I have always been a mass media nut. I read, I watch, I consume. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's terrible, once in awhile it's awesome, and occasionally it's the worst, but I still come back for more.
I started from a young age, mostly with books and cartoons, and the occasional movie. While I got up at the crack of dawn on Saturday mornings to catch every episode of all my favorite shows (and developed a rather ingenious method of watching one channel while recording another before TiVo and the Internet), I also devoured books on mythology. The
ancient world’s ability to ascribe all of the universe’s natural and unnatural
phenomena to gods and goddesses, heroes and villains, and impossible creatures
has always fascinated me. These stories most directly led to my love of
superhero comic books and their gods and goddesses, heroes and villains, and impossible
creatures. And from then on, there was no looking back (if ever there had been).
I have written about mass media on and off my entire adult life. Sometimes for work, sometimes for fun, always with an eye on making sure other people know what I think about various subjects. In an effort to add to
that “one great poem perpetually in progress” that Harold Bloom describes in
his treatise The Anxiety of Influence, I will write about mass media again, here in this blog. It will mostly be about older things; things that have been in out in the world for some time and I have had a chance to digest them, to mull them over, to really get to know them. I don't so much care about being the first to write about any given subject, or even the best, frankly. I just want to make sure I get my opinion out there, and that everybody who reads it knows it is the correct one. That said, I occasionally will not be able to contain my excitement (or disgust) about something that may in fact be happening as I write about it. C'est la vie.
Mass media is art, and art is very important. And it is very important that we as a
society continue to make and appreciate art. As long as art (whether music, writing, painting, architecture, movies, sculpture, comics, or
whatever else one can consider art) continues to be created and appreciated, we as a society will
not have lost our ability to wonder at the universe around us, and therefore
will not have lost our drive and ambition to understand the universe around us. We will not stagnate.
Especially when that art features gods and goddesses, heroes and villains, and impossible creatures.
Oh, also, during this intrepid journey of art and criticism, chances are good that I will curse like a sailor, so fair warning.
