4 Terrible Parts of Pop Culture (With Weird Bright Sides)

I enjoyed Rogue One, because I like clapping at things I recognize. But I also realized that it was pretty flat. Sure, some of the characters were pretty cool, and there were some funny moments, but it wasn't as good as the first two Star Wars movies. It didn't show me anything I hadn't seen before, it just remixed things I already knew existed.

Disney PicturesHey! That's usually in the snow!

Which has really been a problem with Star Wars since Empire -- every single iconic part of that franchise is in those first two movies. The rest has been riding the wave of that radness.

So that's a bummer, right? Why can't Hollywood just learn to make consistently great movies?

The Bright Side

Because making a good movie -- or anything cool -- is sort of magic. There are several articles on this very site about how weird the conditions that made Star Wars were, or the fact that tons of the most iconic parts of pop culture popped up through sheer luck. And luck is pretty much the only thing money can't buy. So when the studio is obsessively controlling every aspect of how a movie is made -- like what is happening in Star Wars and all the Marvel movies -- then a certain floor of quality is guaranteed. But that control means they're also removing the chance for the strange alchemy of luck and magic that you need to make something really important and cool.

So, basically, nobody knows how to corporatize art. Nobody has captured and bottled that particular part of the human brain. There is still magic in the world, and Disney has no idea how to use it.

I'm not shitting on Apple users. I'm typing this on a Mac right now. But the rest of us do realize there are competing phones, right? That do exactly the same thing and still have headphone jacks? This is literally the point of the free market. And it's why I bought a Samsung Galaxy Note ... OK, bad example, but the point is that when we're talking about a company that tortures its employees almost to death, I think releasing a product that isn't going to already work with your Beats by Dre is probably the least of their crimes.

Seriously, though, there are like so many other phones.

... he was forced to delete it by the ravenous mob of the easily offended.

The Bright Side

Do you really think that Steve Martin, the 70-year-old comedy legend who recorded A Wild And Crazy Guy and starred in Planes, Trains And Automobiles was reduced to tears by some angry Twitter comments? Can you picture him now, curled up on his couch in his Hollywood Hills mansion, sobbing as he scrolls through all the "ur a sexist!" tweets in his mentions?

Why do you think Steve Martin is such a wimpy piece of shit? Have more respect for Steve "Bowfinger" Martin, man. This is Steve "The Three Amigos!" Martin we're talking about. He's been in the comedy writing business for 40 years. He's probably better at brushing off criticism than I am at brushing my teeth, and I rule at brushing my teeth. You're talking to the cleanest set of gums on the West Coast, hands down.

I don't know that Steve Martin has told anyone exactly why he deleted the Carrie Fisher tweet. He probably never will. But I think the far more likely explanation is that he saw some criticism, realized he agreed with it, and deleted the tweet for that reason. Doesn't mean you have to agree with him. Doesn't mean he's oversensitive, or a wuss, or that we're all being controlled by the most easily offended. It just means he deleted a tweet he wrote. So ... you kinda got the chance to see inside the creative process of Steve "Bringing Down The House OK Maybe Not The Best Movie To Reference But Still He's Had A Long Career There Are Bound To Be A Couple Stinkers In There" Martin!

Except I didn't get those criticisms from articles about millennials. I got them from this book:

Published in 1971. About baby boomers. Whoops!

The Bright Side

You probably assumed that every generation complained about the next generation, but what you might not know is that it's the exact same damn complaints. Technology is moving too quickly?

"Television, data-processing, and documentary film techniques bombard [baby boomers] with events happening simultaneously the world around -- but they have no context in which to place these events. They have no perspective."

That's word for word what somebody might say about Twitter. Or how about college kids taking things out of proportion:

"Many universities closed down in the spring of 1970 to register protest over the escalation of the war into Cambodia and express grief over the deaths of the four Kent State students killed in a riot ... suppose universities begin closing down in the name of various causes? Suppose, for instance, as was originally planned for the fall of 1970, universities shut down all over America so that the student body could actively participate in the election process?"

Requests for "safe spaces" don't seem so bad when they're compared to entire campus shutdowns. And then he talks about protesters encountering the police:

"One account highly critical of the police, reported that 'the police used their nightsticks freely' (I would hope so; what were they supposed to use, rubber tomahawks?)."

Keep in mind, this guy isn't particularly conservative or some reactionary. He had a Ph.D. from UCLA and was director of the Montana Historical Society. My point isn't that old people are grumpy, because the truth is Toole had a lot of compliments for boomers that I think equally apply to millennials:

"While the young do not recognize the swift diminution of their opportunities in their own personal lives (one has to live that), they seem to have an almost uncanny understanding of today's deepening acceleration of time. ... My generation, bearing its years and its scars and accomplishments, finds it impossible to believe we are living in a time of 'revolution.'"

Different generations don't, and will never, get each other. And we'll always be disproportionately blaming each other for whatever crap is going on, because a generational difference is, by nature, a shift in power, and shifts in power are tough. (Remember when Trump was elected? What a crazy couple days that was.)

But we've always managed to figure it out in the past. So we'll continue to figure it out. Or we'll blow each other up.

JF Sargent is a senior editor for Cracked and had a big drunken argument with his mom about prisons over Christmas. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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