Some half-formed thoughts I want to get down and mull over for a bit …

Been thinking about the near-omnipresence of violence in the media I consume versus my frustration and anger at real world tools of violence and those who choose to carry them, and consequently the level of violence, the presentation of it, and the cast of characters’ relationship with it in the (to be) relaunched (sometime in the next 18 to 24 months) SCWONKEY DOG.

With those thoughts whirling around in my head, tonight’s DOCTOR WHO was especially interesting as an examination of hatred and violence and the relationship between them, and it oddly gave the Doctor himself a kind of prejudice against those who would willingly take up arms that I think will be given some examination over the course of the season. (Odd because, of course, one of the Doctor’s longest standing friendships was with a military man, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Then again, he never did take the Brig traveling with him across the cosmos.) The most interesting element to me is how “victory” at the end of the episode is the direct result of the Doctor experiencing a kind of defeat; violence wins the day, and the Doctor is just miserable about it. Reminds me of the end of the old Jon Pertwee serial “Doctor Who and the Silurians.” Need to give it a second watch, given that the first was under less than ideal viewing conditions, but the points have really hit home.

Likewise, this week’s SPACE DANDY hit me likewise because despite being a sci-fi anime set in a crazy space future, this week’s episode wasn’t about violence at all. It was about … a dance contest. Yes, there is conflict. Yes, the main character repeatedly attacks someone he doesn’t like. But his true victory will not be achieved through violence, but by outdancing his opponent. Other episodes have included a parody of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL and a take on one of those old stories where a young upstart tries to catch some legendary fish and has to deal with the crotchety old man who’s been trying to do it all his life and stuff. Yes, it does go back to raygun space opera tropes throughout its run so far, but it doesn’t JUST do that. It knows there’s so much more to life out there in the vast reaches of space.

I’m looking right now at the blu ray set of Tatsunoko’s recent revival/reimagining of their 1970s smash hit GATCHAMAN, GATCHAMAN CROWDS. I’ve watched maybe half of it so far, and the thing that gets me about it is – it falls right in line with this train of thought I’m riding on. The Gatchaman team starts off fighting these weird abstract alien things. Then one day their newest recruit, who’s been questioning pretty much every element of what they’ve been doing starting with the whole secret identity thing and moving right on down the line, actually decides to try to understand and communicate with one of them. Turns out, hey, this has all been a big misunderstanding based on the vast differences between these beings and us and our world. But once she found the right way to communicate, it was all cleared up.

The double-edged sword of violence and moral action-adventure stories: the violence and the hardware used to inflict violence have to be flash and cool to attract the audience, but the point of the story is always that violence is bad, and the world would be better off without these cool toys. (Pretty much every robot cartoon Yoshiyuki Tomino directed at Sunrise works this way; even post-Tomino GUNDAM shows, GUNDAM WING in particular, work like that, hence why that one ends with the complete destruction of the Gundams.)