Nerd culture and juvenile mediocrities

Anonus

I don't know if I can articulate this, but here goes:

Sometimes I feel alienated by how nerd culture seems to elevate things I'd call "juvenile mediocrities" (e.g. a lot of things associated with the Transformers franchise, most of the 1990s Marvel cartoons) to a level of legitimacy they aren't owed. It might just be an aversion to the aesthetics and stories they utilize (maybe not even that well), and I might be a hypocrite, because I am or have been into a lot of things that seem to inspire revulsion from people for similar reasons (e.g. the old Hanna-Barbera short cartoons, Sonic, My Little Pony).

Sredni Vashtar

It's not "juvenilia," just so you know. Juvenilia is the product of a writer who has not yet come of age. Harlan Ellison's "The Gloconda", much of Arthur Rimbaud's Illuminations, and anything by the late Thomas Chatterton would be juvenile. What you mean is work that is juvenile in content, which is a bit different.

Anyway.

A lot of these cartoons take their appeal from the merchandise surrounding them and the power of creating one's own stories with toys, particularly the Transformers and G.I. Joe franchises; while others, such as comic book and video game adaptations, play off of the affection for their parent media, largely born out of the fantasies of omnipotence and absolute independence that they give the reader or player, and wanting to see those stories as a cartoon. Those which are derided tend to lack that synergy of multiple points of nostalgia, to have been targeted at a group whose experiences are considered marginal or invalid, or whose adaptations were unusually low in quality even for the period.

Salix Babylonika

I would like you to define every single term you used in the opening post, including "nerd culture", "juvenile", "mediocrity (noun)", "legitimacy", "aesthetics", and "revulsion".

Otherwise this will be a longwinded discussion about semantics.

Anonus

A lot of these are things I never tried to define before, so let me try:

nerd culture: entertainment enthusiast culture, kind of difficult to define

juvenile: lacking in intellectual or emotional depth?

legitimacy: credence, a word I probably should have used instead

aesthetics: visual appearance

revulsion: disdain, hatred

Anonus

anyway I will now respond to this:

Sredni Vashtar said:

It's not "juvenilia," just so you know. Juvenilia is the product of a writer who has not yet come of age. Harlan Ellison's "The Gloconda", much of Arthur Rimbaud's Illuminations, and anything by the late Thomas Chatterton would be juvenile. What you mean is work that is juvenile in content, which is a bit different.

Anyway.

A lot of these cartoons take their appeal from the merchandise surrounding them and the power of creating one's own stories with toys, particularly the Transformers and G.I. Joe franchises; while others, such as comic book and video game adaptations, play off of the affection for their parent media, largely born out of the fantasies of omnipotence and absolute independence that they give the reader or player, and wanting to see those stories as a cartoon. Those which are derided tend to lack that synergy of multiple points of nostalgia, to have been targeted at a group whose experiences are considered marginal or invalid, or whose adaptations were unusually low in quality even for the period.

1. Gotcha.

2. See, I can understand Transformers and G.I. Joe as having their appeal primarily in the toys and the concepts therein. It's just that I came of age in an era when cartoons were typically not based on existing properties, they were their own things, and I expect that of them. Even the aforementioned/alluded-to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic infuses its source material with a certain heft that prior iterations did not have, and the show's fans, who mostly lack investment in previous incarnations of the franchise, tend to see the show as the focus, not the toys.

Sredni Vashtar

Well, yeah, exactly. You're younger than the people who are nostalgic for those things, for the most part, and roughly the same age as the MLP fans whose nostalgia with respect to that franchise is tied more to The Powerpuff Girls and Dexter's Laboratory than the original (generally awful) cartoons or the first wave of toys.

Anonus

Much of FIM's DNA is tied to those shows (Lauren Faust, Rob Renzetti, Chris Savino), but I'm sure you knew that.

Odradek

It was really weird for me as a teen to see the Nostalgia Critic praise the 90s X-Men cartoon while turning up his nose at the 90s Spider-Man cartoon when the main difference appeared to be that he watched one when he was a kid and didn't watch the other

Anonus

(Also, Craig McCracken designed the Wonderbolts uniform)

Imipolex G

80s cartoons were the best you philistine!

Anonus

Odradek said:

It was really weird for me as a teen to see the Nostalgia Critic praise the 90s X-Men cartoon while turning up his nose at the 90s Spider-Man cartoon when the main difference appeared to be that he watched one when he was a kid and didn't watch the other

also, I think he made this one as a joke, but he turned his nose up at Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and embraced SatAM, which I personally have always found inferior

Imipolex G

well, I'll agree with that at least.

Anonus

also, '80s cartoons could have been bester if standards and practices departments were abolished

Sredni Vashtar

Could you please change the title? The misuse of the word is bugging me.

Anonus

I did that

Imipolex G

Yeah, I thought this was gonna be about "things nerds wrote as kids"

lee4hmz

Now I'm thinking of Chalopin-era DiC stuff and how weird most of it was.

Anonus

like what

lee4hmz

Apparently they did some odd stuff on the second season (!) of M.A.S.K., like the villains doing Knowing Is Half The Battle spots.

Imipolex G

I think I had stopped watching by that point.

Anonus

^^hahaha

lee4hmz

I didn't even know M.A.S.K. had a second season. Probably because Mom stopped us from watching it about halfway through the first season, since my younger brother got too into it and started hitting.

Section42L

Chalopin-era DiC honestly seems like it should've been amazing.

The company, at its core, was a mix of early anime, Franco-Belgian comics and traditional cartooning.

Inspector Gadget shows this off... but then nothing else did. It's so bizarre.

lee4hmz

Yeah. I have to wonder why they did so many cash-ins.

Imipolex G

TRG was pretty all right. Even today I can watch that and not want to murder its creators.

Imipolex G

I refuse to edit that post on account of ninja editing

lee4hmz

That's fine, it's still relevant. Quite a bit of DiC's non-TRG licensed stuff was pretty forgettable.

Anonus

lee4hmz said:

Yeah. I have to wonder why they did so many cash-ins.

wasn't that just how the industry was when they started up?

lee4hmz

Like, the Nintendo adaptations became relevant again (limitedly) through YouTube Poop, but I have to wonder how many people remember things like Pole Position (based on the game, somehow) or C.O.P.S. 

Anonus

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog seems to have been permanently, deservedly, rescued from the cultural dumpster by YTP

Imipolex G

I remember C.O.P.S.!

you had to be just the right age, though. Man, remember that cheesy anti-drug episode

Section42L

TRG might well be good, but I just can't get past Lorenzo Music's Garfield-sounding Venkman to watch it.

lee4hmz

I remember the intro, but pretty much none of the episodes. Which is weird.

Before YTP, I mainly remember AOSTH for being...unwatchable. It involved some very squishy logic involving my crush at the time finishing her classwork a bit faster than me.