Now her friends buy her!

A little late, but I don't care:

Have you heard? The British are FREAKING OUT! And, get this...it's over Barbie!

The Sun has the headline: "S&M Barbie Is Lashed By Public"
My word! What is this all about?



Mattel is releasing a fall line of Barbies that are based on DC Comic superheroes. Included in this collection are icons Wonder Woman and Supergirl, fan favorite Batgirl (Barbra Gordon), and my favorite comic book character to ever wear fishnets, Black Canary:






Poor Dinah Lance is this "S&M Barbie" all because her costume (since the 1940s by the way!) contains fishnet stockings and black leather.

Golly! What would Dr. Frederic Wertham think? I mean, he claimed Batman and Robin are a gay fantasy, and that Wonder Woman's independence made her a lesbian! But...fetish gear made to attract heterosexual males? In comics? Gasp! Hang on to your monocles!





Hey, S&M Barbie, have you met Bild Lilli?



What do you mean no? She's family! In fact, she's the doll you were based on. Well, not you specifically S&M Barbie, but the original 1959 Barbie. Yeah, she's old. Let me tell you about Lilli: she was a German doll, that was primarily marketed to men as a sex toy.


Oh. Well. Now this is awkward, isn't it.

Yes, Barbie was based on a German sex doll, which makes this quote from British Group Christian Voice about S&M Barbie even funnier: “Barbie has always been on the tarty side and this is taking it too far. A children’s doll in sexually suggestive clothing is irresponsible – it’s filth.”

No, no, Bild Lilli, don't cry, they weren't talking about you, you were marketed to men...it's not your fault that Ruth Handler ripped off your design almost completely for her original Barbie doll...aimed at little girls...


Here's a 1955 Lilli on the left, and a 1959 Barbie on the right.

Now you might be asking "where on earth did this Lilli come from originally anyway?!" Well, would you believe a comic strip?



(Translation from German: "I'm a Whore. Let's go fuck!")



Oh My!

Lilli was a comic strip character created by Reinhard Beuthien for the German newspaper Bild-Zeitung in 1952. Her strips usually involved her using her sexuality to attract men and gain money. In fact, one newspaper (from Australia) even goes as far as to call her a "comic strip prostitute"

Now I understand why Ken isn't atomically correct. Who knows what diseases Barbie inherited from her slutty mother?

(On a side note, those Lilli strips kind of remind me of Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder's Playboy comic "Little Annie Fannie". The main difference is try doing a google search of "Little Annie Fannie" and you get pages of results. Then try searching for the Lilli comic strip and you get the same two images that I posted here. How has this not been archived better?)




So, everyone that's freaking out over Barbie being dressed like Black Canary, S&M gear and all, maybe you should take a look at your tarty children's dolls' history first.

Plus, have you seen their Supergirl doll? Jeez, she's only like 16 in the books...

Looking Over My Blog

Man, do I need to learn formatting.

There's been a lack of updates recently, I know. I've been looking for a new place to live and that's taken up most of my time. I'm going to try to update tomorrow. Anybody hear about that whole Black Canary Barbie thing? We'll, I have some stuff to say about it...three weeks late.

Whatever, no ones reading anyway.

Politicos Will Latch Onto Anything To Prove Their Point

This was sent to me:

"Liberals live in a world of “and.” Full security and full civil liberties. Universal health care and the best quality with no waiting. A dynamic economy and full welfare and unemployment benefits. Liberals, in other words, live in that scene in Spider-Man in which Spidey, forced to choose between saving a tram car full of innocent civilians and saving his girlfriend, chooses both. Liberals live in a fantasy.

Conservatives, though, live in a world of tradeoffs, of either/or. For having this relationship with reality, conservatives are caricatured as grumpy, stingy and negative. Surely all it takes is a bump in taxes on the wealthy and everything will be affordable? Where’s the Hope? Where’s the Dream? Yes, we can!"

Ouch.

And to think, the article was talking about the politics of The Dark Knight...

Can't Stop Now, This Is Bat Country

That Was FANTASTIC.

Shiny Happy Monsters

Feist, everyone's favorite Canadian countress finally performed "1234" on Sesame Street:



It's pretty cool, but..."Chickens just back from the shore"??

I don't even know where to start with that one...


I'm a little disappointed though...when I heard of this, I was promised Count Von Count. There is no Count Von Count in this clip. Way to go Sesame Street, great job dropping the ball on that one.

I Guess Once Again, Comedy Has Done It's Job...

I know that everyone has commented on this already, but it seems that people still don't understand it.

The recent New Yorker cover:




IT'S SATIRE!!!!!!!


The Daily Show made the point pretty well, but still I hear people (read:Newscasters) saying that they think it is offensive...

Look at it like this: If we took all of the descriptions of Barack Obama and his wife Michelle that every commentator on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and the such, have said in the past, and given those descriptions to a sketch artist, who has no clue who these people are, this would be the result. The Media has made this image of the Obamas, and now, THEY think it's offensive.

Unbefuckinglievable.

Fear and Loathing In 1903

Picture yourself in a movie theater in 1903. You've just sat down to watch this new "film" thingy called "The Great Train Robbery". The "film" starts, and you're skeptical. "The way that camera moved made me dizzy!". After an exhausting 12 minutes later, the film finally ends, except...suddenly, one of the bad guys from the movie faces you--THE AUDIENCE--and slowly raises a gun. Oh no! We're doomed! He's going to fire upon us! Nooooo!



Scared? No? Well, that's because we aren't idiots.

**********************************************************************************
I remember watching a great Simpsons 'Tree House Of Horrors' episode where they did their take on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven".

At the end of the story, Bart questions the poem's classification as horror:

Bart: Lisa, that wasn't scary, not even for a poem.
Lisa: Well, it was written in 1845. Maybe people were easier to scare back then.

Lisa suggests that people in the past were a lot more prone to easy scares than we are today. (How else could the romantic horror of "The Raven" ever give someone the chills they get today while watching something like "The Ring".)

Maybe using this theory, we could infer that in 1903, when Thomas Edison and Edwin S. Porter's "The Great Train Robbery" came out, people were still easily scared, and a fictional character on a movie screen could actually pose a real threat.

No, I'm sorry, I've got to call BULLSHIT.



I know film was a new medium at the time, and theoretically, many of the people in the theater probably didn't know what "the moving pictures" were capable of, but to honestly believe that a character on a screen can break the fourth wall and shoot you? Come on.

The movie-going audience of 1903 was more familiar with live theater like plays, and vaudeville, so maybe they though the same rules apply. In a live performance, yes, a guy holding a gun on stage has the ability to actually shoot through the fourth wall...but here's the kicker...I bet that if this was an actual live performance, the audience wouldn't have even blinked. I bring your attention to the Iroquois Theater Fire of 1903. At no more than a month old, the theater broke out into flames during a performance. As the fire spread out of control, THE AUDIENCE DIDN'T MOVE. They thought it was all part of the performance. The actors kept on acting and the dancers kept on dancing. It wasn't until comedian Eddie Foy told the audience that it's wasn't part of the act that anybody did anything.

602 people died because the audience wasn't scared of no heat and flames.

But a 2 dimensional movie character shooting through the fourth wall...well now, that's a pants pisser.


I also have to call bullshit on the idea that people were more prone to be scared back then than today. Case in point.

So, I'm calling every film professor in this country wrong. There ain't no way in hell the people of 1903 were scared of being shot by a two dimensional man. Unless of course, they were idiots.