Monday 19th May 2003
Top story this hour: The National Organisation for Albinism and Hypopigmentation [NOAH] are objecting to the portrayal of 'albinos' as badguys in The Matrix: Reloaded.
'For the last forty years,' NOAH released in a statement, 'filmmakers have used albino characters as villains, and they're almost always vicious, inhuman characters, depicted as freaks.'
NOAH also cite the portrayal of a morlock by Jeremy Irons in The Time Machine and the casting of Rutger Hauer as lead android Roy Batty in Blade Runner as evidence that Hollywood are out to make them seem more like vicious, inhuman freaks than they might if they merely whimpered about things like this.
In response, Warner Brothers have explained that, 'The...twins portray characters who are fifteenth century vampires. They have fangs; they vanish at will; they're clearly supernatural, and are not albinos.'
The National Organsation for Talkshow Sidekicks [NOTS] have no official comment on vicious, inhuman characters being depicted as Paul Shaffer.
Let's move on....
I'm not sure why in hell this keeps happening. Except for this theory I have that people are morons.
When A Fish Called Wanda was released in 1988, it received flak [presumably in a written statement] about its portrayal of a guy who stutters as a guy who stutters and gets injured a lot, going so far as to say that, had the film, starring John Cleese, had a blind character getting injured a lot [like John Cleese's character in 1983's Yellowbeard, for example], there would have been outrages.
So, as someone with a need to wear sunglasses, I'd just like to take this opportunity to complain about people wearing sunglasses always being portrayed as evil arificial intelligence. The agents in the matrix all wear sunglasses. The Terminator wears sunglasses. Even the twins and Paul Shaffer wear sunglasses. I think it's pretty clear what's happening here: people with sunglasses are being treated unfairly by Hollywood; it needs to stop right now.
Okay. I'm joking. There are no conspiracies against me at all, for some reason; I'm not sure who's behind that, though.
Anyway, let's set the record straight. Not all albino people, stuttering people, blind people, deaf people, black people, yellow people, green people, crippled people, or fat people are evil, vicious, inhuman villains; some are merely annoying little twits with the narcissism to assume that everyone's out to get them.
Okay? Happy now? Good.
In other news...I didn't really have any. This was just too dumb to overlook, and it seemed like a good time to write a What's New.
More later....
--Gremlin