Jem Wasn’t That Truly Outrageous

Recently a discussion came up between the Wife and I on the merits of Jem and whether she really was that positive a role model for young girls growing up in the McFly era of 1985. For those of you that aren’t aware, Jem was the star of animated series that ran for 65 episodes during the 80′s, eponymously titled… Jem. It centered around the hi-jinks of good little rich girl Jerica Benton, who, with her little sister Kimber, experience the death of their father who does three things; leave the legacy of “Starlight House” a home for orphaned children to them, leave them one half of the controlling interest in Starlight Records, and leave them a super computer capable of projecting holograms to any point on Earth with a portable transceiver in the shape of earrings. The AI, an aerobicized purple girl named Synergy, was put to use providing a holographic cover for Jerica who became Jem, and her sister, black foster sister, Asian foster sister and eventually new Mexican friend, became the band Jem & The Holograms. And thus a series was born.

Jem herself, the animated heroine looked like this.

Britta Phillips, the girl that provided Jem’s singing voice, looks like this.

She’s still in music these days, by the way. But now she plays bass guitar.

During the 80′s, both this show and G.I. Joe, produced by a combination of Marvel/Sunbow productions, both followed a similar format in that they insisted on having a moral lesson at the end of the show, like “Don’t talk to strangers,” or, “It’s bad to lie,” or “Only use pressure sensitive landmines if you’re sure you won’t patrolling this route again.” At the end of these profound teachings on moral uprightness, they would end it with “Now you know, and knowing…” in the caseof G.I. Joe, “is half the battle,” and in the case of Jem, “makes you a superstar.”

There has been much debate on the truth of these statements with a lot of people saying that G.I. Joe knew what they were talking about and Jem was simply being the complete idiot rich girl she was. Joe, for example, could back up their argument with evidence that knowledge of terrain, the number and disposition of your enemy, and perhaps even knowledge of their own tactics, greatly enhanced your force’s chances of victory since you could now strategize accordingly. Knowledge in this case, really did contribute to the achievement of victory in military conflict. Most people would say that just knowing something does not suddenly give you the key to a recording contract and millions of dollars. However there has been a precedent established by such people as Alex Trebeck of Jeopardy fame, who regularly rewards knowledge of the trivial with large sums of cash. There’s also Who Wants To Be A Millionaire that has made several people rich–and briefly famous–for their ability to know things no one cares about.

But beyond that, what about Jem herself?

I think it’s obvious that even though the era of political correctness was slowly starting to make itself known, there were certain cultural cliches that still managed to work their way into the cartoon. Jem herself for example, is pretty, attractive, smart and most importantly, white. As a result she is rewarded for this by being the heiress of a massive fortune. Her foster sister, Shana is black and so is relegated to playing drums, because of the stereotypes of tribal Africans, while Aja, the generic Asian, plays the guitar (Koto, anyone?) knows a bit of Karate (because all Chinese people do, and yes, I know Karate is Japanese, but do the Americans?) and is the designated chauffer, much like Bruce Lee was during the Green Hornet series.

On the other side, you have the arch-nemesis, a green haired girl named Pizazz, who ran a band called the misfits. She was supposed to be a villain, but of course, because she was white, she was also rewarded for her skin color by being fabulously rich as well. One of her other band members, a white haired girl by the name of Roxy was an uneducated, lower class hick who was illiterate, thus reinforcing the notion that poor people are bad.

Over the course of the series, the Holograms clashed again and again with their rivals the Misfits, and Jem/Jerrica found herself in a the classic dual identity problem of having her clueless boyfriend Rio start to fall in love with her Jem persona, something that was never really resolved and in real life ultimately would have led to Rio either shooting heroine, or Jerrica hiring someone to burn his house down in a fit of rage.

Is this really the kind of value system we were teaching in the 80′s? Then again, looking at how those 80′s kids have turned out today, it looks like the lessons took. Thanks a lot, Jem. Now I know, and knowing makes me a super jerk…

An Office Day

Played games, wrote reviews, went home. That is all.

I’m Almost Responsible

In that I almost have a job.

Today was my first day at the office, except that it was an office I’ve been to many times. The office was the home of GameAxis, the magazine I regularly contribute to. I’m now part-timing with them, which I guess could happen if you crank out articles on a regular basis for a couple of years without screwing up too badly. Unlike most jobs that involve an office however, my first day consisted of surfing video game sites, writing about the Xbox 360 and playing a flight simulator and Black & White 2 for several hours.

It’s a part time gig. I show up Monday through Wednesday and spend the rest of the week doing my other stuff like articles for other magazines and scripts for television.

Speaking of television, 9 Lives, the show I wrote last year back in the September/October period aired tonight. I haven’t seen the show, so I have no idea how closely–or more likely not–they stuck with the script. I got an invitation to watch it with the actors and producer of the show, but since it was my first day at the office–and since I’m not a party person, and more importantly, since I’m not an actor and therefore nowhere near as a social or interesting–I figured I’d just bow out. Actors are better off with other actors. Writers just tend to make things uncomfortable for them. So depending on how the premier goes tonight, I may have a sudden influx of freelance script writing jobs, or else find my freelancing well suddenly dry up while crickets go off in the background…

Dead Computers

It was inevitable, really.

When we moved from our old apartment to this new one, the movers in a fit of complete apathy dropped the tower for my PC. After plugging it back in and powering it up, I noticed my PC now had a wonderful new nervous tic; upon powering up, it would load up as normal, boot up to the desktop, and just as it was about to settle down for another day’s mindless typing and surfing, would promptly shut itself off.

Unfortunately doing this every day for the last three or four months had its effect and my hard drive got slowly corrupted by an improper shut down occurring on a daily basis. The Wife, being far more technically inclined than I am at this sort of thing, managed to pull some kind of retrieval wizardry and got the majority of my work off the dead hard drive and onto this laptop which now sits where my old monitor and keyboard used to. It’s a serviceable laptop, although for some reason it absolutely refuses to recognize my PSP when I plug it in, contrary to the assurance on most technical forums that a PC should automatically recognize a PSP, something my old PC did which this laptop won’t.

Oh well…

Tomorrow, my first post as a pseudo-gainfully employed wage slave.

Or, I now have a part time job…

Technical Difficulties

My computer has died. This is coming out of one of the spare laptops. Dammit.

More later.

Al… Most… Done…

With Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1.

Or at least this second go round to finish everything and get the game complete with all bonuses so that the sequel will read the file and give me all kinds of extra bonus goodies for my trouble.

James Frey & Superman

Two totally unrelated topics, but they’re on my mind.

I followed the story, saw that he’s now got a three page introductory note that still emphasizes the emotional core of his story and read with interest how his agent has now dropped him, and his book deal with his current publisher is now being renegotiated.

It just kind of got me to wondering, if it’s your dream to get published, just how far are you willing you to go? I mean, a lot of struggling writers will say “I’ll do whatever it takes to get my book in the store,” but Frey really went and did it. He saw an opportunity after 17 rejections and realized if he had to lie through his teeth, by God, he was gonna’ do it, and he did. I wonder how many of us would be able to resist the temptation.

I mean, for myself, it’s a non-issue since I’m firmly on the fiction side anyway. If I say “I made it up,” people will reply, “You damn well have better made it up,” so it’s moot point. But now I kind of wonder what I’d do if presented with a similarly shady opportunity. I tell myself, of course I’d just lower my head and keep on powering on the way I have the last few years, but I wonder if I really would.

And on the other hand, there’s the upcoming summer movie Superman Returns.

I don’t care how superficial or vacuous it makes me, I’m really looking forward to this movie.

Part of this is due to Frank Miller.

I think that since the mid 80′s, up until now, dark and gritty has pretty much epitomized the mood of fantastic narrative of almost every sort. In science fiction, it found a name in cyberpunk. In comics, it resulted in The Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns and even stuff like Spawn. In movies, we got The Crow, Dark City, Aliens countless others. And I think it was refreshing. For the most part, it was refreshing because it was a reaction to the Pollyannaism of the early 80′s, the Regan years when people had an almost hyper-acute sense of optimism and refused to see reality for what it was, a dark and complicated mess.

However, over the years, this more merciless, unflinching look at the world has gotten to the point where its marketing, its fashionable. I hadn’t even heard the term “emo” here in Singapore until I read about it some other forum and realize it was a low grade version of Goth where kids more or less dramatize their lives to make them out to be full of angst and misery, just because… well, anger and misunderstandings and outsider-ism is cool. Dark & Gritty has stopped being a spalsh of cold water in deluded eyes and has become a compulsory badge of style. And somewhere along the way, the point of it, which was, “Don’t just look at all comforting nothings society offers, look at how dark it can get” has somehow gotten lost. Now, it’s mostly dark just for its own sake. And it seems like the reverse has now come to pass.

People are so obsessed with seeing the dark side in everything, the intense, dramatic, Goth side, that they’ve forgotten about the other stuff. The good stuff, the courageous stuff, the stuff you can admire and respect.

The HEROIC stuff.

That’s what I’m hoping Superman will be this summer. A return to that. I love Batman Begins, and I wouldn’t change a thing to it, because to be fair, that is who Batman is, and that movie understood it, the same way Frank Miller did back in the 80′s. But Superman… Superman is not someone you’re supposed to be afraid of. He’s not someone you’re supposed to think, “Oh man, he’s gonna’ slaughter them and make them sorry they were ever born.”

Superman is courage, kindness and a simple belief that you do the right thing because it IS the right thing, and not because you need recognition or accolades. I’m hoping that Bryan Singer understands that the reason Superman endures as a symbol is because he represents the positive aspects of human nature, those all too rare moments when we rise above our petty or competitive aspects and show mercy, or great inner strength. Superman should make people want to be like him, not be afraid of him. He should show people that it’s not having great power that counts, but what you do with that power.

Superman should make a person want to be a better person than they are right now.

I hope Bryan Singer gets that. And hopefully, I hope he pulls it off and makes everyone who comes out of the theater want to be a better person too.

I Think I’m Becoming A Gaming Snob

I was perusing–as I am wont to do–IGN today and happened to notice they had a story, or more accurately, a list, of the top selling PS2 games of 2005. Checking out the story, I found myself feeling a growing horror when I saw that Madden NFL 06, NCAA Football 06, MVP Baseball 2005 and a few other sports titles dominated the top 10 with God of War–quite possibly the single best title of the entire year–coming in at number 10.

My immediate gut reaction was, “My God, are these people stupid?!?” And I sat there thinking about how commercial those games were, how they were nothing but franchises and sequels with no originality and how this was squeezing out the really quality, innovative and original gaming experiences… only to realize seconds later that this is probably exactly the same kind of reaction that hoity-toity film critics have when Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith makes more money or is hailed as a cultural phenomenon over Million Dollar Baby.

I wonder if there will ever come a time when game critics have the same weight and authority as film critics.

Admittedly, I’m not a big fan of sports games. I play games for escape, so to me there’s no point in playing a video game of something I could conceivably just go by actually going outside. Granted, I’ll never play in a professional team, but sports games are entirely too bound by reality for me to ever really take to them. If I can’t shoot something, cast a magic spell, play the gee-tar, or save the world somehow, I’m not interested. First Person Shooters are a fun genre only occasionally when a truly unique experience–like Halo or Halflife–comes out, but for the most part, this genre has just turned into running and gunning a corridor and the majority of titles in the genre don’t stray very far from that formula.

But it was kind of a creepy moment to realize and not in the 12 year old l33t way, that there is pretty obviously a difference between people that are gamers–or that other people would label a gamer–and people that play games. I imagine the familiarity and “pick up and play” nature of sports games are what make them so popular. That and the USA is, to be fair, completely dedicated to their sporting events. Whereas something like Dragon Quest VIII or Kingdom Hearts, or even Shadow of the Colossus is something that requires a committment of sorts from the player, and tries to take them to an unfamiliar place with new rules.

I guess in the same way some people like “cinema” and other people like “movies.” I like interactive experiences rather than video games. Kind’a. Sort’a.