Corporations: The True Evil

Before I get into the bulk of this, let me just say right off the bat this is not going to be some anti-capitalist pro-99% blog entry. I save that for my posts on facebook and Youtube (which I should stop because it only gains me unwanted attention). No, this blog entry is about how in so many movies, films and comic books they end up with the villains being financed by publicly traded companies. You would think more stockholders would care that they’ve invested in companies that are pure evil.

The first example of a truly evil corporation is one that seems to not even be a company, but a private army. That company is the Umbrella Corporation of the Resident Evil franchise. From what I can see from the movies and the games, the Umbrella Corporation is good at making zombies and other such monsters. And that is it. They don’t make zombies as some sort of side product to supplement their income. The Umbrella Corporation made the T-Virus and some how used that to fuel their evil worldwide empire where they make worse and worse versions of the T-Virus. If ever there was a strong argument for the EPA, it is the Umbrella Corporation.

"I swear, this armor is totally a business expense."

But a corporation can only be as good or evil as the people in charge of it. Which is how a company like LexCorp can gain so much power in a free economy and still be the financial and technological backers for so many diabolical schemes. I cannot imagine a yearly stockholders meeting of LexCorp where Lex Luthor gets up and explains how he is using their money to obtain large quantities of Kryptonite. Steve Jobs certainly never created any doomsday weapons during his stewardship of Apple (or maybe he did and that’s what gave him cancer. Possible subject for a future blog entry.)

Avengers' Mansion

To be sure there are good corporations in the fictional world. Wayne Entreprises and Stark Industries both finance super heroes and the endeavors and secret projects of those heroes. Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne have both funneled stock holder money into the financing of The Avengers (Quinjets, Avengers Mansion, Communication ID cards) and The Justice League (Watchtower Satellite and Moonbase, Hall of Justice). But when you think about it, spending money on super heroes is just as bad as spending money on a super-villain plot. The only thing that differentiates them is the outcome of their endeavors. Personally I feel that were I a stockholder of either Wayne Enterprises or Stark Industries (and personally I wish I was), I don’t think I’d have a problem being told that some of my money had been used to fund saving the world.

But while there are good corporate owners like Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne it seems like they are the minority. Just looking at the James Bond franchise it seems like there is a never ending amount of wealthy evil geniuses, many of them who earned their fortunes legitimately before they started their nefarious plots.

They say money is the root of all evil. I don’t believe that to be true, but it certainly seems to be a branch on the evil tree. Money is soaking up sunlight and nutrients for evil but it is not the main root. Good and evil can be seen in rich and poor a like. Money can only facilitate the motives of a person and depending on whether the person is already good or evil will determine the outcome.

(WRITER'S NOTE: Also lets not forget individuals like Thomas Crowne, who abandoned the stewardship of a billion dollar company in pursuit of cheap thrills. How many people ended up losing their jobs because this billionaire got bored?)

The Greatest Female Super Heroes Ever

That’s right. The Powerpuff Girls. Among super heroes that count as their members Wonder Woman, Super Girl, Zatanna, and many others, none of them hold a candle to the young trio of girls made from sugar, spice and everything nice (and that secret ingredient, CHEMICAL X). Not only are they amazing super heroes but they are also perfect examples of femininity and what it means to be a girl.

For those unfamiliar with the Powerpuff girls they are three kindergarten aged superheroes who live in the city of Townsville (which has a sister city called the town of Citysville).  They were created by Professor Utonium when he was trying to create the perfect little girl (don’t ask me why a thirty plus year old man is trying to create a young girl, just go with it). While mixing together the ingredients (sugar, spice, everything nice) there is an accident involving a lab monkey (who is revealed to become Mojo Jojo, the girls arch nemesis) and the doctor spills something called Chemical X into the mixture. After a lab explosion the doctor awakes to see three little girls floating in his lab. Blossom (redhead in pink), Bubbles (blonde in blue) and Buttercup (brunette in green), who respectively are the leader, the cute one and the toughie.

Now even though the girls are blessed with amazing powers (pretty much the standard super hero fair, strength, flight, speed, laser vision) they act and live like completely normal girls. Their dad tucks them in at night, they go to school, play with stuffed animals, have fears of the dark and cooties, all of which is revealed in the many adventures they go on.  Not only do they explore the perils of being a young girl, but they also explore many of the tropes of super-herodom.

The girls often encounter other super heroes who have acted as stand-ins for the most popular heroes in comics today. Notably the hilarious The Justice Friends (a take off of the Avengers who originally appeared on Dexter's Laboratory, another Cartoon Network show) who are three super heroes who live together in an apartment. These heroes claim the girls are not fit to join their super hero group, even though the girls prove to be vastly superior in their heroic endeavors.

Another important trend among super heroes that is explored in an episode is the need to reinvent one’s self. Super heroes are constantly changing their looks and arsenal. Being no different, the girls also attempt to do so with Blossom adopting a wide array of toys and gadgets and Buttercup becoming a dark shadowy type reminiscent of Spawn. Bubbles, of course, just puts on a bunny suit, emulating a manga character she seems to enjoy. By the end of the episode the girls realize though that they are far better off just being themselves, a lesson sadly that not enough super heroes learn.

The RowdyRuff Boys

While the girls are excellent examples of feminine super heroes, they also do not allow their femininity to blind them. The Powerpuff girls are children and as such they have the innocent truthfulness that children all seem to have and sadly lose as adults. The girls no what is right and what is wrong and don’t seem to feel the need to blur these beliefs with shades of gray.  Stealing is wrong, hurting people is wrong, and being mean is wrong. No one can convince these girls to believe otherwise.

What Makes a Vampire?

I’m a fan of bloodsuckers. You can obviously tell that by reading some of my past entries (see here and here). To me even a bad movie about vampires can still be pretty entertaining (yes, I am even including the Twilight movies in this list). But with so many different versions of vampires out there I have ask “what makes a vampire?” What are the core attributes that allow the term vampire to be applied to a character?

Blooddrinking

This seems to be the most common attribute of all vampire stories. A vampire must drink blood. But the motivation behind such blood drinking has been different in the multiple versions of vampire stories. Some vampires are portrayed as having to drink due to a blood disorder (Blade). Other vampires have to drink for food/nourishment (Underworld). Perhaps my favorite depiction of blood drinking is the one that likens it to a drug addiction (Being Human). Drinking blood is equal to the ultimate high, which certainly gives an added layer of interest towards the brutal murders that vampires must commit to live. There are also things known as “psychic vampires.” Essentially these types of vampires feed on a sort of life force rather than blood (think Rogue from X-Men). These are less common in popular fiction and more common in vampire folklore (the terms succubus and incubus usually refer to these types of vampires). So even the most common trait associated with vampires is not necessarily a requirement.

Sunlight

This is the next most common trait associated with vampires. These mythical creatures avoid exposure to sunlight. And again there are various reasons for avoiding sunlight and even ways for vampires to get around it. In the Twilight movies, sunlight has no adverse affect on vampires, instead causing them to sparkle when exposed to it (why they don’t sparkle when exposed to any other kind of light was not explained by author Stephanie Meyer). The vampires on Being Human (both American and UK versions) aren’t burned by sunlight, but they do seem to be sensitive to excessive sun exposure (if that’s the case then I might be one as well). Besides those exceptions, most vampires are portrayed as burning to ashes when exposed to sunlight. Which is interesting when the most famous vampire of all time, Count Dracula, was often portrayed as walking in daylight in several incarnations of the character.

Shape-shifting

Another aspect of the vampire made famous by the character Dracula, most modern vampire films have dropped this particular skill from the vampires’ arsenal. Perhaps it seems too outlandish, or merely cost effective as the glut of films and television shows about vampires delude the big and small screens. I put flight in this category as well. While sometimes vampires have been shown flying, usually they have changed into bat to do it.

Psychic abilities

"I see the future!"

While there has always been something hypnotic about vampires, many writers have gone so far as to give vampires amazing mental abilities. While these have mostly involved a form of telepathy (reading thoughts which was suggested as an ability  of vampires by Anne Rice) or a suggestive voice (both The Vampire Diaries and True Blood allow their vampires to control people through suggestion) the author Stephanie Meyer went so far as to give her vampires a wide array of amazing abilities. So many different abilities were given to her vampires that the film adaption of her final book appeared more like an X-Men movie than a film about vampires.

Immortality/Increased Physicality

This is the one universally accepted vampire trait. When you become a vampire you will be both immortal and also much stronger and faster than you were in your human life. The degree to which your physical strength and speed is increased can often vary but they all have it. Some show a mere increase (such as the vamps on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) while others have Herculean strength (Twilight) and faster than sight speed (True Blood). This of course seems to be the major draw presented in every film or TV show about vampires. The chances to last forever.

As time goes on, I’m sure we will see many more changes to the vampire genre. To many fans (such as myself) there was probably no inkling that vampires would stop being monsters and become love interests. A vampire who sparkled in sunlight was (and still is) an odd notion to imagine. I look forward with curious dread about how vampires will be portrayed in fiction twenty years from now.

I Don’t Want to Die in a TV Hospital

  I once heard someone say that the two most reviled professions are Doctors and Lawyers (I'm pretty sure it was an episode of Studio 60, thank you Mr. Sorkin). I put very little stock in this statement being true since I know so many people who want to be either/or and know quite a few wonderful both. And even less stock when you turn on the TV and see the subject matter of most hit shows. Nearly all or many of the characters in prime time drama are a doctor, a lawyer or a cop. Or a rich heir/ess but I call those types of shows “Pretty people with problems” and don't really care about them. In this entry I want to focus on the doctors. Specifically how little faith I would want to put in the care these fictional medical practitioners are capable of giving.

Medical shows have been a major part of television since the sixties. First there was Quincy ME (more of a mortician than a doctor, but still a medical show). That later gave birth to the popular soap opera General Hospital. Then there was MASH and China Beach, both medicine in wartime shows. Doogie Howser was less about medicine and more about adolescence. Further down the road Chicago Hope and ER dueled against each other, many times causing the audience to be unable to differentiate which is which (Adam Arkin and George Clooney had the same hair and they were both set in Chicago). And in recent memory we have had Grey’s Anatomy and House. I’ll even throw Royal Pains in there since the main character is a doctor. Basically all these shows feature large amounts of medicine and drama. Now while the doctors in these shows are all skilled, and in many cases at the top of their game, the drama in which they inhabit seems to completely neutralize their skills as medical practitioners.

There is a personal reason for my fascination with the portrayals of doctors. As a child I was rather sickly. That is, I seemed to always come down with the worst illness a child could come down with doing normal childlike activities (but I also ate a cockroach once so maybe I was not the most sanitary child and deserved every disease I got). It was never just a simple case of the sniffles, which every mother has had to deal with in the process of raising a child. To put it simple I was horribly sick most of the time. And I can say I received excellent care from my doctor. A doctor who in no way resembled the emotionally crippled doctors of most medical dramas. I didn’t have to hear about relationships or personal problems. The hospital was not placed under quarantine due to a rare disease outbreak, bomb scare, psychotic gunman, or any of the other insane storylines that have occurred in any given season of a particular show. I actually got treated like a patient and had an uneventful recovery.

I’ll admit it might be unfair to include shows like MASH and China Beach on this list. Both those shows took place in a wartime setting so of course there is going to be an added level of unexpected drama. They are operating in a battle setting and thus have a different view of things. But for the most part the rest of these shows take place in a normal hospital setting. There are no bombs going off, no wave of casualties coming in, no advancing army marching forward, things are for the most part supposed to be a relatively controlled environment.

Highlighting how much I would not want to be treated in a TV hospital let us take a look at County General Hospital, the fictional setting of the TV show ER. ER was written by famed writer Michael Crichton and based a lot around his experiences as a young physician starting out in medicine. That would seem to indicate that ER is based mostly on reality. Then again, Michael Crichton is also famously the author of Jurassic Park, about a theme park where Dinosaurs run wild, so maybe reality is not completely to be expected. I’m sure the technical information in this show is spot on, but at the same time I find it hard to believe the multiple scenarios that occur per episode. The employees of County General have faced gang warfare, smallpox outbreaks, fires, explosions, a helicopter crash, a serial killer stalking the hospital, a cancer diagnosis, an AIDS diagnosis; I could go on and on. I find the idea of just doing the most menial of tasks in that environment, let alone practice complex medicine, to be absolutely daunting.

Of course ER seems like a better choice for care than Seattle Grace Hospital. In the fictional setting of the show Grey’s Anatomy, not only do they have all the drama and chaos that plagued County General, the doctors in Grey’s Anatomy never seem to stop having sex long enough to actually practice medicine. Now I’m not trying to be some kind of prude, but I don’t want my life in the hands of someone who is only have paying attention to their work because they did or didn’t get a little afternoon delight. Or worse, they are having a severe argument with the person who is assisting them with the operation and literally take out their emotions on my unconscious corpse.

Yet those two situations seem like a spa vacation compared to being treated at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. For those who don’t know, that is the hospital that employs the brilliant yet surly Dr. Gregory House, main character in the aptly named House. This show has all the drama and sexual tension of the above medical dramas and the added danger of being treated like an experiment instead of as an actual patient. Nearly every episode involves the treatment of some rare, extremely hard to diagnose disease, that is always treated incorrectly at first causing the patient to get much sicker than when they arrived at the hospital. A few sniffles and a cough turns into a case of having one's skin melting off. This show has probably given hypochondriacs inspiration for a never ending slew of obscure diseases.

The ONLY Doctor I trust.

I don’t consider myself to be a hypochondriac but as soon as I start to sniffle a bit I immediately start chugging orange juice and vitamins like its nobody’s business. And with good reason. If you’ve read most of these blog entries it seems pretty obvious that I can’t always tell where the line is that separates fiction from reality. If these fictional hospitals are any indication of what it is like in their real world counterparts then I shall endeavor to never get sick enough to need hospitalization. EVER.