Ryan's Journal

This fellow's name is near the end of the credits on episodes of G. I. Joe. In the midst of the entertainment industry re-selling my childhood back to me, I took a peek (via Joost) at some of the old toy commercial cartoons. Man. They really suck. What possible social value could a cartoon designed for selling toys based on violent military action set amidst absurdist fear-mongering really carry? "They're enticing old people to start crappy franchises with life-sized rocket signs on top, then bankrupting them and buying back those franchises on the cheap so they can launch the rockets!" - the hell? What did we learn, kids? That old people are suckers? I wonder if Prof. Selman's research draws on his experiences with attempting to inject educational programming into blatant and crass commercialism. How much of the Joe universe did he have to ingest before vomiting up a takeaway lesson?

I was especially moved by the episode where our protagonists and antagonists find a primitive African hominid culture, "more ape than man," that worships a fallen satellite and intends to murder all their captive Joe's and Cobra's until the Joe's prove their worth by saving ape kids from certain death. After the satellite is destroyed, the Joe's leave them something else "they hope they don't worship" - a television. The proto-hominids proceed to destroy it after watching a commercial. What? Too many cooks on that broth. Aside from snide remarks on 80's programming - the Transformers are worse - I'm afraid the only part of Joost I had any interest in was Robot Chicken, which seems to be entirely based on the premise that 80's programming is best viewed tongue in cheek.

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