And both “Star Wars” and “Return of the Jedi” prove we need a moon-sized space station capable of destroying whole civilizations, lest some other nation/empire develop one first. So let’s get to it.
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I just paid my taxes for the year ~wipes away tear~ and with all this crazy shit, am seriously thinking of bugging the fuck out.
The UK is becoming a parody of an assemblage of all the bad bits that all the classic authors ever wrote about. The Ersatz Democracy.
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I fully support this government’s anti-Dalek and -zombie initiatives.
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Those are the two policies they can actually rationalise.
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I can see the Daily Express now. “Bloody Daleks, coming here, taking our jobs…”
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Jebus, but I saw a car with Romanian plates the other day. It’s frightening - whole country is moving here.
Mind you, it was some sort of new-ish special edition Rover - I reckon Blighty has to let them in if we dumped those on Romania.
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So let me get this straight… Because someone writes a story, a fictional account, a lie you might even say (yes, I know that’s a bit extreme, but we’re below the line here, just roll with it) that means everybody in Britain should be spied on all the time, forever?
Or to put it another way - “We know you’ve done something wrong, we just don’t know what… … yet.”
Call-me-Dave’s aneurysm can’t come soon enough.
Sadly though, despite that, Cameron is actually running the country.
(I bet even the bloke in the pub knows the difference between fiction and reality though).
“the only people who need freedom from total, continuous surveillance were ‘criminals, terrorists and paedophiles.’” So thaaaat’s why leaders get so upset whenever they find out that they too have been surveilled…
But also, why is he letting the cat out of the bag? Coke commercials don’t move units by having some unlikable idiot walk up to the camera and say “Sexy people drink coke and have fun! You drink too, have fun too!” Police procedurals and action movies have been quietly warping our minds into shouting “fuck the warrant, just break that rapists door down!” and “cut his fingers off! make him tell you where he buried that innocent girl!” at the TV 3 times a week without so much as a thought. Seems silly to announce the plan so transparently…
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I’ve long thought something similar about that Mark Harmon show, NCIS or whatever it is. I’ve seen at least a half dozen episodes (involuntarily, I assure you), and each featured a situation where the Good Guys were attempting to investigate some heinous crime and somebody with a strong concern for civil-liberties and/or due process was getting in their way. That somebody was always mocked, ridiculed, and eventually shown to be completely wrong or in some way corrupt.
It always struck me as a very un-subtle way to soften popular objections to shady law enforcement practices.
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Fred at Slacktivist covered this: Don’t Worry: Penelope Garcia is a Good Guy.
I seem to remember another piece somewhere on the subject, bringing in Abby from NCIS and one or two others as well.
For me, it’s also the little details that make it impossible to suspend my disbelief: supervisors in their mid-20’s and high-level supervisors in their mid-30’s, the entire shift all go out together to apprehend the bad guys, women who have to run after perps on a daily basis wearing stiletto heels to work…etc. etc.
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This is sick & twisted & dangerous, obviously, but not merely because Cameron is pointing to fiction. That would undermine the utility of all fiction, including, for example, Cory’s novels.
I’ve always thought that the production firms for the shows get tax breaks with clauses, or some other sneaky such nonsense, or the studio execs muck with the script to amplify the potential audience.
I don’t know many many many scriptwriters who’d happily include mental mismanagement in their script. If you sit and look at life, and think about it a fair bit, and do some reading, it’s a little hard to conclude that everyone just needs fucking over.
The depiction of women is in-credible. How the audience can willingly sit and soak themselves in the bathtub of such a silly fantasy world, I’ll never know.
Torsos, butts and boobies sell advertising space. It’s a little dreary.
That’s why I like shows about robots and spaceships - it’s just honest reality.
Any government leader who wants continuous surveillance can prove to us how “good” it is: voluntarily offer to be surveilled 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 1 year; including ancillary surveillance of all they come in contact with; with the resulting logs/data/images being placed in the public record without interpretation. Let the public form their own opinions, correct or not, just like the spys do. After all, true leaders should be at the front of the pack, correct?
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Apparently the CSI type shows have had such a huge impact on warping people’s expectations of forensic science in jury trials (creating completely unrealistic fantasies of what it can do and when it’s even used), that judges now explicitly reference the shows during jury selection. I’ve heard they were having problems getting convictions for some types of crimes, as the jurors were expecting extensive forensic tests for crimes that in reality had never gotten that treatment (e.g. DNA work-ups for thefts).
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There’s hardly a crime drama where a crime is solved without using the data of a mobile communications device.
The next time someone argues that fiction doesn’t impact people’s views of reality, one only needs to whip out that Cameron quote.
Oh dear I laughed so much that I think I need hospitalization. Oh my.
That’s absolutely true.
What a refreshing bit of honesty from a politician. Granted, he shouldn’t be re-elected because he’s clearly an idiot.
