Fan(atics)

Fanaticism

from Wikipedia.org:

Fanaticism is an emotion of being filled with excessive, uncritical zeal, particularly for an extreme religious or political cause or in some cases sports, or with an obsessive enthusiasm for a pastime or hobby. Philosopher George Santayana defines fanaticism as "redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim"[1]; according to Winston Churchill, "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject". By either description the fanatic displays very strict standards and little tolerance for contrary ideas or opinions.

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The other day at work one of my supervisors at work passed on to me a little URL for the now "as seen on TV during the Superbowl" preview of "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra"! I watched it tonight. Then I got more interested in the movie and did a little online searching for more on this, sure to be a blockbuster whether it ultimately deserves to or not I make no judgements, movie by Michael Bay, of "Transformers" fame. I found one site that purported to be leaking pictures of the cast in costume, (test shots I think), and after checking out the pictures, I scrolled a little further down, and began to read the comments left by visitors to the site.

I couldn't help but both laugh and be, perhaps, just a little scared. These people were brutal in their dislike for the costumes, and in their hatred of the film, even though they hadn't seen it yet, and many were even talking about organizing boycotts of the film because of it. Every now and then there was a cooler head prevailing but even they were quickly shot down, metaphorically speaking, of course. But I have no doubt in my mind that for some of these fellow "Citizens of Planet Earth", a more literal interpretation would suit just as well. I thought about this for a minute and it occured to me what these people actually needed, as compared to wanted, was to GET A LIFE!

I mean come on! It's a frelling Hollywood comic remake, for frack's sake. And I heard people going on about how the movie was destroying treasured images from their childhood. It's a fracking comic book, people. And let's not forget there was also an "action figure". These were so named because the manufacturer could never have gotten away with saying it was a doll. They would never have been able to sell it if parents thought about it as buying a doll for their sons. Thus today we have the tradition of buying action figures for our sons at birthdays and at Christmas.

But. . .

. . . in my world GI Joe and Barbie, were the best of friends. The original BFF's you might say. Of course, what Barbie never realized was that Joe was only hanging out with her so he could get closer to Ken, who secretly swung both ways. Oh yeah, in my world, GI Joe was a fag! Yes children, Joe was as queer as a footbal bat.


. . .


So it seems that what I'm really trying to say here is that there's nothing wrong with being a fan of something. I happen to think fandom is terrific. I am a huge fan of the "Underworld" series of movies. Len Wiseman, Danny McBride, and Kevin Grevioux made a terrific writing team, Len is a phenomenal director with a palpable vision, Danny and Kevin were both in the movie, Danny as Mason, a Death Dealer working in Khan's group, and Kevin as Raze, a lieutenant of Lucien, the leader of the Lycans. As you can see I could go on at length, and may very well do so someday soon, if I can ever get my hands on a good copy (I mean, Offsite Archival Copy) of Dragon Naturally Speaking, and a couple more gigs of RAM. The point here is that fandom is all very well, but getting so worked up about the way a movie treats a comic character, or characters, that you would try to organize a boycott of the movie? That's just dumb, and wreaks of good, old-fashioned, 'waaaay too much time on my hands!' syndrome to me.



But I could be wrong.