Crikey!

I know I am a bit late with this post as he has been dead for about a week - but I have been busy getting myself in trouble in some of the online forums I frequent over the human formally known as Steve Irwin, a.k.a The Crocodile Hunter.

It started on my hometown list, the jclist (Jersey City), when I posted that Steve Irwin was in a way just proving Darwin right after all these years and that the "survival of the fittest" applies greatly in this case. My basic argument about this guy - and let me point out before I start, that I in no way wanted him dead - was that, in a way he was like a gazelle that decided it was going to taunt lions for a living. He had to come to grief eventually.

I then got in trouble for asking wether people wanted to see the footage of his death (I don't). because in my opinion the kind of people who watched the show secretly wanted to see him getting bitten or injured, in the same way that some people watch motor racing just to see if anyone crashes.

Christ! The amount of abuse I got for that comment was unbelieveable! Apparently there is no-one out there that rubbernecks! If that's the case why does the highway slow down on the opposite side from an accident?

So I stand corrected! Everyone watched The Crocodile Hunter for the educational value alone. This would explain why it was so popular not like those boring old David Attenborough documentaries!!! In case you can't tell... I'm being sarcastic here.

To me, and I did sometimes watch the show but mainly to see if he was going to do something stupid and get bitten, the Crocodile Hunter was educational but dumbed down educational. He could tell you all sorts of facts and figures but all you will remember is how close the animal came to biting his balls off. Shame really.....

On the subject of dumbed down, I've also been following the story of Mike Judge's new film Idiocracy, here is a clip from the NY Times about it:

From NY Times:

Shying Away From Degeneracy
By DAN MITCHELL
Published: September 9, 2006

THE new film “Idiocracy” sounds like a sure winner. It was directed by Mike Judge, creator of the animated TV series “Beavis and Butt-head” and “King of the Hill,” and director of the sleeper movie hit “Office Space.” It stars Luke Wilson. It has received good reviews from the few critics who, despite the efforts of 20th Century Fox, have been able to see it.

So why did Fox, after sitting on the movie for two years before releasing it Sept. 1, decide not to market the film, opting instead to open it quietly in only 130 theaters and then quickly send it to video? Judging by the online reaction, there are at least two possible reasons.

The first is that the film is simply too stark a critique of American culture, or even that it is a cautionary tale about low-intelligence dysgenics (essentially, overbreeding among the stupid). The movie depicts a future in which everyone has become so dense and culturally lowbrow that Mr. Wilson’s character — an average guy from the present day who travels by accident hundreds of years forward in time — is a relative genius. Why, asks David Weigel on Reason magazine’s Hit and Run blog (reason.com), do “movies that exploit dumbed-down American culture get wide releases while a comedy making light of that, by the creator of ‘Beavis and Butt-head,’ is getting canned?”

He points to another blogger, Ilkka Kokkarinen, who writes that the implications of the movie’s theme — flatulence jokes aside — “are so immensely serious that it is simply unimaginable that any studio boss would take the slightest chance of becoming the next Mel Gibson over the idea that society of stupid people is worse than a society of smart people." (sixteenvolts.blogspot.com) Populists — defenders of the little guy — would not stand for it, Mr. Kokkarinen says.

Others theorize that Fox disowned the film because it makes fun not only of Fox News — the studio’s sister division — but also of Starbucks, Fuddruckers and other companies that may advertise with one or more media outlets of Fox’s owner, the News Corporation.

The blog FishBowlLA quotes Luke Thompson, a movie reviewer for E! Online, as saying, “some of the sponsors may well have been unhappy with the way their products are placed, and made some phone calls to higher-ups” (mediabistro.com).

A Fox spokeswoman told The Austin American-Statesman that the studio’s handling of the movie was “an executive decision from the chairman,” and would not elaborate.