Recently, noted filmmaker Martin Scorsese reiterated his negative opinion on superhero movies, and other so-called “tentpole” franchises. His comments expectedly garnered some blowback from those who make and attend the endless string of Marvel or D.C. movies about characters that were (mostly) originally comic book creations. These movies have made billions of dollars collectively over a couple of decades or so. A generation or two of young superhero fans likely don’t know who Martin Scorsese is, and couldn’t care less what he thinks about Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Iron Man, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Catwoman, Blue Beetle, and others. Scorsese feels that the proliferation of such movies have taken over the multi-plex venues (both before the pandemic and in the post shut-down period). He considers them as a variation of a theme park. He also asserts these movies have damaged the movie-going culture that was once imbued with more than the now rare offerings of style and serious substance. That is, films for adults.

I personally agree with him, but this posting isn’t really confining itself to Martin’s critical negativity about a part of our overall culture being dumbed down by Marvel and DC’s prolific output of mass produced, cheap cinematic sausage. My attitude is we now live in a country that is in and of itself a cartoon show. And a very unenlightening, unentertaining, increasingly irredeemable one at that.

As recently as last night, several of the lesser cartoon characters who infest our cultural landscape conducted a political “debate”. Except it was not a debate, but a charade. A farce. A fraud. Noisy but bereft of substance. Any substance at all. It need not have been either televised or assessed by any media/news outlet. That it took place was utterly meaningless. Its only contribution to the political machinery that vomited up the event is to reinforce just how horrible our political landscape has become. That “framework” is made of fraying string and stale chewing gum, all of it rotting away as a quotidian cartoon show. It is ugly, angry, inane, insane and insufferable for any observer with a fully functioning brain (which, unarguably, many people apparently lack).

Am I being hyperbolic? No way, I’m actually trying to hold back a little here.

While any movie is produced by those in the cinematic medium, politics is produced by organized parties that live and die by all of media. There is high (but harder to find) to low grade (easy to find) cinematic sausage, while politics has devolved over the past several decades into a very icky, scrape the bottom of the barrel operation. In my adult lifetime, I’ve witnessed a litany of high-profile politicians given major media platforms to appeal to an ever-increasingly “low information” electorate. Leaving Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and II aside, the electorate of late has lowered its standards to the point of endorsing the kind of cartoon characters who were on that debate stage last night, babbling and shooting barbs at one another while the biggest cartoon character of all doesn’t even bother to attend. Why should he? The corporate media gives Agent Orange warehouses of free air time he has grown used to getting, letting him judge his competition. At the same time the media barely bothers any longer to soberly note his massive legal transgressions which should have him already in lockup, or at the least barred from being allowed to pose as a legitimate choice for the 2024 presidential election. Where’s Bugs Bunny? Wile-E Coyote, Yosemite Sam, The Roadrunner, and especially Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck in all this? Folks it’s clearly a Looney Tunes show. It’s all so cartoonish. So cringe-worthy cartoonish. And kind of creepy as well.

Our culture is becoming one big junkyard. That includes every part of our politics (ya know, even that phony Donkey Kong outfit led by a cadaver) our glitzy, vapid pop star spectacles, our de-fanged electronic and print journalism, sport as soap opera and a gambling addict’s dream with on-line betting parlors being peddled to the public with the same frequency as TV ads for more and more pills to cure whatever one may or may not actually suffer from, our junk food franchises littering the national landscape while producing the most obese country in the world. Junk in. Junk out. Are we dumbed down enough yet? No way, but we’re getting to the point where the brilliant social satire Idiocracy (a mostly neglected film from almost 20 years ago!) is becoming a reality before our very eyes.

Oh, and in two days it looks as though the government will shut-down. For no reason other than that’s what we have for a governing body on both sides of that infamous isle. Some voted for this, okay?

Beam me up, Scotty, there’s no intelligent life on this rock.