VIDEODROME

[KingRoyal]

It's entirely possible that 20 years of life have ended up jumbling the foreword, interpreting Buddy becoming a vegetarian with Morrison doing so, as well

[Friday]

I find myself really interested in young people's opinions on things. I've been watching whatever "young person reviews retro game" content I can get ahold of.

I frequently disagree hard with their takes, but I have to admit it's really interesting to see what a 21 year old thinks of games like A Link to the Past, Earthbound, Mario 3, whatever. It's really hard to say that an 18 year old is "wrong" for not thinking AlttP is top tier. In my experience they tend to say things like "it's fine, good even, but I don't get why all my elders talk it up so much."

Why do they think this way? And this isn't just one guy, I've seen at least 3 young retro reviewers have this opinion. That's still anecdotal, of course, but these 3 all sort of said the same thing:

AlttP wasn't their first Zelda game, it was like their 9th or 10th, and everything that it does they'd already experienced in multiple iterations beforehand in Zelda games that came later but they played first.

And that's what really defines why and how different generations perceive things differently. Nobody can ever appreciate again how amazing and mind-blowing Baldur's Gate 1 was in 1998. Ever. If they play it now, it'll just be "oh, i can see how this influenced later games. cool. and now back to my fully immersive VR blowjob RPG."

It's not that young people can't appreciate retro games, there are a lot of channels proving otherwise. But they'll never experience them like we did. That time and place is gone forever. And soon enough, the time and place to experience Baldur's Gate 3, RDR2, Undertale, and whatever else you think is modern and amazing will also be gone forever.

[Mongrel]

Thoughtful Stuff

I think that possible someone getting it almost right can be a bit frustrating to watch.

One of the interesting things about the internet age which is actually good(!) is that some people seem to be more interested in professionalism and best practices, and do seek out information to help them do better at whatever it is they're doing outside of work, be it home improvement, exercise, parenting, streaming, or - in this case - hobby criticism (like actual proper criticism, not just the mass of whinging).

The problem of course is that for a lot of people this happens organically, as it normally would, but now all their learning experiences are presented online as completed work. That kid who makes a C- Grade 12 Media Studies presentation might well go on to become a famous director or critic or writer or what-have-you, and in The Before Times, no one would ever see that presentation outside of his old classmates. But once you have an audience on YouTube - and that whole deal is very much encouraged now as a way to build a "career" everything you do is so much more visible.

Also, specifically in terms of criticism, I think that with TV Tropes having usefully catalogued the entire dramatic trope repertoire of the species, the rise of prestige TV, and re-examination of classic films and TV, people have rightly come to expect higher quality writing from new productions, but obviously there's reasonable differences of opinion and those are mixed in with a LOT of what's just noise from half-baked amateurs (not saying this guy is one in this example) and the usual huge sea of whiny fanboys.

[Mongrel]

I find myself really interested in young people's opinions on things. I've been watching whatever "young person reviews retro game" content I can get ahold of.

I frequently disagree hard with their takes, but I have to admit it's really interesting to see what a 21 year old thinks of games like A Link to the Past, Earthbound, Mario 3, whatever. It's really hard to say that an 18 year old is "wrong" for not thinking AlttP is top tier. In my experience they tend to say things like "it's fine, good even, but I don't get why all my elders talk it up so much."

Why do they think this way? And this isn't just one guy, I've seen at least 3 young retro reviewers have this opinion. That's still anecdotal, of course, but these 3 all sort of said the same thing:

AlttP wasn't their first Zelda game, it was like their 9th or 10th, and everything that it does they'd already experienced in multiple iterations beforehand in Zelda games that came later but they played first.

And that's what really defines why and how different generations perceive things differently. Nobody can ever appreciate again how amazing and mind-blowing Baldur's Gate 1 was in 1998. Ever. If they play it now, it'll just be "oh, i can see how this influenced later games. cool. and now back to my fully immersive VR blowjob RPG."

It's not that young people can't appreciate retro games, there are a lot of channels proving otherwise. But they'll never experience them like we did. That time and place is gone forever. And soon enough, the time and place to experience Baldur's Gate 3, RDR2, Undertale, and whatever else you think is modern and amazing will also be gone forever.

One small note: I sincerely hope that the writing level and player experience of games rises to a point where Undertale becomes unremarkable, because that's not something that I've seen take off just yet. For now it's still pretty damned unicorn, IMO.

[Friday]

Well, Undertale might be a bad example as yeah it's a pretty unique game. It's hard to imagine it becoming a "formula" like AlttP did. Also it's a bad example because unlike the other two I listed, BG3 and RDR2, Undertale is very hit and miss with people. The people who it hits it hits, but the rest are just put off by it or even think it's trash.

[Thad]

Why do they think this way? And this isn't just one guy, I've seen at least 3 young retro reviewers have this opinion. That's still anecdotal, of course, but these 3 all sort of said the same thing:

AlttP wasn't their first Zelda game, it was like their 9th or 10th, and everything that it does they'd already experienced in multiple iterations beforehand in Zelda games that came later but they played first.

And that's what really defines why and how different generations perceive things differently. Nobody can ever appreciate again how amazing and mind-blowing Baldur's Gate 1 was in 1998. Ever. If they play it now, it'll just be "oh, i can see how this influenced later games. cool. and now back to my fully immersive VR blowjob RPG."

It's not that young people can't appreciate retro games, there are a lot of channels proving otherwise. But they'll never experience them like we did. That time and place is gone forever. And soon enough, the time and place to experience Baldur's Gate 3, RDR2, Undertale, and whatever else you think is modern and amazing will also be gone forever.

Yeah but I could watch 2001 and consider it in its appropriate historical context when I was 16 years old.

I realize I have a tendency to be dismissive about things that come easily to me and assume they come easily to everybody, but in this case I think we're talking about a skill that's absolutely essential for a media critic. I'm not saying you can't criticize a movie for having retrograde views, or a game for not having modern QoL features, but if you're not at least considering historical context in how you evaluate a work, then you're doing a grossly incomplete job of evaluating it.

No, I'm never going to have a chance to watch 2001 in a movie theater in 1968. But if I can't at least think about what it would have been like for the people who did, I'm going to end up seeing a very boring movie that doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, starts with a bunch of dudes in gorilla suits and ends with a giant space baby, and refers to Velcro as "grip shoes" in the middle. At that point I've wasted two and a half hours of my life not understanding art; hey, maybe I'll go on the Internet and brag about it.

(And not for nothin', there's an element of clickbait to reviews that declare beloved classics aren't very good, actually. I don't know what the breakdown is of people who are sincere versus people who are just going for rage clicks, but the former really may want to consider whether or not they want to be doing the same shtick as the latter.)

[KingRoyal]

Really, best recommendation for that guy is just to watch more movies and read more movie criticism. Sounds like he's gotten bored with the slice of media consumption he's been enjoying up to this point. Which happens, that's fair! He should follow the path that watching stuff out of his normal like Lord of the Rings and just continue watching more, varied stuff.

[Mongrel]

Well, Undertale might be a bad example as yeah it's a pretty unique game. It's hard to imagine it becoming a "formula" like AlttP did. Also it's a bad example because unlike the other two I listed, BG3 and RDR2, Undertale is very hit and miss with people. The people who it hits it hits, but the rest are just put off by it or even think it's trash.

It's an example we didn't really have before - IMO it legitimately set the bar for all games higher!

Doesn't mean every game or even a majority of games will bother shooting for that (on the contrary, with the trend for gaming to go ever-more towards 'Gaming Commission' Gaming), and like Citizen Kane or 2001 or the Velvet Underground or whoever it's actually fine if lots of people misunderstand it or don't enjoy it; what it does is tell the people actually making this stuff, hey, the moon is there, and you can and should try to shoot for it.

[Thad]

Really, best recommendation for that guy is just to watch more movies and read more movie criticism. Sounds like he's gotten bored with the slice of media consumption he's been enjoying up to this point. Which happens, that's fair! He should follow the path that watching stuff out of his normal like Lord of the Rings and just continue watching more, varied stuff.

I fucking miss Netflix. I mean the original, DVD-in-the-mail Netflix.

I got to catch up with so many classic films that way. The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Animal Crackers, like four different versions of Dracula.

The market's so much more fragmented now; if you want to watch a movie, who knows if it'll be on a streaming service you're signed up for, or *any* streaming service, and DVD rentals are pretty much dead at this point.

I guess your best shot at the classics at this point is the Criterion Channel, but that's a bit on the niche side, there's plenty of stuff they don't have, and maybe you just want to watch an '80s action movie or something.

Honestly these past few years my greatest source of old movies I haven't seen has been Svengoolie. That's a particular niche too, and if cheesy B-movies aren't your thing then it's probably not going to be terribly appealing. (Though I still think a lot of the stuff he shows is stuff people who are interested in film should acquaint themselves with -- Universal Monsters, Hammer Horror, Godzilla, Harryhausen, Vincent Price -- and for the cheesier, cheaper fare, I'd say it's worth it for people to watch at least a little bit of Bert I Gordon, Ed Wood, Roger Corman, et al just to get a feel for it. I think there are important lessons to be learned about filmcraft from zero-budget exploitation releases.)

Like, on the one hand, I'm not a film snob and I don't want to overstate the importance of the canon. But on the other hand, you're probably not going to be literate about film if you don't watch a bunch of different kinds of film.

[KingRoyal]

Not for nothing, but the secret best streaming service is Tubi, which is both free and has an incredibly deep selection of films, way more than you would think a free, advertising supported streaming site would have.

With the exception of the specific movies you mentioned, though. That said, the Classics tag has stuff like Fistful of Dollars, The Great Escape, To Kill a Mockingbird, Doctor Zhivago, Philadelphia Story, Robin Hood, Forbidden Planet and lots more. And a lot of Steve Reeves Hercules in Spanish

[Thad]

Not for nothing, but the secret best streaming service is Tubi, which is both free and has an incredibly deep selection of films, way more than you would think a free, advertising supported streaming site would have.

Yeah, I thought about mentioning that I've found great stuff on Tubi, Roku, Shout, and Pluto (and I've been meaning to see if I can get Hoopla access through my local library) but I felt like I was starting to get a bit afield.

Honestly OTA TV has great shit at this point (at least, it does where I live), and there's something to be said for the spontanaiety of just channel-surfing and finding something unexpected (which, TBF, is possible on a lot of the streaming sites/apps like Pluto). Last year I'd be up at 3 AM feeding the baby and I'd find something like The Day the Earth Stood Still or the 1945 version of The Picture of Dorian Gray with a young Angela Lansbury.

[Friday]

Yeah but I could watch 2001 and consider it in its appropriate historical context when I was 16 years old.

I realize I have a tendency to be dismissive about things that come easily to me and assume they come easily to everybody, but in this case I think we're talking about a skill that's absolutely essential for a media critic. I'm not saying you can't criticize a movie for having retrograde views, or a game for not having modern QoL features, but if you're not at least considering historical context in how you evaluate a work, then you're doing a grossly incomplete job of evaluating it.

No, I'm never going to have a chance to watch 2001 in a movie theater in 1968. But if I can't at least think about what it would have been like for the people who did, I'm going to end up seeing a very boring movie that doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, starts with a bunch of dudes in gorilla suits and ends with a giant space baby, and refers to Velcro as "grip shoes" in the middle. At that point I've wasted two and a half hours of my life not understanding art; hey, maybe I'll go on the Internet and brag about it.

(And not for nothin', there's an element of clickbait to reviews that declare beloved classics aren't very good, actually. I don't know what the breakdown is of people who are sincere versus people who are just going for rage clicks, but the former really may want to consider whether or not they want to be doing the same shtick as the latter.)

Oh, I fully agree that a lot of young (and non-young, but that's outside the scope of this conversation at the moment) critics are terrible. Trust me, I have spent roughly .5% of my life, total, yelling at the computer screen that the critic is wrong. Even at RLM, which is a channel I like.

And being 20 and being able to look at Das Boot or Citizen Kane and understand why they are greats and classics is a skill. It shows emotional maturity and intelligence. But I find myself interested in how young people interface with old stuff even if they're interfacing badly. It can be irritating to see a 16 year old call brobdingnagian Trouble in Little China "trash" or whatever, but I'm still gonna be interested in why they think that. I dunno, maybe that's just me. I find other people's mental processes fascinating.

Hell, I touched on the idea of "how do I review an old thing" back when I was doing the top 100 videogames thread. How do I really "review" old games? Do I review them as how good they were when they came out, or how playable they are now, or somewhere in between? And these are games I myself played as a child. I'm not coming at them 20-40 years after release when I'm 20 myself.

Personally, I think some works age pretty good, some don't, and some works are evergreen. It really does vary. I'm not fond of that guy's opinion you linked where he says that discussing Citizen Kane is tired. It's tired for him, and a lot of other people, but like, guess what? 20 year olds have never discussed it before. If you don't want to listen to a 20 year old opine about Citizen Kane, then don't. It's weird to say that we as a species can never re-litigate anything, because new people are constantly being born. What, do we just tell them to fuck off and never have any opinions about old shit that has already been discussed to death?

I remember one time about 10-15 years ago, Mothra brought up hard determinism here on these boards. He wanted to discuss the concept. I posted some smarmy "oh, hard determinism. how droll. how completely and utterly pointless a topic of discussion." And like, yeah, it kind of is. But also this was Mothra's first encounter with the concept, and I should have been more respectful of that. Instead I just tried my best to shut down the convo because I myself was tired and done with it.

So, sorry, Mothra. I should have helped you figure out your feelings on it instead of just being a prick.

The market's so much more fragmented now; if you want to watch a movie, who knows if it'll be on a streaming service you're signed up for, or *any* streaming service, and DVD rentals are pretty much dead at this point.

Yeah, Link Rot happening in real life in this way is pretty fucking awful. Media preservation is really important.

[Thad]

I'm not fond of that guy's opinion you linked where he says that discussing Citizen Kane is tired. It's tired for him, and a lot of other people, but like, guess what? 20 year olds have never discussed it before. If you don't want to listen to a 20 year old opine about Citizen Kane, then don't. It's weird to say that we as a species can never re-litigate anything, because new people are constantly being born. What, do we just tell them to fuck off and never have any opinions about old shit that has already been discussed to death?

Discuss it, by all means. You don't have to like the thing that critical consensus says is a masterpiece.

But when you're just posting about some critically-beloved work to call it "boring" or "overrated" you're just being an obnoxious edgelord. It's "my opinion is important and I'm smarter than everybody else." It's trolling, if not straight-up clickbait.

It's a little more forgivable coming from 20-year-olds, as most dumbass behavior is (and Rabin's piece isn't directed at 20-year-olds specifically, though I acknowledge that's the context I linked it in); most of us used to pull that "ha, that thing you like sucks" routine all the damn time when we were that age. Fortunately, we grew out of it. Well, most of us.

Actually I think that makes a nice circle-back to the irony versus sincerity point. We came up in an era of irony and snark, and mocking things we thought were bad. I'm a lot more interested in talking about stuff I like now. When I see conversations come up (not here but like on Mastodon or wherever) like "What's something everybody else likes that you don't?" I don't participate and I don't read them. What good does that do anybody? It's not like that prompt is going to lead to a nuanced discussion of Tarantino's stylistic skills juxtaposed with the more problematic elements of his films; it's just people proclaiming that they don't like a thing other people like. It's just shit-stirring.

I'd rather do the opposite and talk about how I've got genuine affection for things that most people dismiss as trash. (Which is what Nathan's getting at with the Freddy Got Fingered line at the end of his post.)

It's not that I don't still enjoy people snarking on trash. I still watch MST3K and read 1900HOTDOG. But it's a lot more fun when the target deserves it (here's Nathan Rabin's review of Reagan) or when, despite making fun of a thing, it's clear that they have a real affection for it (here's Merritt K talking about Skeleton Warriors).

I remember one time about 10-15 years ago, Mothra brought up hard determinism here on these boards. He wanted to discuss the concept. I posted some smarmy "oh, hard determinism. how droll. how completely and utterly pointless a topic of discussion." And like, yeah, it kind of is. But also this was Mothra's first encounter with the concept, and I should have been more respectful of that. Instead I just tried my best to shut down the convo because I myself was tired and done with it.

Yeah but somebody posting "Citizen Kane is boring" isn't trying to have a conversation. They're just showing their ass.

[Friday]

oh yeah? well you like thundercats

ALTERNATIVE JOKE REPLY

kazzass.jpg

I feel like proper criticism of anything is determined by whether or not it's constructive. Me saying "the combat in OoT is bad, it's mostly just waiting around" is different than someone saying "OoT sucks, it's actually awful." Like, my thing points out a problem (it doesn't provide a solution, though it may infer one) and the other just is someone, as you said, showing their ass. OoT isn't awful, and it doesn't suck. I do have issues with it, though. It's important to be fair if you want to do real criticism. A constructive response points out both the good and bad.

Your youtube comment is a good example. You point out what was good about the video, and then offer some insight as to what was wrong with it. You were polite and direct.

Put another way: A good critical reply is one where in theory at least the guy can see your reply and maybe learn something and improve. A bad one ("This video sucks and is terrible!") does not do that.

I'd rather do the opposite and talk about how I've got genuine affection for things that most people dismiss as trash. (Which is what Nathan's getting at with the Freddy Got Fingered line at the end of his post.)

Freddy Got Fingered is fucking amazing, and I'm saying that as someone who does not like Tom Green's humor in general.

[Mongrel]

When I see conversations come up (not here but like on Mastodon or wherever) like "What's something everybody else likes that you don't?" I don't participate and I don't read them. What good does that do anybody? It's not like that prompt is going to lead to a nuanced discussion of Tarantino's stylistic skills juxtaposed with the more problematic elements of his films; it's just people proclaiming that they don't like a thing other people like. It's just shit-stirring.

Not directly related, but you reminded me of a comical aspect of these, which is when you find the guys who, trolling or genuine, profess a weird hatred for something terribly obscure or otherwise niche. I mean, if you think about it, it just makes sense that a popular anything will also have more haters, due to the sheer numbers of people exposed to it, so it all ends up kind of anodyne; it's the strange outliers which catch your attention.

My favourite example was an occasion someone ran a "which band?" version of this. Obviously most of the examples were boring replies like The Doors or whatever, but there was this one guy who - of all the music of the last century! - reserved his deepest loathing and contempt for frikkin' Paul Revere and the Raiders.

I get a good laugh every time I remember that guy.

[nosimpleway]

Funny you should mention it, it seems a lot of people really like Anodyne but I found it to be cryptic for the sake of being cryptic and therefore tedious

[Thad]

Freddy Got Fingered is fucking amazing, and I'm saying that as someone who does not like Tom Green's humor in general.

Yeah, I think its Worst Picture Razzie was the first time I started to realize the Razzies are bullshit that just go after low-hanging fruit.

Hey, I've got a Rabin link for that, too.

[Thad]

Funny you should mention it, it seems a lot of people really like Anodyne but I found it to be cryptic for the sake of being cryptic and therefore tedious

I liked the atmosphere and the cryptic shit didn't bother me. Some of the jumping stuff pissed me off, but I really liked it overall.

It's kinda nice seeing Link's Awakening get more attention. It's a brilliant fucking game that, while not exactly overlooked, has often felt to me like it was less-celebrated than it deserves.

[Thad]

The reason the brobdingnagian Two started hiring folks like Morrison, Gaiman, Milligan, Grant, and, later, Ellis and Ennis is because of how successful Alan Moore had been as a British writer deconstructing American superhero comics.

Come to think of it, Miracleman is a perfect example of a highly-regarded work that doesn't do much for me because I'll never be able to experience it in its original context.

It's not bad by any means, and I understand how important it is; nobody had ever seen anything like it, it put Alan Moore on the map, and in a very real way it changed comics in general and the superhero genre in particular.

But I didn't just read it after Watchmen, I read it after decades of other comics imitating Watchmen. And it's a lot easier to see its flaws in that context. It feels like a rough draft for the much better books Moore would be writing soon after.

But, y'know, I'm not going to go around calling it "overrated" or anything silly like that. I understand that it was an extremely important book, and at the time it was released it was a revelation. I'm not saying it's bad, or even mediocre. I'm just saying it hits me a lot differently than it hit people when it first came out.

[Friday]

For the record, I do not agree with Rabin's assertion that anyone calling anything "overrated" is just the person being a lazy piece of shit who thinks they're smarter than everyone else. It can absolutely be that and frequently is, but his position seems to be that any and all use of the word is wrong.

If you're going to be a critic, you yourself can be criticized, and I think Rabin is using this line of thought to undermine and dismiss anyone who disagrees with his own opinions. Me thinking OoT is overrated does not make me a lazy stupid idiot who doesn't understand criticism. Someone who watches Casablanca and calls it "boring and overrated" is probably a lazy stupid idiot, but that doesn't mean that anyone who says something was boring or overrated is.

Things can be boring. Things can be overrated. Simply calling beloved classics boring and overrated to generate hate clicks is lazy and shitty, yes. But Rabin is painting with a pretty brobdingnagian brush when he calls out anyone who uses those terms at all in any context lazy and stupid.