Month: March 2006

From the AHD this seems apt.

rough-cut

NOUN:
A print of a movie that has not been completely edited.
ADJECTIVE:
Lacking manners and finesse: “a rough-cut man who drew his life with a broad stroke” (Clif Garboden).

So I was doing some err cultural research for a project I’m set to get started on and I came across this term: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retcon

Retcon is shorthand for retroactive continuity. So just when I thought it was tough enough to get anything reliable and consistent in terms of historical information for real stuff I go and find that inconsistencies in my precious fictional ‘verses are so prevalent that there is a term for it. Scrolling down on the link I found a few that were quite entertaining but still I think this is a bad thing. Most good stories have an arch there are sarafices and developments of characters. There is change in environments and themes are developed and deconstructed. Once the world is opened up to being retroactively rewritten it yeilds a great amount of confusion and in many cases ruins what would have been a good story. When one rewrites a movie or adapts a work for the screen or stage there are changes for sure and this is accepted I think because it is a different world. But when a new writer takes over a story and changes it retroactively it seems to negate the previous work and throws the earned emotional connection with the characters into a general disarray (1 more day for more South Park (still written by the same 2 guys no retcon there)). Also once this practice of retcon is accepted it negates all of the work for who is to say that the next writer won’t just throw out the work of his predecessors? I guess I feel that the practice of retcon is the ultimate in lazy writing and a serious cop out in terms of a storytelling device. If a writer wants to tell a story about bounty hunting aliens fighting in giant space robots within the constraints of a previously established world that’s all well and good but if he* wants to make it his own then I think he should do the work and write his own from scratch.

* I’m saying “he” here not to be sexist but simply put women don’t write BHAFiGSR stories . . . if anybody knows one I’d like to meet her.

So word around the campfire is that Issac Hayes has put in to end his contract with Comedy Central and will cease being the Chef character on South Park. Now like many I enjoyed Chef’s wisdom and found him to be a great character. I guess Hayes is a Scientologists and after last seasons episodes slamming Scientology and Catholicism he doesn’t feel like being party to that. Of course he’s stayed around for the years that they slammed many other things. This is what South Park does. I think this hypocrisy of what is off limits is a funny issue. I’ve noticed this before in my life how people will enjoy a show as long as it gels with their world view but find it “not so good” once it contradicts their politics, etc even when the content the jokes are in fact still funny (as quantified by some kind of meter for measuring funny, I’m sure it’s evolving on the net somewhere even as we speak Google Laugh)). Oh well people like that usually give me a good laugh. I just hope that Alphone Mephisto will return to South Park to, in some way, fill the vaccuum that Hayes’ leaving will leave. OR better yet they will work it out OR, as this is the net, it might all just be baseless rumor. On a side note when I tried to do an image search for a pic to dear Alphonse it yielded a dead link and a picture of Christopher Hitchens maybe he could play the new school lunchroom guy.