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Destinata's Replies
That’s me being critical. Your posts are you being thin-skinned. I won’t ask you to re-read them to see how thin-skinned and the opposite of “friendly” you are, because you can’t see yourself as others see you. And yes, another poster could see I wasn’t trying to say I was from the “Greatest Generation,” and yet you missed that entirely — lack of reading comprehension, which could have been due to skimming rather than reading because you were so incensed. Just a guess, and as a guess, I may be wrong — a bit of grace you refused to extend to the poor fellow you said was projecting his “poor life choices” on the rest of us.
You tried to tell me that in the ‘60’s comic books started to become something adults read. One would think if that were true I’d have run into a single adult that was a comic book aficionado. Maybe they were all in NYC or LA, not out where the common people lived. But it wasn’t even a thing that was noticed enough for the adults where I lived commented on it. And trust me, they would have! I never heard, “Did you see in Time Magazine where they say grown ups — actual GROWN UPS — are reading comic books???”
Ooh, laddie, I’m far from intellectual, pseudo or otherwise! You’re the one with pretensions to that claim. I don’t write as if I hold my opinions because I think they’re wrong, so I guess from your perspective it seems as though I’m not accepting reality. I haven’t looked up and down this thread lately, but I think you’re the only one willing to die on your particular hill. I’ve seen a number of people try to explain to me why what was once the province of children is now considered “intellectual.” I think you’re feeling threatened, and that’s why you’re lashing out. You won’t agree, which won’t surprise me.
I’ll let you have the last word. Continue to call me names in that friendly way of yours. 😉
I disagree with you, therefore I am condescending. You say that comic books are the stuff of mature intellectuals now; I say no. You maintained a barely civil tone -- bluntness, to put it in your terms -- showed a lack of reading comprehension, and tried to educate me about my generation and got it wrong. But you are petulant and overly touchy if someone suggests that once upon a time comic books were the sort of thing you saw sticking out of the back pockets of little kids. "Friendly" you are not. "Hostile" comes closer.
If you doubt the accuracy of my assessment of cultures past, delve into some popular old movies and see if anyone beyond sock hop and soda shop days gave a hoot about what Archie and Veronica were doing. You might find a reference like, "Do I look like Superman?" but that was harkening back to the old days of childhood fantasy and asking the person addressed to grow up and deal with reality.
Okay. I see your point. Society has turned upside down, and it's not unreasonable to expect the downtime pursuits to be upside down, too.
There are sections of society -- I'm thinking certain churches, but there may be other pockets -- that exist with a different set of values. In that subculture men who step up to the plate, find a woman who will commit to him exclusively and he to her, works hard, has a family, and keeps them grounded in faith and what we now consider old-fashioned values still finds the respect that the hard-working white male doesn't find in today's broader culture.
I live in this same world where men are expected to be always apologetic for their maleness, whether they're white or not. We live in a crazy world where feelings trump facts, we can't assume another person's gender based on biology, and pay no attention to the lunatic in Venezuela, socialism is great -- except don't dare call people who call themselves socialists, "socialists," or you'll get a twelve page rant on MovieChat. We may both live in this insane asylum, but we don't have to have its values. My husband and I have values that are quite different from the outside world, we have friends who share those values, and we are our society. The outside world is in free fall. That's their choice...talking about some very poor life choices....
There are some I can't do it with. Bill Cosby will never be the same, because he tried to make his persona the real Bill. Now that we know the real Bill, it just screams "HYPOCRITE!" When you find out a director has preyed on his actors, it's difficult to think of them as creating works of art as opposed to finding a work environment to enable their perversion. And I still can't watch Mel Gibson without a nagging little voice in the back of my mind saying, "You fraud!"
Yes, I can! But I've had longer to process this.
He wasn't my favorite actor, but Robert Pastorelli was good in nearly everything he was in. There are a lot of Brits who'd argue with me, but I adored him in Cracker, a knock-off of a British series by the same name. His performance was electrifying. He could have gone far, except that he couldn't stay off the heroin, and the police were going to reopen the investigation into the death of his girlfriend, the mother of his daughter. It was shortly after that he gave himself a hotshot (overdose).
My husband had found a Bruce Willis movie I hadn't seen with Pastorelli in it. His character was killed off early, then other murders started happening. I shouldn't have done it, but I leaned over to hubby and told him, "That guy they killed off early? He isn't dead. His name is Robert Pastorelli, he's a better actor than the whole cast combined, and nobody is going to waste that kind of talent by killing him off at the beginning of the film. Sure 'nuff.
Eventually you separate the flawed man from the performance. In Pastorelli's case, the fact that he was a tortured individual informed his acting. He didn't become a murderer until that torment spun out of control. In Jackson's case, I don't think the flaws had anything to do with his performance. I think he compartmentalized his life.
If you ever watched the original Murphy Brown, he played Eldon, the house painter.
It takes a while. When it first became obvious to me that there was too much smoke not to be fire, I tossed all my Michael Jackson CDs. I’d have vigorous debates with fans who just couldn’t see what was to me, obvious. There are some things in life that can be judgement calls, but MJ’s life was a scream for help.
Then I was walking through Costco when “This Is It” was first released on DVD. I looked up, and there was the Michael Jackson I’d always loved as a performer. He was mesmerizing, and that’s why he’d become the #1 star in the music world.
It takes a little while before the sense of betrayal leaves and you can separate the performer from whatever else his life might have been.
One of my favorite actors was a murderer — he later committed suicide, most think from the guilt. Another had a number of women say he’d molested them. There’s either enough distance between them and their performances, or there isn’t.
And yes, sometimes putting on the headphones and cranking them up stops all the noise in one’s head. Go for it.
Indeed!
😂
I'd have expected the theme from The Twilight Zone to start at any time!
I think we've all liked Sci Fi at some time or another, and for many of us who watched Star Trek in our youth, it's a genre preference that's stuck with us. But only a few of us, say, secretly -- or not so secretly -- fancy themselves as Capt. Kirk. Was it the same guy, or are two of them running loose?
Most of us won't even do the tired, "Who was the better Captain of the Enterprise -- Picard or Kirk?" Maybe for kicks and giggles, but seriously? Not many.
Joe, you have a good point there!
Agreed. But I'm on Twitter, and for me it pins the needle to see political pundits I respect having a stupid, knock down, drag out argument over who could kick who to the moon and back -- Spidey or Superman. It's bad enough that they're grown ups who are so into it that they can argue minutiae, but to get so overwrought, too! From FilmBuff's reaction I'm sure you're not surprised that when I tossed a "Who the heck cares? In my day the only ones who did care looked like Beaver Cleaver!" into their argument that I wound up losing followers.
It's an odd world we live in. But if their lives are going so smoothly that they need comics for excitement, they should be thankful. And I suppose I should be happy for them. They're like the grown ups who used to like Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. Except I remember those as gentle folk, sort of the Boo Radleys of the neighborhood. Not the knock-down, drag-out types.
I wouldn't argue that comics are now literary because the Snowflake generation studies them in college. It doesn't really back up your point.
Yes, a couple of my favorite movies are supposedly based on "graphic novels" (*snort*). They have a teenage feel to them, but the acting makes it worthwhile for an adult to sit down and watch them -- MIB and RED. If I got my hands on the original comics, I can't imagine poring over the pages like I did with the Sunday funnies when I was a kid, breathlessly turning the page to see what Prince Valiant was up to next, or what was doing in Dogpatch -- even though MIB and RED were designed and marketed for today's adults.
I didn't lump myself in with the WWII generation. Those were the adults of my day -- our parents, neighbors, uncles and aunts. My father and mother both served during WWII and after. The neighbor down the street served in WWI -- and that's where I learned what happens to old tattoos! All my friends' fathers either served in WWII or Korea. Instead of keeping my head down looking at my phone, I stood around listening to the grown-ups talk. I got to hear a lot of fascinating stuff, learned that we could blame a lot of our ills on "the middleman," whoever he was (a kid wouldn't know, of course), but I never ONCE heard them even refer to comic books. I certainly never heard them stoop to having serious conversations over which was better, DC or Marvel. That was for people who looked like Beaver Cleaver.
My point is that grown ups don't go around being experts on comics -- at least they didn't used to. People whose world consisted of the far more serious business of draft numbers and whether they should start a family now or wait until the war in Vietnam was over weren't looking for thrills and excitement in the pages of a comic book. You can remain ignorant of my generation, and I'll remain ignorant of the "intellectual" content and "mature fare" of Spiderman and Wonder Woman, happily.
Thank you, QueenFan. Perhaps I could have worded it better, but I meant the adults when I was a kid -- hence my asking my husband if he'd ever heard of the adults arguing comic books when he was growing up.
I think Temporary read a poll somewhere that said Americans -- go figure -- don't want a socialist for President. "Bernie's not a socialist! Besides, they always call us socialists!" Some do, I suppose. What I keep hearing is that their policies are socialist, in that they're big government, centralized power, taking power from the locals where they know what the issues are.
I have nothing against sports. My dad watched all kinds, including golf, which was like watching paint dry to me. But before arthritis gnarled his hands until he couldn't do the grip, he was out there playing golf and beating the pants off of everybody. My mother said he could have been a professional golfer or professional bowler if he wanted to. I still remember when he had to put his ball up for the last time because they'd had to drill the holes so large that he lost his fingertip control.
But my point was that no one argued about comic book heroes in those days. I asked my husband after I posted this is he ever heard grown men arguing over which comic book hero could beat the pants off the other. "Adults? No," he said, with the air of a man who'd just heard the dumbest question ever. I think that's why the adults of our generation were considered The Greatest Generation. Once you'd whipped Hitler's little three letters, Spiderman was just a tad childish.
What's more, he's proud of being socialist.
A guy who brings his daughter and son-in-law in and demands they get security clearances is not interested in draining the swamp. None of us knows if he actually cut it back slightly, but if anyone looked at his record of where he gave money, he spent a lifetime being actively pro-swamp.
That’s gonna leave a mark!
I'm sure MJ's staff was constantly working. But unless he was rehearsing or on the road, he had plenty of down time.
Molesters know the control they have over their victims. They wanted to keep their special relationship going, and were probably half or completely in love with Michael. And if not, they likely didn't want the blowback from demented, rabid fans who weren't above death threats and throwing dead pets onto people's yards. Finally, they'd have to answer, "Well, if he was doing those unspeakable things to you, why did you stay?" How do you explain to someone who wasn't there the insane environment that had somehow become normal because of the careful way Michael had groomed them?
One of the things predators do is look for victims in dysfunctional families. So you wouldn't have taken the money? Do you think a dysfunctional parent would? In a heartbeat, m'lad.
How do you know nothing happened with Culkin? Because he said so? Review the paragraph on why the victims stay and why they'd lie -- and why the perp would KNOW they'd lie for him.
There can't be tis much smoke and no fire. But his fans would tell you otherwise.
You're accusing him of only wanting to look at what he wants to look at while you refuse to look at what he's looking at. "He was never proven guilty, therefore he is innocent." To which we always reply that O.J. wasn't proven guilty of the murder of her wife and her friend, but everyone who wasn't biased knew he was guilty as sin.
Then you throw in the example of you and your little brother sleeping in the same tent. It's not quite the same as a grown man seeking out other people's kids to sleep with.
BTW, sexual predators are like any other predator -- they pick the vulnerable ones. In this case, the kids whose fathers weren't around much, the mothers were distracted by a disintegrating marriage, and the kids had to find someone who made them feel wanted and needed. MJ knew how to make people feel like they were the only person he cared about in the whole world.
I suppose it is possible that he could have had the exact M.O. of a predator, alarms in his bedroom to let him know people were coming down the hall, he could have special young friends all of the same sex who actually are telling the truth when they say he never molested them. I'm sure it could look like textbook sexual predation and still not be. But those kids had plenty of reason to deny he'd molested them. After all, they kept hanging around. Even though MJ's line that they'd all go to prison forever was a lie, they'd carry the stigma of having fallen for someone who was preying on them.
I hold the parents responsible, too. After all, they were pimping out their kids even if MJ wasn't. They were willing to give their kids over to a creepy guy in exchange for gifts and trips and the ability to say they were friends of Michael Jackson.