renegadecut

Update August 3rd

Added 2020-08-03 23:15:15 +0000 UTC

Hello, everyone. I hope you are having an enjoyable and safe summer. There is a lot coming soon on the show. Due to a poll, there will be a Star Wars video debuting soon, and I have several big projects in the works. One is about global capitalism and another questions the need for a head of state and government -- just in time for the election.

With that said, here are some scripts from recent episodes.

HARLEY QUINN

AUDIO 1
The world stinks, right? Climate change is going to flood the coast, and justice doesn't really exist, and there's an election this year, and I don't know how it's gonna go, and even if it goes exactly like I want, is that gonna be enough? Electoral politics alone won't save us, and maybe it's too late, but you know what? You know what's good? You know what's been keeping me afloat in 2020? Harley Quinn, a streaming series I had no interest in whatsoever or even knew existed until someone posted the first minute of it on Twitter. It's very funny and engages with our modern world in a way that some other adult cartoons don't. The series is not about whether or not life is meaningless – nor does it promote apathy as an equal substitute for principles. It stars villains, but it's really just about the importance of friendship as the best defense against powerful entities that make the world worse. It's a show about relationships. I could do a deep dive about the series, that would be the obvious thing to do on this channel, but I really just wanna talk about how much I love it and why I love it. Is that OK? If it's not, then it's fine, but I'm definitely going to anyway. By the way, this is overflowing with spoilers, and even though you should expect that when clicking on a video about a piece of media, I want to be perfectly clear about what this is.
One thing I was not expecting from a streaming series on DC Universe? What? – is that for a show with lots of unnecessary cussing and bloodshed – it also has a lot of heart. The series is surprisingly touching in a way that is often absent from the Adult Swim style of cartoons for not children. Harley goes through serious changes throughout the first thirteen episodes. She begins in a toxic relationship with the Joker but quickly dumps him after she finally realizes that he's no good, but like in many real world cases, she relapses and falls for his trickery and deceit, and it is so...sad. Harley Quinn falling to her doom, curling up into the fetal position after being pushed out of a helicopter by the man she loves is heartbreaking. Her moments of connection with Batman – both immediately after said helicopter scene and in an earlier scene about how Batman needs to be there for his friend Jim Gordon – are reminiscent of the famous Batman: The Animated Series episode in which the caped crusader shows how much he empathizes with her. Harley's relationship with Poison Ivy is the center of the series – not her relationship with the Joker, as is often the case with media about Harley Quinn. Harley and Ivy are close friends who have each other's backs, and two-thirds of the way through the first season when Ivy loses faith in Harley, it is devastating. When Ivy seemingly dies in Harley's arms, it is a tragedy.
AUDIO 2
One complaint about the series is that Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy are friends and not a romantic couple. Some media portrays them one way and some media portrays them the other. It should be noted, however, that interviews by the creators of the series and hints within the series itself suggest that that is the trajectory of the relationship. It's only season one, and the series may be building to that. The complaint is certainly valid, but I personally think Harley spending season one getting over her ex and Ivy having an at-first uncomfortable but then loving relationship with Kite-Man were both good choices for the first season. Harley's relationship with her not-so-great parents is full of conflict – that terrible feeling of desperately wanting approval from people who may not really deserve your love. Her relationship with her crew, Dr. Psycho, Clayface and King Shark, is formed only from necessity but then becomes her real family. A family who will protect her instead of turn on her. Characters learn that they are stronger together throughout the season and learn who they can and cannot trust. Harley learns she can't trust the Joker but can trust Poison Ivy and her crew. Ivy's central conflict through the season is her greatest fear: allowing herself to trust someone. After rightfully becoming an outcast for being a misogynist, Dr. Psycho learns to trust Harley as his leader and comes to rely on her.
Even when the crew is temporarily disbanded, he steps up to help save Poison Ivy. Dr. Psycho's behavior is never portrayed as “correct” – always the opposite and consistently admonished by the other characters. Psycho's misogyny exists only to be proven wrong. The series is good about staying on the right side of showing but not endorsing. Clayface and King Shark don't have the trust issues that the others have, as they enthusiastically join Harley. King Shark has different issues. He feels compelled to put a positive spin on everything because his insecurities make him think that this version of himself is the one that people will love, but near the end of the season, he recognizes that. Clayface is shockingly well-adjusted and helpful and stands tall as a great what's-on-the-inside-that-counts example in the series. I thought they were gonna go with Clayface always being other people to hide the fact that doesn't like himself, but nope! He just loves acting, and the crimes he commits related to his acting are irrelevant. Kite-Man's character development over the course of only a handful of episodes shows how his macho, dude-bro exterior is only a defense mechanism to protect his big heart, and this more real version of Kite-Man is the man Ivy can fall for.
AUDIO 3
One complaint about the series is that a character, Sy Borgman, exhibits Jewish stereotypes, but a quick glance at the writers, creators and executive producers of the series suggest that these jokes and gags were all written by Jewish people with a self-deprecating sense of humor. The writing credit on most episodes has a common Jewish last name, and the character getting all the attention is enthusiastically played by Jewish actor Jason Alexander. It's not really not my place to tell marginalized people that they can't poke gentle fun at themselves, so, maybe I should just stay in my lane on this one. Harley follows the classic character arc in the first season. A conflict between what she wants and what she needs. She wants respect – respect from the Joker, respect from her supervillain peers, and respect from the Legion of Doom. She spends most of the season trying to impress them in order to show up the Joker. But once she gets in the LOD, she finds that they really aren't her kind of people and that her crew that helped her get there are her kind of people. What she wants is respect, but what she needs is love. She confused the two because Joker never gave her either of those things, and they got mixed up in her mind. Plus, her crew comes to respect her anyway, so she gets both of those things from the people who really matter. God, I love this show, it is so beautiful, and everyone should watch it.
It's also extremely funny, and its politics are on point. I especially appreciate how it goes for funny-politics, basically stating the explicit opinion of the series, sometimes directly to the audience, in a way that the sincerity of how it's being said is itself part of the joke. I love where the series plants its flag, you know? The upside down universe of Harley Quinn always makes it clear that while Harley is a “bad guy” she's a good person. The structure of their society is that supervillainy and superheroism are two sides of the same coin, put together by talent agencies and phone apps, not unlike the structure of villainy in The Venture Bros where it's really more of an arrangement. I don't want to spend several seasons cheering for bad people to win or to watch a show where bad people are the smart ones and good people are the fools. Both the structure and tone of the show allow for an experience devoid of toxicity and lets Harley Quinn be a regular pleasure instead of a guilty one. Some “bad guys” in the series, however, are bad people, like the Joker, but Harley has a line she won't cross and makes it clear that she won't kill innocent people. Frankly, when she crushes the leg of this pharma-bro looking guy, I passed absolutely no judgment on her. So, that's it. Wow, a whole video where I'm not a total Cassandra about the end being extremely nigh. Feels good. Tune in next week when I definitely return to status quo, sorry.

AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

AUDIO 1
“Lisa the Iconoclast” is the sixteenth episode of the seventh season of The Simpsons. The bicentennial for the town of Springfield approaches, Lisa Simpson visits a local museum dedicated to the history of the town founder: Jebediah Springfield. The historian, Hollis Hurlbut, teaches Lisa about the greatness of Jebediah, who famously tamed the wild buffalo, led settlers from Maryland to a new land and founded the town they know and love to today. While Mr. Hurlbut is in the other room, Lisa discovers a secret confession hidden inside Jebediah's fife. She learns that Jebediah Springfield's real name was Hans Sprungfeld, that he never tamed the wild buffalo and that he was actually a pirate who had no love for the people of the town whatsoever. Her further research shows that Jebediah once tried to assassinate President George Washington in the midst of a botched robbery. Lisa's mother, Marge, does not believe her – nor does anyone else in town, including Mr. Hurlburt. Lisa's father, Homer, does believe her and tries to help her convince the town. In the end, she finally has irrefutable proof of the true identity of Jebediah, but at the last moment, she opts not to inform the town during the bicentennial parade, concluding that the myth of Jebediah Springfield brings out the best in people and that this ignorance actually has greater value than the truth. There is a happy ending, Lisa and Homer march in the parade, and all is well in Springfield once more.
Although the episode is specifically about the fictional town of Springfield, Lisa's words about historical mythology being an unassailable good is questionable. Broadening the scope of historical mythology to national myth – myths of the United States – we see that these myths have a negative impact not only on our understanding of history but on policy and attitudes about the United States to this day. Patriotism does not always “bring out the best” in people, and its related cousin, nationalism, can bring out the worst. Philosopher and psychologist Rollo May once said “A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.” That is more or less what Lisa Simpson is saying, but myth can be more than that, and it's important to draw a distinction between myth as propaganda and myth as etiology. An etiological myth is a story that explains something that is contemporaneously unexplainable, such as ancient Greek myths about the changing seasons. Myth as propaganda, however, intentionally replaces facts, replace history, and becomes more akin to misinformation than a tale tale or harmless fable. American myths are very much myths as propaganda. While America is a continent, not a country, I'll be using the naming convention of shortening United States of America to “America” and “US-Americans” as “Americans” here.
  AUDIO 2
Nobody needs to “Lisa Simpson” me about naming conventions that I did not invent and cannot change, thank you very much. [I. Foundational Mythology] American Mythology begins with Christopher Columbus and his arrival in the Americas. This sets “discovery” as a key, foundational aspect of what it means to be American, which in turn comes to justify colonization and westward expansion as “destiny” rather than choice, obfuscating responsibility for the consequences. Columbus, though from a foreign land, is adopted by Americans and inserted into American mythology as its foundational mythological figure. In the very beginning of a letter sent back to Spain upon his arrival in the “new world”, Columbus describes how by his mere presence, he has declared possession of land by bringing the Native population under Spanish colonial rule: “I discovered a great many islands, inhabited by numberless people; and of all I have taken possession for their Highnesses by proclamation and display of the Royal Standard without opposition...” When Columbus declared the land his, who among the indigenous people present could understand his language and what was going on, let alone spoke an opposing that Columbus would have understood? Columbus justification is that no one opposed his claim and that any rights were therefore forfeited. By dismissing the indigenous people as primitive, Columbus justified his later actions.
By re-naming the lands the people who inhabited them, Columbus positioned himself as the only authority and therefore the author of his own story, his own myth. Historian Heike Paul, author of The Myths That Made America, explained it thusly: “Translating, naming, and classifying are operations that are part of the process of colonization and intricate parts of the process of ‘othering,’ i.e. of turning the Native population into ‘the other’ and the object of European rule. In Columbus’s description of the ‘new world’ inhabitants, there is a clear dichotomy of us (the Europeans) vs. them (the Native population) at work – both groups are portrayed as fundamentally and irreconcilably different from each other. This extreme polarization – what Hartog describes as the “excluded middle” – is another ingredient in the rhetoric of otherness that produces unbridgeable difference, introduces a steep hierarchy between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ and thus legitimizes asymmetrical power relations.” American mythology related the Columbus resembles an etiological creation myth, but the intention of the myth was not to explain something that was contemporaneously unexplainable. Instead, it was myth as propaganda, initially for the Spanish royalty to prove that his voyage was a success and could see a return on the investment, but later, the myth helped solidify “discovery” as an inherently American attribute.
AUDIO 3
The consequence of mythologizing Columbus' “discovery” is that if discovery is wholly American, then whatever Columbus did to the indigenous people was in service of discovery and therefore American. This is why contradicting the Columbus myth produces an opposition based in nationalism. Historical criticism, even dispassionate historical investigation into Columbus provokes defensive cries from Americans that if not for Columbus, there would be no America, and we should all just shut up and not reconsider our nation's past, and if we don't like it, well, we can just go to Russia – or something. Love it or leave it. In the aforementioned episode, Lisa the Iconoclast, when Lisa attempts to expose Jebediah Springfield for his crimes, Apu knowingly asks her not to do so in his store, largely out of fear. He knows that contradicting American mythology is seen as “un-American” and as an immigrant, he will be subject to greater scrutiny and oppression than Lisa would. [clip] Because of Columbus' position as the foundational mythological figure in America, criticism of Columbus is viewed as “un-American” in spite of the fact that Columbus himself was not American. In spite of this, Columbus is inextricably linked with America, mythologized in many ways. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, gives a few examples:
“The Columbus myth suggests that from US independence onward, colonial settlers saw themselves as part of a world system of colonization. 'Columbia,' the poetic, Latinate name used in reference to the United States from its founding throughout the nineteenth century, was based on the name of Christopher Columbus. The 'Land of Columbus' was-and still is-represented by the image of a woman in sculptures and paintings, by institutions such as Columbia University, and by countless place names, including that of the national capital, the District of Columbia. The 1798 hymn 'Hail, Columbia' was the early national anthem and is now used whenever the vice president of the United States makes a public appearance, and Columbus Day is still a federal holiday despite Columbus never having set foot on the continent claimed by the United States.” Children are taught about Columbus “discovering America” in school, and unless they look into it further, that is what they believe for the rest of their lives. [clip] Christopher Columbus initiated the two greatest crimes in the history of the Western Hemisphere, the Atlantic slave trade, and the Native American genocide. Among his most notable crimes, Columbus ordered 1,500 men and women seized, eventually letting 400 go, condemning 500 to be sent to Spain, and another 600 to be enslaved by Spanish men remaining on the island.
  AUDIO 4
Approximately 200 of the 500 sent to Spain died on the voyage, and were thrown overboard by the Spanish. Historians estimate that there were about 300,000 inhabitants of Hispaniola in 1492. Between 1494 and 1496, 100,000 died, half due to mass suicide rather than be enslaved by Columbus. By 1548, it was estimated to be only 500. These facts are irrefutable and widely understood by historians across the world. Nevertheless, referencing these facts provoke a severe, defensive reaction from Americans, calling Columbus a “hero” and offering no consideration for everything else he did. [clip] Columbus wrote his own myth and it continued long after his death. There is no “secret confession” of Columbus the way there is with Jebediah Springfield. Quite the opposite. It is Columbus' writings that his defenders and mythmakers use to glorify him and subsequently glorify America. 19th century historian Aaron Goodrich, in his book A History of the Character and Achievements of the So-Called Christopher Columbus, wrote the following: “We are constantly told that the weight of authority is on the side of Columbus; but how can the ardent seeker of truth, and truth only, fail to be discouraged when he finds how partial is the testimony in the case? … Columbus thus becomes his own historian and eulogist, laying down the law by which the claims of all others are to be judged.
He would naturally present his own side of the case, and, from what his writings lead us to suppose, would not scruple to slander those whose opinions or statements differed from his, or who had opposed any of his measures.” Consequences of mythologizing discovery and expansion as indisputable American attributes include hundreds of years of trampling Native American rights – from various conflicts and forced relocation to incidents in modern times like the Dakota pipeline. If this were happening, say, in the middle of Dallas or Boston, we would be outraged, but centuries of mythologizing about the founding of America – much of which contains “othering” the indigenous people – has much of America think of this concern as something unrelated to “real America” – the unfortunate happenstance of a “race apart” rather than the consequences of hundreds of years of propaganda and anti-historical cultural myths. [clip: II. The Founding Fathers] In the eighth episode of the first season of The Simpsons, “The Tell-Tale Head”, Bart meets some new friends, the worst kids in school. After a day of sneaking into movies and shoplifting, Bart and his cohorts look at images in the clouds. Bart sees the statue of Jebediah Springfield without its head. Jimbo remarks that it would be funny if someone cut off the head of the statue. Bart, hoping to impress his new friends, sneaks out in the middle of the night and saws off the head.
AUDIO 5
The town is in mourning. Nobody has been hurt, nobody lost their life, but the fact that the statue of their town's founder has been vandalized has crushed the spirits of everyone in Springfield. Bart eventually confesses his crime to his family, and on the way back to return the head, the townspeople discover what happened and attempt to lynch a ten year old boy. Bart, having learned his lesson, replaces the head, and he and Homer walk away unscathed. Although vandalism is far from a capital offense, the people of Springfield firmly believed it was their duty to execute anyone who defiled the memory of their founding father. Jebediah is revered locally much as the “Founding Fathers” of the United States of America are revered nationally. According to the aforementioned book The Myths That Made America: “The myth of the Founding Fathers constitutes an American master narrative which has enshrined a group of statesmen and politicians of the revolutionary and post-revolutionary period as personifications of the origin of American nationhood, republicanism, and democratic culture. ...the Founding Fathers epitomize a political myth of origin that is phrased in a language of kinship. The term ‘Fathers’ suggests tradition, legitimacy, and paternity and creates an allegory of family and affiliation that affirms the union and the cohesion of the new nation.”
Who counts as a “founding father” is debatable. The people who signed the Declaration of Independence, perhaps, or those who those who had a hand in the United States Constitution, or both? Certainly the early presidents, at least, though there is no official and universally agreed-upon list. The Founding Fathers is a myth that claims that the United States evolved from the Puritans’ Mayflower Compact to the political maturity of a representative republic. If Columbus resembles a creation myth, the Founding Fathers are a post-flood re-creation myth, a new beginning through the American Revolution. The mythologized Founding Fathers symbolize cooperation. The myth is hegemonic – these “fathers” all working toward one goal. The myth tones down internal conflicts among these fathers, erasing their plans, their interests, their disagreements. They form a collective in the myth, a singular political entity. The myth also strongly personalizes the origins of the United States and its representative republic by presenting them as the results of the political genius, virtue, and audacity of history's “great men.” This personalization breeds a kind of unearned familiarity with the founding fathers. When Springfield's founder is “attacked” through vandalism, the town takes it personally. This is not only an attack on a statue – itself centered around a myth of Jebediah Springfield killing a bear. It's an attack on themselves due to this unearned familiarity.
AUDIO 6
One man almost always included in conversations and lists about “founding fathers” is President George Washington. Mythology about Washington was that he could not tell a lie and that he famously fought for liberty, but even a cursory examination of Washington shows him to have been a deeply deceptive figure as well as someone who denied the liberty of others. When Washington, was 11 years old, he inherited 10 slaves from his father’s estate. This was not something simply thrust upon him. Throughout his life, he continued to acquire slaves, some more through inheritance and others through his own direct purchases. In 1759, he married the wealthy widow Martha Dandridge Custis, bringing in over 80 more slaves to the estate at Mount Vernon, bringing his total to almost 150 slaves. Washington used slave labor to maintain his wealth, his lifestyle and his reputation. As he aged, he considering ridding himself of his slaves, as he famously wrote in 1778, but he never did. According to New York Times journalist Erica Armstrong Dunbar, President Washington actually went to great lengths to maintain his ownership of his slaves. “During the president’s two terms in office, the Washingtons relocated first to New York and then to Philadelphia. Although slavery had steadily declined in the North, the Washingtons decided that they could not live without it.
Once settled in Philadelphia, Washington encountered his first roadblock to slave ownership in the region — Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780. The act began dismantling slavery, eventually releasing people from bondage after their 28th birthdays. Under the law, any slave who entered Pennsylvania with an owner and lived in the state for longer than six months would be set free automatically. This presented a problem for the new president. Washington developed a canny strategy that would protect his property and allow him to avoid public scrutiny. Every six months, the president’s slaves would travel back to Mount Vernon or would journey with Mrs. Washington outside the boundaries of the state. In essence, the Washingtons reset the clock.” Washington supported policies that protected slave owners. In 1793, Washington signed the first fugitive slave law, which allowed fugitives to be seized in any state, tried and returned to their owners. Anyone who harbored or assisted a fugitive faced a $500 penalty and possible imprisonment. In 1796, Ona Judge, the Washingtons’ 22-year-old slave woman, escape from Philadelphia. This was provoked by Martha Washington’s plan to give Ona Judge away as a wedding gift to her granddaughter. President Washington and his agents pursued Judge for three years but managed to avoid re-capture for the remainder of her life.
AUDIO 7
Should you mention that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin owned slaves and at least in one case did something a lot worse than just owning the slave, the nationalism ignites in the hearts of many Americans, and their figurative pitchforks and torches are brandished. Bad arguments like “it was a different time, and that's what people did back then” ignore the contributions of abolitionist activists in that period and the fact that by the time the United States abolished slavery, it was already abolished in much of the western world, making the US a real johnny-come-lately in the great experiment in “treating people like human beings.” It also ignores the fact that owning slaves, like all exploitation to this day, was predominantly the domain of the wealthy and that the vast majority of Americans did not own slaves. But the Founding Fathers? Oh, yes. Quite a few did.
The consequences of mythologizing these men and obfuscating their crimes with propaganda are numerous. For one, it glorifies “traditionalism” which has the byproduct of political conservatism and even reactionary politics. For another, it helps obfuscate how the effects of slavery are still being felt today due to generational wealth. The descendants of slave-owners profit from that inherited wealth and are therefore born into the upper class, and the descendants of slaves, having far less or no generational wealth, are born into poverty. For another still, mythologizing the founding fathers as “great men” is an argument for constitutional constructionism, a position of seeing the United States constitution as a perfect document that can only be interpreted literally and within the confines of the time it was written. No new rights or privileges can be awarded under a strict constructionist interpretation. For yet another still, mythologizing and deifying the founding fathers leads to the legitimization of the comically ridiculous argument of “What would the founding fathers think?” when confronted with marginalized people gaining new rights and consideration under the law. Whenever there is progress, someone says “What would the founding fathers think?” and everyone is forced to pretend this is a real argument or else be labeled un-American.
AUDIO 8
Returning to “Lisa the Iconoclast” and her speech at the end, is Springfield really better off ignorantly believing that Jebediah Springfield was a great hero? Has his myth really brought out the best in everyone? The lesson Lisa is meant to learn in this Frank Capra style ending is that even though she finds freedom in the truth, others might not. And that's a fair bit of knowledge itself...except that ignorance and mythology about the past often limits the freedom of people. It is something to keep people less free. Coddling Americans about what the United States really was and really is does a disservice to the people who are harmed by this ignorance. Lisa doesn't want to hurt the feelings of Americans, but what about the feelings of those who suffer because of this mythology? The parade is filled with soldiers whose pride is intertwined with that of Jebediah Springfield. National mythology and an unearned feeling of righteousness allows conflicts to rage across the world un-protested by a people who assume their people must be the good guys. Their mythology tells them so. The episode chastises Lisa in the end for being, well, a spoilsport and has her change her mind to let the audience know the message of the story. But Lisa was right in the first place, before she changed her mind. A community is not better for deifying their leaders, their founders, mythologizing their past. It's propaganda that is time and time again used for political goals, often against marginalized people.
Your comfort is not more important than the truth if the lie is weaponized to hurt people. Maybe if you see America only a series of parades, nobody is being harmed, and on that day, all was well, but what about every other day? From the aforementioned book An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States: “How then can US society come to terms with its past? How can it acknowledge responsibility? The late Native historian Jack Forbes always stressed that while living persons are not responsible for what their ancestors did, they are responsible for the society they live in, which is a product of that past. Assuming this responsibility provides a means of survival and liberation.”

SONIC

AUDIO 1
You ever worry that the world is slowly crumbling into a dystopia – unrecognizable from your youth – and that perhaps you have stared into the void, the middle distance between yourself and oblivion, just a little too long and that having done this, brought something back with you? And then have you ever seen the Sonic the Hedgehog movie and had all of this confirmed? [It never ends.] Sonic the Hedgehog the Movie the Hedgehog opens in an animated world made to resemble the video game upon which it's based – a bright but weightless world full of nothing that distracts children from talking to their parents and makes millennials who grew up on said games mistake recognition for genuine happiness. Then a tribe of Knuckles ambush Sonic and try to grab him. So, Sonic's owl mother sends him to Earth to protect him from the echidnas. Sonic grows up in Green Hills while avoiding all human contact because he's a blue space alien. He desperately wants to be friends with the people in town, but he was told to keep away because, again, he's a blue space alien. Sonic the Hedgehog is all alone and also a cowboy, so he needs to find friends. The United States Department of Defense takes a break from ruining the world and enforcing US hegemony in the world – especially the Middle East – to send Dr. Robotnik to Green Hills to determine what's making all that sweet, sweet blue energy. Sonic and Tom, the town sheriff, team up stop Robotnik and to keep Sonic safe, and they win.
Tom and his wife offer to let Sonic stay with them to keep him safe. Of course, Sonic could have just checked for houses on Zillow. [clips] Sonic the Hedgehog has become a banner for right-wing YouTubers who think self-describing as “anti-SJW” can be a replacement for a personality. The movie is a pawn in a culture war that never needed to happen and is used as a weapon against a completely unrelated movie, Birds of Prey, in the sweaty, gamer discourse that always smells like a basement. Here's why. A subsection of social media loves this movie because it is the “apolitical” gold standard that they claim they always want – whereas Birds of Prey – a movie released around the same time and competed with Sonic at the box office – is “political” because it...stars a woman. The barrier between what is “apolitical” and “political” to these people is paper thin. Video games have a contingent of fans whose hobby is their identity. There is a reason why people who watch a lot of television do not call themselves “TV'ers” but people who play a lot of video games call themselves gamers. Part of gaming sub-culture is a common refutation of anything that politicizes their games or their habits, but the only games that “politicize” their habits to them are games which have politics that do not reinforce the political status quo, and games that are their so-called “apolitical” gold standard are games that do reinforce political status quo.
AUDIO 2
They are political, but the status quo is culturally invisible, and since this subsection of hobbyists hold up intellectual incuriosity as a value, they are not motivated or incentivized to notice or acknowledge this. Games that portray the United States military as an overall good for the world are “apolitical” to gamers – at least American gamers – because this is a culturally invisible unquestioned truth whereas a game that features a woman being strong and independent in a male-dominated world is “too political” – and this mindset overlaps in discourse about popular media in general, including movies, and in the rare event of a video game movie, the intensity upon which it must be defended as “apolitical” must then double. Sonic the Hedgehog is a fairly conservative film. The character with an arc is Tom, a police officer. He goes through the basic want-and-need arc of wanting to be a big city cop in San Francisco to realizing he needs to be a friendly, country sheriff. Tom's sister-in-law does not like him for unexplained reasons, and since the only thing we know about Tom is that he's a cop, we can infer that she doesn't like him because she wisely believes that the police as an institution monopolize violence and should be dismantled and replaced.
Or that she just, you know, doesn't trust cops. So, the movie is very pro-cop. Another conservative value in the film is the rural, small town is shown to be full of “real Americans” and the big city Dr. Robotnik constantly demeans them for being too “country.” “Rural” and “country” are conflated with conservative America, and Robotnik positions himself as the enemy of said conservative America. Tom wants to leave his small town for San Francisco – the “hippy dippy” city of choice when deriding urban and left-leaning values – but Tom learns in the end that his heart is in the small, rural town in Montana, an idealized “real America” hamlet more fictionalized than main street at Disneyland. Robotnik is an “egghead” intellectual who the Department of Defense only reluctantly works with, and once he is out of the picture, the rough, tough American soldiers disavow his existence and show their support of Tom and his small town. Sonic the Hedgehog is anything but “apolitical” but since patriotism, small town values, and glorification of both the police and military are the culturally invisible, goes-without-saying ideology of a huge swath of the paying audience for the film, its most ardent supporters can and do ignore this. Sonic the Hedgehog thus becomes a cudgel to use to prove the inherent worth of so-called “apolitical” films while obviously not being apolitical at all.
AUDIO 3
After all, Sonic the Hedgehog made nearly 300 million worldwide whereas Birds of Prey – the so-called political film – only made nearly 200 million worldwide. It had a mid-sized budget and will definitely earn a profit, but dang, what a turbo-sized bomb, right? In truth, movies that this subculture derides as “political” – meaning starring women or with diverse casts – often smash box office records. Not that this should be any indicator of the worth of the art, but try telling that to the “get woke, go broke” YouTubers who never actually do any math or fact-checking. There is no quality, only CAPITAL. [Olive Garden] In creating a culture war surrounding Sonic the Hedgehog, this subsection of gamers and bad faith ne'er-do-wells can turn a mediocre children's movie into a chemical weapon, and by choosing a completely unrelated movie to label as its enemy, the battle feels real and activates a tribal, defensive posture. Note: If you liked Sonic the Hedgehog but do not hold these toxic beliefs and/or have no strong opinion about Birds of Prey, relax and breathe, because this isn't about you. Sonic the Hedgehog can certainly be enjoyed without any interest in trashing Birds of Prey and will predominantly be put in front of the eyeballs of children who have no love for or even knowledge of this toxic discourse, but due to this invented rivalry, it's hard for people to casually announce that they enjoyed Sonic the Hedgehog on social media without being accidentally and unwillingly drafted into this fabricated conflict. Everything is bad, and the hurting never stops. [Sarah Palin, this is life now]
Sonic the Hedgehog follows the formula of the Masters of the Universe movie and the Beastmaster sequel by taking all the fantastical action of the premise of the intellectual property and shoehorning it into our world. This gives the movie a lot of “fish out of water” jokes – Sonic Encino Man's his way through the movie, understanding the world only through non-interactions he has from a distance and from pop culture. Sonic makes a variety of base pop culture references throughout the movie in substitute for jokes. [What do you do?] Great. Cringe. But that's not all. He also makes hacky jokes. [Do you have insurance?] Great. Cringe. The reference jokes were dated by the time the movie was released, by the way. It begins with a freeze frame record-scratch “Yeah, that's me, bet you're wondering how I get into this” kind of thing and proceeds with antiquated cracks about hipsters, which I think were a thing and an easy target for think piece articles nine years ago. Too old to be a timely joke. Not old enough to be a retro joke. Again, that's not all, because the movie also references the video game several times like Dr. Robotnik having a controller on his hand. Fan service is not respect for the audience. It's flattery. We need to stop being so easily impressed that a movie reminded you something exists. Defenders of the non-humor and rote story will undoubtedly say that it's a kids' movie.
AUDIO 4
But that all falls apart when better movies designed for younger audiences are in theaters right now, like Disney-Pixar's latest entry, Onward. The bar for a movie being good is NOT somehow lowered due to the average height of the target audience. Last year saw the release of Klaus, Missing Link, The Lego Movie 2, and the most recent and perhaps final entries in the Toy Story and How to Train Your Dragon franchises. Not to mention live action fare like The Kid Who Would Be King. A movie being aimed at younger audiences is not somehow immune to criticism. If anything, movies aimed at younger audiences have an even greater responsibility to not be garbage for the same reason that every other product for children requires greater scrutiny. Scott Tafoya from Consequence of Sound put it best: “I didn’t laugh, but I’m maybe not the target audience for the thing. Who the target audience is I couldn’t tell you with a gun to my head. The school group I was told would be watching this flop sweat-soaked trifle is mostly 12 year olds from the looks of them. They laugh as a group three times. I counted. One of them laughed at one sight gag by himself. That’s it. They quietly talked amongst themselves the rest of the time. What a school is doing taking kids to see a movie based on a video game when they all own cell phones? Couldn’t tell you, but I’m guessing they enjoyed not being in class even if they clearly didn’t enjoy the movie.
...They all cheered like hell during the post-credits scene when Sonic’s sidekick Tails showed up. I couldn’t believe it. They snored their way through the first movie, and then cheered like zealots when they were threatened with another one. It may happen, too, even if the box office isn’t rousing. You’re still going to die.” The movie attempts to inject some heart into film, such as in this touching moment when Sonic nearly dies, and Tom rushes to saves him, and parks in such a way to make sure the Toyota Tacoma brand is facing directly toward the camera like a Coca-Cola bottle on American Idol. There is also this part where Sonic, again, seemingly dies, and Tom tells off Robotnik. [His name was Sonic, and he was my friend.] Truly he was the King of Kings. K. Austin Collins of Vanity Fair remarked: “Fowler’s Sonic is what it is: family fun, which in the U.S.—Pixar and Into the Spiderverse notwithstanding—still tends to mean only-sort-of fun and adamantly not-smart.” There is something unsettling about watching Sonic the Hedgehog, perhaps because the social media reaction to the initial design of Sonic was so poor that the studio made the visual effects house re-do Sonic completely, resulting in months upon months are extra work, which itself resulted in the VFX house going out of business. But hey, at least Sonic doesn't have teeth now.
  AUDIO 5
  All this outrage and all this added effort for a movie that you will never see more than once and will forget about by the time you reach your car in the theater parking lot. Some have placed the blame squarely on the fans, but that displays a misunderstanding of the power dynamics at play here. We can't even blame the fans – entitled as they may be – because the fans have no authority to make the contracted VFX artists work overtime. It was not a decision reached by Twitter randos, only influenced by Twitter randos. In the end, this was a decision reached by very powerful, very rich people with no sympathy for artists and an eye toward the bottom line. Capitalism sure does breed innovation and lifts people out of poverty. [Olive Garden] The new design of Sonic has its own problems, mostly because the movie was already shot with the understanding that the actors would be reacting to something mildly terrifying and alien. In this scene, a character seeing Sonic for the first time assumes he's an alien from another planet, which works when Sonic looked like this but not when Sonic looks like this. Because when Sonic looks like this, he doesn't seem at all like a space monster. He has been designed to look exactly like he does in cartoons to satisfy an audience that prefers familiarity over originality. The reaction to Sonic as “clearly an alien” doesn't work when his eyes and mouth resemble that of cartoons and his gloves look like Mickey Mouse's hands.
It would be like a live action character seeing Roger Rabbit for the first time and saying “Ah! It's a space alien!” when he looks nothing like what the mind conjures up when thinking of a space alien and everything the mind conjures up when thinking of cartoons. This makes the entire movie feel like two puzzle pieces that don't quite fit together. There's something about the Sonic the Hedgehog movie that makes me feel a little bit sad when I watch it, and since I decided to make a video about it, that means I've watched it multiple times now. The crass, unceasing product placement reminds me too much of the economic system and culture that prizes profit over humanity and that was responsible for the demise of the VFX house that made the titular character. The movie reminds me of diminishing union power. The movie reminds me of the ever-growing disparity between the rich and everyone else. Not to mention, you know, literally everything else that's happening right now, including but not limited to a global pandemic whose eventual cure will almost certainly not be provided for free for poor people – at least in my country. Free testing, perhaps. Free treatment, highly unlikely. And if your response to this is, hey, it's just a movie, then please recognize that your complaint about the complaint can also be hand-waved with the same meaningless, empty phrase. Even if you think Sonic the Hedgehog exists in a vacuum, which it most certainly does not, its constant name-checking of corporate brands snaps us right back to reality. It can't be escapism if we can't escape.

PANDEMIC

In addition to blaming the Chinese, agents of the state are also blaming immigrants from across our border, particularly the southern border, for potentially spreading infection. This is erroneous considering that as of this writing, the United States has well over 20,000 confirmed coronavirus cases whereas Canada only has about 800, and Mexico only has 164.
  AUDIO 8
  These numbers are fluid and will be different by the time this is uploaded, but the disparity of cases clearly proves this accusation wrong. There is so much more to examine, such as the National Guard being deployed to “quell disturbances” – a dangerously broad mandate – but this is a developing story at time of writing and may need its own video. For now, let's conclude by debunking some of the “help” the state has offered. Trump claimed he would suspend all evictions during the pandemic, but like all Trump declarations, he got it wrong. First, he hasn't signed anything. He just declared it, as if that makes it happen automatically. Second, it seems to only apply to HUD housing: Housing and Urban Development. Next, various proposals for economic relief have been suggested, but as of this writing, nothing has been signed into law. The corporate bailouts and helping hand to the stock market happened almost instantly whereas the people who need relief are still waiting. Some of the greatest relief for people has come, well, from the people. Autonomous groups are mobilizing mutual aid initiatives to help people during the pandemic. Maybe, if nothing else, this crisis will teach us who really has our backs and who doesn't.