Here are some quotes that I find quite poignant:
"The kids of the early '90s liked humor and bright graphics and appealing characters to latch onto. The Simpsons and Nickelodeon proved that. And despite all the talk of 'postliterate' culture, they liked narrative. The astounding success of R.L. Stine's Fear Street and Goosebumps series of juvenile horror stories proved that. These kids had grown from toddlerhood to school age loving the Ninja Turtles and the Muppets. They'd been raised in a commercialized, competitive time, but generally by parents more serious about their duties than parents of the late '60s and '70s. Most kids of the middle class, at least, had been given a relatively optimistic and structured world. What could the superhero subculture, with its bizarre combination of vicious violence, hard-boiled posing, whiny melodrama, and geeky pretension, say to them?"
From The Comic Book Heroes by Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs (2nd edition)
I feel this quote captures me and my generation to a tee, and in a way shows our place in the comic book industry of the 1990s.
"When I first saw Godzilla at the studio screening, I couldn't help crying when I watched Godzilla become a skeleton. I thought, 'Why did mankind have to punish Godzilla like that?'...Mankind seemed like a bigger villain than Godzilla, and I felt sorry for him. I think sympathy for him still exists today. If Godzilla were truly evil, people wouldn't have loved him so much. We were responsible for triggering Godzilla's violence."
Film star Akira Takarada, originally from an interview in Toho SF Special Effects Movie Series Vol. 7: Godzilla vs. Mothra, later quoted in Japan's Favorite Mon-Star: The Unauthorized Biography of "The Big G" by Steve Ryfle.
This quote needs no explanation.
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1 comment:
Quite interesting cultural observations. Yes it does reflect a prevailing glorification of violence, unfortunately. Yet, violence is needed in self defense situations, it is a problem which rests with the individual to solve in specific situations. Failure to do so results in surrender of the self to the consensual control of primal urges, invariably leading to destruction.
Regarding Japanese culture, the series "Heroes" brings up interesting issues and has much dialog in contemporary Japanese, subtitled of course.
This may be of interest.
Thanks for quite interesting blog postings.
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