#I know the audience for this show skews younger but like. I promise you that many thirty year olds date old dudes without problems | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

daresplaining · 7 years

Text

Yes! We would love that too, and we apologize ahead of time for taking this as an opportunity to talk about something we’ve been holding in for far too long-- our issues with the show’s handling of Matt’s origin story. This post has been sitting on the back burner since we started this blog, and we’ve been avoiding it because 1. We like to skew positive here. If we don’t like something, we tend to not talk about it; and 2. We’ve been way too busy blogging about other stuff. But we might as well just get this out there, if only for our own health.

Origins are tricky things to adapt, since it’s easy to get bogged down in them and forfeit the opportunity to tell a new story. The Netflix shows have stuck with a formula of relegating origin details to flashbacks, thus getting them out of the way and leaving maximum time for new narratives. This approach makes a lot of sense for movies, which have limited time to begin with (We are, for instance, fine with not witnessing Uncle Ben’s death yet again in Spider-Man: Homecoming). But while this is the third live action DD adaptation, Daredevil is still a C- to B-list superhero, who is not that well known among mainstream audiences and whose origin story is worth repeating. Besides, we’re not talking about a movie, here. The Netflix shows have thirteen hours to play with.

The main issue we take with the Netflix adaptation is the shortening of the timeline-- which both alters and eliminates key elements of Matt’s origin story in ways that, we feel, end up removing a lot of its power. And that’s key. Yes, we’re kind of complaining because we’re big nerds with big nerdy dreams for our comics adaptations, but we’re also complaining because the Netflix origin actively weakens the story as a whole. There are ways to cut Matt’s backstory down into its basic components without diminishing its effect, and this isn't it.

We will say upfront that we like Matt being blinded at nine. We’ve always felt his official comics age at the time of the accident-- fifteen-- was too old, so that’s an element of the Netflix Daredevil Timeline Squish(TM) that we appreciate. However, we completely disagree with the decision to kill Jack so early. This happened in the movie as well, and we’re not sure why it’s a trend, beyond possibly the easy shock factor of orphaning Matt at such a young age. But knocking Jack off this quickly limits the amount of time available to spend on developing Matt’s massively important relationship with his father. The fact that Jack was always there-- through Matt’s blinding, through hardship after hardship, into Matt’s college years-- is part of what makes him such a compelling character in the comics. By making his death a fact of Matt’s childhood, he feels less important-- just another long-dead parent in a world full of fictional characters with dead parents. His murder isn’t even relevant to Matt’s decision to become Daredevil.

There’s also the fact that Jack is, arguably, the reason that Matt gets into Columbia in the comics. He’s the one who pushes him to study hard, and to strive for a successful career and a better life.

Jack: “No, Matt, your homework comes first. I promised your momma before she... before she died... that I wouldn’t let you grow up to be an uneducated pug like me. Now you have to promise me something, son. Promise me you’ll study every chance you get, that you’ll become a doctor or a lawyer... somebody important! Promise me you’ll be somebody I never could...”

Matt: “I promise, pop! You’ll be proud of me! You’ll see...”

Daredevil vol. 1 #164 by Roger McKenzie, Frank Miller, and Glynis Wein

Yes, Matt’s a smart kid in his own right, but Jack’s support keeps him grounded and focused amid very difficult circumstances. In the Netflix show, with Matt left parentless and stuck in an orphanage before middle school, he is deprived of that support. We don’t get a lot of details about his life at the orphanage, and we know that Maggie keeps an eye on him in a vague, sneaky kind of way... but we do get this memorable shot of poor Matt writhing in pain, all alone in his sparsely-furnished room (complete with unnecessary desk lamp):

This does not seem like an environment that would empower a young blind kid with a tendency toward distraction to get into one of the most competitive schools in the country. College, certainly. But Columbia? Doubtful. If Jack had died later-- maybe while Matt was in high school, like in Miller’s Man Without Fear origin variation, he might at least have found the drive to succeed for the sake of honoring his father’s hopes for him. But that kind of thing can only last so long, and we can’t imagine little Matt managing to stick with that promise, all on his own, for ten years.

The one theory we have about the logic of isolating Matt at this age is that it smooths out Stick’s introduction. We’re very attached to Matt sneaking out at night and training behind Jack’s back for years and years, but removing Jack as an obstacle and giving Stick free access to Matt makes the whole situation a little more believable and less complicated. However, even this opportunity is wasted by the fact that Stick doesn’t stick around-- and since no effort is made to age young Matt in the show, we have no idea how long his training actually lasts. When they meet again in the present, in Season 1 episode 7, Matt says that Stick has been gone for twenty years. Matt in the present is in his early thirties, and we know that he can’t have been younger than ten when he first encountered Stick. This means they only trained together for maybe three or four years at the absolute most-- which is certainly not enough time for him to become as skilled as he currently is. If they kept Matt extra young for the sake of allowing him more time to train with Stick, then why didn’t they... allow him more time to train with Stick?

Orphaning Matt early also deprives us of a relationship that we’ve always enjoyed, and which dmcreif has been good enough to bring up: Jack’s relationship with Foggy.

Foggy: “Jeez, Creel’s a pretty tough customer, Jack. You think you can take him?”

Jack: “It’s like I’ve been tellin’ Matt all his life. You can do anything as long as you’re not afraid.”

Daredevil: Yellow #1 by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale

Foggy and Jack never will meet in the MCU, which is something we find very sad but which, arguably, isn’t a major detriment to the narrative. However, this also means that Foggy isn’t at Jack’s final fight-- which we do think is a big deal.

Foggy: “Hey, Matt! Wait up! I wanna read you the sports headline! It’s about your dad! He’s fighting Dynamite Davis tomorrow night in New York! How about that? Wanna go??”

Matt: “I’ve already got the tickets, Foggy... one for each of us!”

Daredevil vol. 1 #1 by Stan Lee, Bill Everett, and Sam Rosen

While it doesn’t come up as much as it probably should, the experience of going through this pivotal point of Matt’s origin story together is undeniably a major bonding moment for Matt and Foggy. The one problem with their relationship in the show is that they're nearly always fighting-- thus eclipsing the fact that they are, in fact, best friends. They are in desperate need of more bonding moments, to solidify the basis of their relationship-- and while the flashbacks we do have are wonderful, having this extra vital experience thrown into the mix would have really helped. To address your comment, @dmcreif -- while it’s possible, given that MCU Foggy grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, that he just happened to be at the fight, 1. We don’t think it’s likely, because that seems like something that would have come up in his early interactions with Matt in Season 1; and 2. Even if he was, there’s no way he was there with Matt, which makes all of the difference for us. “Hey, I saw that fight! That was pretty cool” just isn’t the same.

Not only that... but Matt isn’t at the fight either! He misses out on a key part of his own origin story! This would be like a Batman adaptation where young Bruce stayed home with Alfred while his parents went to the movies. He has to be there!

Guy: “This is it, Murdock. Just give him an opening and fall down like you should. Think about that boy of yours.”

Jack: “That’s just what I’m thinking about, you bum. I’m thinking my boy is out there-- in the audience-- and I’m thinking about how I told him one thing worth a damn. I told him to never give up. Never. It’s time I showed him his dad may be a loser-- but he’s no quitter.”

Daredevil: The Man Without Fear #1 by Frank Miller, John Romita, Jr., and Christie Scheele

And yes, they did manage to fit the most basic component of this scene-- Jack’s Matt-inspired decision to defy the Fixer and win the fight-- into the show. We really like Matt overhearing the conversation at the gym, and the idea of him confronting his father about it directly is actually a neat variation.

But this is still underwhelming and weak when compared to the actual scene from the comics. The only reason we can think of for Matt not being at the fight is that, in this universe, he's too young-- yet another reason the timeline squish was a poorly conceived idea.

So Foggy doesn’t get to attend the fight, Matt doesn’t get to attend the fight... and even the viewer doesn’t get to attend the fight. They skip Jack’s big moment entirely. Why? Budget? Time? We were sad about not seeing Danny’s big origin fight in Iron Fist, but we're also perfectly willing to allow for budgeting excuses for situations that involve dragons. Obviously, that doesn't apply here. Jack’s victory is such an emotionally-charged and vital part of Matt’s origin that we can’t imagine why the creative team would decide to completely skip over it.

Our last complaint could technically be its own post, but consolidating seems like a good idea for this sort of thing. It doesn’t involve the condensed timeline, but rather, it has to do with another key element of Matt’s origin: bullying. This is a big Daredevil theme, and beyond young Matt’s reference to Murdocks getting hit a lot-- which could be construed as a hint that he’s being abused by his peers-- it’s never addressed in the show.

Punk: “Come on, Murdock! Try it! What’re you afraid of?

Matt: “I can’t. I gotta read!”

Nate: “He’s gotta read! Man. That’s the Murdock spirit! Don’t hurt yerself turnin’ all them heavy pages, Daredevil! [...] Awww... you gonna cry? Huh? Daredevil gonna cry? Hey, Daredevil! I dare ya to turn around!”

Daredevil vol. 3 #28 by Mark Waid and Javier Rodriguez

That said, we don’t see much of pre-accident Matt in the show, and it makes sense for much of the bullying to stop after he was blinded. (They tried to make that work in the movie, and it... really didn’t, in our opinion.) And while this early abuse is a major factor in Matt’s childhood for all sorts of reasons, and ties into his relationship with his father and with his academics, his secret-keeping and identity issues, the inherent feelings of powerlessness that his superhero career helps to combat, etc. etc... and is a weird, major omission, we don’t feel it weakens the narrative as much as the stuff we griped about earlier in the post does. Our main complaint is that it messes with Matt’s superhero identity-- his name, in particular.

In the final episode of Season 1, Brett sets up the best opportunity for a dramatic code name reveal that a new superhero could ask for, and we were really hoping Matt would take that opportunity and come up with the name “Daredevil” on his own. As it stands, the moment is difficult to parse, since it cuts away so quickly, but all evidence suggests that Matt leaves without answering Brett’s question. There’s no set up for Matt coming up with his own code name, and we are left with yet another boring situation where the press gets to make one up. This happens all the time in “serious” live action superhero adaptations: the hero is handed a label that they consider to be a little silly, and then they get a “well okay, haha, I guess that works” moment, and that’s that. We’re annoyed they went with this in Daredevil, because 1. Excuse you, Daredevil is an awesome code name. (*Cough* And that is a completely unbiased opinion); 2. The “Man in Black” -> “Devil of Hell’s Kitchen” -> Daredevil progression they tried to go for in the show feels forced at best. (And if he's still being called “the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen” on a regular basis in Season 3, we’re going to start throwing tomatoes at the screen. Honestly. Stop that.); and 3. Matt picking his own name is a major act of self-empowerment.

Matt: “The neighborhood kids called me Daredevil... but they meant it as an insult! I’ll make that nickname truer than they ever suspected-- and I’ll start in the morning!”

Daredevil vol. 1 #53 by Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, and Gene Colan

Power is a big Daredevil theme. Matt’s decision to step up and take on the Daredevil identity is wrapped up in all kinds of motivations, but a big part of it involves breaking a pattern of powerlessness that he has labored under for most of his life. Because of his father’s strict rules against violence, Matt spent his childhood unable to defend himself against the emotional and physical torment heaped on him by his peers. After his accident, he is forced to endure being seen as a “poor, helpless blind guy” by society, a symbolic theft of power that he cannot stand. But when Jack is murdered by people who are-- when you get right down to it-- glorified bullies, Matt decides to break the promise he made to his father, and to finally fight back. This is all symbolized by his decision to take the name “Daredevil”-- which was used ironically by his tormenters as a disparaging nickname-- and to reclaim it as a symbol of this new, empowered identity he has created for himself. Taking this decision away from him feels wrong. His ownership of his superhero name means something, dammit.

*Sigh*

In any case, it goes without saying that we like a lot of the decisions that were made on the show, and are very excited to see what’s in store for MCU Matt and Co. in future seasons. But we still reserve the right to critique and complain. We do it because we care.

#Daredevil #Netflix Daredevil #Matt Murdock #Jack Murdock #Commentary #dmcreif #We're so sorry for hijacking your comment like this...

67 notes · View notes

100foreverfiles · 7 years

Text

I’m going to rant about The 100.

* I did not watch this week’s ep.

This show is completely losing it, and it’s disappointing because it had so much promise. This show is airing on the CW network, but squandered the chance to be a crossover success (similar to Jane the Virgin) by reaching a wider audience than teen viewers.

It began with an interesting - and unfortunately, now timely and relevant (thanks Trump!) - premise: the world was destroyed by nuclear explosions. The last remains of humanity were hovering in space waiting for Earth to be habitable.

Clever! Intriguing!

The show had a cast that included several Battlestar Galactica alums thanks to shooting in Vancouver:

Gaeta (Alessandro Juliani) who played Sinclair. Ellen Tigh (Kate Vernon) who played Diana Sydney. Tory Foster (Rekha Sharma) who played Dr. Lorelei Tsing. Aaron Kelly (Ty Olsson) who played Nyko.

…to name a few.

These familiar faces immediately attracted an older demographic, who had been in search of the next great space/dystopian drama. From Reddit to TV reviewers, people were calling it the “next Battlestar.”

The show also had a handful of professional actors in the leads to help support a cast of younger unknowns and newcomers including longtime actors:

Isaiah Washington (you might recognize him from Grey’s and lots of movies)

Henry Ian Cusick, of Scandal and Lost most recently.

Paige Turco of Person of Interest.

After the first few teen-skewed “CW” episodes, The 100 found its footing. It began telling a story of a people, and the devastating consequences and emotional impact of what it meant to have to fight for survival. It showed the impossible choices and their weight, and asked you to think: what would I have done?

The scene where they went to collect the bodies on Deck 15? Still burned into my mind.

Clarke’s decision to save her mother at Mt. Weather - despite knowing she would kill innocent people in the process? A horrible worst-case-scenario thought experiment played out before your eyes.

And Maya’s haunting final words, “none of us is innocent,” spoke to the underlying truth that’s also the show’s central theme.

Or, “there are no good guys.”

This statement was mirrored again when Abby tells Kane “everybody always does,” after Kane laments how Bellamy really believed he was doing the right thing.

But the show has missed its mark in a number of key areas.

For starters, it failed to show how a (Trump-like) dictator of sorts, Pike, was able to establish power so quickly.

After all, the existing leadership so far had managed to fight against nearly insurmountable odds: survival on a new world after a lifetime in space, having to feed and house their people, a dangerous unknown enemy, vicious animals, etc., etc.

But the sky people were making their way towards peace with the grounders, and had even established a society of sorts - gardens were growing, there was a mess hall, booze, and even a piano!

Clarke had just saved them from Mt. Weather, Kane was proving to be a great diplomat, and then BOOM, in comes Mr. Us-Vs.-Them Pike, who suddenly had half the camp’s support. How?

It’s also unfathomable that Bellamy would have taken part in the grounder massacre. Remember this is a boy who JUST MURDERED hundreds of innocents at Mt. Weather. And despite how he was portrayed in S1, he’s basically a good person who knows the difference between right and wrong.

The storyline says he was under Pike’s spell, but in reality, it was lazy writing. We were told this, not shown it. There needed to be a conflict, so one was written in without any respect to Bellamy’s history or character development.

Being TOLD and not SHOWN is probably The 100′s greatest weakness. If it’s not a fight scene, The 100 doesn’t want to deal.

The show also proceeded to kill off its most intriguing and diverse characters, in just terribly written ways. Lexa (in a bury-your-gays meme) dies of an accidental bullet. Lincoln - who knows what’s what about survival - chooses to hang back for his certain death. Really? Lincoln was not dumb. He surely understood that his role as a bridge between the two peoples was of greater long-term worth to all of humanity, than his honorable intentions in remaining behind.

Pike, meanwhile, is painted as a pure villain. He doesn’t at all have a convincing argument as to why war is better than peace, but somehow manages to commit atrocity after atrocity with nary a raised eyebrow from his early supporters.

If he’s The 100′s Trump, then the show should have explained what exactly people thought could be achieved by electing a dictator. Did they really vote for war and more genocide? Or did the show just need a bad guy for a season?

(Hint, it’s the latter).

Then you have the show’s long and often tedious slog through grounder culture.

Instead of a world-building scenario where history of the peoples of the earth is told through interpersonal relationships, politics, and cross-cultural exchanges, the story of the grounders is almost entirely about warfare and violence.

This doesn’t jive at all with the fact that there was a grounder society - cities, villages, clans, religion, government, a justice system. You can’t constantly be warring and also develop this level of infrastructure and stability.

And where is the backstory about why the clans separated, or what their shared values and differences are, or why Ice Nation became so brutal and calculated?

Again, we’re told, not shown. Here are some clans. They like to fight. This one is bad.

Contrast this to S1 and the grounders exacting an eye-for-an-eye revenge leading to Clarke stabbing (and crying) over her misguided boyfriend du jour to achieve peace with the grounders and save Finn from suffering.

So many takeaways from that scene:

Grounders believe in justice and punishment; acts of terrorism (Finn shot up innocent people, recall) have real world consequences; Clarke knew how to achieve both goals (saving Finn from suffering, placating the grounders) and did so despite the personal cost; Clarke is a real person with feelings; Lexa accepted Finn’s death was enough to satisfy the call for justice, because she didn’t want to have to deal with political cost of a protracted war with the sky people; Lexa is not a monster, but a real person with feelings. And Clarke was a mother-f’ing leader.

And all this was SHOWN through maybe a few minutes of action and acting and very little dialog.

These past seasons, though, you have Clarke, the blonde-haired earth newcomer-turned-leader, falling for the commander/queen-like figure, and later “dressing up” like a grounder to hide out (that grounder hair, e.g. - it was hard not to equate it to white girl dreads).

And in S4, you’ve got this lead character coldly sentencing a man to die for the purpose of testing an experimental drug, then trying to appropriate grounder religion under the guise of saving all the people at the expense of everyone’s dignity and humanity.

What is this s***?

Meanwhile, the show has killed off most of the adults that played notable roles (Diana, Kane’s mom, that savvy lady who ran the black market on the spaceship, people’s parents, Sinclair, Lincoln, Pike), turned them into jokes (Jaha), or just sidelined them while sometimes using them as plot devices (Kane, Abby, Jackson). The remaining grown-ups (and only established actors on this show) no longer have interpersonal relationships except as “mom” and “dad” figures to the kids, in Abby and Kane’s case. (And sometimes Jaha.)

Can we please recall in S1, these people were actually running the entire space-born society? I get that this is a kid show, but these are still experienced leaders and would in reality be playing larger roles in this story if it wasn’t for this being a CW show.

And while everyone just loves the whole daddy Kane trope, it’s diminishing to a character who had grown from unemotional autocrat to repentant sinner to peaceful ambassador to loving partner. Now he’s just the hey-there-kid-it’s-all-gonna-be-ok guy.

And Abby has been painted as nothing more than a shrill mama bear who will do anything to save her daughter.

I mean, she stops Clarke from taking the chip not because it’s massively insulting to grounder culture to try to cheat your way into their religious order, but because “we don’t even know if it will work.”

And then there are the kids.

Octavia. Ugh, she’s a fighter, not a lover! (Ha.)

She doesn’t find a way to do any good following Lincoln’s death by - like, say, becoming an ambassador who tries to mend the relationships between grounders and sky people so leaders like Pike could never come to power again. Nope, she just kills people and uses sex to block out her sadness. What a great message for the kids watching the show! Aww, did life get hard? Turn evil! Don’t try to find any meaning in tragedy!

And are we supposed to care about Harper and Monty now, by the way? I mean, I guess when you’ve killed off so much of the cast, you have to move team B into team A roles. But the whole of their relationship has been a few shots of them in bed, and little character development beyond Monty’s mommy-is-our-enemy problem?

And Harper is suicidal because? Because why exactly? Because maybe these are very green writers creating this show and they wanted to write a “sad scene?”

And good god, is Jasper the most annoying person ever because he knew a nice girl for a week or two, probably had his first-ever kiss, and then she died? Or is he the only one who has got it right? (“Fuck this show, I’m outta here!”)

The only good actor among the kids is Richard Harmon, whose resume is growing to support this. Lindsey Morgan will likely do well in action-girl type films (bat girl?), but she’s better when playing girl-who-is-awesomer-than-thou. Her emotional range needs work. (No, don’t tell me about the amazing scenes with Murphy, because he’s carrying her through them. And remember her awkward 2-episode relationship with that blond Wick dude? Yeah, no wonder they decided to pigeonhole her as kick-ass grrrl engineer.)

Some of the supporting actors are okay, but definitely not-steal-the-show stars (beyond Carney obviously who did before leaving, or Ricky Whittle who is now leading American Gods).

And some, I’m sorry, are just flat one-notes who are clearly still “perfecting their craft.”

And that’s fine, everyone needs a starter show. But in that event, showrunners should pair them up MORE with the pros, because the kids can learn on the job and improve over time, while pros can carry a scene and give it weight and impact when the newbies cannot.

A pro can express a range of emotions and clue you into their internal turmoil with just a look. (Remember Kane, saying “again” as Abby is lashed? He had one word of dialog that he said a couple of times. But damned if that wasn’t one of the show’s most harrowing scenes. A perfect conflict between the decentness inside him, and his need to re-establish order. And how terrible he felt doing the “right” thing.)

But then you have Clarke who’s seems to only emote like a broken record now: “survive!” She committed genocide a few months ago, recall? Yet, she can’t seem to shed a tear for anything or anyone but dear, departed Lexa.

Even while holding her mom who’s sobbing in her arms, she just seemed annoyed - like her mind was already onto “well, what’s plan B?” - rather than having any sort of reaction to the fact that she had just asked her own mother to basically (probably) watch her die.

Sorry, she’s kind of a monster now.

Finally, we have the show’s distaste for character development in favor of choreographed action sequences.

Yes, fight scenes and battles can get the blood pumping, but they only have long-term impact when you are rooting for someone to win. But who are the good guys here? It’s arguably no longer the sky people (was it ever?), who have only committed multiple genocides since landing, and just tried co-op grounder religion as a political move.

It’s hard to even want them to survive at this point. After all, wasn’t Polis a lovely bustling city before the sky people showed up? Market stalls with sunglasses and weird food, and kids running around!

Meanwhile, the writing team’s Twitter feed is a continual stream of taunts about ooooh battle! ooooh war! which characters will die next?

Not only is this rude to the fans who have formed attachments to their favorites, it’s also the entirely wrong type of sentiment to be trying to strike at this time in our lives. The writers seem downright stoked about the fact that they can instill fear in the hearts of fans, when our very world is watching the fallout of terrorism, war and the real human cost of all that play out in front of our eyes.

We are seeing innocents rammed down with trucks, shot up in schools and public places. We’re watching dictators attack their own people, truth tellers jailed, and children suffer. We have a dangerous man in power in the U.S., who’s more concerned with ego and sticking it to the left than with getting up to speed on what his job really entails.

So no, The 100 Writing team, war and terror should not painted as a “fun escape” for your little CW show. It should be shown as the very real, unholy piece of s*** awfulness that it truly is. And with every battle scene and every death, we should see the characters taking on the burden of living with the choices that led to the end of people’s lives.

And frankly, wouldn’t that be a better fit for a group of people that’s supposedly interested in saving humanity? You know, seeing them actually caring about other human beings?

8 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 4 years

Text

The Best Geek TV Deep Dives on YouTube

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

From the heyday of Television Without Pity to niche podcasts that cover every small screen angle you can think of, TV show deep dives have always thrived online, and popular platforms like YouTube and Vimeo provide opportunities for talented creators to add a visual angle that can often make a well-edited analysis of your favorite series even more compelling.

YouTube is positively teeming with potential rabbit holes for TV obsessives to fall down. Sometimes at 3 a.m. Sometimes after a few beers. Sometimes when you should be working (couldn’t be us) but whether you’re drawn in by a near-obligatory shocked reaction thumbnail or you accidentally stumble across an interesting take on something you’re passionate about, there’s usually a rabbit hole waiting that feels like it could have been made just for you.

With any luck, falling down one of those rabbit holes ends with you landing far away from the world of destructive opinions, of which there are many, and not just on YouTube. Most of us have probably seen a clip floating around of someone spouting the most harmful, misinformed nonsense at one time or another, and asked ourselves whether giving that person a platform was really the best idea.

Well, this isn’t that. Instead, we’ve pulled together some weighty YouTube-accessible examples of what happens when someone loves a TV series or franchise so much, they can’t stop talking about it – even decades later. Most of these deep dives are a labor of love, which is not to say that they always have a happy ending.

The Retrospective

Ian Martin, who runs the YouTube channel Passion of the Nerd, says his journey began rather accidentally in his early 30s when he found himself feeling a little lost in life. He admits he tried a variety of ways to rid himself of the sensation, including “too much alcohol,” but after deciding on a career change and fruitlessly looking for ways into the voiceover industry, he decided the best course of action was to go ahead and just …make stuff. After all, this course of action didn’t require anyone else to give him a break, and made him the master of his own destiny.

“I sat down and wrote a script about a show I’d become consumed by and edited it into a video called Why You Should Watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” he wrote. “In that video, I mentioned that Buffy’s first season was a little rough and, for people who just wanted to get into the show, I would create a short little episode guide just to get them through the first season.”

Six years later, Martin is still at it, and his audience has grown into a supportive community that includes over sixty thousand subscribers, propped up by funding from Patreon. Not only is he still covering Joss Whedon’s first series in depth, episode-by-episode, he’s now delving into spin-off show Angel and Firefly.

Martin’s videos don’t pore over every aspect of these shows, and rarely does an instalment hit the 30-minute mark. Rather, they tend to examine the philosophy behind their themes, citing absurdist and existentialist influences. The host himself doesn’t push these ideas on his audience, but if you don’t end up buying a copy of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea by the time you get to the end of Season 3, it may be that you’ve missed out on a pretty essential element of Buffy’s enduring appeal.

“It took me a long time to figure out what Passion of the Nerd was but I started to find its shape through the journey it was taking ME on,” he explained. “On any average day it’s a chance to make someone laugh over our shared interests. But my favorite experience of art is the one in which we find ourselves. That movie, piece of music, performance, or show that makes us feel like its creator opened up our heart to take a picture of its inner depths. And I love talking about why media MATTERS and finding those moments in popular culture. Sometimes I get to distil those moments for other people and when I do, I hope it does for them what the channel has done for me.”

Martin’s coverage of the very first episode of Buffy lies below. If you continue watching his series of videos after that, it’s unlikely you’ll want that time back. They’re incredibly thoughtful and, frankly, an absolute joy.

The Deconstruction

Ah, Twin Peaks. The show that changed television forever, and one that has been hard to forget ever since. You’ve not been able to throw a golden shovel without hitting a Twin Peaks deep dive online in the last three decades, but occasionally one arrives and threatens to pull apart the backbone of its dreamscape for good.

Twin Perfect’s Rosseter turned in a Twin Peaks deep dive last October with a running time not for the faint of heart. His deconstruction of David Lynch’s endlessly puzzling mystery, supported by myriad quotes from its beloved co-creator, is over four-and-a-half hours long, but its length certainly hasn’t put off curious viewers – over a million people have already chosen to hear what Rosseter has to say about the real meaning behind Twin Peaks.

“Garmonbozia, the Black and White Lodges, Mike, Bob and the Little Man, Judy, Audrey and Charlie, Season 3’s ending… The mystery of Twin Peaks has survived for nearly 30 years… until now,” the video promises, which is a tease that even casual fans of the series can’t possibly resist. Their mileage may vary with the host’s loud impression of Lynch throughout the video, however, even as he produces what feels like a fairly accurate interpretation of Twin Peaks’ initial intentions, its ongoing message in the prequel film Fire Walk with Me, and a gut-punching look at 2017’s The Return.

Rosseter starts out by warning his audience that if they haven’t consumed all three Twin Peaks seasons and the film, they should consider stepping back until they have, which stands to reason: he’s about to spoil most of their various twists and turns. But he then goes on to say that die-hard Twin Peaks junkies should also reconsider watching the video, because after they’ve heard him out, they might never be able to look at Twin Peaks the same way again.

For many, the temptation to potentially peek behind the red curtain has been too great to ignore, and the comment section is filled with people who sat through the whole thing, having felt truly changed by the experience.

“David Lynch didn’t even know what this show was about until he saw this video,” someone joked, while another added more solemnly “I just feel regret. I appreciate the show on a whole other level but the haunting magic that it had for me is gone.”

One viewer thought that Rosseter’s comprehensive offering “may legitimately and unironically be one of the most intelligent and well-constructed videos ever put on YouTube,” but others hit the nail on the head when they realised that unwrapping Twin Peaks’ clues over the years had only led to one significant discovery: “we were controlling Twin Peaks the entire time.”

So, what’s at the heart of Rosseter’s theory? You may want to find out for yourself, and he certainly makes an incredibly detailed case for it. In this event, a brief explanation in the next paragraph will be a SPOILER.

While it’s common knowledge that David Lynch didn’t want to reveal who was responsible for killing Twin Peaks’ central victim, Laura Palmer, and that he was forced by TV bigwigs to wrap up the storyline and the investigation into her murder during Season 2 in late 1990, Rosseter posits that the reason we were never supposed to uncover the mystery of who ended her life and get closure on her death is because Lynch fundamentally believes that consumable TV violence is rotting our brains, and that’s why he created the series in the first place.

Still intrigued? Take a look…

The Discussion

Two-time Shorty Award winner Kristen Maldonado launched her YouTube channel in 2014 as a place where pop culture meets community, and she has the kind of drive, ambition and fast turnaround skills that make other creators look like they’re napping on the job, frankly.

While working as a social media manager for MTV, she’s used her YouTube platform to support women, diversity, and LGBTQ+ representation, discussing everything from the acknowledgement of Kat’s identity on The Bold Type, to the highs and lows of TV’s YA-skewed failures, emphasising the importance of why representation matters “on screen, behind the scenes, and critically.”

Along the way, she’s become a notable queen of deep dives, and not just where TV or movies are concerned – at one point she was even documenting her own musical journey on Spotify, where she was keen to bring attention to emerging artists. Discussing TV still feels like Maldonado’s reigning passion, though, and she usually explores her favorite shows in bite-sized segments that add up to a comprehensive look at their subjects.

One show she’s been extremely passionate about is the Charmed reboot, which she was beyond excited to see come to fruition on The CW. The fantasy drama series originally ran for eight seasons between 1998 and 2006, and CBS had tried and failed to reboot it before, but this time The CW intended to get the job done, bringing the story of magic and sisterhood back to TV and hoping to entice both fans of the old series and a new, younger audience.

The reboot was initially touted across industry trades as a project that would star three Latinx actresses, and that casting choice meant a lot to Maldonado. When news later emerged that only one of the new Charmed sisters would be played by a Latina actress, she posted a video addressing her feelings of confusion about how the show was originally announced, her disappointment that the roles wouldn’t be filled by three Latinx performers, and why series creators need to start using valuable representation opportunities properly.

Maldonado has covered the Charmed reboot comprehensively since it began in 2018, and this year has moved into livestreaming her reviews, switching from shorter videos to longer discussions about the episodes. If you’re a fan of Charmed, or any of the other series she covers (and there are quite a few) you might well find her channel to be an insightful addition to your subscription list.

The Takedown

Chances are, a TV show has pissed you off or upset you before. That Game of Thrones ending? Probably. Bobby Ewing stepping out of the shower? Sure. Quantum Leap? We’re not over it. Only a few of us take the time to make a video detailing just how upset we are about a show and upload it to YouTube, though.

Mike Stoklasa is likely to be a pretty familiar face to some of the Very Online movie and TV addicts reading these words. He’s the founder of production company RedLetterMedia, through which he’s been creating content and offering his desert-dry opinion on various facets of pop culture for well over a decade.

On YouTube, Stoklasa is regularly accompanied by cohorts Jay Bauman and Rich Evans as they take a hard look at some of their favorite films from the past, some of the worst straight-to-video movies of all time, and some of the bigger releases, too. He also voices a character called Mr. Plinkett, and when he does, viewers know that they’re about to peer screaming into the void, because ‘Mr. Plinkett’ does not hold back, especially when it comes to Star Wars or Star Trek.

Stoklasa is one of the most vocal Star Trek fans alive, and is known to consistently derail otherwise unconnected discussions with his Trek references, often explaining how Star Trek may have influenced the subject’s storytelling, and how it might have been – or should have been – a positive lesson from TV past.

To say that he’s not a fan of Star Trek’s fairly recent resurgence under the eye of executive producer Alex Kurtzman is probably an understatement. He covered CBS All-Access’ Star Trek: Discovery, a series that has, for the most part, chosen to abandon Trek’s previous lean towards standalone stories and episodes in favor of season-long arcs, and he seemed interested but trepidatious ahead of Star Trek: Picard’s arrival on the streaming service. But after the show had run its course, he uploaded a 94-minute takedown called ‘Mr. Plinkett’s Star Trek Picard Review’.

The broader world of YouTube takedowns is, objectively, a cesspool – misogyny, racism and homophobia have often run rampant – but Stoklasa has been in the business of keeping more of a constructive balance going for a long time, so when ‘Mr Plinkett’s’ review of Picard appeared online towards the end of May, anyone with even a little backstory on his recent problems with Trek’s TV universe suspected that the fresh adventures of the aging ex-Enterprise captain had finally pushed him over the edge …but they weren’t quite prepared for the ‘Dear John’ letter that ultimately arrived.

Whether you enjoyed Picard or not, Stoklasa makes some constructive points in his video review, and his breakup with the current Star Trek TV world is one for the ages.

The Art of More

If it’s the visual element of a TV show deep dive you’re into, YouTube has plenty to offer.

Art meets skill as Skip Intro takes a fascinating look at the editing behind David E. Kelley’s Big Little Lies, Ladyknightthebrave spends the best part of an hour pondering how Fleabag’s gimmick of breaking the fourth wall serves the show’s characters and story, and balancing ‘point of view’ vs ‘the big picture’ becomes the focus of Lost Thoughts’ It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Island.

Here, Thomas Flight explores how HBO’s award-guzzling Chernobyl became a masterclass in perspective…

We hope you found something worth your time in this piece, and writing it up wasn’t really an excuse to discover more of them, but it also wasn’t NOT an excuse to discover more of them. So, if you’ve found any notable examples to keep us busy, please direct our attention to them in the comments, thank you.

The post The Best Geek TV Deep Dives on YouTube appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3eddPoI

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

0 notes

unifiedsocialblog · 6 years

Text

As Facebook Shifts, Instagram Emerges As A New Home For Brands

This post was originally published on Forbes.

For big brands, the difference can be staggering. When Mercedes-Benz shared a post on Facebook recently about the premiere of its new A-Class, the update quickly garnered more than 10,000 Likes. Impressive … until you consider that the very same image on Instagram generated more than 150,000 Likes—15 times the response!

Granted, Mercedes is a visual brand and Instagram is a visual platform. (And engagement isn’t everything—Facebook, the world’s most popular social network, still enjoys an important edge in overall reach.) But the luxury automaker isn’t the only company seeing eye-popping results on Instagram.

The photo-based network added 100 million users in just five months last year—rivaling Facebook’s growth numbers—and now boasts 800 million monthly users. With an audience that skews young (a majority of users are reported to be under 30) and is also fiercely brand conscious (53 percent of users follow brands), Instagram is quietly emerging as the new home for companies seeking an impact on social media.

The dust has yet to settle on the impact of Facebook’s big decision in January to revamp its news feed—prioritizing “meaningful interactions,” especially updates from friends and family, while limiting content from brands and publishers. But, for companies, it’s likely to only accelerate a shift of resources and awareness to Facebook’s younger sibling. For businesses seeking to stay ahead of the social curve, here’s why doubling down on Instagram makes sense this year.

Instagram is a skilled omnivore when it comes to devouring other networks’ features. A social network with nearly a billion users isn’t supposed to be innovative and turn-on-a-dime adaptable. But Instagram has shown itself to be just that. The “Stories” concept, a daily disappearing montage of users’ photos and videos, may have originated with Snapchat, but Instagram has taken it mainstream since copying it 2016—adding more than 300 million users in the process.

Instagram has also been quick to embrace everything from live video and private messaging functionality to Snapchat-inspired “filters” for creative selfies. Plus, despite some initial user resistance, the network has pivoted in recent years from a chronological stream to an algorithmic news feed—a la Facebook—giving developers and advertisers more fine-grained control over what users see. What does all of this mean for companies? Instagram’s ability to continually reinvent itself promises to pay off in the form of sustained user growth going forward.

Engagement for brands on Instagram is unparalleled. Facebook, with its 2 billion-plus users, is obviously the undisputed champion of “reach” in the social media universe. But Instagram holds the title for an arguably more critical metric—”engagement.” While definitions vary, engagement embraces the degree to which users actually interact with content—liking, sharing and commenting, rather than just passively looking. A recent study showed that brands are getting three times more engagement on Instagram, when compared apples-to-apples with Facebook. On Twitter, meanwhile, engagement rates can be less than 1/30th what they are on Instagram.

The differential comes down to Instagram’s DNA: The network is and has always been a visual-first platform. And that’s an undeniable advantage: At a biological level, visual content can be processed faster and more efficiently by the human brain, is retained longer, elicits stronger emotions and is engaged with more often. On Instagram, users scroll through reams of photos, liking and commenting rapid-fire as they go. This generates levels of engagement that older, text-based social networks simply can’t compete with. Importantly, for brands, this engagement is overwhelmingly positive (after all, there’s no “dislike” button on Instagram), whereas posts on Facebook often generate a broader gamut of reactions and comments.

While Facebook is limiting brand content, Instagram is embracing it. Facebook’s recent decision to curb content from brands and publishers on users’ news feed reflected a common, understandable gripe: “I log onto Facebook to catch up with friends and family, not to be sold to!” Instagram, however, has arguably been different from the start. The highly visual format means it’s a place where branded content can come across more naturally and feel less intrusive. Gorgeous visuals, after all, are gorgeous visuals—whether they come from your best friend or from Nike (who, incidentally, has 75 million Instagram followers).

Recent signs suggest that Instagram is deepening its embrace of brands. The revamped Explore tab automatically connects users with people and companies outside their immediate circle. For brands who master the art of catchy visual content, opportunities for exposure here are virtually limitless (especially as this Explore functionality may soon be woven right into users’ personal feeds). Instagram is also jumping enthusiastically into the world of in-app shopping. Eligible businesses can now tag products in their posts, with a direct link to purchase. Integrations with platforms like Shopify enable all this to happen right inside the app. The bigger picture: Instagram is rolling out the welcome mat for brands, with more ways to find customers and make deeper connections with them.

Instagram’s ad tools have grown up. When it comes to targeting ads on social media and getting the best bang for your buck, Facebook has long been the consensus winner. Sophisticated tools enable filtering audiences by everything from geography to interests and industry. Not to mention, you can create “custom audiences” based on your own website traffic or your customer database.

Once upon a time, Instagram was an ad-free zone. But since fully opening up the platform to ads in 2015, it has quickly integrated much of Facebook’s ad functionality. Today, brands can target customers with the same level of ease and precision. The network has also innovated on ad formats: they integrated Stories-style ads last year, giving companies a way to combine pics, video and text. Tellingly, the number of advertisers on the platform doubled last year to 2 million, with most of that growth from small- and medium-sized businesses (a pace of growth that has rubbed some users the wrong way). Considering that Instagram ad revenues are projected to nearly triple to $11 billion by 2019, companies who get in now will be ahead of the game and stand a better chance of being noticed.

Better business tools for Instagram are coming. Outside the tech community, the acronym API—short for Application Programming Interface—may not mean much. But, believe me, for business users it definitely matters: in fact, the impact can be game-changing. Earlier this year, Instagram updated its API—in layman’s terms, the firehose of user information that’s made available to outside developers. In practice, this means that a new generation of third-party Instagram tools is on the horizon—ones that allow companies to efficiently post at scale to the network and measure results.

For some perspective, back in the day, it was this same kind of API access that transformed Facebook and Twitter from dorm-room toys into full-fledged marketing channels for companies. Easy-to-use software tools, built off these APIs, enabled brands to schedule multiple posts and monitor engagement—all without having to laboriously scroll through individual feeds. Instagram’s new Graph API promises to be no less transformative. I know this firsthand: access to this functionality has long been the number one request from Hootsuite’s 16 million users.

It’s important to note here that this isn’t a zero-sum game (especially since Facebook owns Instagram). Facebook will remain a critical tool for brands hoping to connect with their audiences for the foreseeable future. Nearly a third of the planet logs onto Facebook, after all, and Instagram currently generates just a fraction of Facebook’s overall ad revenue. But for companies seeking to deepen and sustain connections with their customers, a complementary approach is increasingly critical. Facebook’s little sibling has grown up, and its knack for innovation and engagement promise to make it ever more important in the years ahead.

The post As Facebook Shifts, Instagram Emerges As A New Home For Brands appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.

As Facebook Shifts, Instagram Emerges As A New Home For Brands published first on https://getfblike.tumblr.com/

0 notes