The Battle Continues Over "Childish Things"

The recent kerfuffle between Bill Maher and comic fans mourning Stan Lee's passing has illustrated an ugly truth that geeks everywhere continue to face: geekdom is still viewed by some as a sign that society has failed to "grow up."

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Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

[h=3]It Started with Stan[/h]The death of comics legend Stan Lee prompted an outpouring of grief and comedian Bill Maher took his passing as an opportunity to take a shot at fandom with an essay titled "Adulting":

"...the assumption everyone had back then, both the adults and the kids, was that comics were for kids, and when you grew up you moved on to big-boy books without the pictures. But then twenty years or so ago, something happened – adults decided they didn’t have to give up kid stuff. And so they pretended comic books were actually sophisticated literature."
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The response was swift. Maher admitted the lost 40,000 Twitter followers after his post and that he's still followed by paparazzi asking him about "the Stan Lee thing." In response, Maher doubled down in a scathing attack on geekdom everywhere with a video titled, "New Rule: Grow Up":

"...the point of my blog is that I'm not glad Stan Lee is dead I'm sad you're alive...my shot wasn't at Stan Lee it was at, you know, grown men who still dress like kids...I'm sorry but if you are an adult playing with superhero dolls--I'm sorry, I mean collectible action figures!--why not go all the way and drive to work on a big wheel? Grown-ups these days, they cling so desperately to their childhood that when they do attempt to act their age they have a special word for it now, 'adulting'."
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If those statements make your blood boil, you're not alone. The comic book industry's condemnation of Maher's comments were swift and wide-reaching. Stan Lee's estate responded directly to Maher:

Mr. Maher: Comic books, like all literature, are storytelling devices. When written well by great creators such as Stan Lee, they make us feel, make us think and teach us lessons that hopefully make us better human beings. One lesson Stan taught so many of us was tolerance and respect, and thanks to that message, we are grateful that we can say you have a right to your opinion that comics are childish and unsophisticated. Many said the same about Dickens, Steinbeck, Melville and even Shakespeare. But to say that Stan merely inspired people to “watch a movie” is in our opinion frankly disgusting. Countless people can attest to how Stan inspired them to read, taught them that the world is not made up of absolutes, that heroes can have flaws and even villains can show humanity within their souls.
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The same criticism has been leveled at all things geeky, including role-playing games.
[h=3]Are Role-Playing Games Childish?[/h]Maher's attack on comics is essentially an attack on geekdom itself; the defense from Stan Lee's estate is an argument for the kind of imaginative storytelling that is at the heart of role-playing games.

In a lengthy response to a Quora question if D&D is "too immature and childish," Jake Harris explained:

D&D is a great game that brings people of all kinds together, for those willing to actually try and enjoy it. It's far from childish. Same with other forms of science fiction and fantasy. I strongly believe that these are lowkey pillars of society, which endure when pop culture constantly waxes and wanes with new trends and interpretations of “pop”. Dungeons & Dragons might have 6 Editions (I'm counting 3rd and 3.5 Editions) and Pathfinder, but its playerbase and rules remain largely the same: sit around a table, and travel to far-off lands, doing what no one else in the world is able to. Maybe you think that's childish. Maybe you could even argue that it is. Fine. I submit that maybe our world needs a little childishness. Maybe if we learn to fight less and play more we might actually get somewhere. If we choose to let the children inside of us inspire ourselves and those around us, we might not be stuck with all the problems we have.
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Comedian and actor Patton Oswalt doesn't see a difference between pop culture and geek culture:

...I've got news for you—pop culture is nerd culture. The fans of Real Housewives of Hoboken watch, discuss, and absorb their show the same way a geek watched Dark Shadows or obsessed over his eighth-level half-elf ranger character in Dungeons & Dragons. It's the method of consumption, not what's on the plate.
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That times have changed is perhaps best exemplified by the Collins online dictionary, which signified a shift away from Maher's perspective:

Once a slur reserved for eggheads and an insult aimed at lovers of computer programming, geek has been deemed the word of the year by the Collins online dictionary. Less brazen than selfie – which topped the Oxford Dictionaries poll last month – geek was chosen as a reminder of how an insult can be transformed into a badge of honour, according to Collins. In September the dictionary changed the main definition of geek from someone preoccupied with computing to "a person who is very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about a specific subject'', adding geekery, geek chic and geekdom to the fold.
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Part of geekdom is maintaining the passion for things we enjoyed as children into adulthood, but it does not necessarily mean that we aren't effectively "adulting." Although geekdom seems to have taken over popular culture, comedians like Maher are there to remind us that not everyone is okay with the takeover.

Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I think a lot of people in this thread have completely missed the point. It is never about how many people like comics or not or what kind of movies people watched. It really is if you are Adult enough to take a joke at your own expense without having to make personal attacks about who is dating who or who looks like an eggplant whatever that is supposed to mean.

:eggplant emoji: is a way of saying Maher's a... well you can click on the Know Your Meme link if you care. He's a professional jerk who makes a living mocking other people.

 

[Hussar]

To be honest, I’m rather baffled why my grandmother playing Euchre for several hours is adult entertainment but Call of Duty isn’t? Huh?

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

To be honest, I’m rather baffled why my grandmother playing Euchre for several hours is adult entertainment but Call of Duty isn’t? Huh?

Perfect example!

I mean, blood sports used to be considered "adult entertainment." In Call of Duty, it's all fake.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

People will remember Stan Lee when Bill Maher's memory is dust.

Glad someone said it.

Maher, a baby boomer takes another swipe at a younger generation so squeezed the only recreational activity that I can afford is D&D even though I have a great job. That generation gave us student loan dept, skyrocketing housing prices, stagnate wages and a credit society. I don't think this is about Geek culture its about a generation suffering under sever economic stress and really pissed off about it.

Exactly right.

Part of the problem here I think is that Maher conflates “comic books” and “superheroes”. He’s really criticizing one genre but speaks as if he’s criticizing the entire media of comic books. And while he may have at least a little bit of a point about superheroes (and I say that as a fan), dismissing the entire medium is just foolish. There are clearly examples of comic books that rise to the level of literature.

It displays his ignorance on the topic, which therefore makes it easy to ignore. It’s also a shame because as comedian, he’s an artist in a craft that is often dismissed as being unimportant, or less worthwhile when compared to “serious” art. As such, you’d think he would get it....but no.

Superheroes aren't even worhty of the mockery he's giving the medium, though. Blake Panther isn't a silly kid's movie. Gail Simone's Clean Room isn't a silly kid's comic.

Question: If we accept that “D&D” is a serious, adult activity or even a medium capable of producing art, can we still lightly dismiss complaints with “you’re playing a magic elf game” or the like?

Of course. I mean, that point has always related to complaints about realism and the like, not complaints that the medium isn't taken seriously enough.

I just watched the "New Rule: Grow Up" clip in the OP and I have to admit, that was funny.

And Maher was right about something, you can not compare Comics with "Dickens, Steinbeck, Melville and even Shakespeare"

Of course you can.

I'll play devil's advocate here.

What does it say about a society when its 45 year olds want to consume the same art and culture that they consumed as 15 year olds?

Nothing.

 

[Jester David]

I'll play devil's advocate here.

Big picture, it's worth considering is there's something unhealthy in a society where people's outlooks, preferences, and pass-times don't change between adolescence and mature adulthood. When adults are regarded as teenagers with more money in their pockets. When it's pretty much impossible for a movie to be a big hit unless it appeals to adolescents.

Okay, but WHY is it unhealthy? Based on what metric?

It's not like enjoying adult activities inherently makes someone more responsible or mature. I doubt there's any reliable correlation between the maturity of an individual and their choice of escapist vs non-escapist entertainment.

If we're really digging deep here, we can't just assume that things we arbitrarily deem "mature" are inherently more desirable or worthy of praise. Why are certain things more "adult" than others? Who gets to decide?
Why is a long romantic period drama about fictitious nobles more "adult" than a movie about the fictitious ruler of an African Futuristic kingdom? Or a billionaire industrialist playboy philanthropist in a metal suit?

Look at the top box office movies over the decades and consider what they say about society.

https://www.filmsite.org/boxoffice2.html

What did it say about the 1960s that movies like Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, Midnight Cowboy, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf - movies that few 12 year olds would understand, let alone enjoy - were box office hits?

You're also only looking at the few excellent films that were also box office successes and ignoring the many classic films that bombed or were only middling successes. Like Shawshank Redemption, Schindler's List, Casablanca, On the Waterfront, Singing in the Rain, Sunset Boulevard, 12 Angry Men, or Chinatown And, of course, the big one, Citizen Kane.

Seriously, compare the AFI's list of greatest films (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI's_100_Years...100_Movies#List) with the all time box office list ([url]https://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm[/URL])

You're also cherry picking the most mature films of the era to prove that people's tastes have declined, and ignoring other popular hit films of the '60s. Such as, 101 Dalmatians, The Love Bug, Thunderball, Animal House, and Psycho. All of which are higher on the All-Time Box Office chart than Midnight Cowboy.

This is also ignoring other factors.
Such as the much larger number of films being produced, which decreases the amount of time a single film is in theaters to make money. Fewer people are going to see it twice, and there's more choices. Popular movies used to be able to run for years. Now if they make it four months it's impressive.
And also the competition of other forms of entertainment: television, personal copies, computer games, streaming, books, plays, etc. There's less drive to get out to movies, and more freedom to stay at home. Plus, new "classic" films are also competing against every classic ever released. Why watch a new film that's like Gone With the Wind when you can just watch Gone With the Wind?

It's less that people ever really wanted the more mature films. Its that there were fewer choices and less competition for an evening out.
When you adjust for inflation, there's only three movies released in the last twenty years on the chart: individuals movies just don't make as much money.

There's also something fundamentally problematic about using motion pictures as the baseline for the maturity of society. And not the popularity of, say, the opera and theater.
You could just as easily argue that the popularity of literary and intellectual television shows (Game of Thrones or Westworld) also speaks highly of society. Or how the last four to five years were some of the biggest years in Broadway history.

What does it say about the 2010s that virtually all of the biggest earners are fantasies aimed at 12 year olds? What does it say about the changes in tastes that an unapologetically adult movie like Doctor Zhivago would be considered a fringe art-house film if it were released today, instead of enormously popular entertainment? Or that Kramer vs Kramer wouldn't even get wide distribution today, let alone be the #1 top-grossing movie of the year?

First, it says that the market has spoken.
Because this isn't some recent phenomena. It started in the '70s. Not the current generation or even their parents, but their parent's parents.
People clearly wanted spectacle, and they were given spectacle.

Second, this also ignores how much fantasy was in the classic movies. Ben Hur and Ten Commandments were big SFX blockbusters of the era. They're only "adult" because they're old and thus deemed "classics".
As has been said in this thread, Dickens and Shakespeare were stuff crapped out for the masses. They were popular entertainment and spectacle. Dickens in particular is pretty terrible from a modern sense: he was paid by the word and it shows. And he was literally making up his plots as he went along.

What does it say about a society when its 45 year olds want to consume the same art and culture that they consumed as 15 year olds?

I don't know. What does it say?

You dance around the question but never answer. What does it say?

 

[Doctor Futurity]

Maher needs clicks, needs attention. When he can say something that garners that, he's getting what he needs. Remember, there is no bad publicity in marketing.

 

[jasper]

Yep, he is that kind of :eggplant emoji:.

I was going to ask what that meant, but google was not my friend. A friend would not want me to know this.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think most of us will agree that Maher is what we would call "on the fringe" of many different particular agendas. He has his own particular place on many topics, and would not be considered "in the middle" or in the "mainstream" on a lot of them. Anyone whose followed his feelings on religion know him to be way off to the far side than most of the rest of society-- even those who would call themselves atheists would say he's much further out, much more caustic, much less tolerant to those who are religious that most non-religious people would see themselves as.

He's also over 60, which is also a great divider in cultural belief systems-- the aged versus younger people. And that is something many comedians have to deal with (as we see nowadays), where things that are acceptable to make fun of or how you make fun of them has changed over the decades.

But in many ways I think those fringe voices are needed. We NEED to have the voices from the edges making all manner of claims, because it forces us to take a good hard look at what is being said and then come to conclusions whether or not we think those voices are full of crap. And that's what is happening here-- Maher is making commentary (I won't say "jokes" per se, as I think the humor is meant to be drawn from the performance and the angry 'get off my lawn' attitude rather than any particular joke structure) on how younger people are living their lives right now... and everyone is coming to their own conclusions and feelings about whether he has any point. Does he? I think the response has been pretty indicative.

I suspect most people are just rolling their eyes at him the same way you roll your eyes at your aunt or uncle at Thanksgiving. He's interpreting life through his own lens and perspective and isn't capable of seeing it through anyone else's. But at least his rant forces us to take stock of what he has said and analyze whether his opinion on the matter holds any weight. And that allows us to grow ourselves.

The one thing I'm glad about is that even on anyone's own particular "side" of large-scale issues there are going to be dissenting voices about particular individual things, and thus it will always force us to continue to think and consider and not turn our brains off mindlessly. Yeah, it feels jarring when someone we think is on our "side" holds an opinion that makes us go "Ew! Really?!?", but that jarring keeps us ever vigilant and constantly reassessing what we believe and who we listen to. As Dennis Miller joked back in the 90s on his show... "The last time I remember an entire nation being on the same page it was Germany in the late '30s, and it didn't end up all that funny."

And THAT'S what I think being an adult is really about. Always listening, and always learning.

 

[Haffrung]

What it chiefly says to me is that a parent in the 1960's could generally take his kids to see a movie aimed at an adult audience without fear that it would be inappropriate viewing for them. They might not catch all the nuance, but there is hardly anything in the 'top films of the 1960's' that I wouldn't have let me kids watch if they wanted to. Indeed, 'Lawrence of Arabia' contains so very serious subject matter - rape, sodomy, torture, murder, suicide, etc. - but it's handled generally tastefully and without gratuitous obsessing over the matter, so that I do remember watching (and enjoying) 'Lawrence' when I was like 9 or 10 even when I might not have gotten exactly what was going on in every scene. By contrast, it's a rare films these days that is aimed at an adult audience that doesn't show a juvenile obsession with depicting sexual acts and graphic violence.

Excellent point. As a kid in the 70s and 80s I could watch almost all movies on TV (many of them from the 50s and 60s too) and most the theatre no problem. So I enjoyed watching everything from Zulu and A Bridge Too Far to Giant and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Movies that certainly weren't aimed at kids, but which a kid could watch alongside an adult no problem.

As a parent, I find it extremely difficult to find entertainment today that is aimed at adults, but appropriate for kids to watch too. Today, if something is aimed at adults it seems mandatory that it includes explicit sexual scenes, grotesque violence, or otherwise sketchy content for young kids. I can't even watch the latest Star Trek series with my kids, because apparently TV shows that appeal to both 40 year olds and 10 year olds aren't a thing anymore.

I think it says that we've gotten much more sophisticated in terms of the media that we target to 15 year olds. One positive thing that I see in the current culture is that while we may be dumbing down what media we feed to adults, we've gotten much more respectful of the intellectual abilities of children and young adults. If you look back at what was available in children's literature 30 or 60 years ago, the pickings were pretty thin. Today, not only is that a huge market, but books like 'Harry Potter' have provided to children long sustained story telling with complex themes and a rich vocabulary. (Seriously, I occasionally have to look up words in 'Harry Potter' - for example, 'serried' comes to mind.)

I'm not so sure about that. I recently re-read The Eagle of the Ninth, a historical novel written by Rosemary Sutcliff in 1954. I discovered it at my elementary school library in 1979. And it's far more mature and sophisticated in its diction and story than the Harry Potter books, or anything else I've seen at my kids' school libraries. And Sutcliff wasn't an obscure writer in her day - she won an OBE for her contributions to children's literature. I also read Watership Down, a Wizard of Earthsea, and Lord of the Rings when I was nine. My kids' school library doesn't have any of the above.

It's great the growth of the YA genre has got a lot of kids reading who otherwise wouldn't read at all. But IMHO it's not nearly as rich in language or as sophisticated dramatically as comparable books from the 50s to the 70s.

But, while we may agree generally that there is something wrong with the maturity of society, I don't at all agree it has to do with things like reading comic books or watching comic book movies. I won't attempt to diagnosis it here, but what I will do is ask whether - if this is a serious problem - someone like Bill Maher in any way acts as if this is a serious problem. Is Bill Maher a serious thinker and a serious and astute critic of society's immaturity?

No. But that doesn't mean he's necessarily wrong in this case.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

I'll play devil's advocate here.

Big picture, it's worth considering is there's something unhealthy in a society where people's outlooks, preferences, and pass-times don't change between adolescence and mature adulthood. When adults are regarded as teenagers with more money in their pockets. When it's pretty much impossible for a movie to be a big hit unless it appeals to adolescents.

This part I bolded is you answering your own question to the next few....

Look at the top box office movies over the decades and consider what they say about society.

https://www.filmsite.org/boxoffice2.html

What did it say about the 1960s that movies like Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, Midnight Cowboy, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf - movies that few 12 year olds would understand, let alone enjoy - were box office hits?

It shows that the consumer market has changed dramatically over time, shifting away from an adult themed audience to a broader, more popular and younger audience. The adults who enjoy sophisticated films are still there, but those films don't cost millions in CGI effects to produce, while garnering (I bet) the same proportionate crowds they once did long ago. This isn't a case of the market leaving something behind (mature films), it's a case of the mature films remaining present while an entirely new market (sophisticated and expensive but high-return movies aimed at a general or young audience) has risen to absorb a demand previously unmet.

What does it say about the 2010s that virtually all of the biggest earners are fantasies aimed at 12 year olds? What does it say about the changes in tastes that an unapologetically adult movie like Doctor Zhivago would be considered a fringe art-house film if it were released today, instead of enormously popular entertainment? Or that Kramer vs Kramer wouldn't even get wide distribution today, let alone be the #1 top-grossing movie of the year?

Obviously this is a point of opinion but there are a lot of movies that do quite well, are not considered fringe/arthouse and are of the same caliber as Doctor Zhivago, if not superior. The interesting thing about the film industry today is that it supports more uniqure, niche audiences than it ever has before. The fact that the largest chunk of the money goes to broadly popular entertainment for 12 year olds, as you put it, is irrelevant to the fact that so much really quality content is out there. We are literally drowning in content, to be honest.

What does it say about a society when its 45 year olds want to consume the same art and culture that they consumed as 15 year olds?

It says that Football is extremely popular across the ages. Oh wait, you meant geek culture! Sorry. It says that sometimes people grow up enjoying things for arbitrary reasons, and the Gen X parents (of which I am one) were strongly indoctrinated into a new culture of consumer-driven culture, which has allowed us to assimilate a wide range of hobbies and interests that once were considered childish after a certain age, but are now regarded as normal and mainstream. At least part of this is the phenomenon of a culture literally drowning in entertainment of such a bewildering array of flavors and varieties that yes, it can mean that more sophisticated and thoughtful elements are more easily drowned out. So what it says about our society is: we have a competition for our attention, and it turns out certain types of media are extremely efficient at capturing it. Is this good or bad? It depends heavily on whether those 15 year olds were taught not merely to seek the easy entertainment when they were fifteen, but also to value more intellectual or challenging forms of entertainment (and note that the latter is critical, because for a lot of people from my ignored Gen X generation, it was often quite clear that the "entertainment" allowed to adults back in the day was actually not entertaining at all).

Our culture is, for better or worse depending on your point of view, moving away from the concept that being an adult means that entertainment (at least on the surface, as a matter of appearance) must not actually appear to be entertaining. This was always there in the past, it just wasn't allowed as a socially perceptible norm.