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 PTG Episode 70 [62:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (60)

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com

PTG Episode 70 is brought to you by The Cult of Negativity. I’m taking this opportunity to let each and every one of you know that as of today, I’m taking a stand against casual, habitual cynicism. Western society–in particular American society within a certain age group–is in love with cynicism and negativity, and has been for a long time. Somewhere along the way in the last, oh, 20-30 years it became “cool” to be casually and habitually cynical. My generation (and perhaps the generation that preceded mine) learned during the formative years that perhaps the fastest way to win friends and influence people if you weren’t cover model gorgeous was to verbally knock everything in sight, including the supposedly-vacuous cover-model gorgeous people. I personally picked up on this sometime during my junior year of high school; up until that time, I was as unpopular as one can get. Once I realized, however, that the key to making people warm up to you, find you interesting, engaging or least tolerate you to the point where they don’t dump their garbage on top of your barely-eaten lunch is to let them know that you’re just as miserable as they are with their lot. Show them that you, too, believe that school sucks and teachers suck and jocks suck and cliques suck and classes suck and parents suck and music sucks and politicians suck and the president sucks and the world just GENERALLY sucks and you’re gold. Show your peers that you can comment on that suckage in a way that makes people feel a little bit better about things and your path to relative popularity, or at least detente with those around you, is set.

Now maybe that’s fine for high school life, but what I believe it sets a precedent for is a pattern of behavior in which people as adults are FAR more likely to look for ways that something new–a book, a movie, a song, a law, a government policy, the way someone on the street walking by dresses, walks, or talks, ANYTHING that they become aware of in the course of leading their everyday lives–might possibly SUCK, as opposed to looking for the positive in said item. We no longer, as witnesses and participants in the constant evolution of pop culture, seek to examine a given thing’s purpose and evaluate it based on how well it achieves its purpose, but instead simply regard it on an arbitrary scale along with everything else we either like or dislike in order to say that either “it sucks” or “it’s frickin’ awesome!” It’s a propensity that I certainly admit I’ve been guilty of more than once–make no mistake, I acknowledge that fact. But no longer. I’m done with taking the easy path, because let’s be honest here: it’s a WHOLE lot easier (and funnier to most people) to hate on something for what it ISN’T or what we might think it failed epically to be, rather than accept something for what it is and be positive about however it might have succeeded.

It’s time to jump off the bandwagon, time to pick up the fallen standard and fight the impossible fight against The Cult of Negativity that gains new members each and every day. And I don’t mean to fight this battle by suddenly walking through life wearing blinders to all that’s wrong in our world, to view the events of our collective lives and experiences through those oh-so-cliche rose-colored glasses. I’m talking about first looking at something new, no matter what it may be, and before knee-jerk judging it based on whether or not it fits within my own range of tastes or opinions actually determining what its purpose was or is and THEN judging it based on how well or how poorly it achieves its purpose. What this will lead to (hopefully) is either accepting something for it is and crediting it for achieving its purpose, or giving relevant, thoughtful, constructive critique regard how it fails to achieve its purpose, and it avoids simple wholehearted acceptance or rejection based on personal biases and one’s own degree of cynicism. It’s time to end the love affair with hating on things simply for the pleasure and entertainment value of hating on things.

If you’re still reading this, you might be asking yourself, “Why is he going on about all this?” Well, Episode 70 starts off with a review of last week’s No. 1 film at the box office, 2012, which earned, for the most part, the scorn of movie critics across the country (37% rotten rating at RottenTomatoes.com). That in and of itself doesn’t bother me or even surprise me, and I happen to believe that professional critics, ones that make their living writing reviews that are published in mainstream media, really DO evaluate films based on their opinions on how successful or unsuccessful a film is at achieving what it sets out to do. What bothers me to NO end is the number of people, some of whom are my dear friends and/or listeners to this program that I consider to otherwise be thoughtful, well-reasoned human beings, whether they’ve seen the movie or even just the previews of the movie declare it to be the worst kind of stupid, mindless, Hollywood tripe because it’s unrealistic, because the “science” behind the film’s concept is laughable, because the script or the acting is less-than-Oscar worthy, etc, etc. To them I give you the words of movie critic Roger Ebert, who gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars: “[2012] delivers what it promises, and since no sentient being will buy a ticket expecting anything else, it will be, for its audiences, one of the most satisfactory films of the year.” (for his full review, click here.) Key words there: no sentient being will buy a ticket expecting anything else. Well, it’s quite clear he was wrong on that score, because quite a few people apparently went into that film expecting Lawrence of Arabia-like film-making genius, or Memento-like air-tight logic.

Reality Flash: Writer/director Roland Emmerich never, to my knowledge, has claimed to be the second coming of David Lean. And 2012 does not aspire to be anything else but ridiculous disaster-movie fun, the disaster movie to end ALL disaster movies. In my perhaps not-so-humble opinion, it succeeds. If you go into ANY disaster film, but especially into an Emmerich-directed disaster film (he brought us Independence Day, the ’90s revival of Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow) expecting anything more than that, then you need to 1) lighten up; and 2) have your head checked.

Maybe you can already tell what I personally thought of 2012 from what I’ve written here, but to hear my full review, listen to the podcast. Also in this episode, a “true” Flash TV Reviews segment covering FOUR shows (V, Heroes, Fringe, and FlashForward), and a Blackest Night Spotlight on last week’s latest BN tie-ins and feature books, including Green Lantern Corps #42, R.E.B.E.L.S #10, and Booster Gold #26. Hope you enjoy!