Tag Archives: Superman

The Commoditization of Emotional Discovery

Feel like crying?

There’s an entire genre of movies, TV shows and music, explicitly designed to mollify you in your time of emotional distress. Plus, there’s a contrived ending that tells you everything’s okay. Or not. It’s basically sadness porn, after all.

Feel like laughing? Same deal. Entire blocks of television programming are devoted to laughter, loaded with disparate commercials for unhealthy items and services. You can “binge-watch” every stand-up special a comedian has produced, and then argue about a decrease in their edge, on the Internet. Isn’t that fantastic?

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Filed under Don't Know Don't Care, Eatable Things, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Uncategorized, Worst Of All

Gridbug Chasers

In the 1982 science-fiction fantasy TRON, there comes a moment inside the computer world where the protagonists are imperiled by “gridbugs”.

gridbug1

Clearly a threat.

The danger is underlined by dialogue spoken by Cindy Morgan, as the shapely input/output program Yori:

“This isn’t going to be easy. If those gridbugs get us, we’ve had it.”

The gridbugs in question get a ten-second interlude, complete with a unique and rather corny soundtrack cue, and then go on to never affect anything or even be mentioned in passing again. Continue reading

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Filed under Animation Analysis, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned, Worst Of All