Saturday, May 14, 2011

I'm Batman

I was planning on doing a lengthy observation of the practice of justifying a belief in God through wishy-washy apologetics and semantic games.  Instead I'm going to bitch about TV.  The following entry is going to be an exercise in nitpicking a subject which, for some of you, has been covered to death already.  You have been warned.

There are certain factually inaccurate movie/TV tropes which make me want to hurl a brick through whichever screen I may be watching them on.  They're things which you don't have to be an expert in (and I am by far not an expert) to notice the skull-fucking wrongness of them.

Guns, guns, guns.  People love guns.  I love guns.  Guns are fun.  And this is coming from mister lefty atheist socialist cut the defense budget by 100% so we can pay for everybody to get a good education and be healthy and make all their dreams come true until the end of time me here.  Guns is neat!  They go bang and things fly out of them.  Lots of people (and by lots I mean Americans) have a gun, have fired a gun, or generally know how they work.  Which begs the question, why the hell in movies do they treat pistols like old timey revolvers?  You don't have to rack the god damn thing!  Way to go wasting part of your severely limited ammo there, Action Steve!  The bullet will come out of the little hole at the end and make people dead, depending on your proficiency.

Allow me to paint a scene for you.  The hero has got the bad guy (or a sufficiently bad cronie) at gunpoint.  The the baddie is defiant, refusing to give our grizzled hero information vital to moving the plot along.  "Fuck you," spits the villain with much spittle.  "I am not at all intimidated by the loaded death blaster aimed at my body's central processing unit!  You, the virtuous embodiment of solid American morals who has heretofore not killed a single person in the previous fifty three minutes, would never end my wretched existence!"  The hero, without a word, racks the automatic pistol to prove that he is tough and serious.  The villain promptly wets himself and spills the beans.

This leads smoothly to another overused device in interrogation scenes.  "He said he'd kill me if I talked!"  In most cases this is nothing more than a plot speed bump.  In real life interrogations, this is where the interrogating authority figures offer protection and/or a plea bargain.  In movies, this is where Batman drops you off a fire escape or the generic hero acts even more mean or tough, so the suspect will break.  Literally break in the case of Batman.  I suppose I can forgive this, as in real life interrogation is really damn boring to watch.

I'm nowhere NEAR finished with this topic.  I expect you to expect more in the future.

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