{"id":354,"date":"2016-06-19T23:06:56","date_gmt":"2016-06-19T23:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=354"},"modified":"2016-06-19T23:06:56","modified_gmt":"2016-06-19T23:06:56","slug":"holding-on-to-he-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=354","title":{"rendered":"Letting Go of Our Old Comic Heroes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\u00a0<\/span>\n

A<\/span>few days ago, I saw this kid on the footpath while I was having a cigarette. His father was waiting in a queue and this boy, who looked like he was seven or eight, was busy entertaining himself by skipping an action figure along the flower pots that lined the way. At this display of childish imagination, I smiled and thought, \u201cYou\u2019re lucky there are people here, runt, or that plastic soldier would be mine.\u201d\n\n<\/p>I know, I\u2019m talking about mugging a child and that\u2019s nuts, but I wasn\u2019t really going to do it! Probably\u2026 but there\u2019s a part of me that never really grew up. The schoolboy version of me would be delighted with the amount of video game hours I squeeze into a working week. In fact, if we were to meet, I\u2019d sit him down next to me, beat him hollow at FIFA, and then console him by saying, \u201cListen little guy, in 2016, you\u2019re going to be able to see the first He-Man cartoon made in 30 years!\u201d School-me would then squeal with excitement and run back into the past to do nothing else but await the second coming of the Masters of Universe. <\/span>\n\nI was a He-Man nut back then. The concept of He-Man was as simple as it gets \u2013 he\u2019s really strong and he fights the bad guys, easily identified by their allegiance to a disturbingly buff blue guy with a skull for a head. The story doesn\u2019t get much more complicated than that. And it didn\u2019t need to. Those were simpler times, with none of the complexities and escalating darkness and plot lines that say a series like Harry Potter presents. The spectacle of this muscled warrior and his hearty friends battling with the forces of evil across the fantastical planet of Eternia was enough to make up for the lack of dramatic substance. \u00a0<\/span>\n\nA lot of my growing-up years were spent recreating those battles with my friends and cousins. There were no Comic Cons to attend then. Real battles would also ensue, between who got to be He-Man and who had to play Skeletor. For some reason, no one wanted to play Orko<\/span>.<\/b> In the run-up to each Sunday\u2019s episode, I would thirst for everything He-Man in between those weekly doses of adrenaline \u2013 action figures, VHS tapes, compass box; I had them all. If my mother had let me, I would have probably gotten that horrible haircut and blonde dye-job too.<\/span>\n\nSo naturally, when I heard about the He-Man episode, which <\/span>released<\/span><\/a>\u00a0this July, I started feeling an excited anticipation. The makers have captured the look of the old 1980s\u2019 cartoon series faithfully and with that amazing, cheesy theme intact. The embarrassingly bad He-Man movie starring Ivan Drago from <\/span>Rocky IV<\/span><\/i> or the underwhelming reboot from the early 2000s didn\u2019t come close to what the first cartoons achieved. So when the new episode came out looking old school, I was a happy guy. Let them green-light a whole new season, I hoped.<\/span>\n

Wouldn\u2019t it be nicer if there were new heroes and stories that better document our times?<\/blockquote>\nBut then, something sad took place. June 20, the premiere date of the new episode, came and went. It was shown to audiences at San Diego\u2019s Comic Con and, being too poor to fly across the world, unfortunately I couldn\u2019t attend. So I hunted high and low for a link to the episode. I failed. I would have had to be part of the pass-holding audience to have seen this episode. I hadn\u2019t got the dough to drop to be in that number, so I missed out. In 2016, if you haven\u2019t watched a new episode of any popular show, you\u2019re screwed with spoilers, reviews, and reactions that clutter up the internet soon after. The thrill of being in the audience diminishes the longer it takes for you to get the episode. My excitement ebbed away, and it was replaced with a grim realisation. My memories have become somebody else\u2019s cash cow.<\/span>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\nOurs is a generation that is still clinging to the last vestiges of being a child. We play board games at bars, we love going to Comic Cons with friends, and don\u2019t like going to work. Between office and school, we long for the uniformed days. I\u2019m humming my school anthem writing this.<\/span>\n\nNow, this kind of longing makes for a great opportunity and purveyors of commercial entertainment begin circling like vultures. Soon, the shrieking of the flock around the carrion becomes the only thing you can hear. I got excited about He-Man, but I\u2019m getting sick of the trend overall. It\u2019s not going away. A\u00a0new Harry Potter book released<\/span>\u00a0on July 31 and drove people mad with excitement. Jungle Book was pretty much an exact, scene-for-scene remake of the original animated film, and it became one of the biggest <\/span>hits<\/span><\/a> of the year. Pok\u00e9mon Go, and this sentence needs no other qualifications.<\/span>\n\nTrends have always been cyclical and I know this is just another example, but the profusion of this 1990s\u2019 media revival is ridiculous. The \u201990s generation has reached the age where they can be looked at by corporations as consumers with an income. Buzzfeed is one of the prime examples, which apart from being a procrastination aid is also a champion exploiter of nostalgia. It\u2019s possibly augmented by the fact that our generation chooses to document every aspect of their lives on social media and takes every chance to declare their nostalgia, their claim to a period of time, their ownership of a culture by yelling, \u201cLook at this thing I love, and how much I love it.\u201d <\/span><\/b>\n\nWhat happens is, of course, that content, that is old thrives and the new never gets a chance. The entertainment properties of what was essentially a very different era in social and cultural terms continue to persist, influence, and inform their consumers daily, creating a break between the world we live in and how we think. <\/span>\n\nThe realisation made me wonder whether we even really need a new He-Man cartoon and what relevance this overtly brawny hero has in our lives beyond reminding us of a simpler time. Wouldn\u2019t it be nicer if there were new heroes and stories that better document our times? Take <\/span>Ghosbusters<\/span><\/i>, for instance. Merely swapping out the male protagonists with female ones is hardly an update. Why do the four girls have to go ghostbusting when they can fight literally any other problem? Why not the Rapebusters, four Indian girls that drive around on Harleys and chase sex offenders with machetes? <\/span>\n\nI\u2019ll tell you why, because studios and corporations don\u2019t want to take chances on anything which isn\u2019t proven.<\/span> Because an already successful franchise has a guaranteed fan base and ensures money for the makers, an increasing number of movies, books, and other storytelling mediums are opting for remakes or adaptations. This leaves less and less room for original ideas and new content to gain an audience, to represent our culture, this moment in our times that is unique and that He-Man sadly doesn\u2019t have much in common with. <\/span>\n\nA proven formula can only fail when variables in the equation are altered. Maybe it\u2019s time for us, as an audience, to stop popping out the fireworks and champagne every time someone reaches into our childhood for cash. Maybe that means we\u2019ll get new stories to enjoy. For those who feel there\u2019s no harm in buying a ticket to enjoy a little nostalgic thrill, remember what nostalgia means. It\u2019s derived from the Greek word <\/span>nostos<\/span><\/i>, which translates to <\/span>return<\/span><\/i> home<\/span><\/i>. We can relive our memories in our imagination, because who the hell pays entry money at their house door?<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our generation grabs every chance to declare its nostalgia. The Comic Con is one such chance. But what happens is that old content thrives and the new never gets a chance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":355,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[62,63,64,65,66,67,640,71,72],"class_list":["post-354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-arre","tag-arre-digital-platform","tag-arre-originals","tag-arre-reads","tag-arre-text-articles","tag-arre-website","tag-he-man","tag-web-series","tag-web-shows"],"yoast_head":"\nLetting Go of Our Old Comic Heroes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Our generation grabs every chance to declare its nostalgia. The Comic Con is one such chance. 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