Subject:
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Re: Arkham Asylum - A cool set, but a bit disturbing.
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 7 Jun 2007 19:29:02 GMT
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Viewed:
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7302 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
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Although it’s unlikely that LEGO intended the set as a commentary on Abu
Ghraib,
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You think?
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Well, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
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All you do is give, Dave!
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their choice to foreground an institutionalized torture chamber
speaks of a curious lack of sensitivity on the subject. Given TLG’s
long-standing policy of non-violent toys (a policy quickly abandoned when
it threatened their profits, of course), you’d think that they’d be more
conscious of how their portrayals of violence are likely to be interpreted.
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I think that there is a definite line WRT to reality and fantasy. The
holocaust sets were offensive because they portrayed reality; these
Spiderman sets deal in the realm of fantasy and make-believe, and so they
shouldn’t be judged by the same metric IMO.
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Hey, you poser--we’re talking about Batman sets here. Keep your escapist
fantasy characters sorted out, will you? Of course, if you’re looking to
talk about the current Spider-man license, I happily invite you to visit
The Bloks Forum where we can discuss this
and other Mega Bloks topics at greater length!
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Oops! Mea culpa, but a rather funny blooper there, nonetheless:-) I’ll bet you
are only too happy to invite me into your little den of iniquity, Dave! :-)
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Anyway, you’re correct that fantasy and reality are very different, but it’s
still entirely appropriate to comment on the implications of one in the
context of the other, especially when fantasy resonates strongly with a
portion of reality that carries a strong emotional context.
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I agree, and I think that fantasy provides a perfect outlet to express strong
emotional content that would be inhibited by a direct nexus to reality. That
way, the essence of the struggle between good and evil can be distilled and
investigated, without all of the political blah blah hindering it.
Further, I fully acknowledge that writers in the past have taken cover in
fantasy by creating strong narratives that are pointedly derivative of reality
as a form of social commentary, but I really don’t see this to be the case here.
Just your average bad guy doing his thing, with the above-average good guy
trying to stop him.
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If LEGO had released a US military base and there were a torture chamber
in it, I’d think there was a big problem.
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Yes, because of the breach of the reality/fantasy line.
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What if it were a fictional US Military set in, say, the year 2050?
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Nope, because the US is a reality. It would have to be something along the
lines of NWO thinking, or something to that effect.
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Why include the torture chamber at all? They didn’t include the reception
desk, the bathroom, or the parking lot, after all. Their choice to include
the chamber makes it fair game for discussion.
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Because the overarching theme of these works is the struggle of good verses
evil, Dave! Providing children a means to vanquish evil and see good
prevail in their play is a valuable component in creative play IMO.
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Fair enough, but which side is being portrayed as good and which side as
evil? The strapped-down supervillain or his torturers?
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Well, I’m not too familiar with the story line here, so I can’t really say. If
a bad guy is torturing a bad guy, well, while I can’t condone that type of
behavior, I can’t really sympathize with the victim, either. For the good/evil
struggle thing to work, it is the innocent who must suffer. When the evil
suffer, it is plain ol’ comeuppance:-)
JOHN
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