Circus peanuts
Plus sports
:eek: Them’s fightin’ words, mister!
I do hope you’re not attempting to imply that any significant percentage of adults have ever had tastes ‘evolved for more sophisticated art’.
I mean, heck, in this very thread we’ve talked about the ongoing popularity of sports. Comics and movies, sophisticated or not, at least are art.
Nope. Often the meaning is fairly clear from the context. I became a Beatles fan around 4th grade, so I read plenty of books about them from the UK. This was way before the internet so I’d occasionally have to look things up.
I think even in 4th grade I could have figured out that cellotape was Scotch tape. Admittedly, I was a voracious reader and was used to having to figure out words. I read a lot of the original Hardy Boys books which used some vocabulary from the 1920s that wasn’t common in the 1970s.
Like soap operas are more sophisticated? Really, comics often are soap operas with lots of fights and a little added humor (depending on the title). But then, the same can be said for popular prime time shows with their story arcs and so on. I don’t see anything about comics that are any less “sophisticated art” than your standard television show.
I remember someone commenting (almost 20 years ago now, probably) that comics had finally caught up with who was reading because they advertised a Toyota Prius in the issue.
Here’s an article about the average age of comic readers going down recently. Though it’s unscientific in its approach to buyers. Here’s another from 2011. Publishers would probably like a younger demographic - older teens and young adults, maybe. And readership is still very male.
Of course, different titles are aimed at different demographics.
Yeah, I know, but given the thread title it doesn’t make sense to get passionate with me about it.
Dammit, I succumbed too.
There are few threads I can think of where the obvious response to nearly every post is always off-topic!
Exactly. Last February, I went from flipping through channels, to saying “what’s this weird olympic sport - oh, I’ve heard of curling” to listening to the announcers explain the rules over a couple rounds, to deciding what team I wanted to win based on their uniform color (neither were my country), to holding my breath at every shot, to jumping around when “my” team won, all over the course of a single match. It was rather astounding.
Twenty years later, the same thing was said about “Titanic”, and to some extent still is.
Do you seriously not know the history? It is fine if you personally don’t think this should be a big deal, but anyone with a passing knowledge of 20th century history will certainly understand the Taiwan versus PRC disputes. I was too young to understand the isolation of the People’s Republic of China and the gradual acceptance that it should be accepted as China and the change in the UN status of Taiwan. But, the opening of China was important and it was silly to pretend that an island was the ‘real’ China as opposed to a nation of one billion.
It was a huge breach of etiquette when Trump took the call from the President of Taiwan.
Good friends of our were Civil War reenactors. My best friend from high school made all her own costumes. Her name for what Wikipedia called thread-counters was underwear Nazis.
Many people can tell you more than you never wanted to know about all kinds of things, some common knowledge while others are more obscure.
I won’t call it my passion, but I can spend an hour telling you about Saipan. It’s more than likely you don’t know much about it, or even care, but at least I can make it interesting.
Is Mac Vs PC still a thing? Because whoo-boy did folks used to get riled up.
I don’t think it’s quite as a big deal as it used to be and thank God we don’t have the Linux people jumping into every computer thread telling us unwashed masses what fools we are.
In the SCA, we call those “garb Nazis” or “authenticity Nazis”. Not like the actualSCA Nazis, who tried to pass off their Nazi-ism by pleading authenticity…
Not sure if this is about being passionate or just baffling behavior, but I don’t understand how people brush off bad movie ratings, then bitch about how bad the movie was.
They line up five miles around the block to see a prequel/sequel that was trashed by die-hard fans. The movie makes $100 million in it’s first three days, then more in the following weeks, but everyone says it sucked!
When Siskel and Ebert (just two guys) gave a movie “two thumbs down”, people avoided it like the plague. But when thousands of online commenters say it sucks, the fans will abandon their newborns and dying grandmothers to go see it anyway. Then they go online to trash it. WTF?
Is it an inclusion thing? Do they not want to be socially criticized for being “the one” who didn’t see it? I’m stumped.
Oh, I understand the history and political ramifications, and agree that Trump accepting that call was a diplomatic blunder indicating that he has no understanding international politics, but to hear two otherwise reasonable intelligent people stand up aqnd declare that they were willing to fight and die over purely symbolic verbiage gave me pause.
I think that it is done to be up on the nerd subculture of the fanchise. So while it might have caused some minor bran damage to sit through “The Final Frontier” or the “Phantom Menace” its worth it to appreciate jokes about “Why would god need a star ship?” or speculate on the fate of Darth Mal.
Further, never underestimate the bonding power of a good griping session. While it nice to be able to be smug about the 15 bucks and 3 hours of your life that you saved. When all your friends are sitting around tearing apart the latest flik its much more fun to be able to join in the discussion.
Part of my gripe is that there have been so many films made since 1977 that it makes no sense the adoration heaped upon one film.
I’m not sure many folks realize how many films are made each year.
In my few years as a projectionist in the late 80s I showed well into the hundreds of films just in my theater, mostly forgettable. But in that same time we showed such films as Rain Man, Die Hard, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Fatal Attraction, all great films in their own genres, and all politely left in their era with occasional reference.
It’s just so disproportionate: for every time Die Hard or Rain Man is referenced in modern discussion, Star Wars gets 1000 mentions (possibly exaggeration, but I hope you get my point).
ETA: How could I forget Goodfellas? That was one of my favorite films we showed, and it also sits humbly among its neighbors in film history.
Sure, but that’s just some things. Think about The Wizard of Oz or It’s A Wonderful Life - I don’t even think either was that huge when released, but they’ve become part of our culture and get referenced casually so that even those who haven’t seen the movie (like myself with IAWL), know certain things about it. Some things just end up sticking with people. Often, it seems, with those who were kids when it came out (with the first generation that were adults when it came out not viewing it the same way). And it goes from “a movie” to “a classic” even if it’s not what critics think is best.