I think I’ve been destroying the impressions of some of the stuff I used to watch or read many, many years ago …
Last century even. Although that’s not quite as bad as it sounds considering we’re only 20 odd years into this one !
I’ve been looking at a few older things lately … One thing they show is how the world has changed since I grew up. I talked about the Drizzt Do’Urden books the other day and the ones I read of those back then were great (although there is a Room Elephant that I’ll get to later). Homeland and the half of Exile I’ve read so far are still great books now. The Shadowdale, Tantras and Waterdeep books by the Richard Awlinson name (multi authors, one name used, can’t remember the term) were pretty good too, although I didn’t get on so well with the Cyric books that followed because they go into madness a bit too much.
My brain seems to bounce off madness and insanity in books, it’s why it took me a while to return to Alastair Reynolds books after struggling in Chasm City.
Room Elephant ? Dungeons and Dragons is set up with a lot of built in races, borrowed from various legends and myths. Elves are thin, pointy and haughty. Dwarves are short, strong and wide and beardy. Halflings eat everything. Orcs and Goblins are green and evil. You get the picture.
Dark Elves are impossibly corrupt and maliciously evil. If you don’t see the problem with the black people in the setting being portrayed as the most evil and murderous race, then you haven’t been paying attention to what’s been happening in the world. Drizzt is the exception in the books, he’s a good guy and the books do go into that somewhat … are the Dark Elves bad because of an innate nature or does their society make them that way.
I think the owners of Dungeons and Dragons are steadily sorting out things like this in their settings. Some of the changes involve removing disadvantages that different races had. That’s a good change and it’s good that the game system can move on over time.
Errr no.
The catalyst for this post is mostly watching some oldies again. I’ve abandoned both for different reasons.
First up … Captain Scarlet. But not the classic from 1967. No. I started watching the remake from 2005. It’s not that it was terrible. It was actually fairly ok and a nice update. But with it disappearing from A Certain Streaming TV Service soon, I didn’t see it worth investing time into binge watching all of it before it did disappear. It was watchable but not particularly inspiring. If you have limited time to watch things, spend your time on the good stuff.
(I’ve signed up again to watch the latest series of The Expanse plus I had a voucher deal thing if I’m still subscribed in a couple of months – I will cancel it after that).
Oh and I was also badly missing the old 1960s Captain Scarlet outro music. Let’s see. Attempt one : Here’s a link to the intro. Ah ha ! Here’s the outro music (linky). The new outro is watered down and not very good. It was a great series in its day. I loved the music, plus you never really knew who was going to win in an episode. Sometimes the enemy was allowed to win. That was unheard of in kiddie fiction …
That’s another theme tune that I loved, the iconic Knight Rider theme. (Of course I looked it up ! Linky). I must see about rewatching those some time. I enjoyed the remake / update that was on screens in (gapes at IMDB) 2008.
However … this is where I fuel up the flamethrower. The thing that destroyed a bit of the childhood was 2.5 episodes of Terrahawks yesterday. It’s another from the Gerry Anderson stable and (looks at wiki) the first puppet series he did after a decade and also the last.
From the opening scenes, it unleashes racism. I was shocked to hear Lt Hiro coming out with “Exactry”, with that establishing the meme for his character. You don’t need to do that as a writer. It’s … just no. Don’t do it.
And horrors continued from there. The members of Hawknest are assisted by Zeroids, robotic spheres with eyes and guns that bounce around and shoot things. The ground soldier Zeroids are led by Sergeant Major Zero, voiced by the dearly departed Windsor Davies. It was a little watered down but I instantly recognised his Sergeant Major character from series like It Ain’t Half Hot Mum.
Quite early on, Zero is being berated by the lead character as being nothing, less then nothing and even worse than that. That put the Bully Detector sounding off immediately.
Oh and the bad people are also portrayed as extremely ugly too with the goodies being the glamourous ones.
So you have racism, bullying and objectivisation. And there was probably much more in the rest of the series. I didn’t stick around to find out. Thing is though, stuff like that was tolerated in the last century. It was even encouraged.
It’s good to see that the world has changed somewhat and those old ways are starting to get swept aside. There’s still a way to go though.
The story doesn’t end quite there though. After having bitter disappointment with Terrahawks, I was on the lookout for something 90 minutes long ish … (was getting later). I found …
That’s from My Neighbour Totoro, made in 1988. It’s a charming tale of a man and his two daughters who move into a house in rural Japan. While playing, the girls find the forest spirits. Including the legendary sleepy Totoro. Totoro is about 12 feet tall and has dark fur above a lighter coloured belly.
(I’m enjoying the alt-text writing style, it’s making me think about how to find the right words to describe images).
Adventures commence and a charming tale of wonder unfolds. I thoroughly enjoyed watching it last night and I’ll be back for more Studio Ghibli films later. The only other one I’ve watched is Spirited Away, which was marvelous too. Need to rewatch that.
Also has Catbus.
Stay safe everyone, be well and remember that some of the stuff in the past, needs to get buried there whereas there are other stories that are still quite wonderful today.
