Aaron R. Davis

Okay, now, bear with me here, because I’m going to be discussing Disney’s Camp Rock.

Two years ago, Disney Channel had a surprise hit with a pretty bad movie called Camp Rock, in which Demi Lovato and her bad acting charmed Joe Jonas and his bad hair at a lame summer camp for wannabe musicians, all while bad musical numbers went on around them. Kids ate it up, and Disney immediately built sitcoms around Demi Lovato and the Jonas Brothers and set up plans to make 2010 the year of Camp Rock 2: Let’s Milk This Cash Cow Until It Squirts Blood.

It started earlier this year when Demi Lovato and Joe Jonas got together and started dating, in a relationship that invited a humanity-will-be-ashamed-of-this-when-the-archaeologists-of-the-year-2525-write-the-book level of embarrassing scrutiny and preoccupation on our teenager-infected Internet. Many called it a sham for publicity. Others, ignoring the fact that Coca-Cola, one of the oldest and most recognized soda brands still extant, spends millions in advertising every year, naively argued that Disney doesn’t need publicity, because they have enough. Not that I care if it was real or not — any more than you may care who the hell Demi Lovato and Joe Jonas are — I just thought this argument was shockingly unsophisticated. It reminds of those Ayn Rand acolytes who think an unregulated free market will correct itself because corporations really care about their reputations.

By the way, they cap that oil leak yet?

Anyway, back to Camp Rock 2: Give Us All Your Money, Brats, We’ve Got Gold Toilets on Back Order. It’s that kind of willful ignorance, this strange belief in the idea that everything celebrities do is genuine, that makes these kinds of cash cows grow and thrive like a baseball player lying to Congress about being on steroids.

Back in April, just in time for Earth Day, Disney had Joe and Demi record “Make a Wave,” a chintzy ballad with a truly ludicrous romantic video that became the flagship song of Disney Channel’s ongoing eco-awareness effort, Friends for Change, but really to promote their film Oceans, the latest culling together of scenes from the exquisite BBC documentary Planet Earth. Then, just as Disney Channel was transforming the two stars’ sitcoms (Sonny with a Chance and Jonas) from surprisingly funny half-hours to silly, overwrought teen romance soaps, there was a big, publicized breakup. And lo, the children Tweeted.

On the 25th of that same month, the first single from the soundtrack, “Can’t Back Down” was released, and Disney Channel declared that this summer would be the summer of Camp Rock 2. Then, just a couple of weeks later, a second single called “It’s On” followed, and Disney Channel began airing commercials for summer programming featuring the song and bearing the slogan “This Summer on Disney Channel: It’s On.”

Then a flood of segments began airing, a microseries called The Road to Camp Rock 2, which were five minutes of behind the scenes talk-up to promote the coming movie. The music videos for the songs played constantly. Three more singles followed on June 25, July 23 and August 22. This was all accompanied by a concert tour featuring Demi Lovato, the Jonas Brothers and so many guest stars (mostly from the movie) jam-packed into the proceedings that you’d be forgiven for believing that Ringo Starr was the impresario behind it. The tour kicked off back on the sixth and continues until mid-November.

Go to any store that sells children’s clothing or school supplies or party supplies, and you will see Demi Lovato and her fake tan staring at you from Camp Rock 2 shirts, posters, napkins, backpacks and notebooks. Go anywhere inside of Walmart and you’ll see Joe Jonas and his vacant, unengaged eyes following you from the toy aisle to electronics. The soundtrack was released on the 10th; lots of places are playing it in stereo demos.

Oh, wait … did I mention that the movie hasn’t even aired yet?

Yes, this entire marketing blitz to whip tweens into a foaming frenzy has all been about a Disney Channel TV movie that hasn’t even premiered. It doesn’t air until this Friday.

Because what better time to watch a movie about the friendships forged in the fires of shitty pop music and the endless possibilities of summer fun and romance than when summer’s already over and you’ve already gone back to school?

Part of my lifelong Disney fandom is watching the Disney Channel, so it feels like I’ve been exposed to Camp Rock 2: Screw Quality, We Need Cash for most of my life. Jeez, they had teaser trailers on Disney DVDs as far back as last December. Endless interviews, making-ofs, music videos, commercials, appearances, concerts, possible fake relationships … all of it, for the entire year so far, and this movie hasn’t even so much as graced a television.

My experience with Disney Channel tells me that Camp Rock 2: Your Kids Are Our ATMs is going to really suck. The first movie — which, trivia time, was actually co-written by Julie Brown — was pretty bad, and in this one, Disney’s really trying too hard to up the stakes. (Well, the marketing stakes.) But let me ask you: does it actually matter what the quality of the damn thing is? Disney’s probably already made millions in advertising, merchandising, soundtrack sales and concert tickets.

The actual movie this is all based around is so far beside the point that the Jonas Brothers could club baby seals and sodomize their corpses in the middle of act two and it wouldn’t matter. (And it might also make it a better movie, provided the scene wasn’t accompanied by yet another song about doing your best to prove a point.)

Except that, of course, the actual movie does hold some value … as an advertisement for the DVD! I saw a commercial on another channel entirely today, and the DVD of Camp Rock 2: The Vast Audience Hold-Up is coming out on Tuesday. Talk about expedient; movie out on Friday, DVD out five days later. And, just in case you were foolishly thinking of withholding another twenty bucks from Disney, it’s an extended edition, with two new songs and two new scenes. So, there’s still so much more Camp Rock 2 excitement to pay for.

Which, I guess, is a relief for those Jemi fans (yes, they do call themselves that) and those Disney execs who have the same mutual interest: never letting Camp Rock stop being something you can purchase.

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com.

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Aaron R. Davis

I am not a fan of Family Guy.

You are? I don’t care.

I’m tired of taking shit on the Internet from the show’s audience of socially retarded frat boys, stoners and other assorted imbeciles who become incredibly defensive and irrationally upset when you don’t think their idiot show is the funniest thing ever to grace the television. There’s room enough on the Internet for all of us, and their insistence that we all like the same things is as troubling as it is fear-based.

The reason I bring this up is a comment I received on my blog regarding my opinion on Family Guy’s Star Wars parodies. I thought the first one, “Blue Harvest,” was surprisingly funny. And I thought the second one, “Something Something Something Dark Side,” was terrible even for Family Guy. It’s a perfect example of everything that’s completely unfunny about the show: in brief, the repetition of the same unfunny gags over and over, multitudes of references to other shows and movies, empty characterizations, loooooooong sequences where the animation is nothing more than an exact replica of a scene from something else, Seth MacFarlane’s extreme laziness as a writer and swearing that’s supposedly funny in and of itself.

Also, lots of misogyny. That’s one of the things that bothers me most about this show, is how misogynistic it is. It’s supposed to be somehow cute that Quagmire is basically a rapist. Seth MacFarlane has apparently never imagined a scenario where a woman getting punched in the face by a man isn’t funny. When I see these jokes, it feels to me like someone taking a frat boy, putting his arm around the boy’s ironic, beer-and-chip-stained hockey jersey and stroking his backward-hat-wearing head while saying, in soothing tones, “Yes, women are scary. Don’t worry; they’re things, not people.”

So, it was amusing to me when I got this comment on my thoughts from someone called “austin” who seems really, really offended that I didn’t care for Family Guy.

you’re all completely retarded. the family guy star wars films are not parodies. they are stylistically referenced homages. none of you understand why seth mcfarlanes sense of humor is funny, the humor comes from the redundancy, repetition and gross inappropriate-nes. im not saying that every time peter falls, hits his knee and starts tooth-breathing, i start guffawing like a stoned teenager; but i chuckle inside a bit. when peter knocks out lois like a rocky movie its not funny cause he’s beating women (or is it) its funny because its so socially unacceptable. you know why most of you dont think its funny? because you’re to busy sitting in your overstuffed lounger with your smoking jacket and penny loafers sipping a 3 finger snifter of 12 year old scotch to appreciate potty humor. fuck off

Good stuff, eh? I just had to share it with you.

It’s the usual cry of a Family Guy fan: because I don’t find the show funny, I must be some kind of intellectual elitist, too full of myself and all of my fancy thinkin’ to relax and enjoy anything. The problem isn’t that Seth MacFarlane isn’t funny; the problem is that I’m too full of myself and my mannered, urbane lifestyle to realize that Seth MacFarlane is actually a comedy genius.

Why, I was so shocked by this accusation that I spilled my glass of sherry all over my Valentino ascot. My butler will have the hardest time cleaning the stains, but I couldn’t help myself. So, instead of turning on my amusing “TeeVee” box to that delightful Frasier program, I decided to answer the charges of this Everyman with the courage to take me to task for my, um, “retardedness.”

1. the family guy star wars films are not parodies. they are stylistically referenced homages.

Incorrect. Shaun of the Dead is a “stylistically referenced homage.” I can see why you wouldn’t think “Something Something Something Dark Side” isn’t a parody, since parodies are supposed to be funny, and it spends much more time repeating exactly scenes from The Empire Strikes Back in a hushed tone of reverence instead of actually parodying the film, but it’s still a parody. If it’s an homage, this is one of the many, many instances in pop culture where “homage” simply means “acknowledged rip-off.”

2. none of you understand why seth mcfarlanes sense of humor is funny, the humor comes from the redundancy, repetition and gross inappropriate-nes. im not saying that every time peter falls, hits his knee and starts tooth-breathing, i start guffawing like a stoned teenager; but i chuckle inside a bit.

This is the part of the — let’s be charitable and call it an argument — that I hate the most: the assertion that the very things that make the show unfunny (repetition, redundancy, faux-inappropriate humor) actually make the show incredibly hilarious.

Watching an episode of Family Guy is actually, in my experience, frustratingly insulting, because it’s the same thing over and over again. It’s just all chopped into bits, asides, random gags and non-sequiturs. How much actual plot content is there on this show anymore? I’m not talking about the first two or three seasons, when the show was actually funny. I’m talking about now, when the show can’t go 45 seconds without a reference gag or something instead of telling a story. They must write about six minutes of plot material and then go to some kind of stock list of references to 80s movies and 70s television and just see what they can randomly throw in that’s like the time something else happened. It’s so much easier than real writing, isn’t it?

It basically goes like this: Plot. Scene from an 80s movie with Peter thrown in for no reason. Set-up for the episode. Random bit. Scene from Sesame Street or something but with Stewie carrying a gun around to show you how Family Guy is so much tougher than the lame shit you grew up with. Joke about violence or woman getting punched. Attempt at a social point that falls flat because it’s coupled with a joke about how retarded Peter is. Cleveland very slowly falls from an incline. Opportunity for Adam West to ramble or the gay dude to say “I knoooooww” or whatever lame voice Seth MacFarlane did in the shower that morning and his giggling staff of pot-smoking writers laughed at uncontrollably for 15 minutes. Lots of repetition of something. Someone hits their shin and breathes in slowly for two entire minutes. Stewie makes fun of Brian’s novel. Little bit of plot. Peter and the Chicken fight for seven minutes. Back to plot. Insertion of an Internet meme that was kind of funny 18 months ago, but from which the Internet has long since moved on. Reference to some commercial from 1983. Pointless “character” moment featuring a bit player rambling on about something or other to fill time. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Conway Twitty. “Edgy” bit making fun of feminism or religion or abortion or something, followed by a musical number that goes on for far, far too long but at least manages to rhyme words with “bitch” and “ass.” Unfunny joke about vaudeville. The end.

Yes … it’s a genius formula. Especially when your audience apparently finds great comfort in seeing the exact same thing over and over and over again.

(Scene not shown: Seth MacFarlane laughing all the way to the bank that people will watch the same ten gags on every episode and still buy the DVDs. It’s easy to make stoners laugh, isn’t it?)

3. when peter knocks out lois like a rocky movie its not funny cause he’s beating women (or is it) its funny because its so socially unacceptable.

This is my absolute favorite part of this comment.

It’s amazing to me how part of the popularity of Family Guy seems to be that it takes its viewers and — by pretending to insult an imaginary audience of bluenoses, intellectuals, moralists, religious people and social activists — turns them into egotistical anti-intellectuals who seriously believe that Family Guy is some sort of empowering force for the “common people.” It’s Sarah Palin’s entire political strategy: make someone feel smart by celebrating their ignorance, then paint a false picture of the people who don’t like the same things they do, turning them into “real America” versus a bunch of liberals.

But what’s funny is that Family Guy is so damn gutless in its humor. The Simpsons may not have been very funny for the last several years, but at least it always had the courage to tear into its audience. That’s real edge. Family Guy simply nurtures its audience’s pretensions and fears by taking shots at groups of people who don’t actually watch the show. That way a Family Guy viewers gets to feel all smug about how some feminist or moral crusader somewhere must be really cheesed off by the way Seth MacFarlane just zinged their uncool attitudes. Take that, society!

Comments like this are born from the way this show revels in its own awfulness and, by design, makes its viewers feel brilliant. They’ll never be challenged by actual humor because they prefer the idiocy, and that’s what MacFarlane gives them.

That’s why this part of “austin’s” comment is my favorite. I love that he thinks what’s so funny about the fearful, childish, sexually immature, terrifyingly casual misogyny of Family Guy is that it’s somehow a challenge to social conventions. That it’s not at all Seth MacFarlane playing up to an audience that is scared of the social rules of 21st Century interaction and takes out their frustrations with feminism by laughing at women getting punched, but some kind of edgy commentary, some sort of attempt to push the envelope of what’s acceptable in humor.

But then he has the gall to add “or is it,” which completely negates his entire point. He just wants to leave the door open to the idea that watching women get clocked and then fall over unconscious could just be really, really hilarious. But in case I don’t realize how funny it truly is, he’ll find other ways to justify it by claiming it’s something else.

4. you know why most of you dont think its funny? because you’re to busy sitting in your overstuffed lounger with your smoking jacket and penny loafers sipping a 3 finger snifter of 12 year old scotch to appreciate potty humor

I have to say, I’ve never had someone attempt to insult me by telling me — and derisively, at that — that I wasn’t dumb enough to get something. That is a new one. And given all of the times I’ve been taken to task for being a fan of Kevin Smith or Judd Apatow, it’s kind of refreshing. But it did make me laugh longer and harder than Family Guy has in the last decade.

Oh, and also: you drink brandy from a snifter. Scotch is a whiskey; you drink it from a tumbler. Just FYI.

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com.

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Aaron R. Davis

I’ve always found the epic, constant whining of Star Wars fans to be pretty empty and, very often, completely hilarious. I’ve gotten into fights with the hardcore fans for the dumbest reasons, like my opinion that Star Wars is fantasy and not science fiction (not a criticism of the films, by the way) or that Boba Fett sucks (he does). People will go to the mattresses over the dumbest things when it comes to these movies. Oh, and daring to like the prequels? You’d better believe that’s a verbal paddling.

In brief, here’s my history with Star Wars fandom.

I was less than a year old when Star Wars came out, so there’s no version of the world where I wasn’t a fan of these movies. My childhood was dominated by them. And then, after Return of the Jedi was re-released in 1985, that fandom started to cool down. Most of us moved on to other stuff. Our action figures, sadly, were sold by our mothers at garage sales while we were out of town. The merchandising pretty much ceased, George Lucas moved on to making other movies and we began to let go of this legendary idea that there would eventually be nine Star Wars movies.

Star Wars fandom, for the most part, was kind of dead until George Lucas got divorced in 1987 and had to give up most of his money. Then he set the merchandising empire in motion again, beginning with a boxed VHS set of the movies for the very first time. I got it for Christmas in 1990 and was hugely excited. A lot of people were. It reignited Star Wars fandom, and soon new action figures were coming out, the Expanded Universe novels were on a regular schedule and Star Wars hit laserdisc.

But it was about this time that a lot of articles started to appear that were mainly Star Wars fans bitching about how much they hated Return of the Jedi. Apparently people who were my age — and I turned 18 in 1994 — were now claiming that, back when they were seven, they were somehow insulted by the presence of Ewoks in a series of fun kiddie movies that they were starting to take far, far too seriously. Even before the Special Editions came out, there was a very loud contingent of fans for whom loving Star Wars meant hating Star Wars. And with the release of prequels, TV shows and more and more merchandise — and, let’s be honest, the further these people get from a childhood they don’t want to share with kids who weren’t there when we had to wait three years to see what happened after Vader told Luke the truth about his parentage — that hate gets louder, sadder and much, much emptier.

What sparks my column this week is a post on an LA Times blog that has brought a lot of this anger into discussion. It’s partially an interview with Gary Kurtz, the producer of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, who has always felt that the emphasis on toys and merchandising took away the integrity of the Star Wars movies. He actually does have some interesting things to say about the films, but where I find the usual hollowness is in the fans bringing a lot of the old saws to the comments and onto their own blogs.

The biggest complaint that gets brought up is the toys, particularly the Ewoks. The old song goes that George Lucas originally wanted to have Wookies in Return of the Jedi, but that he changed it to Ewoks in order to sell teddy bears. It used to be just an interesting factoid that Lucas originally had Wookies in mind; now the whole accusatory edge of it just makes me laugh. We’re talking about a man who had made Wookies the star of an embarrassingly awful holiday special here. Do fans really, really think that George Lucas wouldn’t have just been selling plush Wookies instead of plush Ewoks? Is this the battle of integrity you really want to have?

This is why I think the bitching is just empty noise. Fans are still going to buy Star Wars merchandise, no matter how angry they get with George Lucas for creating Ewoks or Gungans or Special Editions. Fans will go as far to create a documentary called The People vs. George Lucas, a monument to the epic whining of not liking a decade-old movie that they went to see multiple times, but who cares? You saw the movie, George Lucas made the money, it’s over and done with. Your whining doesn’t change anything.

It’s this simple: didn’t like the Special Editions? Don’t watch them. Didn’t like the Ewoks? I don’t care; being a crybaby about space teddy bears for 27 years doesn’t make George Lucas look like the guy with the problem. Don’t like the Prequel Trilogy? Ignore it. The Star Wars canon has apparently grown vast enough that you don’t have to like every single aspect of it. Hell, I don’t. I think Boba Fett sucks; he doesn’t do dick in the movies and he dies like a punk. But I don’t spend my online time sobbing like an immature twat over it. I shrug and focus on the aspects I do like.

The other complaint that’s getting brought up again is when — when, Lord?! — the original, unaltered films are going to be remastered for DVD. That people are still asking this question is proof that no one is paying attention to anything but their hurt feelings. The answer is never.

If you remember, when George Lucas decided to remaster and recreate the “definitive” versions of his movies, he did so by cutting into and altering the original film negatives. The original release versions no longer exist. Not that they ever existed, really. Hell, the original release version didn’t say “Episode IV: A New Hope.” That was added after the release of The Empire Strikes Back. George Lucas has been altering and re-editing these movies since day one.

Look around online and you can find sites dedicated to pointing out the differences between the various releases and re-releases of the original movies, their multiple appearances on VHS and their subsequent turns on DVD. Even The Phantom Menace noticeably had scenes added when it first showed up on DVD. Lucas has been tinkering with these things for decades. So, when the so-called “unaltered versions” appeared on DVD a couple of years ago, and everyone complained that the transfer was from a non-anamorphic 1993 laserdisc, that’s because it’s the best you’re going to get. Quit whining that George Lucas won’t remaster the original versions for Blu-Ray, because the masters don’t exist anymore. They’ve been Special Editioned.

But this is where I find the complaints completely hollow: it’s not like these people are going to just stop being Star Wars fans. And they’re not going to stop buying Star Wars merchandise. In the minds of far, far too many people, Star Wars is something they’ve got to hold onto very tightly in order to protect it from its own creator. So, in this twisted duality they have with a man whom they’ve never met but who, nevertheless, controls a lot of their mental space, they have to keep complaining in order to make sure the world knows that they are much better stewards of an imagined universe that only exists because George Lucas took the time to create it.

Ask yourselves: would you be happier if he had never bothered at all?

And: what’s the point of being a fan of something that clearly drives you nuts?

This is all coming at the same time as the big gathering for Star Wars Celebration V, where Lucasfilm premiered a short clip of a deleted scene from Return of the Jedi that, apparently, will end up on the Blu-Ray. The clip going around YouTube shows massive applause throughout. So, really, you guys can bitch all you want, but George Lucas has just offered you a 47-second incentive to buy these movies again, and we all know you’re going to take it.

You bought the VHS boxed set in 1990. You bought the THX-remastered widescreen versions in 1995. Maybe you bought the laserdiscs in 1993. As much as you bitched about the Special Editions, you bought them on VHS in 1998. You bought the trilogy DVD set with the extra disc of documentaries in 2004. You bought the original trilogy again in 2006 because it had the original versions as DVD extras, even though they were laserdisc transfers. And now you’re going to buy them again on Blu-Ray. And mark my words, there will be changes. George Lucas has already said that he’s going to take the puppet Yoda out of The Phantom Menace and replace him with the CGI model used in Revenge of the Sith. So there will most likely be changes made to the original trilogy, his work in perpetual progress, when it hits Blu-Ray. Be prepared.

But whenever they come out, you’re going to buy them. You are. Because you can’t quit your abusive relationship with Star Wars.

You have no credibility when you’re angry about Star Wars toys, because you keep buying Star Wars toys. You have no steady ground when you question George Lucas’ integrity as a filmmaker, because you consistently (and vocally) refused to support his career when he was making anything other than Star Wars or Indiana Jones.

And until you stop buying the movies over and over, I refuse to take your complaints about them seriously.

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com.

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Aaron R. Davis

Back in June, I wrote about my weird friend Harlan and his horrifyingly convincing theory that Steven Spielberg’s movies are all about conquering or mastering the penis. Back then, I teased you with a future column devoted to Harlan’s theory that Pixar movies are all about sexual inadequacy. And, well … here we are.

How are the Toy Story movies about sexual inadequacy?

“This is actually the most obvious one,” he says. “I’m certainly not the first person to point out that what we have in the first movie is a battle for mastery of the bedroom between a floppy, flaccid, cloth Woody and a flashy, plastic, battery-operated Buzz am I? Flaccid Woody gets ignored because plastic Buzz is newer, more energetic and more exciting. And in the end, Woody learns to live with and even be friends with Buzz, because they can both be part of a thriving bedroom partnership.”

“Of course,” he continues, “in the sequel, we learn that Woody does need a bit of an ego boost every now and then. But when he sees how deeply Buzz has internalized his message — that the whole point of Woody is to be, um, played with — Woody decides it’s too early to retire just to be admired, and he’d rather be loved and cared for and presumably caressed and massaged by his master, a kid named Andy, which is from the Greek word Andros, which means man.

“And in the third movie, we see Andy passing on his Woody to a little girl, which probably says something that I don’t even want to think about. But I guess girls need a Woody now and then, so it’s all good.”

A Bug’s Life: “An ant named Flick (which rhymes with a certain euphemism for ‘penis’) can only become a man and get the princess when he hires a bunch of circus performers to pretend to be warriors. Of course, since it’s a lie, he still doesn’t become a man. He’s riddled with self-doubt until he’s able to stand up to a grasshopper. Also, he kills the grasshopper with a bird, which is probably also a euphemism for something. You ever hear the phrase ‘hairy bird’ before?”

Monsters, Inc.: “Big, manly Sulley, the jock, hangs out with beta male sidekick Mike, who is basically a walking testicle. Where the inadequacy comes in is that he’s beaten down by the establishment — even though they’ve turned him into a hero —into being scared of children. It’s only when he cares for a little girl and rescues her from both the chameleon/penis-like Randall and his boss, who is like a crawling Freudian symbol for vagina fear come to life, that he becomes a true success.”

You don’t think you’re stretching it a bit here?

“Trust me, it’s all there. Also, how about those door portals with children inside? I mean, Sulley can master the womb, but he’s afraid of what’s inside of it.”

I stand corrected.

Finding Nemo: “Oh, this is all about the fear of inadequacy, dude. You have a beta male fish who fears everything, and he has to conquer his fears. He’s afraid of the dark, he’s afraid of trusting anyone and he’s afraid of getting hurt. It’s like he’s been too feminine for too long, or something. I mean, he saved one egg out of his wife’s cave/womb — which was stabbed to death by a barracuda/penis — and he lives inside a giant vagina. Then he’s got to go off into the unknown where, among other things, he’s nearly killed by sharks (penises), a giant field of jellyfish (testicles) and a lantern fish (another vagina). What teaches him to be manly? Letting go and having faith when he’s trapped inside a giant penis substitute, the humpback whale.”

The Incredibles: “This one’s a gold mine. In fact, it’s so obviously about inadequacy, I’m not sure I even need to go into it too deeply here. Mr. Incredible is full of vim and vigor, a real hero, but when he’s forced to stop using his powers, he becomes impotent, old, tired and fat. He’s got little to no interest in his family or in his job. He’s essentially become neutered. But then he gets the opportunity — in secret, like an exciting affair — to be Mr. Incredible again, and he slims down, becomes a great lover, an attentive father, an energetic man who’s strong and doesn’t have back problems anymore. He buys a sports car, damn it! This whole movie could double as an Enzyte commercial!”

Cars: “Well, this is about a young car — a car, dude — bursting with so much energy that he can’t slow down. He crashes into everything, because he’s trying to fuck everything. He goes so fast that they have to imprison him and chain him to a machine that paves roads, and even then he’s going too fast. The thing’s bubbling and spilling over in an orgy of symbolism. The car’s name is even ‘Lightning.’ He’s got a real problem with premature ejaculation. So he has to be schooled in racing by Doc Hudson — a doctor — and he learns that if he goes too fast, he burns himself out and hurts himself.

“See, lots of people don’t like Cars, but it’s actually kind of brilliant because it overturns everything Pixar has done up until this point. Instead of a guy learning to master his impotence, or fear of impotence and become virile again, in this movie, the young virile guy needs to be taught to slow down in order to become a competent lover. He even learns that it’s not about finishing making 500 left turns before anyone else, but that it’s all about what you do while you’re making the circle.

“Oh, yeah … enjoy that ride, little man.”

(I wanted to break for a shower, but instead I press onward and ask about Ratatouille.)

“Everything you need to know about Ratatouille is that the chef who can’t cook is guided by a rat that he calls ‘Little Chef.’ And that the chef’s name is ‘Linguini.’ So, the rat pulls on his Linguini and creates magic with it, and the chef trusts in his Little Chef to make things work out for him. And they’re nearly thwarted by an angry short man, a universal symbol for inadequacy. Yeah, what’s this all about?

“Also, did you notice that the magic created by the two of them makes an old, cynical man virile and full of life again? It’s all there.”

WALL-E: “See, you think I’m going to sell you on the idea that the little robot is some kind of penis symbol, but you’re wrong. The sexual inadequacy here is all in the ship captain, who relies on an automated pilot to do his job for him. He’s not a man at all until he’s given a seedling — birth symbolism — and he’s put into a position of caring for everyone else. The whole Adam and Eve story with the robots is wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but they’re just the device that opens up the true story of mastery over impotence. The captain conquers his automated replacement and plants his people into the ground. That’s the real point. Claim your masculinity.”

Up: “Apart from the title, you mean? Okay, we all know the house symbolizes love and all that. But what’s the catalyst in Carl’s journey from impotence to virility? Becoming a surrogate father figure to Russell. Not only that, but we see the outcome of a sort of false virility — Charles Muntz and his obsession with finding a rare bird (and there’s the bird symbolism again) has made him old and dusty. Both men are living in houses full of broken dreams that only see love as accomplishment-oriented: Carl wants to accomplish Ellie’s dream because he thinks without doing that their love was imperfect and Charles wants to vindicate his reputation and win back the love of his fans and the science community. But Carl realizes that love isn’t accomplishment and that he can honor Ellie by being a loving, caring man. And when he does, he takes over Charles’ big flying penis symbol.

“Great movie.”

Wow … so, what do you think the Pixar shorts symbolize?

“Dude, you don’t have to analyze everything.”

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com.

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Aaron R. Davis

Let me preface this whole discussion with this: triceratops still exists.

Everyone chill out.

Over the weekend, word reached the Internet that two of the world’s preeminent paleontologists, John Scanella and Jack Horner, had published a paper arguing that triceratops may not be its own species of dinosaur, but simply a juvenile form of the less-famous torosaurus. Both dinosaurs were discovered in the late 1800s by Othniel Marsh, who considered them two separate species.

Right away, we’re dealing with some major problems.

First, we have no dinosaur DNA. So we can’t exactly do genetic testing.

Second, dinosaurs have been extinct for millions of years. No one’s ever seen one in the wild, so no one really knows from experience what these things are supposed to look like.

Third, Othniel Marsh engaged in a war for years with paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope that involved, at various times, dynamiting fossil sites, discrediting each other in papers and haphazardly assembling bones — sometimes bones that didn’t even go together — in an attempt to “discover” more new species than anyone else.

Scientists are still fixing errors made, sometimes deliberately, by Marsh and Cope.

So the situation we have here is as though some future naturalist who had never seen a caterpillar or a butterfly had no idea they were actually developmental stages of the same animal. Why would you, just to look at them? Hell, I know kids who don’t realize that the white, puffy weeds on the lawn are dandelions simply because they aren’t yellow.

Now, I’m fascinated by the world of paleontology; I have been since before I can even remember. Dinosaur bones captivated me at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago when I was a child, and they’ve held me in thrall ever since. So I considered this story a fascinating find. And in fact, the article linked above goes on to say that Scanella and Horner have made similar assertions about other species, and gone some way towards supporting a theory that dinosaur diversity was on the decline before they were wiped out by an extinction level event in the form of an asteroid. Which itself may explain something to us about the evolution of species. If widely accepted, this could change how paleontology is approached in the future.

In other words, this is a big freaking deal.

So, of course, the Internet had a nerd meltdown over it.

Typically, the bloggers seized on the most simplistic aspect possible: “The triceratops never really existed.”

Almost immediately, the memes started flying around. “Everything I’ve ever known was a lie!” “Scientists are taking my whole childhood away!” And the inevitable t-shirt that reads “I still believe.”

We’ve got a few generations cruising the Internet now, so you’d think people would be used to rapid changes. But there are still people out there who are butt hurt over the loss of Pluto’s status as a planet; they’re so upset over it you’d think they vacationed there or were building a beach house. (Yes, I know it’s a ball of ice, I just needed an analogy there.) There are people who just won’t let this go, and they manage to turn it into a whole “science be damned, I’ll believe what I like” argument. With all of the problems in the world, this is what the nerds want to go down fighting on: the classification of a planetoid.

And now they want to go down fighting over the existence of triceratops, which is not actually the issue. The issue is whether the classification of dinosaur bones is incorrect or not.

Keep in mind how hypothesis works. Paleontology hasn’t made some blanket acceptance of this new idea; this will need to be tested. Some paleontologists have already wondered aloud if triceratops and torosaurus aren’t still two separate but closely-related dinosaurs, and there’ve just been a lot of mistakes in classifying baby torosaurus fossils.

But leave it to the Internet to get into fights over the dumbest aspects of actual science. And really, that’s my whole point. This is the constant stupidity of being on the Internet: someone says that someone said something and no one bothered to verify it. Instead, it’s a visceral reaction and a weird decision to not trust actual scientists or even to look up the actual facts being tossed around and alluded to. And it’s something that just kind of worries me as a skeptic and an atheist. People don’t just get religious about religion. People get religious about vegetarianism or being a Lady Gaga fan or thinking the triceratops is awesome. And while the triceratops is awesome — full disclosure, it’s always been my favorite dinosaur — I think new scientific knowledge is something to get excited over, not something to fight against because you might have to call a dinosaur by a different name.

And, actually, if they had bothered to read the article itself, they would’ve seen the following line: “Torosaurus will now be abolished as a species and specimens reassigned to Triceratops, says Horner.”

But, you know, why have all the facts when you can just freak out and maybe make a t-shirt to make some money off the confusion?

This is the biggest problem with the way news travels on the Internet. Too often, you’re getting stuff filtered by people’s initial, often confused impressions. People take sides on all kinds of non-issues they don’t fully understand simply because of momentary passions, or in reaction to someone else or for stupid reasons I can’t even fathom.

I’m not going to be the adult here who says something like “If only people got all worked up like this where it really matters” and then mumbles something about what things were like in some imagined past.

But I am going to roll my eyes pretty damn hard and just leave the science-ing to the scientists.

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com.