Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel and David Schechner to discuss the brain/brawn continuum, the culture of fat empowerment, the morality of science, and their advice for Conan O’Brien.
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Intelligent v. Smart: I’ve met myriad people with genius-level IQs or that can ace a hardcore math or physics exam without breaking a sweat, yet they couldn’t cook a grilled cheese without turning it black or boil ramen noodles without turning them into mush. It happens. All the time. The ones I have met are also almost always socially awkward and have trouble distinguishing and following social norms and proprieties.
Nononono, to be a real Renaissance Man, you need to be capable of teaching Shakespeare to a small group of misfit Army recruits.
I used to work for TJ-Maxx… Oh man, oh man…
Morality and food: Did you see the NYT article about the government and cheese?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/us/07fat.html?_r=1&src=ISMR_AP_LI_MST_FB
Stock Characters: To piggyback, not all stock characters are demonstrating “bad” characteristics.
I can’t help but wonder if part of the whole Fat Empowerment movement comes from the history of eating disorders. I could be wrong, but I think mental disorders like anorexia and bulimia have been recognized as clinically diagnosable for much longer than overeating and food addiction. Only recently have the connections between depression and, say, overeating been acknowledged by psychologists. I think that’s why a lot of these Fat Empowerment shows have a lot of psychology involved, not just diet and exercise regimes- there is talk of loving oneself and what-have-you in shows like The Biggest Loser that sounds much like the stuff you hear from people in charge of clinics for anorexics. I don’t really have a thesis, here, but I do think there must be some sort of connection.
I can’t believe we forgot to mention that Danny De Vito classic, which, aside from a stirring “St Crispin’s Day” speech in the rain while the recruits are doing push-ups, features one of the best “rap a Shakespeare play” sequences in modern cinema.
The Leader/Hulk as Jock vs Nerd, shouldn’t we consider that Bruce Banner is a scientific and is more focused on staying Bruce Banner than being the Hulk?
@redem
Maybe Bruce Banner wants to be Bruce Banner and not the Hulk to an extent, but I’ve never bought that as a reasonable message of a Hulk property. Rare indeed is the Hulk comic or TV show that is itself unsympathetic to the Hulk. People identify with the Hulk and want to be the Hulk, however destructive or otherwise problematic it might be.
The Hulk is a fantasy. Bruce Banner is a random burdle.
I’ve also never bought the idea that the Hulk is itself a wound that must be healed, even when properties have come out and said it. The Hulk is a response to trauma, not the trauma itself. The Hulk is a good guy. The necessity of his existence is unfortunate, but that is a problem with the world, not with Bruce Banner.
I’m surprised that Dr. Horrible didn’t come up with the strong & good versus smart & evil stuff. Though, it looks like Megamind is going to cover similar territory, I don’t know. In any case, that’s a different take on the issue where the smart & evil is a lot more sympathetic than the strong & good.
@SoCalEm
The only reason I didn’t bring up Dr. Horrible is I haven’t seen it yet.
I’m not the world’s biggest Whedon fan, but it isn’t because of active dislike. I got tired of Buffy after a while, though I held on a bit longer with Angel. I only recently got around to watching Firefly, which was pretty great. Serenity the movie is next. Dr. Horrible is a little farther down the list.
I’m also not a big Whedon fan (if most of his work is like Dollhouse, I’ll pass), but I have seen Dr. Horrible for I do love my musicals. I think the interesting thing about Dr. Horrible is that it explored the motivations and behavior of Hammer and Dr. Horrible outside of the actions that defined their hero/villain plot. That’s a good deal of what makes them sympathetic or not.
Yes, he’s the villain but he believes he’s doing the right thing and he discusses things like doing away with the evil in the world to rebuild again (though like many such reformers he believes he should be at the head and decide what is best), and shaking up the status quo and forcing people to see what is going on, and combatting hypocrisy. Outside of doing evil he’s a relatively nice guy.
Yes, Nathan Fillion is the hero but he doesn’t act out of a sense of justice or a desire to help people or change things for the better. He enjoys the acclaim and the attention. Outside of thwarting NPH he’s a bully. He’s vain, self-absorbed, etc.
I think Megamind will be more about the villain doing “good” than making you sympathize with why the villain is doing “evil”.
To piggyback, that difference and shift in what we’d expect, so to speak, from the “hero” and the “villain” puts Dr. Horrible in a category I’d ALMOST call deconstruction, but I can’t bring myself to submit the terminology completely. Perhaps (mostly) because I feel like “deconstruction” gets tossed about willy-nilly nowadays, and am thus curmudgeoningly hesitant to use it. But Dr. Horrible certainly turns a lot of expectations and tropes in the superhero genre on their heads, if nothing else.
Poor Dollhouse.
Yeah, I have a complicated relationship with Whedon, but the man can write a good musical.
What we start off with in Dr. Horrible is a character doing good things for bad reasons, and a character doing bad things for good reasons. Does Dr. Horrible’s intelligence make him the moral example of the two? Or is it that the outward behavior can change the inner identity (as Horrible becomes more evil and Hammer more good). If I recall my ethics class correctly, morality is all a kind of selfishness, anyway, and Aristotle would have no problem with Captain Hammer.
First of all, this episode was hilarious. More Schechner!
Hulk/Leader: I will freely admit I know nothing about what you are discussing. However, given the information you provided I have three readings of how to explain selling this concept to an audience who will probably identity more with the villain than the hero. 1) self-hatred 2) sense of purpose 3) A specifically Hulk-centered reading. The Hulk is also Bruce Banner. The dichotomy being set up seems to be Nerd vs. Nerd. One nerd has chosen the path of villainy and is content to rely only on his intelligence. The other nerd has chosen to be the hero of sorts and use both brawn and brains (from my understanding he exists in both states as Hulk and Bruce). One could argue that the Hulk represents self-improvement and well-roundedness and avoiding taking the easy path and falling into villainy because you will inevitably lose.
Part of the problem with coming up with a specific definition or identity of the Hulk is he has undergone many transformations (ba dum tish) over the years, depending on the writer. So besides brainy Bruce Banner turning into green, mostly mindless Hulk when he gets mad, there is also Banner’s mind in Hulk’s body, World War Hulk where he was pretty much Hulk all the time with his own distinct personality, a mob enforcer named Mr Fixit who was grey and turned into the Hulk at night and Banner during the day, etc.
Banner is often shown to be remorseful over the carnage he causes as the Hulk, but in the comics he didn’t seem to have a problem developing a Gamma Bomb for the military (it was only in the TV show and movies where he was doing medical research). However, the comics really made a point of showing that no one ever died from a Hulk rampage. Banner/Hulk was almost a message of don’t pick on the nerds because you never know what seething mountain of rage lurks inside. A message that probably became less comical after Columbine.
Hulk vs Leader still shows the classic comic hero vs villain difference. The Leader uses his ‘gifts’ to prove his superiority and to take over the world, feeling others are insignificant compared to his brilliance. Banner, despite his curse, will still help others even to his own detriment. He would destroy a cure rather than have it be used by others as a weapon, for example.
I would like to point out that Craig Ferguson, while he does for whatever reason have cards with information about the guest on them, always makes a show of ripping up said cards and throwing them away when the interview begins. Unless it is all a clever ruse, and unless Ferguson is being dishonest with the viewer, he doesn’t do any “feeding” of the guest, and instead just has a conversation with them. Although, he also has a tendency to turn his conversations into absurdist pieces, with intentional periods of awkward silence, having his guests play the harmonica, and a recent feature in which he presses a doorbell, music starts to play, and two people in a horse costume come out and sort of dance along with Ferguson and the desk. This is why Ferguson is the king of late night in my mind, though I do enjoy Conan as well.
You know, I heard an interview with Craig Ferguson, and it made me want to check out his show. I feel like it’s blasphemy to say it here, but there’s only so many TV-watching hours in the day.
Every episode of his show is put up on the YouTubes in nicely segmented fashion so you can pick and choose what you want to watch. Here is but a taste for your perusal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk9v2-g8Cuw&feature=related
I also watched that interview on Kevin Pollak’s show, which in turn got me watching Pollak’s show when I have the time. Alas, as you said, there are only so many hours in the day to watch things on TV/the Internets. Then, when you throw podcasts in…
RSA member on OTI? what a small world
i’m an avid ferguson’s fan but i feel that despite the obligatory ripping of prepared questions some of the interviews are still scripted
Thank you!!!
For years,I’ve been trying to identify that cartoon I once saw where the guy turns into a car when he poured hot soup on himself. Turbo Teen!!
For the uninitiated:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UevBVGMap4
When Mr. Fenzel said en masse whilst talking about obesity, it sounded to my British ears ‘and moss’, implying that non-rolling stones do gather moss. Inadvertently hilarious, along with the usual intentional hilarity. When was the last time Shechner was on, like less than 20?
Yeah, it’s been a while since Shechner’s been on the podcast — a lot has changed in his life since then. For example, in this podcast he mentions his wife (who is awesome) — it’s quite possible he wasn’t married yet when he was last on the podcast. I think there may have been one other one in the past year or so that he appeared on though, but I’m not sure.
Hopefully we can convince him to join us more often :-)
For the next big anniversary, you should try and get everybody on… I’m sure that wouldn’t be that impossible. Just quite impossible.
I think we would crash Skype. I mean, the whole network.
Their shield can’t repel overthinking of that magnitude. And when I say everyone, I did mean site staff and regular podcasters. If Callot goes on the podcast, I win the OTI bingo.
This must be the tenth time in the last few months where you guys share your feelings about being nerdy kids and ultimately convince yourselves that it was okay to be picked on because you did better in the end. Cry me a river!
Fenzel already knows this, but by posting this comment I must be letting you know that you guys were doing something right.
Don’t have much to add other than to say you are correct.
On both counts :-)
I don’t see the Hulk/Leader dichotomy as being the Jock/Geek dichotomy. I see the two characters representing two responses to geek alienation, angst versus contempt. The Hulk is about the fantasy that your suppressed rage could explode into righteous fury, but you live as an outcast to keep people safe. The Leader is about the fantasy that your intellect could let you exact revenge by controlling your alleged inferiors. On the whole, the Hulk, as a romantic outsider and wanderer, is a somewhat healthier response than the Leader, as a selfish and manipulator.
I also like the idea that the stereotypical geek is even less accurate than it used to be. That’s why, though I generally like Big Bang Theory, it’s portrayal of geeks as socially and physically maladroit is actually behind the curve. It’s a view of geekdom that hasn’t really changed since Revenge of the Nerds in the 1980s, and it needs to be changed.
While I agree with the idea that we should create new archetypes, that’s much easier said than done. That’s deep, deep stuff, sustained by the cumulative momentum of untold other stories and images.
I am glad you mentioned this because it has been bothering me for some time now. I just finished reading The Elfish Gene by Mark Barrowcliffe which recounts his experience being a gamer in England in the late 1970’s. He really goes after gamers and seems to imply that D&D turns otherwise normal teenagers into completely anti-social losers, and if they didn’t or stopped playing D&D they would suddenly turn cool and be drowning in girls (in the book he flat out states all gamers are male).
In addition I have been reading webcomics where, even tho the main characters are all gamers, they still make fun of the socially maladjusted, inept nerd stereotype. Something Positive does this particularly often. It’s like the main characters are the “cool” nerds: they drink, they have sex, they dye their hair, they are basically hipster nerds and feel completely comfortable insulting and berating the people that THEY consider nerds.
This bothers me A) because it creates a new jock/cheerleader VS nerd dichotomy within the fandom community itself, and B) while sometimes accurate, the nerd stereotype is not accurate 24/7. There are times when I geek out and will discuss comics or Star Trek and if you met me on that day for just 10 minutes you might lump me into that stereotype. If you met me for 10 minutes another day you might lump me into another stereotype. No one is any one particular personality type 100% of the time.
There really is no one archetype that could possibly fit all of geekdom, when you consider that it ranges from almost 40 year old punks into Star Trek like me to 14 year old Otaku in cat ears.
Here’s a question, do you think with the success of comic book movies, The Lord of The Rings, et al. that having geeky interests is more socially acceptable overall?
You didn’t ask me, per say, but to answer your question, yes. To an extent, though. Saying you enjoy Tolkein and Harry Potter is cool and all, but if someone came into your room and saw your complete set of action figures or the posters on your wall and the complete sets of books (in both hard- AND paper-back), they may become apprehensive, at best. The socially acceptable is the mainstream interpretation and presentation of nerdery, the fluffy, watered down, pop interpretation- not the hardcore version. I don’t want to call the latter insincere, because I do think it can come from a genuine enjoyment and appreciation for the subject matter, but it is at least a little different- I’d almost say superficial- because it only goes so far. I think your term “hipster nerds” is great for it- hipster nerdery is sort of bandwagon fandom. Now, I do think a deeper appreciation for nerdery can develop from an initial hipster fascination, but with that shift comes the social stigma of true nerdery.
The Mark Lee is Dead!
Long live the Mark Lee!
Oh yeah, dude, Mark, feel better.
Only one phrase will suffice in this moment:
“I’ll be back.”
Well, in a couple of weeks, to be specific. I’m missing the next episode but will be back for Episode 125, in which Fenzel and I enact our fighting in the form of a dramatic reading of a Dragonball Z fight.
Who’s gonna play Bulma?
We’ve determined that it is officially impossible to make a female character who isn’t offensive and anti-feminist.
So, we replaced Bulma with a sass-talking robot.
Oh, I didn’t realize you were aiming at non-offensive. Shucks. I was *this* close to getting a blue wig, too.
Awesome “female” robot outside the DB Universe: Thelma, from Space Cases
Having just seen MegaMind I can say that Fenzel was right; there is the whole ‘good can not exsist without bad’ (or vice versa) idea and that when that power is disrupted the balance must be restored otherwise chaos reigns.
Having said that, the entire movie is an entire ripoff the Superman comic/movies.
But the movie was still amusing in that I had fun picking out all of the Superman refrences.