Fires ravage California? Whatever.
Universal health care torpedoes Obama presidency? Whatever.
O’C’s mother signs up for Facebook? Whatever.
Disney buys Marvel? All hell breaks loose.
The most intelligent thing I read on this was that Disney was buying into a vast franchise for boys of varying princess through Miley ages. They’ve already got girls sewn up from birth to the point where they hear something on the radio that’s actually good, but boys have been elusive aside from the occasional odd pirate. Now they’ve got hypothetical pirates up the wazoo. Economics aside, that sounds pretty savvy to me. And no, IOA won’t be packing up and moving down the road. Universal apparently owns those ride rights in Florida (and their freedom from direct competition) for eternity or thereabouts. Theoretically, I think, however, they could put a Spiderman ride (#1 dark ride in the universe, no contest) in, say, Disneyland Tokyo.
Why do I care? Well, popular culture is pretty important, and Disney is pretty important because it owns so much of it. This is aside from any fanboy aspects of the thing, although I am a minor fanboy, no question. Major fanboys go to Disneyland every week or WDW every couple of months. I go every few years, so I don’t even register on the scale. There is a vast literature on Disney cultural studies. If you’re interested in getting into cult studies, Disney, since you already basically know so much about it, is a great place to start.
Meanwhile, I spent last night finishing my updated cur material on justice, some of which I published here not too long ago. I added in a little Nozick, some utility and a soupcon of the Almighty, just to round it off, but that about does it. The thing is, I come on Rawls from a soc con point of view, so my justice material, which seques from soc con, has that relation to what has gone before. And, as I’ve said in the Feed recently, I am a bleeding heart liberal, so being personally rather Rawlsian simply follows naturally. So for me justice is a way to bring soc con into the present day as well as an issue in and of itself.
O’C is beavering away at shoring up instructors for MHLW; we should be able to publish the list in a day or two. We’re getting there. And some Sailors are recruiting this week at a freshman orientation session (school starts after Labor Day). Tomorrow night we’ll chez up some more on Sept-Oct. I’m working on getting a judge for Monticello. I’m annoying CP with bugs in the new tabroom.com as often as I can. I’m slowly plodding my way through my vacation photos in iPhoto. I’m mastering the art of crème brulee. I’m finishing up The Magicians (audio) but still plodding along in Perdido Street Station (manual). I’m planning my Labor Day 2010 vacation (more on that to come) but still meditating on my May 2010 vacation, and diddling about Christmas break 2009, and wondering what exactly I’ll be doing this Saturday in the city (Saint Gaudens?), so I am thinking ahead albeit in reverse order (cf Nabokov’s Ada on memory). In other words, everything is about normal here at Coachean HQ. How’s by you?
1 comment:
Most of the uproar I heard about this is from the Marvel geek side. Everyone was getting very excited about the direction Marvel movies were taking, with Iron Man and the Hulk being done with respect and quality the past couple of years, and a few more movies coming down the pipeline that promise the same quality, leading to one giant-ass Avengers movie (the Avengers put a whole mess of recognizable superheroes in one crime-fighting force).
Now people are worried that Marvel will be subjected to the same crap DC goes through with everything but Batman - fighting for control, to preserve the legacy of a character, yada yada. I personally think that Disney has gotten smart enough to give Marvel the Pixar treatment and leave well enough alone.
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