Breakup Letter- Toonami (more specifally, Tom)

My good friend Tom,

As our lives go on, many people say that their childhoods have gone by so quickly, the memories dwindling down to nothing as the ever present clock stops for no man. It is at our earliest memories in which we need to make the most of; so that we can take the luxury of saying “I remember it like it was just yesterday”. Despite my various memories as a child, I am honored to say that the crown jewels of it all were when you were around.

It was always a Friday or Saturday night, whether it is a small get together with friends or simply going over to grandma’s house with my older sister. We would have a great time before then, sure, but the night was made when you came along, and brought us the entertainment that we oh-so-desperately needed. I still remember those moments when we all watched you, staring and listening in awe at the stories you had to tell and the shows you would put on for us, and how they captivated our interests.

You were more than just an entertainer to us, Tom. You were a wise, older friend. The kind of friend that everyone wanted to be around. Even when the shows that you put on were beginning to get repetitive (and dare I say, dull) you still found a way for us to listen in and keep watching. And it would almost always be worth it, just to hear what you had to say.

The best part is, you grew up with us.

As our generation grew older, we started to stay up later, and later. You moved with us, and for a while, we didn’t seem to mind.

Until that is, when we noticed we were seeing you less and less.

Some of us had by that time of realization have moved on to bigger and better things, but those who stuck with you were devastated by the slow motion train wreck before our eyes. Sure, you would try to go back to the old days and mention them from time to time, but you ended up tripping on your own words, and ultimately making you appear unappealing to us. At that point, we assumed the worst.

Then that was it. With a memorable speech, you bid us adieu and flew off into the horizon as the words slowly sank in and registered in our heads.

You were gone. And it was that way for a long, long time.

But now you are back, not as the childhood entertainer, but something more, and perhaps more wiser, as if you have never stopped growing with us.

By the moment of this letter, I am now currently 16 years old. Still youthful to appreciate the times when I am not drowning in my studies, but instead watching some mind-numbing television.

But as a teenager, I have quickly become friends with late night sleep, just shy out of your block. I’m afraid I just can’t keep up with the pace you’re going now. I don’t have the energy like I used to. Of course, there is always the internet where can keep posted about each other, but to be fully honest, it’s just not the same.

So, until we meet again, stay gold.

Bang.

Spider Man Shares Cold Dishes With A Sassy Friend as they Plot to Kill Bill

Revenge.

Even just by looking at it, it’s an ugly word to many. It meaning can range from the smallest to the biggest of scales, but nearly every method or way is the same. Revenge is an act of “getting back” even if that means you’ll be better off doing nothing. Whatever the consequence, people will go to the extremes just to say they have obtained revenge by doing so.

No one is safe from this cruel act of desire. At some point in everyone’s life, we have the overwhelming desire to “Get back” at whatever bothers us at the time. Children are not safe from the influence of revenge either, for they are constantly exposed by the media to revenge stories in the form of superheroes that children are supposed to look up to.

One of my favorite examples of such is Spiderman.

Since the beginning, Spiderman (also known as Peter Parker) was given a drive to do his deeds, but at the same time, has also been driven towards a path of revenge with the death of his uncle. This is shown especially well in the recent movie, Spiderman 3,for there is a whole scene with Spiderman confronting the Sandman (also known as Flint Marco), who has been staged in the movie as the uncle’s killer. Before this scene, Spiderman was mainly concerned with using his new found powers to help people. However, thanks to the Symboyite that has infected him within this movie, his aggression has been amplified, and thus, the story of Spiderman takes a darker turn as it follows his desire for revenge, rather than his desire to use his powers to help those around him.

Although this movie is certainly darker in terms of Peter Parkers Back story and motive, it does give a sense of choice to the audience as to whether or not Parker acted out his revenge in full; as to let the audience themselves define what revenge truly is. The result of this choice being allowed is the dark, yet still kid friendly movie that we all know today as Spiderman 3.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how much the underlying theme of revenge has been portrayed in the movie industry. There are literally hundreds of movies who have used the idea of revenge as a driving motive for a character in the movies plot, regardless of how they choose to act it out and to what degree.

In my eyes, Spiderman 3 was on the more mild side on the revenge in movies scale. It’s tough to come up with a low point example for this scale, for Spiderman 3 is relatively close on the boundary line, mainly because although he acts out revenge, he sees through it and isn’t completely driven by revenge in the course of the movie.

So, what is  an example of the more harsher forms of revenge seen in the movie field?

Two Words.

Kill Bill.

“Revenge is never a straight line. It's a forest, And, like a forest, it's easy to lose your way... To get lost... To forget where you came in.” - Hattori Hanzo, Kill Bill

Everything about this movie screams revenge, from the back stories, to the actions, to the visuals. Kill Bill is movie for a mature audience (also the main reason why I chose a quote and not a video), following a women known as “The Bride”‘s desire for one thing and one thing only- to get revenge on the people who have caused her to be put into a coma for four years, losing her own child in the process. Before then, she was part of a special group of assassins, all lead by a man named Bill. However, once she discovered she was pregnant, she wished to escape that lifestyle, and ran off to Texas and settled down with a man. On the day of their wedding rehearsal, she was gunned down by her former squad, lead by an angry and jealous Bill. Believing Bill to be the source of her strife, she makes it her mission to find and kill Bill, along with her former comrades who have assisted him in destroying her life and taking away her unborn child.

The plot for this whole story was so complex and time consuming, it is not one movie, but three.  All of which are filled with the careful planning and literal execution of her plans as she takes out each of her former comrades in order to get one step closer to Bill.

Revenge is a powerful tool not only in the hands of story writers, but in the idea of human morals themselves. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is one of the earliest known plays that demonstrates the exploration of the theme of revenge, and is still referred in modern times in many different aspects. Nearly every modern piece of demonstrating media, such as movies and other plays, can ultimately draw back on the ideas that were explored in hamlet, and thus use the outline created from Hamlet as a guide to entertain and further explore human ideas and intakes about revenge. In addition, revenge within Hamlet has been extended so far over the course of time that it now has a comical appeal in certain videos, such as this video from a web series called Sassy Gay Friend, When the friend meets Ophelia and talks to her about drowning herself, as if it were a modern time situation.the tragedy of Hamlet to go any further, as if to give a lighter appeal to Hamlet.

Satire Films inc.

Satire is everywhere, whether we like it or not.  Satire can be defined as a humorous commentary and/or critiques of human behavior, flaws, and societies. It can bee seen by nearly any form of the media, from daily programming to newspaper reporters. One unique form of such however, is the film industry, which not only displays satire, but also gives the opportunity in the field alone to become satire targets.

Within my high school career, I have been in two classes that have spent deliberate time on film study. Now, granted most of the time it was focused on the difference between screen shots and the physical outline of the movies, but one week we spent the classes watching famous, or "classic" movies. That is when we had unknowingly begun an independent study of a unique form of satire: movies and parodies.

when it comes to the film industry, there are certain guidelines, techniques, and trademark expressions that are passed between directors, producers, even in the actors; and can still be seen over generations. However, some of these things have become to the point where they are too relevant, and are accepted as standard. some examples are obvious: explosions belong in an action movie around the climax, and the more alone time a character has on screen in a scary movie, the more we  feel for that character, making whatever happens to them seem amplified to the audience.

Then there are the subtle “hand-me-downs" of the film industry, usually coming from directors, where certain scenes or camera angles are taken from one movie and are put into the other under the label of a "method" or an "indirect reference". One of the examples of such occurring is how Alfred Hitchcock's movie "The Birds" is referenced in movies to create or form familiar connections to overall chaos when in a different movie. 

link to source of picture

Finally, there is the example of the bad “hand-me-downs” within the industry: a prime example being not a movie, but a director and Producer, by the name of Michael bay, a leading modern director and producer in Hollywood that has made blockbusters in the industry such as Armageddon, The Island, and the Transformers movie series. Although he is a well known producer and “respected” in Hollywood, he is infamously known for his trademarks that show up in every one of his movies: the over dramatization of special effects (preferably explosions and slow motion) the portrayal of sexism in the portrayal of feminine character, and racism. His “infamy” has been long spread to the corners of the internet,  spawning many different forms of media about him (the most common being in the forms of captioned pictures, cartoons, and internet memes, one example being the picture above) and has spawned many forms of parodies of his work; a notable one being a video from abridged series* maker LittleKuriboh  on Youtube ( also currently known as CardgamesFTW) when he made an April fools video about selling the rights to the abridged series to Michael bay, and exploring the outcome in one video. To sum it all up in a few sentences, it would be much like this:


Picture a television show from the early 2000s era about cartoon kids and the plot revolving around playing card games.  Sounds innocent enough, right? Now picture it with explosions at every word a character says, with the main character being someone like Shia Lebouf, lame attempts such as appealing to stereotypical crowds in order to be “hip” with the younger audience, inexplicable plot points involving aliens, and the only girl character reduced to saying nothing but “jiggle jiggle”, and being in a swimsuit for no reason that is explained. All of that with the soundtrack provided by Linkin Park.



I don’t know about you, but my childhood was not filled with that type of standard being accepted in children’s programming.

The entire video is satire in itself: it makes fun of everything Michael Bay puts into his movies (which is really unorganized chaos when you really think about it- this was pointed out by Doug Walkers** rant about why Bay SHOULD direct an upcoming movie) and at the very end, questions Bays directing methods in an indirect form of acting it out through the use of the characters. Another video clip of satire being used to question Michael Bay’s directing methods was mentioned in an episode of South Park, where Michael Bay is brought in by the government in order to help brainstorm ideas- and all of his involve describing special effects as the entire plot, and in the end, nothing is resolved.

Mark Twain has also brushed upon this particular topic (though not in the same circumstances) in the world of satire in his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (You’re probably wondering how I went from Michael Bay to Mark Twain, but relax, it’ll make sense soon. Hopefully.) There are many scenes and scenarios in the novel in which our protagonists much face that involve questioning the set standards of the society in which they have lived in. This especially applies to Huck when he decides to write a letter in order to cleanse himself of his sins against society, but refuses to deliver it stating that saving a friend is worth all of the fires of hell. This is also portrayed in the characters themselves, the two most noticeable being the Duke and the King. Not only do they portray the (underrated) satire theme of how show business cans lead people astray or into thinking of a certain mindset by having them trick crowds into told for getting what they truly want-money. On a lighter note, they also remind me of Michael Bay himself: they are both so fake (and the audience knows this) that it sometimes hurts to watch them.

Side notes:

* - an abridged series is also another from of satire, taking the entirety of a television show, usually a cartoon series, and pointing out its flaws in a comical way to a point where it is still entertaining to watch as it moves in order of the series.

**- Doug Walker is a well known movie reviewer on the internet, and is famous for his over dramatic reactions to circumstances but if needed takes the time to explain it to the audience further. Unfortunately, the video in which I have found his opinion about Michael Bay has strong language, and this is not welcome in the typical setting of a high school classroom. he may be found at thatguywiththeglasses.com