I have noticed a pattern in the way in which humans are acquainted with aliens. This pattern explains a few things about the entertainment industry.

Cartoons in the United States are marketed toward children. When conflicts arise between aliens and humans in cartoons, more often than not, the conflict is portrayed as one where the evil humans have intruded upon the aliens, and it is we who must understand them. An example of this would be the Galaxy Ranger episode entitled, "Traash", where human incrusions on Traash territory caused the aliens to launch an invasion. The Rangers were sent in, they made nice with the aliens, and an understanding was reached.

The next phase of this sequence could be dubbed the "testosterone phase" because it is geared so much toward teenage boys. Once kids reach the age where they know what a joystick is they are introduced to video games, where the object is to win, or in a lot of cases, simply survive. Usually, amid all of the assorted levels, and the game mechanic puzzles and the tons of really cool backgrounds and ultra-neato music lurks an alien that just needs more lead pumped into it. There are always other aliens...even if you "die", you simply pop in another quarter, and away you go again...oh, and there is nothing personal about the decimation of tha alien...the game could have been about cowboys and indians, and one side or the other would be littering the carpet with their horribly mangled corpeses.

The final stage occurs probably just after the first male urge to reproduce happens. All of a sudden, we must protect the human race and our future at al costs, and by god, if we have to smack a few aliens, so be it. Notice that the tables have turned full circle since childhood. The maligned alien has become the maligned human. In this case however, the aliens seem neither inclined nor intelligent enough to either reach some sort of truce with humans, or just get the hell out of Dodge.

Look at the movie series entitled, coincidentally enough, "Aliens" (Ok, Alien, Aliens, and Alien3, and whatever they named the fourth movie... if you insist on absolute accuracy here...) In the first movie, humans are awakened by their ship's computer because it received a signal from an unexplored planet. The humans go to the planet and find a nest of alien eggs inside of a huge complex. One of the humans (who later reprised this role in "Spaceballs") finds an egg just as its about to hatch. He hangs around a little too long and ends up with baby alien all over his face. Eventually the baby is removed and it dies and all seems well until the crew sits down to dinner.

At about this point in the movie, you don't want to be having food of any sort, because this guy basically explodes his guts all over the table as a young alien emerges and takes off.

The majority of the rest of the movie is spent hunting down this thing. Oh, by the way, we find out during this chase that the planet wasn't quite unexplored...the weapons division of a company on Earth discovered the planet, discovered the aliens, and just hoped that the humans out there would be incompetant enough to bring one of these nasties back.

Well, Ramboette kills the alien, then settles down in stasis for what ends up being a nap that lasts fifty years.

Note: At no point did any of the humans say, "If we only understood these aliens..."

The second movie finds our intrepid hero joining up with a bunch of marines because apparently the company didn't tell the general public that it would not be a good idea to throw up a colony on this particular planet. Of course, if having hundreds of humans running around your nest is not a terrible annoyance, I don't know what is.

I'll spare you the play-by-play. Suffice it to say that there were alot of dead humans, and more dead aliens, and Ramboette REALLY tweaks off the aliens by torching the nest area...

Well, there were more survivors...sorta...see, Hollywood added a new twist in plot development and killed off two people and an android while the opening credits were rolling in the third film. That almost set a record for the most humans killed in the shortest time, and the alien still had time to impregnate Ramboette!

Well, the third movie was more of the same...bunch of rather poorly-armed humans, and one alien equals lots of dead bodies. This time, Ramboette decides that suicide is preferable to the alternatives (either the alien is born, or the alien is born and the copany gets it) and she takes a dive into a smelter furnace.

I digress a bit to affirm that the evil company had its claws in both the second and third movies. They decided that a troop of marines was expendable in the second movie, and they attempted to capture Ramboette before she fell into the furnace in the third.

The fourth movie is a bit confusing. Apparently the millitary, having forgotten the mishap that happened in the second movie, has gotten into the business of cloning aliens in an attempt to clone an alien/human hybrid. Their attempts are moderately successful....they clone Ramboette, then lock her up in a secluded cell. However, as we see later in the movie, their other attempts were horrifyingly unsuccessful.

In this movie, we learn a valuable duo of lessons. The first: never capture aliens for study. The second: if you disregard the first, never get the aliens REALLY pissed off at you. One of the doctor-idiots does this, and when the aliens break out of their cell, it is human-munching time again...

***

This turn-around doesn't just happen in sci-fi either. While watching an episode of "The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog" (so that's where egg nog comes from), I noticed that during combat, no blood whatsoever is drawn on either side. All of the swords strike clangingly true....across the blade of another sword. I thought to myself, "Gee, if this were an adult movie, half of these people would have their heads on the carpet by now."

Too much is taken from sword fights to please the parents in this country. How many of you, when you were kids, swordplayed for hours without making that lunge into the "bad guy" sticking the plastic blade into his stomach? You ALL did...that was the whole point. If kids can "get" the rules of the game, why can't their parents?

The same thing occurs in anime. In Sailor Moon, there is no bloodshed. In fact, there is no mass fighting either. The battles are clean, with the bad guy fading into a non-bloody dust when they are defeated. On the other hand, check out such flicks as Vampire Hunter D or Dirty Pair, and you will see blood (more so with Vampire Hunter D...with all those creepy monsters and stuff....)

The difference? They're both cartoons, but one is directly aimed at children, and the other is aimed at adults.

I heard recently that Steven Spielberg will not allow his son to go see "Saving Private Ryan"? Why? Is the first twenty minutes of the movie too realistic? Do you think the violence of war will do lasting harm to the kid? Maybe it will put such a fear of war into him that he will KNOW what it is like and will treat it as the serious issue that it is.

Perhaps I am having a pipe dream...I seem to be having a lot of them lately. The last was when I thought Clinton would be removed......

Artemis

(comments welcome - please email me at lunahq7@yahoo.com and I will post your comments here as well.)