode with Robin Williams all from the p.o.v. of a family who’ve just seen their wife/mother gunned down while on vacation. And hell…even Buffy dealt with it (according to my gal). Okay, it’s one thing to have Daffy, Bugs and Elmer beating the tar out of each other with no cause…clearly these are caricatures, exaggerations, dark comedies (for KNOWING adults)…but this action hero nonsense is set in the ‘natural’ world.

Consequences DO Exist
Now I don’t give a hoot about the issue of entertainment influenced violence (I grew up playing toy gun related games and have YET to kill anyone). This isn't a so-called bleeding heart liberal call for the reduction of violence in entertainment. I got a brains and two hands, I can turn the damn television off…no…what I’m baffled by is the utter lack of common sense/logic. I’m talking mindset/philosophy here. IT’s not just cartoons...remember all those pretty greenish bombs dropping all over Iraq back in the early 1990s? Man they were beautiful. Do you remember the images of the results of those bombs? The decapitated heads of children? The burned women and men? Of course not. Because we are never shown this material. Even after September 11th…the truly graphic images were, THANKFULLY, not shown (although I did watch that ABC documentary by the French guys and I’ll never forget the sound of the ‘thumps’ as bodies fell).