Still not doing so well. :/

Traffic at SC picked up a bit in the last couple of days, with 123 unique visitors yesterday (yay!) but bandwidth was still surprisingly low. I'm not sure what to make of it, but comparing it to the opening days of February I guess that image script really is having an effect. Woo. Also, the TMNT anime hasn't been dethroned yet, but the Creepy Freaks are certainly doing their best to make it happen -- take a look. Neck and neck, people.

So we recently got cable at the house and, on the whole, I can't say I've been to pleased with it. At least when we didn't have it and there was nothing worth watching on network television I could tell myself that there was something worthwhile playing on a cable station -- I just didn't have access to it at the time. Now I can't even do that, since 99% of cable tv is crap too, and much of it is even worse than what's playing on the standard channels. That certainty -- and the knowledge that people are actually watching and being influenced by this stuff -- has been part of what's made my last week or so really awful.

But not all of cable tv is abysmal, and occasionally something airs that is quite good -- hence the title of this entry, "Teen Titans, go!" It's no secret that I'm a big fan of cartoons, so you'd expect me to be really into Cartoon Network, but not so -- these days it's mostly just Scooby-Doo marathons and lame anime dubs. Which isn't to say that all anime is bad, of course, but the stuff that airs on CN seems to have been chosen not because it's actually good, but because it's anime, and what merit the shows might have had is all but taken from it when they dub the shows and change the dialogue to appease a more mainstream American audience. And don't get me started on the Adult Swim cartoons -- these are consistently some of the most idiotic (and horribly animated) shows I've ever seen, yet somehow they're considered "adult" shows because the characters occasionally make drug references and jokes of the lame homophobic variety. Ugh.

"Teen Titans" airs on Saturdays at 9 PM. I'm not very familiar with the show, but given that I was feeling particularly down then (see the previous post) I decided I'd watch before pouring myself a few drinks and passing out. Obviously, I wasn't expecting much.

Of the members who have posted comments on the episode thus far on the Toonzone forums, I am one of two to give the episode 5/5 stars. So yes, I really liked it. Not only did the episode drive home a moral that many of us seem to have forgotten these days, but there were also some clever ideas within -- such that I think "Transformations" (the episode title) was either deeper than the writers intended for it to be or deeper than most of its viewers will realize.

In the episode, one of the Titans -- an alien girl named Starfire, who looks pretty much human -- grew what appeared to be a large zit (about as long and thick as three fingers) in the center of her forehead. Being unfamiliar with pimples, she freaked out, but that was only the beginning -- in the next several days, she also grew tusks from her neck, long black-and-white striped claws, hobbit feet, elven ears, and scales on her skin. She took to wearing a long raincoat and hat, galoshes, a scarf, and thick mittens to cover her deformities, and thought to herself that if her friends saw how ugly she had become, they would laugh at her and possibly even destroy her.

The Titans' encounter with Plasmus -- a monster of considerable hideousness -- did not help, as the Titans taunted the beast with remarks about his ugliness, and eventually in the course of the battle Starfire's disguise was knocked away. The Titans seemed completely unfazed when they looked at her, but she imagined them laughing at her and left the planet -- surely she was too ugly to have friends like the Titans. She wandered the galaxy, visiting planets whose inhabitants were hideous, hoping that they would take her in -- but, of course, they ran from her in fear.

Ever more dejected, Starfire drifted into the darker parts of the solar system, and after a near-death encounter with a carnivorous plant -- which got a mouthful of her and spat her out in disgust -- she encountered a radiant being that told her she was beautiful and explained that she was undergoing a wondrous change. The shimmering creature told her that she was becoming a Chrysalis. Starfire looked upon this being with reverence, and, as a cocoon began to form around her, she asked, "How is it that you know such things?"

The creature smiled and responded, "Because...I AM A CHRYSALIS EATER!!!!!!!" and at once transformed into a terrifying cross between a spider, a giant crab, and a grinning skeleton.

Meanwhile, the Titans had modified their submarine in order to travel into space and bring Starfire back home, and of course they arrived just in time to stop the Chrysalis Eater from devouring Starfire, now helpless inside her cocoon. The battle was tough, but Robin managed to knock the cocoon away while the others engaged the Eater in battle. He moved to open the cocoon, but Starfire sadly asked him not to, for he could hardly stand to look at her, hideous as she had become -- but Robin calmly told her that he was her friend, and that he didn't care how she looked. "No matter how much you change on the outside," he said, "you'll still be Starfire on the inside." And when he had pried the cocoon open, she was back to her old self in appearance. But the change had left her with a new trick -- Starfire could now fire green laser beams from her eyes, which she used to make short work of the Chrysalis Eater and send it crashing into the wilderness, only to be devoured by the plant from earlier.

Of course, many of the people who voiced their displeasure with the episode berated it for its children's story qualities -- in addition to the obvious similarities of the tale, it was also narrated by Tony Jay, who has the perfect voice for that sort of thing -- and for its "typical" message. And in my review, I wrote, "It may seem like an obvious and trite moral -- 'it's what's on the inside that counts' -- but when you've got so many makeover shows on television these days and so many people going around 'celebrating' mere appearances, you've got to wonder how many of us really take it to heart."

And I do wonder. I wrote once about the show "Extreme Makeover", which takes women who are unhappy with their appearances and gives them so much plastic surgery that they are almost unrecognizable at the end of the show -- but what's worse is that they are encouraged in this by their family members, and sometimes it is the women's husbands who call in and arrange the appearance for them. There was one episode in particular, in which a nine-years-younger husband supported the operations because he had a habit of telling his wife he could find someone younger and better looking, and after the plastic surgery she would be closer to his level in the looks department. And there is no shortage of makeover shows and Style Courts (sorry Dawn :)) that focus on and critique people with respect to their appearances, and there is apparently an entire network (the Style Network, on which Style Court airs) with this as its aim.

But there was also something else worth noting -- the deception of the Chrysalis Eater. We're all familiar with the children's books in which the ugly duckling becomes a beautiful swan, or in which the saggy baggy elephant comes to realize its own external beauty upon meeting a troupe of elephants "like itself." And we've all seen the way that people tell others (and themselves) how beautiful they are, and how they're encouraged to go out and be proud of who they are -- by which they oftentimes mean what they are and what they look like. But here, the one who told Starfire that she was beautiful ended up being the one who tried to devour her, whereas her real friends could've cared less about what she looked like. And when Robin delivered his moral, it wasn't in a very serious way -- he spoke it almost haphazardly, stifling a laugh, as if Starfire had been incredibly silly for even thinking that he and the others would care about her appearance. Is it an obvious moral? Perhaps -- but pick an online dating service and browse through the ads and tell me how many persons you find who truly value it. Do I think that the occasional compliment constitutes a legitimate figurative attempt to devour them? Nah -- I'll often throw out a "you're so cute" line if I think it's warranted. Just understand that I don't mean that much by it, and you shouldn't take too much stock in it either.

And now, we'll close with a relevant poem. I wrote this during my freshman year of college -- waaaaay back in the fall of '99. Wow, I don't even remember what was going on back then. I think it's supposed to be a Spenserian stanza (written for a Spenser class I was taking at the time). Well, here we go -- hope you enjoy.

Your Eyes

Your eyes are soft, like waters of the Nile

but like that river, there is danger too --

and yet so often my heart they beguile --

strange pools of wonder, befitting of you.

One day they were green, the next icy blue,

and once you wore red, to give me a scare --

but without contacts, your eyes shine more true.

So if new colors, my dear, you must wear

I suggest you put highlights in your hair.

Cheers. 🙂