Bill Bodden's Blog - Posts Tagged "criticism"
Taking the Joy Out of Life
Word got out this week about a blog post from "comedian" Bill Maher regarding the death of Stan Lee. He wrote:
"The guy who created Spider-Man and the Hulk has died, and America is in mourning. Deep, deep mourning for a man who inspired millions to, I don’t know, watch a movie, I guess. Someone on Reddit wrote: “I'm so incredibly grateful I lived in a world that included Stan Lee.” Personally, I’m grateful I lived in a world that included oxygen and trees, but to each his own. Now, I have nothing against comic books – I read them now and then when I was a kid and I was all out of Hardy Boys. But the assumption everyone had back then, both the adults and the kids, was that comics were for kids, and when you grew up you moved on to big-boy books without the pictures."
So Bill Maher is a condescending, self-important windbag; no surprise there. The thing is, a lot of people hold this opinion: that things cannot evolve. Comics have undergone a tremendous shift, both in the complexity and in the maturity of their stories. To say that an average comic book written today is no more sophisticated than one from the 1940s or 1950s shows a staggering lack of awareness, and an obvious lack of common sense. The whole world has changed in the last 80 years to such an overwhelming degree that I'm not convinced people who were adults in 1940 would even recognize half of culture today. Maher's comments are no more than a scared old man screaming at kids to "Get off my lawn!"
To read the rest of this post, please visit: http://billbodden.com/2019/01/28/taki...
"The guy who created Spider-Man and the Hulk has died, and America is in mourning. Deep, deep mourning for a man who inspired millions to, I don’t know, watch a movie, I guess. Someone on Reddit wrote: “I'm so incredibly grateful I lived in a world that included Stan Lee.” Personally, I’m grateful I lived in a world that included oxygen and trees, but to each his own. Now, I have nothing against comic books – I read them now and then when I was a kid and I was all out of Hardy Boys. But the assumption everyone had back then, both the adults and the kids, was that comics were for kids, and when you grew up you moved on to big-boy books without the pictures."
So Bill Maher is a condescending, self-important windbag; no surprise there. The thing is, a lot of people hold this opinion: that things cannot evolve. Comics have undergone a tremendous shift, both in the complexity and in the maturity of their stories. To say that an average comic book written today is no more sophisticated than one from the 1940s or 1950s shows a staggering lack of awareness, and an obvious lack of common sense. The whole world has changed in the last 80 years to such an overwhelming degree that I'm not convinced people who were adults in 1940 would even recognize half of culture today. Maher's comments are no more than a scared old man screaming at kids to "Get off my lawn!"
To read the rest of this post, please visit: http://billbodden.com/2019/01/28/taki...
Giving Fatigue
Only two months into the new year, and I'm already tapped out on charitable contributions for a while.
Facebook has instituted an interesting new policy: they offer the opportunity for people to put up a post soliciting donations. This is a worthwhile endeavor to be sure, but the speed at which it's spreading through my friends list is somewhat alarming. At the high water mark (so far) I had 17 friends with charitable campaigns running on their pages in one week.
To read the rest of this post, please visit: http://billbodden.com/2019/02/25/givi...
Facebook has instituted an interesting new policy: they offer the opportunity for people to put up a post soliciting donations. This is a worthwhile endeavor to be sure, but the speed at which it's spreading through my friends list is somewhat alarming. At the high water mark (so far) I had 17 friends with charitable campaigns running on their pages in one week.
To read the rest of this post, please visit: http://billbodden.com/2019/02/25/givi...
