So did everyone else when he was standing outside WB with a poster that said, "Whedon hates cyborgs."
The Batman (June 25, 2021)
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So did everyone else when he was standing outside WB with a poster that said, "Whedon hates cyborgs."
I'll still fall back on the whole "nobody's mind would go there" bit. A simple hairstyle change can make people seem different. Look at this woman. Can you tell who she is with a glance?
Spoiler:
Clark wears glasses, has a different hairstyle, wears clothes that hide his physique, slouches, acts much differently than Superman and works a normal job. I think it's not that weird. Most people would never think that Superman would bother with everyday things, and so their mind wouldn't even entertain the possibility, even if they noticed the facial similarity. Because at the end, that's what remains; a bone structure. Everything else between Clark and Superman is different. But again, he's a superpowered alien, the "warps his face" argument still works.
Move on from SuperGod. Batman's the one with the most moronic case of hiding his identity.
I'll still fall back on the whole "nobody's mind would go there" bit. A simple hairstyle change can make people seem different. Look at this woman. Can you tell who she is with a glance?
Huh. Instantly better looking when I can see her eyebrows and forehead.
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Truth is, I wouldn't recognize her in any look, so perhaps not the best example for me.
He's very tall, very broad shouldered, and even in a baggy shirt you can't hide that barrel chest. People react to tall, broad humans, they draw attention. And following that people are gonna stare at his handsome face. (Like many of these board discussions, I feel like I'm having this talk at recess in the schoolyard LOLOLOL)
I've seen several celebrities up close. Sure, many of them could slip under the radar based on their stature, or thanks to lights/camera/make-up you may doubt yourself. But you know what makes you stop and look? A lot of professional athletes, because of their stature and proportions. They're humans with heroic proportions.
So I contend that Clark Kent could walk through Metropolis and though he may turn a couple of heads, pass unnoticed -- but acquaintances, co-workers? Fugeddaboutit.
Must've been either before or after my time. I read Superman comics from around Crisis on Infinite Earths until about 1988, don't remember anything about that.
As for Batman ... having been in fights the idea of anyone being effective and stealthy while wearing a cape is absurd, and trying on a Boba Fett helmet ruined the character for me because I can no longer imagine anyone being a super duper techno ninja while wearing that bucket on their head. Don't get me started on stormtroopers.
(Crap. I think I'm finally growing up.)
Truth is, I wouldn't recognize her in any look, so perhaps not the best example for me.
He's very tall, very broad shouldered, and even in a baggy shirt you can't hide that barrel chest. People react to tall, broad humans, they draw attention. And following that people are gonna stare at his handsome face. (Like many of these board discussions, I feel like I'm having this talk at recess in the schoolyard LOLOLOL)
I've seen several celebrities up close. Sure, many of them could slip under the radar based on their stature, or thanks to lights/camera/make-up you may doubt yourself. But you know what makes you stop and look? A lot of professional athletes, because of their stature and proportions. They're humans with heroic proportions.
So I contend that Clark Kent could walk through Metropolis and though he may turn a couple of heads, pass unnoticed -- but acquaintances, co-workers? Fugeddaboutit.
Must've been either before or after my time. I read Superman comics from around Crisis on Infinite Earths until about 1988, don't remember anything about that.
As for Batman ... having been in fights the idea of anyone being effective and stealthy while wearing a cape is absurd, and trying on a Boba Fett helmet ruined the character for me because I can no longer imagine anyone being a super duper techno ninja while wearing that bucket on their head. Don't get me started on stormtroopers.
(Crap. I think I'm finally growing up.)
No you're not. There's a stage beyond this where you just accept it all again. Possibly.
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Funny thing about Stormtrooper helmets is that we might have said they must have an Iron Man-esque Augmented Reality technology built into them but then Luke actually says in the movie ''I can't see a thing in this helmet''
Maybe he just wasn't using it right.
Maybe he just wasn't using it right.
jye4ever
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Aren’t storm troopers predisposed to hit their heads because pappa Fett did it
I know for a fact that DiFabio loves this stuff!
I know for a fact that DiFabio loves this stuff!
jye4ever
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Special Man!
Who is this special fella
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Funny thing about Stormtrooper helmets is that we might have said they must have an Iron Man-esque Augmented Reality technology built into them but then Luke actually says in the movie ''I can't see a thing in this helmet''
Maybe he just wasn't using it right.
Yeah. Even so, wearing armour significantly cuts down on your mobility, speed and overall agility, so the trade-off should be protection. Except guys with sticks can kill stormtroopers so...
I remember in the Star Wars novelization the Tantive IV boarding was described as considerably more violent and messy, and post-battle at least one of the stormtroopers casually had his helmet pushed up off his face with "a fresh, livid scar" from the battle so he could speak to Vader or some commander ... I forget. I do remember a vivid description of "rainbow hued bolts of light" and someone getting caught in the head by one in "an explosion of bone and fire" or something to that effect. So the armour was never really blaster proof...I guess it was intended to look cool, protect against hostile environments and offer reduced damage from blaster fire. Maybe.
Hey wait, this The Batman thread right?
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Total DiFabio Bait.
jye4ever
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Between those few "all look the same" actresses of that era, I preferred Katy Perry.
No specific reason...
Those are all valid criticisms. Let's be honest, between HD vids and the fact that Kent is literally a journalist who writes for a pretty big paper, someone would notice the similarity. But I think the explanation given that time Luthor's AI came to same conclusion, and Lex went "REEEEEEE Superman wouldn't waste his time as a random nobody" is good enough. Most people will just say he happens to look like Superman. They won't be able to accept that a demigod spends his time like that. Or not, dunno. But there's much dumber nonsense in capebooks is my point.Truth is, I wouldn't recognize her in any look, so perhaps not the best example for me.
He's very tall, very broad shouldered, and even in a baggy shirt you can't hide that barrel chest. People react to tall, broad humans, they draw attention. And following that people are gonna stare at his handsome face. (Like many of these board discussions, I feel like I'm having this talk at recess in the schoolyard LOLOLOL)
I've seen several celebrities up close. Sure, many of them could slip under the radar based on their stature, or thanks to lights/camera/make-up you may doubt yourself. But you know what makes you stop and look? A lot of professional athletes, because of their stature and proportions. They're humans with heroic proportions.
So I contend that Clark Kent could walk through Metropolis and though he may turn a couple of heads, pass unnoticed -- but acquaintances, co-workers? Fugeddaboutit.
I've seen it get poted around over the years but I have no actual source, so it might be ********. I think it's from the notes of All-Star Superman, but again, not sure at all. I've never been much of a Superfan. I like the concept well enough, the lore too, but the execution... eh. As far as Superman Clones go, I like Majestros.
I like WildStorm in general though. It's a product of its (my) time. It started off as an X-Men/SHIELD Rip-Off and turned into something that did a lot of things better than them. I especially liked StormWatch.
Exactly. My problem with Batman comes from the fact that they keep making him more and more OP, while not changing the average story at all. His "no-kill" nonsense aside, the stories themselves just break down. You can't have him building Justicebusters and fighting Eldritch Martians from the 7th Dimensional-Ringworld, then have him stuggle with an insane serial killer in Discount New Jersey, whom he's going to allow to live even after he's witnessed his Dead Baby Trophy Room. It's a tonal whiplash that just destroys the character. For me at least. If he was flying around the world in his high-tech suits, taking out all sorts of monsters and evil scientists, I'd still be interested. But alas... It's what Morrison was building up to, and more or less did with Batman Inc, but it was forgotten instantly so that he could go play hide n' seek with bird themed mobsters. I've got my TDKR Batman on PO, I'll get a Ledger when they put him up, but that's as far as Batman goes for me.As for Batman ... having been in fights the idea of anyone being effective and stealthy while wearing a cape is absurd, and trying on a Boba Fett helmet ruined the character for me because I can no longer imagine anyone being a super duper techno ninja while wearing that bucket on their head. Don't get me started on stormtroopers.
As for the Stormtroopes, I remember those Magazines, Star Wars Insider or the like, that used to have coss-sections of the helmets. It's supposed to be padded up and have sensors and whatever. Cool helmets are a staple of SyFy, I'm willing to let it slide.
I've been feeling that for the past few years. There's less "I sure do enjoy this" and more "well, I did enjoy this at some point, and I've already wasted so much time and money on it, so..." going on with me and pop culture.
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...godDAMN.
What's striking about those photos besides the subject, is what happened to fashion and pop culture. In my late teens and early 20s that was an Alternative look with a capital A. But Katy Perry is/was mainstream pop, right? I'm not familiar with her.
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That's the Investment Fallacy that keeps people in bad or expired relationships. You should just get a divorce, man.
BTW...watched the first episode of The Young Pope. Excellent so far.
I'm partial to her Cleopatra look myself.
No way this music video would get made these days.
Can you believe that hipsters were a thing that was everywhere for a while? And then they just stopped existing. Like in an instant they all gave up. The world's moving too fast, yet too slow. Everything exists in a perpetual state of [current day]. Perry was a mainstream pop singer, yeah. But while she was "naughty" during her time, she's very tame by today's standards. I just can't get a grasp on anything anymore. You used to have certain fashions and subcultures in every period. Post 2015 or so, it all bleeds together. I can tell you that we had frosted tips and goths in the 2000s, I can tell you about the early 10s hipsters and mid-10s "everyone looks like a raver" phase, but there's nothing now. Every fad lasts a few months and goes away, and it's usually an internet meme. Nothing makes an impact anymore. It's weird.
I know, I know... I've managed to cut stuff down, but it's hard to do it with everything. Like the Batman I mentioned above. I can restrain myself enough to just buy those two figs and cross my fingers for a Terry McGinnins someday, but I can't delete the 150GBs of BatBooks in my HD and not buy a single figure. I don't enjoy Batman these days, but I have this lingering memory. I'm not wasting money on something like the GotG that I absolutely don't care for, besides reading their book back in 2008, but there are some capes I have some slight attachment to, despite my curent distaste for them. As the days go by I let go of more and more things though, so I am on the right track. It's this damn completionism of mine that keeps being a problem. But I'm passing everything through a filter now, and in most cases a single representation of a property is good enough for me. I don't much like the X-Men in general, even though I used to, but I'm keeping tabs on the current run due to the writer and story. When the MCU flicks hit and HT makes figures, I'll be content with just one or two characters that I still genuinely enjoy, based on aesthetics mostly, which I find are the most important thing in pop culture. I won't feel the need to complete whole teams or whatever. And with that, it's a chapter closed. That's more or less how I treat those pesky nostalgia/completionist motivated things.
I don't know. Sometimes I do want to chug it all down the drain, so to speak. What's the point? These will keep going on and on. They'll never end. Stop now, stop later, keep nothing. Maybe I should just delete everything, buy my 30-something "must haves" and be done with it all. I mean, why the Hell would I buy any X-Men stuff if I don't like the characters or the books? Why do I still keep up? Because I like the writer? Screw it, read it in 2 years when it's done. Why drop 300 euros on a single figure that you "eh, kinda, sorta, somehow, maybe, liked in the past"? Hell, why stop there? Might as well buy a Superman and Wonder Woman to form the Trinity. And heck, you can't have Moon Knight and the Punisher without Daredevil, Blade, Spider-Man, Hawkeye and White Tiger. I don't know, I think it's a very slippery slope. I think I'm making a mistake still tangling myself in such things. God knows I have little time to do anything these days. I still have old SW EU books to go through for mindless entertainment. It's not like I'm starved for escapism and need to hold onto everything. I watched what, 6 seasons of the Walking Dead and read the comic up until the middle or something; who remembers now. Do I need to go buy the Compendiums now? It feels like a mistake. Maybe Underwood had it right in HoC. A book, an FPS to relax and miniature painting are enough for "guilty pleasures".
Yeah, it really is a great piece of televised art. The second season isn't as good, but it's still a gorgeous experience, aesthetically.
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They got older, the pop-cultural 'smear' as I call it devoured some of their choices and simply smothered the rest. But yeah, it's startling when I think about it.
Apt description.
Oh crap, you done gone set me off. For myself, I can pinpoint where it started.
In 1992 I was still identified squarely with Alternative sub-culture. Sure, I went outside of it for some types of music or experiences, but it was my 'home' and my 'people'. We could recognize each other on the street and draw inferences about each other based on our fashion choices.
That was the year Smells Like Teen Spirit got released. Record companies and marketing people saw the cultural impact it made (and had also paid attention to the kids at Lollapalooza '91), and started mining Seattle and places like it for the Grunge sound, which thanks to radio soon got lumped into the "Alternative" genre -- which was laughable to us fans of Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Leatherstrip, Fields of the Nephilim, Christian Death etc. etc. -- we could appreciate Grunge but to us there was nothing alternative about flannel shirts.
(Tim Burton was another story, speaking of marketing and mainstream appeal).
But it was at Lollapalooza '92 kids rocked out to Ministry *and* Cypress Hill *and* Pearl Jam. It's not like there wasn't crossover before, but this was a tipping point for marketing, and for bored jocks who discovered the heavy **** we freaks were listening to in our headphones and underground clubs and bars.
In 1995 The World Wide Web started getting promoted heavily (the Internet was around long before of course, with bulletin boards etc. but prior to 1995 it was Deep Nerd).
Electronica hit. Rave culture spread. Brit-Pop (which in some way had always been there) joined the fray. You could soon find something like 5 or 6 sub-cultures in one 3-floor club in Toronto with everyone dancing and drinking and getting high together with a good DJ able to move effortlessly between genres. It was the craziest and most diverse party I've ever seen. Fashion started blending.
And it was around this time that mainstream people who used to stare at my friends and I on the bus or yell things out at us from moving cars -- learned to call us 'goths' -- a name we only labeled ourselves ironically, most of the time, as it was too limiting, goofy and conformist before it mainstreamed.
By 2001 Britney Spears had co-opted fetish culture and fashion for "I'm A Slave 4U". What started with marginalized weirdos like Iggy Pop and Joy Division with cross-pollination from the gay and kink communities, ended with Spears.
There are other markers of course -- what happened to hip-hop to turn it into a pale, Top 40 imitation of its history comes to mind immediately -- but there was basically a decade -- '91-'01 -- when marketers and mainstream audiences inhaled everything underground, mixed it in a blender, then diluted it and spat it back out in some shade of beige.
Now I'm 47 and haven't worn all-black in decades, more likely to listen to Brazilian Lounge or Bach instead of NIN, know from my years of working in hospitality that dance clubs are gone, replaced by bars -- maybe a symptom of people not wanting to risk being filmed dancing in our curated social media driven milieu, I don't know ... and when I see a young woman with a crazy dye job or shaved head wearing tall boots with a full sleeve, it's a safe bet I have no idea what kind of music she likes -- not because I'm middle-aged but because there are no clear sub-cultural markers anymore, not really anyway unless you count being poor, and that's a whole other thing.
I could go on and on about this stuff ... I had worked as a freelance design professional both in the arts and in tech, in tandem with being a hospitality professional for 20 years, always working alongside younger people and watching the world change through them in ways nobody saw coming.
Boundaries are gone, sub-culture's diluted, everything including your life is 'branded' and young people can't make their mistakes in relative privacy anymore, while they choke on self-conscious irony and regurgitated, remixed crap from decades ago.
If I had to choose tipping points for Western pop-culture, it'd be:
1989 - Berlin Wall comes down, at least a symbolic end to the Cold War and sparking optimism.
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1991 - Lollapalooza makes marketers pay attention
1992 - Lollapalooza and marketers make mainstream audiences pay attention, Smells Like Teen Spirit comes out
1995 - World Wide Web revs up for mainstream users
1999 - Napster hammers the music industry and changes the way people consume music
2001 - Britney Spears puts on fetish gear (Yes, Madonna did it first but the impact was different) -- this is right where I think sub-cultures died.
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2001 - 9/11 effectively destroyed the sense of openness and optimism that began in 1989
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2005 - YouTube launches
2006 - Facebook opens to anyone over 13 with an email address, Twitter launches
2010 - Instagram launches
Those 4 websites are ancient by current standards, but they've done more to shape cultural discourse and influence marketing, which in turn shapes public behaviour, than anything I can think of to date.
2017 - Donald Trump elected; extreme polarization in mainstream politics & society, in tandem with social media-driven dumbed down discourse.
2020 - COVID-19 Pandemic begins.
1989 - hope
91-00 - big party
2001 - paranoia
05-10 - rise of idiocracy
2017 - apotheosis of idiocracy
2020 - even more paranoid
Really seems like one kick in the nuts after another, don't it?
I'm just thinking out loud. Could be wrong.
So I'm really wondering if The Batman will be another regurgitated, beige product or if it's going to give us something ... not "great" nor "artistic" or even "entertaining" per se, but something with a recognizable *vision*.
As much as I think his films are poor, I'll give that one thing to Zach Snyder. The films are his.
That's a very interesting breakdown and some very apt descriptions. I have no such stories, because around my parts we got the American Products years later. We had broadband in 2006! There were always subcultures, but not that extent. Ours were "pale immitations", so to speak. The thing is, you are completely right when you say that these days there are no subcultures. Aside from companies turning everything into just another product, I think it's also a result of the sheer amount of useless entertainment we have instant access to. Too many games, movies, shows, comics, music. Most of it is derivative trash yet they still clog our lives. Nothing can rise to the top and have a genuine influence anymore.
That part about seeing a girl walking down the street and being unable to make any assumptions is completely tue. If it's bad or not, I don't know. We used to wear our "personas" on our sleeves because it was a statement. Now with so much influx, with kids going on the internet and exposed to the totality of humanity's knowledge, filth and misinformation, before they've engaged with any actual experiences, they're not going to go through a phase. They'll go through multiple contradicting phases that will leave them unable to construct an identity. You don't know who to trust and why. You get fed the "good" parts and so you assimilate something before you've processed it all. And that goes for everything, fom politics to entertainment. It used to be we had to make choices. You could buy 5 comics, and one videogame. You had to choose in order to invest. That choice informed a part of you. Now you've got it all. You can instantly pirate everything. If you have nothing to lose, there's no consequences and thus you don't take anything "seriously".
It's all stagnant in general. From culture to entertainment. It doesn't take much digging to see that. We're reheating stale lunch and serving it over and over again. I honestly don't know where anything is going, much less entertainment. The entire industry is propped up by people too bored to skip anything, so they'll watch anything to pass the time, and the same products peddled to 20-50 YOs who grew up with [THING] and now want [THING] again so that they can maybe turn back the time for a bit.
If there's a way out, I don't know. What I do know, is that most days I want to just dump all "entertainment". I could do more research. I could start painting again. Or try and learn an intrument after all these years. Do something with my limited free time other than passively consuming banal products. I'll be glad if I find a cool new and interesting movie. But where is the reason to still be keeping up with all these endless IPs that keep going on and on, with the same stories, the same beats, the same mechanics, over and over? I don't know. I used to have about 5 TBs of stored Pop Culture. Comics, Movies, Books, Genre Movies, Shows, all of that. Stuff I had gone through and wanted to keep, stuff I wanted to. I've brought it down to ~2TBs, mostly stuff I've already consumed. And I wonder, can't I bring it down to 1TB, just the bare essentials in HD? I used to have 2 sets. One digital files, and another scans, to look at the ads. Can you imagine that? Nostalgia not just for products, but for advertisments of products. It sounds completely loony, and it is!
Maybe some subcultures still exist. But from my POV, once gatekeeping went out of the window, once quality was sacrificed for quantity, it was all over. Everything exists in an eternal faux equilibrium and I don't know what the future holds.
Ahhh, the memories. That post took me back. Skinny Puppy... girls with shaved heads that weren't going by 'they'.... Netscape Navigator...
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