Thursday, February 01, 2007

Need a reason to flip off your TV?

This is not an attack on "Norbit" which I'm not even going to dignify with a response, nor is it a reason to throw anything within reach at the TV which trailers for "Ghost Rider" have been giving me a good excuse to do lately. This is me, unemployed as I am, with way too much time on my hands - complaining about commercials.

In my own defense I am home alone all day and it doesn't occur to me to turn on the TV until my mom gets home from work because evening television is all she does. And to be honest, with THE COMPLETE SERIES of the West Wing on DVD who needs television (which is - for the record Dead to me since the West Wing was canceled.) Except I watch the evening line ups with my mom (when I can't get her to watch the West Wing all night every night.

Watching TV leads to being exposed to commercials and two commercials lately have gotten under my skin. They're not what you think. The first one, I'm embarrassed to admit is for Epic Movie. Now I could address this simply by saying Epic Movie: You're stupid. But that's obvious. Epic movie is supposed to be stupid. And it was made for stupid people who see stupid parody movies. I, however, have a quarrel with Epic Movie on premise. I would like to argue its misunderstanding of the word "epic." "Epic" means literally "worthy of epic poetry, such as Beowulf or The Odyssey." A traditional hero myth. Epic movie confuses what is "epic" with the entire fantasy/Si-Fi genre.

Almost NONE of the films being spoofed in this film do I consider Epic. Now Lord of the Rings, is an epic, and though I hate to see it lampooned could probably humor the non-ring geeks who put up with so much from the rest of us but LOTR isn't even being made fun of. Maybe the Chronicles of Narnia if we're talking about THE SERIES and not just one installment. X men, I can sort of see it. Epic? Pirates of the Caribbean? Willy Wonka? Nacho Libre? Don't even ask me where they pulled Da Vinci code from!

You want to spoof bad "Epic" movies, here's a list for you Troy, King Arthur, Alexander, Chronicles of Riddick...A better comment would be simply Epic Movie: You Suck.

While I was just going to exercise myself of the suffering caused by cognitive dissonance between the meaning of "epic" and what we're pretending it means, Windows VISTA commercial lit my flame. At first I thought it was going to try to sell me a TV, but it got my attention. Then I find it out it's comparing the experience of Windows VISTA to watching the moon landing or the Berlin wall fall!
Next time I'm just going to stick my head through the TV!

1 comment:

Nicki said...

I hear ya on the epic thing...they're spoofing Harry Potter as well, which would MAYBE be justifiable if they spoofed all the books, but I'm sure they're not. And even then, is HP epic? IT only takes place over seven yeras and Odysseus was gone for what, twenty? pffft.