Gotham High

I’m not a comic book geek. Not hating or judging, I totally get it — you see how I am about movies — that’s just not my niche. So I’m not hugely precious about comic book properties, which is why I think this abandoned concept for a “Batman in High School” cartoon series, Gotham High, is hilarious.

We all go through incredible changes as teenagers: growth spurts, bad skin, a sudden insatiable need to uphold justice and avenge your murdered parents…. Well, that is if you’re Bruce Wayne.
As if being a freshman at Gotham High wasn’t tough enough, Bruce’s insomnia and technological fascinations are taking their toll. Instead of spending his time studying, he has begun to obsess over an emerging personality trait: Batman. But under the watchful eye of his guardian and steward, Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce is forced to put his intelligence to good use: graduating high school. But given his classmates, can Bruce survive Gotham High?

There’s some artwork on the site showing character designs and the overall art style that the animation would have had. The commentors are split between loving it and clutching madly at their pearls over this abomination.

Let me just say that despite not being a major comic aficionado, I watched the 90s animated series and I’ve absorbed enough of the Batmythology from the culture to know that this idea makes no sense at all. I think that’s what makes it awesome.

Someone accused them of essentially pitching a real version of Watchmen Babies, which I think is a fairly spot-on observation (although Batman is not, in general, quite so cynical as Watchmen). Whether it’s a compliment or critique, however, depends on your point of view.

My point of view, in turn, depends on the tone. If they were going to play this straight, a la Batman: TAS or Batman Beyond, no way it would ever fly. But if they did this fairly tongue-in-cheek, recognizing and playing with the inherent absurdity of it all, I think it could have been great. I said I watched the original animated series — I also grew up with 60s Adam West Batman, and loved it.

I mean, this is just rife for satire for your typical high school drama. If the writing was of a caliber akin to, say, Clone High (of which this is obviously a close cousin), I think this could have been something really special. Poison Ivy as the slutty cheerleader whose ex-boyfriends have a tendency not to come back to school after the break-up. Joker being all emo and taking everything seriously. And a very special episode where star wrestler Bane struggles with steroid abuse.

Don’t get me wrong, this would be hard to get right. Let too many network executives give it the Bad Touch in its bathing suit area, and it could have gone down as the biggest trainwreck in modern animation history. But if they’d managed to ride the razor’s edge, between reverence for the source material and irreverence for the format, it might just have been gleefully crazy enough to work.

Regarding the “Liberal Media”

I don’t always agree with Keith Olbermann — since the election last year he’s occasionally seemed a little unhinged. It’s not that he is sometimes “too liberal;” if anything, it’s that he sometimes lets his emotional reactions compromise his liberalism and make him say unreasonable things.

I recall one occasion when he essentially called for a limit on the Constitutional freedom of speech for the teabaggers, birthers, and other such vile creatures. While I was completely on board with Keith regarding the fact that they’re hateful, ignorant embarrassments to the conservative movement in particular and the human race in general, he lost me instantly when he implied that they should not be legally permitted to be hateful, ignorant embarrassments etc. Because they should. Because as awful as they are, giving the government the power to limit free expression of any idea is a slippery slope, and the visceral satisfaction of having people I disagree with silenced would not be worth the inevitable silencing of my own expression when the pendulum inevitably returns. Call it “Mutually Assured Discussion.”

And then there was when this went down. Olbermann went berserk, spearheading the accusations of racism that I honestly am not convinced were intended or even subconsciously inserted. The joke of the cartoon was that the stimulus plan was so poorly-written that it must’ve been written by a chimp. I don’t think at all that it was meant to cast aspersions on the actual writer(s) of the bill, and certainly not against the new black President. I’d be more likely to associate it with the “1000 typewriters for 1000 years” type of monkey than the “porch” type. It’s called satire, folks. When you see “it’s because he’s black!” under everything, you’re the racist. 

Still, among the available talking heads that aren’t Stewart and Colbert, Olbermann is still my preference — although I want to watch more of Maddow’s show. For one thing, he’s a liberal and, occasional lapses of irrational hypersensitivity aside, is usually reality-based. Compare this to Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, etc, who will distort, dismiss, or outright fabricate information in order to form events to the predetermined version (though O’Reilly seems to have occasional lapses of rationality). Olbermann at least cites his sources.

Compare also to the fact that, again, he’s a liberal awash in a sea of conservatives — and unlike those conservative commentators, who like to pretend that they’re in some way “neutral,” he at least makes no bones about the fact that he’s coming at this from a liberal slant.

I’ve always been annoyed by the blanket references to the “liberal media,” because I really don’t know what the people who use the phrase are talking about. They seem to mean that entertainment is liberal — but the news media certainly isn’t. Conservatives like to say that conservatism doesn’t have a voice in the media because, I dunno, they have a persecution complex or something.

This claim is clearly false, but I’ve never quite had the motivation to piece together a response to it. But Olbermann — who again, I like because he does the research and cites his sources — did it for me.

Thank You, Daily Show

I’m a big fan of the Daily Show. I’ve been watching it semi-regularly since it first went on the air in 1996 with Craig Kilborn in the chair. At that point it was more of a rip-off “SNL’s Weekend Update,” reporting current news and adding a punchline. They had interviews like they do now, where the interviewer would ask the interviewee absurd questions, but they were clearly editing tricks, where the interviewees were not actually asked those questions.

When Jon Stewart took over, the show became more overtly political, and also grew a pair. Now when a ridiculous question pops up in an interview, we can rest safely assured that the correspondent actually asked that question.

It’s gotten to the point where The Daily Show is the only news commentary show I trust. Jon Stewart is astoundingly intelligent; whenever a guest comes on who has written a book, Jon has read the book in preparation for the interview. He asks his guests harder and more sincere questions than anyone else in the news media; he has, on a supposedly fluff “comedy show,” taken powerful politicians to task in front of a live studio audience.

Most importantly, they do their research. If a politician or news analyst makes a statement directly in contradiction to another of their own statements, they dig it up and share it with the world.

Case in point, this video from last night’s show, taking the media to task for their double standard in letting VP-nominated Sarah Palin off the hook for…well, everything.

I’m voting Obama, and enthusiastically so, and anyone who isn’t — well, I just have nothing to say to them, because obviously we neither speak the same language nor live in the same reality. But regardless of your politics, regardless of which way the pendulum swings, it’s good to know that The Daily Show is there to call people on their bullshit. And I’ve seen them hit the Dems just as hard, and with good cause.

If I believed there was a God, I would thank him for The Daily Show. Since I don’t, I’ll settle for just thanking them.

Speaking of which, I’m really bogged down with work and haven’t had time to continue Case for a Creator. Considering I don’t want to just post glib or dismissive posts, I’ll hold off continuing the reading for a while until I can review and post more substantively.

The New Knight Rider

So I’ve had plenty to say about the design of KITT. But how was the show (currently only a TV movie, obviously a pilot for a series)?

Well, first off, full disclosure: I really don’t remember the original Knight Rider. Like, at all. I remember two things from watching it as a child.

The first, there was an episode where KITT chased a bad guy down the street where I lived. If KITT had turned right instead of left, he would have driven right in front of my house¹.

The second, KITT fucking ruled. (Although I wouldn’t learn to say “fucking” until I was 6.) I would look forward to going to Universal Studios, when it was essentially just a studio masquerading as a theme park, because they had KITT there. You could stand in line and get to sit in KITT and talk to him. I don’t imagine they got Mr. Feeny to actually sit there and do the voice for KITT, but I don’t remember ever thinking “That’s not KITT’s voice.” Ah, the innocence of childhood².