What’s this article about again?
Wait, where am I?
Kevin Doole, staff
Dinosaurs are cool. It’s a fact. They’re big and dangerous, and they’ve been extinct a long time, so they are mysterious. More importantly, they fuel a huge industry that incorporates education, entertainment, and research. Hollywood has tried its best to cash in on the mythos of dinos, but children’s entertainment has been the most gallant in its manipulation of children, parents, fact, and myth.
Kids like dinos and therefore so do children’s TV producers. If they can make a show about dinos, they’ve covered their bases in one shot. Dinos can be cute and scary, depending on their species, so the heroes and villains of such shows take care themselves. Throw in a couple erroneous factoids short enough that the kids won’t notice them and BOOM, they’ve filled their educational quota. Parents can feel comfortable plopping their little bundles of stinky noise in front of the TV for as long as it takes to do whatever.
Take, for example, Bruce McTaggart’s arena rock kid’s show Walking With Dinosaurs: The Live Experience. While McTaggart excitedly offers statements as to the show’s uniqueness and its ability to be both entertaining and informative, Bradley Parsons, president of Arena Network, has different things to plug. Parsons projects a possible annual income of $100 million to come from bridging the crossover between children and adult entertainment.
The way I see it, while kids like giddy, absurd entertainment, adults prefer awesome, violent, naked, profane entertainment. There is obviously a big gap between the two forms, but dinosaurs are really big! You could also say, “It’s no problem they’ve got big shoes to fill!”
With a little effort, Walking With Dinosaurs could easily incorporate education, bloodshed, drama, and perhaps even hot live sex, all within a children’s adventure story. Throw in a few s-words, f-words and c-words and, so long as you remember to include the science bites, you’ve got yourself a bestseller.
But, is this what they’ve actually done?
While most reviews have been geared towards the experience of their children, there is one person, Damien Madden of Stagenoise, who reviewed from the standpoint of bridging the gap. He comments that “although short . . . the show is very slow in places” and “there is very little physical interaction, even when they are meant to be attacking each other.” The fact of the matter is, um . . .
Well, now, I just want to say that I set out here to do an article for the culture section and why am I now blathering on about concert reviews and entertainment? It started out as a well-structured general discussion about what I wanted to talk about, but has clearly devolved into a discussion suitable only for the Arts and Entertainment section.
Honestly, I’ve been looking forward to trying out the culture section. No Korn CD reviews, no whiny commenting, no boring news . . . it seems to be the most useful and endearing section. [Ed. note: no it doesn’t.] I would hate to taint it with lowbrow rambles.
But, what article can actually fit into the culture section? Culture is another of those slippery words that defy definition. I could probably go look in a dictionary to find a “definition,” but it wouldn’t be correct. Culture is a concept that needs a more conceptual mode of definition.
Those of you readers who hold that Wikipedia is a poor source for reliable information will just have to bend over and take this one. It is a forum created by our culture and as such should be the only reliable source for a definition. It’s like in Jurassic Park when Dr. Saddler examines a sick triceratops. She doesn’t try to wistfully whip up a diagnosis; she goes to the only available hard evidence: the fecal matter. Wikipedia is much the same: culture is the triceratops and Wikipedia is the fecal pile of digested remnants it has produced.
Wikipedia says that “culture generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significant importance.” So . . . a good culture article should be about people doing things for reasons.
It goes on to say that “culture is manifested in music, literature, painting, sculpture, theater, and film . . . consumption and consumer goods . . . processes which produce such goods . . . and the social relationships and practices in which such objects and processes become embedded,” adding that it includes “technology, art, science, as well as moral systems.”
Scrolling down the page clarifies little. “A culture is then, by definition at least, a set of cultural objects.” A little broad, but we’ll humour the idea. Anthropologist Leslie White breaks it down for us and clears up any confusion: “Are they physical objects? Mental objects? Both? Metaphors? Symbols? Reifications?”
I’m sweating now trying to simultaneously read this passage and process the questions. Again to my rescue comes Mr. White, this time with an answer. Culture, he says, is “symbolates understood in an extra-somatic context,” a symbolate being an object born of symbolization, like a dinosaur action figure, for example.
AHA! A new direction for this tattered, bastard article. Something I (and readers?) can really sink my (our) teeth into. Something interesting! And I was on the right track to start out. The problem was that I became distracted by the glistening façade of the glamorous dinosaur entertainment industry. Really, who could blame me?
Are dinosaurs a worthy subject matter for a culture section article? That is to say, are dinosaurs extra-somatic symbolates? Can they be edged into the category of technology-art-science-consumption-production-relationships-processes?
Well, let’s see. They are entertaining. But they existed before many cultural concepts (art, technology, etc.) existed.
Walking With Dinosaurs and other productions are clearly topics to be covered in arts and entertainment.
Paleontology is science and technology, but definitely not entertainment (and therefore not art).
In fact, dinosaurs themselves are not symbolates. They are the symbols. The symbolates are dinosaur action figures. Dino figurines are art, science, and technology, all balled up in a tight little package of production and consumption of extra-somatic symbolates. I submit that they are the perfect subject matter for the culture section.
So, reader, stay tuned for, at some point in the near or distant future, some sort of article — in the culture section — about dinosaur figurines and the cultural implications thereof. Or perhaps just a review of cool dino toys. Maybe just toys in general. Or maybe just general topics.
