Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2010-01-15]
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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True, though it goes both ways. My adult daughter doesn't even want to think of her father & I having sex (immaculate conception?) A lot of young people don't want to think of older people having sex. Americans seem to want sex for themselves, but everyone else is an issue. Basically we're uncomfortable with the subject. Same with death. I've been around so many parents who have their own issues with death so they can't talk to their kids about it. I was always open about it which is why I think my daughter did ok when her father died 9 yrs ago. I didn't think twice about it in Astro, then I saw John Stewart talking about it on the Daily show-Tenma's kid dying, then he made Astro, then he wanted to take Astro's heart out & Stewart said his son looked at him...I didn't think twice about that, nor did the audience in the packed theater I was in. But we're also pretty reactionary. Other people might just turn off the tv if they don't like a show while we start letter campaigns or advertiser boycotts. The whole sexting thing came out of moms complaining, didn't it? I figure some girl is stupid enough to take a naked picture of herself & give it to he b/f, it's her stupid fault if the whole football team ends up with it as their wallpaper, but I thought the mom made a fuss to get laws passed or something. As for the US forcing it on other countries, I thought the UN (Unicef? Some world child group)was trying to pass the virtual child porn thing. They've been pressuring Japan for awhile about virtual child porn so it's not the US one has to fear. |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3490 Location: Back stateside |
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Virgin birth, actually. Immaculate conception refers to Mary being born without original sin; in all other regards, she was conceived the normal way (if you're Catholic, at least). 
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Well, there's also the story about the storks delivering the babies to their parents. I wonder if in many other countries, they just explain the whole process of sex whereas this story was made up to circumvent having to talk about sex.
I think in your case, CCSYueh, it's become a generational thing. From what I've noticed of the distancing between kids and adults, it continues for the rest of their lives, keeping a child-to-adult distancing to generations before theirs and an adult-to-child distancing to generations after theirs. That is, the generation before the person in question will always be that person's "parent's generation."
You're right--we treat death on television and the movies like we do sex--it's a social taboo. All those ridiculous censorship practices people did, like the infamous "sent to another dimension" or "sent to the Shadow Realm" business, were to prevent parents from writing those aforementioned petitions to remove the perceived evil off the air. Again, I feel this links back to how we consider adults as the searchlights to help the children find their way (regardless of if these kids already know the way or not). Those activist parents want to do something meaningful and help other parents, I believe. Maybe they think they're every kid's parents. Or maybe they consider their morals the best in the world and take offense in someone else who may have different ethical standards. But hey, the USA was founded on revolutions. It still has a highly revolutionary spirit. What constitutes "virtual child porn"? Does it only constitute photorealistic CGI where it can't be told apart from a photograph, or does it not specify in the wording, thus making all CGI depicting someone under 18 in a sexual way illegal? |
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Ggultra2764
 Subscriber Posts: 3890 Location: New York state. |
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Would this Ghetto also apply to animated adult comedies like The Simpsons and Family Guy? I always assumed animation was never seen as a serious medium here in the West and that many folks seen animation only as a form of entertainment either connecting it mostly to Disney or raunchy animated comedies. |
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jvowles
Otakon Representative
 Posts: 219 Location: Maryland |
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Rather than address specifics here, I would say that I disagree that we have more crowding and traffic problems than Expo does. I say that as someone who's been attending Otakon since 1996 and Expo since 2005. Which isn't to say that we don't have them -- we are at the mercy of our function space and bizarre attendee behavior. I saw just as many inconsiderate cosplayers and photographers -- it's just that there's twice as much space for them to use, and outdoors is more compelling. The biggest boon for Expo, space-wise, is the fantastic weather and large open outdoor spaces. We get 90-110 degree weather an 80%+ humidity. The LACC is nearly twice the size of the BCC, by which I mean it has nearly twice the function space, and much more "pre-function" space. It's also hideously expensive and the cost of using it has been a real issue for Expo the last few years. |
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jvowles
Otakon Representative
Posts: 219 Location: Maryland |
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Ah, autograph complaints. Everyone in this biz gets them, and there's just a limit as to what we can do. Especially for guests like Crispin who we have only for one day, and who did two panels and two autograph sessions during his limited time (he caught the redeye back home). By opening up early, we got *more* people through his autograph line than we would have otherwise. Guests can only sign so many autographs per hour, and with the bigger name folks, the number of folks who line up in advance is pretty daunting. Those 10 extra minutes may be 20-25 more people. (FWIW, we're running 3 autograph sessions at any given time, and lining starts as soon as we empty a queue zone. I could use twice the space we have now!) But having watched the exact same thing happen at every con I've been to that had a popular guest -- wait in a Neil Gaiman line sometime! -- I can honestly say we're doing pretty well in terms of sheer numbers processed vs numbers we have to turn away. We've tried most of the more sensible suggestions people have offered (as have others), but many of them simply don't scale well to the huge lines some folks draw. |
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jvowles
Otakon Representative
Posts: 219 Location: Maryland |
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It's a slightly different ghetto -- and a relatively new one, from mainstream perspective. I still remember the HUGE hullabaloo when the Simpsons first aired, and it was *scandalous*; now it's a mainstream icon. To large part the mainstream moved in Simpson direction, at least embracing the social commentary aspects. South Park has remained edgier, and despite being in many ways *just* as much about social commentary, it is clearly not a kids' show ---- they even made their one feature film about that very issue. |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Yeah, I remember reading a few critics talking about how some parents brought their kids in to see South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut and then walking out when they realized this isn't for kids.
And I definitely remember the angry mob of parents who were claiming that The Simpsons, Bart in particular, was a bad example for children, despite Matt Groening, Tracy Ullman, Mel Brooks, and pretty much all of FOX as a whole repeatedly saying that this is a cartoon for adults. Nevertheless, the viewing audience for these shows have almost never wandered above the young adult category. The Simpsons is quite possibly the one animated program on American television with a substantial viewing audience of people in their middle ages or older, and I'd bet that's because it's been around for over 20 years and its audience grew up with the family from Springfield. The audience for South Park has been getting older as the seasons have gone on as well. It may be a generation-based thing, that each successive generation in the USA is taking animation more seriously than the last. The generation who grew up with The Simpsons learned that cartoons don't have to be for kids and can be insightful. South Park and Family Guy, which came out about a decade later, became part of the generation after that, and learned that cartoons don't need to set aside kid-friendly stuff. It's been about a decade since then, and from what I've observed, this generation of young adults has been exposed to the likes of Bleach, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (the CGI version), and The Boondocks and are currently learning that cartoons don't need to be comedies. And Aqua Teen Hunger Force, learning to get stoned watching them. All these shows are currently still in progress, and all the ones that have had time have evolved with the years. By the time South Park was dealing with topics like euthanization and drug abuse, The Simpsons had episodes like "Brother's Little Helper," which criticized the medicine industry. The early episodes of The Simpsons are comparatively tame compared to episodes like that. I do think we're moving out of the Animation Age Ghetto, but we're doing so by generation, not by an acceptance of the general populace. Oh yes! And one more unrelated thing: Anime is a strictly 2-D medium as it is right now and wouldn't work viewing it with 3-D glasses. I remember some comic books where you'd read them with 3-D glasses, and they looked like cardboard cutouts placed at varying distances. The images of the characters, props, backgrounds, skies, and so forth were all still 2-D flat. Unless some anime is going to draw a different image for each eye per frame, which will drive up costs to ridiculous degrees, we'll never see traditional 2-D animation of any sort become the sort of 3-D we're seeing in Avatar or, for a better example, Coraline (as, unlike Avatar, it uses old-fashioned stop-motion and has exaggerated-looking characters doing clearly physically impossible things). |
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