Then there are times when I KNOW they don't get it.
For instance, take the movie Kick-Ass. The movie (based on a comic book of the same name) is based on the premise 'Why hasn't anyone tried to be a superhero?'. In it, we follow the adventure of a high school geek who's only super power is "being invisible to girls". When he orders a costume over the internet, and goes to try and fight crime, he promptly gets stabbed, and then hit by a car. The result? He's got metal supporting his bones now, and his nerve endings are shot, so he can't feel pain. And then he goes back out, crimefighting again, becoming an internet sensation, while at school he's still the geek who can't score.
So far, all the critics love the movie, enjoying the close parallel to Spider-man and Peter Parker. Of course, that's only the first twenty minutes or so.
Then we meet Hit Girl and Big Daddy, a pair of costumed vigilantes who are more Punisher than the Batman and Robin they echo. Hit Girl first appears in costume wielding more blades than a chef at Benihana, and she proceeds to destroy the gang-bangers who Kick-Ass had come to intimidate, before Big Daddy takes down the last one with a shot from a sniper rifle through the window.
From that point on, the critics lament and moan how horrible the movie is, with graphic depictions of violence, and the way Hit Girl curses enough to make a sailor blush, all the while being cute and adorable. A review in the local paper actually whined that the movie would have been better if it were more like Peter Parker in Spider-man.
News flash. This movie is NOT Spider-man.
What this movie is actually a more realistic representation of what would happen if people in real life tried to be superheroes, and there is a simple reason why it doesn't portray the main characters as wearing blue spandex tights, flying around, and behaving like an extraterrestrial boyscout. These are real people, with real flaws, and real limitations on what they can do. And nothing they do (with the exception of jetpack-mounted miniguns) is within the realm of human ability.
Moreover, the character of Hit Girl is SUPPOSED to be disturbing! She and Big Daddy have given themselves completely to the 'by any means necessary' approach to bringing retribution to those who are outside the law. Like Rorschach in the Watchmen, they are agents of vengeance, and there is a certain nobility in their almost psychotic behavior, their clarity of vision. They do the things we all wish we could do.
The reason Hit Girl and Rorschach are disturbing is because we have all thought that the world would be a better place if we just took the fight to the criminals, the terrorists, the people who make our lives miserable, and laid waste to them all. But we always hold back, either through fear, or morality, or apathy. We talk the talk, but they walk the walk, and that is what disturbs us. It isn't that we hate what they do, but that we hate the fact that they are doing it and not us.
But perhaps old people just don't get it.
And then there's the recent outrage by commentators and public morality hypocrites over the recent video circulating the internet showing Miley Cyrus dancing up on a guy, grinding on him. Now commentators are bitching and moaning about how she shouldn't be doing that, or whatever.
I've seen the video, and honestly? It is painfully obvious that the people who are outraged haven't actually been to a high school dance in a couple decades, at least. News flash, people, that was pretty tame for what teenagers do. Hell, at my high school prom I saw much worse, and that was back in '02.
This is simply how people dance now. Or did you think teenagers went for doing a nice waltz, or perhaps a square dance? Did you think that they were somehow more pure than you were when you were a teenager? Don't tell me none of you got freaky growing up in the 60s and 70s!
Old people just don't get it.
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