Comments on: Chuck vs. Fire from Olympus

By: Publius Cato

Publius Cato — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:59:58 +0000

I have to disagree, the entire premise of your article: that knowledge is free and expertise is easy is pure bunk. Your view of both Neo and Chuck are facile and do not take into consideration the deeper sacrifices and costs each of them face. For Neo, to obtain the power to know kung fu from a download he had to learn the forbidden knowledge, that reality is a lie; he had to surender all of his possessions and his identity he had to “die” as Mr. Anderson to be “reborn” as Neo. Moreover, from learning this forbidden knowledge he eventualy dies, its no different from any other savior myth: there is a moment of enlightenment, the receipt of super-human power, death because of enlightenment. For Chuch, his cost is less obvious, his cost is much like Damocles Sword, he has great power, but he also lives in danger of death every moment of his life. To the extent this re-booted Chuck is not really threatened by death, we have to remember the cost his society bears for him to enjoy this power trip. Chuck is protected by the CIA and the CIA is funded by tax dollars (put your tin foil hats away), at a minimum, the taxpayers are giving Chuck a government subsidized power trip. In this plane of reality taxpayers usually get a say on who will have the privilege to go on government subsidized power trip, when they go to vote every November.

By: Dan

Dan — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:20:34 +0000

mmm… cooked meat….

By: JayR.Grey

JayR.Grey — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 04:59:19 +0000

“In an age when information costs nothing and expertise is a click away, any of us can be heroes.”

Unfortunately this is incorrect. Well the information may be freely available, the use of it still requires a great deal of time to master. Just lesser is the cost of the initial acquisition.

Surely the ability to find information on anatomy and surgical procedures via the World Wide Web does not make one equal to a doctor, or even nurse?

Jurassic Park/The Lost World (Books, not –quite– the films) seems to suggest that the consequence of this ease of access of information is the use of this knowledge without any discipline (Standing on the shoulders of giants without a care for whom supports you); A lack of ability to determine its proper use and the effects there of. Whether it is the eating of tourists in a genetically conceived theme park or the rise of a silicon-based species that imprisons all of humanity in a simulation.

Chuck, like kid from The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, is more-so a victim*. Unlike Neil who, with his current hard-earned skill set, sought out Morpheus.

*Though from what you write about the third season, he’s now just super-awesome-cool because he can download mad skillz and totally own the baddies. Just, with his foundation as a quirky, intelligent, every-nerd this is more endearing and acceptable. Yes, Chuck has become Jackie Chan in The Tuxedo, just more . . . tolerable.

Somehow I think I’ve lost the point I was filing, leaving a rather oblong and obtuse stub.

By: Megan from Lombard

Megan from Lombard — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:30:02 +0000

well actually…Chuck got expelled from Stanford for “cheating” on an exam (we later learn that Brice made the teacher, who was a CIA recruiter, fabricate the charge because he didn’t want Chuck to get sucked into the spy-world). I find the whole situation rather ironic because Brice ended up bringing Chuck into the whole game, but that’s another article on the whole fate v. free will debate.

I agree with your article, the world is over-saturated with information that some of the more important things get lost in the cracks. Couldn’t that be seen as a consequence of having all that information at our finger-tips?

By: mcneil

mcneil — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:16:47 +0000

@stokes: that’s an interesting point. You say that when everyone has a smartphone and has access to instant information, Chuck’s superpowers cease to be interesting. Your point about the democratic power-sharing Adam, Eve and Prometheus seems to undermine that argument. When their stories were first told, everyone had access to fire and had at least a basic grasp of good and evil. We still do and yet we’re still reading these stories because they celebrate that universal knowledge. We stare into the fire and can still imagine that once upon a time, this magical creature belonged only to the gods.

Similarly, even when we all have access to Chuck-like smart phones, we will still want to celebrate that magic and see it used in ways that are somewhat more exciting than just impressing people at the dinner table.

BTW: I meant to include this in the article, but here’s what the next generation of this technology is going to look like: http://blog.ted.com/2009/03/sixth_sense_demo.php

@Rosa: I hear you, but feel like they’ve managed to give Chuck a little more agency without making him invulnerable. Maybe I’m oversympathizing with the character, but I’m psyched to see him grow up and glad that he’s subject to less humiliation.

By: Rosa

Rosa — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 02:00:06 +0000

I’m actually not a fan of Intersect 2.0 Chuck. I think a huge part of his appeal was his bumbling nature – his adorkableness. He needed rescuing nearly every episode, and when he did get to play hero, it was usually by accident or through some venue accessible to normal folks (like internet porn virus). Souped up Chuck has lost some of his charm.

By: Valatan

Valatan — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:58:31 +0000

@stokes:

Actually, Edward Teller totally led a horrible witchhunting blackball quest against Oppenheimer that led to him even getting his basic security clearance revoked. This despite the fact that Oppenheimer had long been out of the military weapons game by this point, and that this whole thing was simply retribution for Oppenheimer going pacifist.

By: stokes

stokes — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:14:44 +0000

This was a hell of a lot of fun to read, and I basically agree with you, but I want to take it in another direction just for the sake of argument.

So, one of the important things about Prometheus is that he’s democratic, right? It’s not just that he took fire from the gods, it’s that he went and gave it to everyone. Same deal with Adam and Eve. It’s not as explicit, but I’m pretty sure it’s implied that we all get a little slice of that knowledge-of-good-and-evil jazz along with our dose of original sin. Chuck, on the other hand, is the only guy with an intersect. And that means… something? Maybe?

I’m reminded of that scene at the very end of Shaolin Soccer where literally EVERYONE knows wire-fu, and they’re using it to do stuff like parallel park more efficiently. It’s the most ridiculous scene in the movie, and that’s saying something because there’s an earlier scene where a guy gets hit so hard with a soccer ball that all of his clothes fly off. If one person, or a handful of people, have a spark of divine fire, we’re pretty much okay with it. They’re superheroes, we can deal with superheroes. But if you share it with the rest of the world, you get your liver torn out. If Chuck started blabbing state secrets to everyone he met, I bet the government would have Jayne from Firefly put two in the back of his head. (See also the relative reputations of Robert Oppenheimer and Abdul Qadeer Khan.)

This might also explain part of the charm of the smartphone. They’re more and more common, but they’re still not ubiquitous. So as long as you have one and your date doesn’t, you get to be a superhero. I like Chuck a lot, but the day that someone makes a smartphone so cheap that homeless people are using it to download an app called “Panhandlr 2.0″ is the day that show gets cancelled.