Thursday, July 19, 2012

Granddaddy Nerd

Ah, the Emmy nominations for 2012. Notice what's on there? Game of Thrones. The young folks may now shrug their shoulders. "So what?" they say. "It's a good show." Yeah, it is. But I'm not young folk. I'm a Granddaddy Nerd.

And that means I remember a time when a series like GoT could have been the love child of I Love Lucy, All in the Family, and Roots, and it STILL wouldn't have gotten an Emmy. Hell, it wouldn't even have been financed. And a bunch of Entourage types in Italian suits would have rolled their eyes if you'd dared to suggest it.

In the last thirty years, an amazing thing has happened - science fiction, fantasy and graphic novels have been mainstreamed. When I was in college, I would have bet heavy money that this was as likely as, well, as likely as a Columbia grad being elected president. (Yeah, I'm looking at you, Barry.)


There are a dozen different reasons and people responsible, from Star Wars to Frank Miller's reinvention of Batman as "the Dark Knight" to the way video games grew exponentially in power while adopting F/SF themes and tropes.The dam finally burst, I think, when Peter Jackson brought LOTR to the screen. Money is legitimacy in Hollywood, and F/SF had finally, finally made enough money. (Never mind the mega-millions it had been raking in, one way or another, for years.) I may be the only person in America who remembers Ralph Bakshi's brave, doomed early attempt with The Fellowship of the Ring.

There's a lot to talk about on the topic, positive and negative. We'll be coming back to this subject, oh yes, like indieprods to Comic-Con.


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