Captain PMS 8/22

Captain's Blog Stardate 8/25:
Today I watched the first of several shows saved to my TiVo that I have recorded throughout the week. I like to start with the least intellectual programming and work my way up. This chronology dictates that I start with Who Wants to be a Superhero, a contrived and over-scripted nightmare of reality television. Eventually I will end the weekend with something more mind-friendly like Jeopardy or The Daily Show but for now, after one of the longest first school weeks in history, I am but a vegetable, and shows like Who Wants to be a Superhero are about all I can handle. The show, if you haven't seen it, centers around comic book legend, Stan Lee, and his attempt at finding a hero for his next comic book series. This means that for one hour a week grown men and women run around in private-cupping spandex while crying and hugging each other a lot. It seems that these days most superhero movies are more about special effects than story and this may be why the contestants on the show seem so dated and out of place. The show is obviously not that high up on the network's funding list and the special effects have been reduced to the occasional bolt of lightning and some strange green smoke. That said, I couldn't help but think about our first class while I watched Fat Momma, Feedback, and Major Victory race to an anti-climatic finish.
Superhero, like a lot of "reality" television touches on many of the themes surrounding postmodernism. Absurdity, meaninglessness, and surrealism are apparent in every frame of the fake challenges the contestants are sent on. At times the earnestness of the characters seems so absurd that it becomes painful to watch. The move from universality to plurality that postmodernism exhibits is evident in the fact that the entire point of the program is for one person to be immortalized as a comic book hero. Each week a contestant is removed and challenges are completed in rapid time and so, like most shows, speed is of importance (and I might add, aided to by my fast-forward button each time I see a tear welling up in some poor saps eye.) I can't even get into all of the comparisons to be made when you talk about the theme of reinvention, but the rise of comic book popularity as of late and the fact that a comic book hero is essentially a reinvented man or woman are two that come immediately to mind. The point is, Superhero, like most shows in its genre, embodies the themes of postmodernism in ways I am just beginning to see after our first meeting. A week ago I would have laughed at the bad editing and overacting that Superhero illustrates but now I find myself pondering deeper ideas which pisses me off in a way. I beleive I mentioned my vegetable status and here comes the Notorious R.O.G. to mess with my head. I have come to the conclusion that like a computer generated bolt shot from Feedback's hand, this class is going to explode my mind.