We all love dumb, cheesy media. Everyone, at one point or another craves a piece art that lets us turn our brains off, laugh at some dumb jokes ,get lost in some corny romance, or get high on the adrenaline fueled primal cravings for action. Some media is subtle and thought provoking, some media straddles the line between intelligent and cheesy, and some go all out, take no prisoners and indulge fully in their own campy-ness. Every level of cheese in a movie or book has it’s audience, even genuinely bad movies can amass a following on their lack of quality alone, but don’t think that campy media doesn’t have merit as art, or that it can’t be valued simultaneously for the things it does intelligently and the things it does stupid.
About a few months ago I finished watching an anime called JoJo’s Bizarre adventure and it may just be the pinnacle of stupid media. JoJo’s Bizarre adventure is a story spanning 8 parts about one man’s entire lineage punching people allot. The entire series is filled to the brim with vibrant, colorful environments, half naked muscular men posing dramatically, people punching each other with sunlight, people punching each other with ghosts, vampires, Aztec vampires, and many, many references to popular horror movies, action films, westerns, and music. For the whole series JoJo’s , a manga written in the 80’s tells a story that feels entirely unique when compared to any piece of western or eastern media I’ve ever seen.
I think JoJo’s is pretty cool and from what I’ve heard that is the consensus of Japanese audiences as well. Now, I don’t watch anime much, and I don’t know much about Japanese culture, but I’ve heard many Anime Buffs say that JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is a cultural phenomenon in Japan, I’ve even seen some claim it was as popular in Japan as Star Wars was in America. A bold claim, and I am skeptical of it, but considering the countless games and shows its influenced, and the praise it must have amassed to warrant an 8 part series that has continued to from 1987 to today, it’s hard to deny that the series has significant merit.
Despite what fans of “intelligent media” say, there is allot to be gained from films and games that lay all of its major themes, even pretty heavy ones on the surface. The Wolfenstein series, although more serious and dramatic in it’s recent tone, has always indulged in and essentially founded the FPS genre’s love of over the top machismo. In the original wolf 3D you end a chapter off by fighting Adolf Hitler in a mechanized battle suit. In Wolfenstein 2009, players fight Nazis by going into a shadow dimension. In Wolfenstein : the new order Nazi Germany wins the war by using ancient Jewish technology and you have to travel the world, blast your way out of concentration camps, and even go to the moon to liberate the entire planet. In the up coming Wolfenstein : the New Colossus, the tone seems to mimic The New Order’s brash and ballistic themes whilst exploring Nazism in the United States, a very hot button issue as of late. Theirs been some controversy about the media and ads surrounding the New Colossus basically poking holes at “alt-right” types and the “is it alright to punch Nazis?” debate, but I think this has less to do with Wolfenstein “becoming political” as some gamers claim, but just becoming more relevant, as Americans are currently making worrying realizations about their “fellow countrymen”. The fact that a beefy, jar headed game series that is known for the American past time of stabbin’, shootin’, and stranglin’ Nazis is focus for serious debate really shows that cheesy, dumb media doesn’t need to tone down, to be important, when the whole world is already getting stupid.
Chunks of gaming 