Scripted Through Sin 11.11.08: It’s Good to Be Empty-Headed

Last week marked a monumental occasion in American history with an election process that has changed our government’s direction from the previous eight years, but after the joy and sorrow of the results came more bitter news about the economy as several motor companies announced loss of profits for the quarter and job cuts to stop the bleeding. The fear now is that if any car maker claims bankruptcy, particularly General Motors as they seem to be closer to a collapse, then millions of jobs could be lost. This is all news that can and will affect the wrestling industry to some extent as consumers will be tightening up their budgets, but as it was mentioned by Iron Knee, in his comment, that the industry that most benefits during an economic crisis is the entertainment industry.

	During The Great Depression, entertainment companies didn’t do as poorly as other companies. People need escapism. Look at the late 1970s/ early 1980s when the US economy truly sucked on an almost Hooverian scale. We had Star Wars, Jaws, Superman, et al. come out of Hollywood. Also, Atari?Sears videogame systems sold like hotcakes. Posted By: Iron Knee (Guest) on November 04, 2008 at 08:01 PM

The difference, however, is that now we have so many mediums to which we can still get the value of the entertainment industry without pumping money into it. There are so many ways to get your video games off of the internet and working on your console, DVD quality copies of films playing on the big screen, download whole albums before they’re even released on store shelves, and so many ways to keep up with wrestling on your computer that the smallest companies are going to take the biggest hit thanks to this technological advancement. Companies like IWA:MS are going to take a hit especially if they don’t have a strong financial foundation in their fan base to keep them afloat. Like I said before, companies like WWE and TNA won’t be hurt too bad by this economic situation but the smaller, independent companies will more than likely become crippled or collapse entirely. The only way to tell if my cynicism is correct is to wait and see what happens as the situation unfolds and begins to lay claim to the demise of several long standing independent companies.

Moving on to something different, I’ve caught myself binging on the latest release of the Gears of War 2, which I was fortunate enough to have gotten my hands on Thursday afternoon. To say that the first Gears game was a bit of a disappointment would be a tragic understatement as the story was too simple and easy to get through, particularly in Co-Op mode, and the multiplayer feature had its short comings with certain hiccups that only grew into a mountain of frustration when a patch released made it even harder for friends to play together in ranked matches. The game was simplistic and fun until you scratched the surface to see its true core which was repulsive to most casual players only interested in a fun shooter to play with their friends against other groups of people, mostly for the bragging rights of sniping some foreigner’s head clean off with a torque bow from the other end of the map. This time around the experience is a lot more pleasurable as it does host a cleaner party system, a series of options for friends to play together for hours upon hours with varying degrees of difficulty, and to top it all off, any complaints about the campaign’s lack of a story to move everything forward was better looked upon with a more in-depth progression of actions and reasons behind the [two main] characters, ultimately giving us a real story behind the game.

Through all of its faults and flaws I became a fan of the franchise and found it a lot more satisfying than Halo 2 or [Halo] 3, for that matter, as it allowed me more options to play the “duck and cover” game plan that I feel is vital for any shooter. Sure, I thought the story in the first game was the equivalent of swimming in an inflatable pool that has Sesame Street characters painted all over it, and the second installment was more like actually swimming in a public pool’s shallow end – with floaties. At no point do I feel a true connection to the characters, nor do I get a sense of who they are and what they’re fighting for outside of Dom’s recent character development, but it was a huge step up from the first installment’s lame-duck story of “go here, shoot the bad guys and live to go to another destination to rinse and repeat the process”. At least this time there was bits more reason behind the actions, although there were still more questions left to be answered that probably won’t be answered even in the third installment. For all of the story’s flaws and issues I still hold to it dearly as a favorite of mine and will probably be playing this one a little longer than I was playing the original. Hell, I’ve already sacrificed hours of sleep to it just to see how I can better hold off the wave of hordes coming my way on certain maps that offer little to no vantage points to protect yourself.

If anything, I’m probably blindly aligning myself to the fan base of the franchise just because it is my cup of tea. It’s generally the type of game I find enjoyment out of and regardless of how bad the storyline could be I don’t seem to mind it as I sit down and really take in the campaign mode. Regardless of what I think of the shallow characters, I still find myself clinging to them and liking the sounds they add to the game as I’m popping heads off of the mutated scum trying to destroy this fictional world that they inhabit. It’s shallow, devoid of meaning and overall just mindless fun, so maybe that’s why I can now try and better understand TNA fans.

Oh, sure TNA has their big storyline of the Main Event Mafia taking on the Young Lions, or whatever fancy name you would like to attribute to them, but the characters still seem a bit flat if only for the fact that the booking tends to go in the wrong direction. The core fans that make up TNA‘s base aren’t coming to them for their story telling abilities or the characters they create, they’re turning to TNA for being an in-ring alternative to the WWE‘s style. They’re interested in all of the cool moves these younger guys are capable of doing. Enchanted and mesmerized by the athletic ability of the new generation’s talent as well as their innovative nature as they do things that haven’t been seen on television before, not even in WCW‘s Cruiserweight division. The fans of TNA are mostly interested in the mindless fun that this company represents and are interested in the action more so than anything else.

For these fans TNA having Robert Roode and Kaz feud for a week over Ms. [Traci] Brooks only to pull out a 15 minute athletic competition at No Surrender last year was more entertaining and exciting than a year long build for AJ Styles and Kurt Angle to finally confront one another. Of course, the fans fell in love with the Styles and Angle matches but not because of the story around it, rather because they enjoyed the athletic displays both men demonstrated in their bouts.

For years I’ve tried to understand how people can so blindly pledge their allegiance to a brand of entertainment, regardless of what that brand or product is. I think I best understand it now that I’m going through it with Gears of War. It’s all just a fun route of escapism from the norm only further taken at face value so as to just sit back and enjoy the pretty imagery that flashes by you. No need to think about anything, just watch the pretty pictures continue to bath you in their awesome, warm glow.

It seems to be that TNA fans aren’t interested in any of the political ramifications of this company if it doesn’t continue to grow a steady and healthy fan base, nor do they care about the company getting bigger and better ratings or buy rates [for their pay-per-view events] as none of that matters to them. What matters most to these people is that they get their fix of fun wrestling that is both mindless and exhilarating. No need to think about what roles the workers are playing, any connections you can make with them on an emotional level, regardless of whether you like them or not, no thoughts at all required for processing. It seems the TNA fans just want flashing lights and all the pretty imagery to hit them in the face and never stop which in and of itself is fine. We all need to escape from our everyday lives and get lost in some form of entertainment and sometimes it just needs to be mindless enough to keep us grounded in the thought that there can be fun things still floating about in this world; not everything needs to be serious or thought provoking.

So to keep this short, as my brain is coming up empty on further comments to fill up this page, I’ll just say that Turning Point was probably the most boring pay-per-view I’ve seen this year, and that prompted me to turn off Gears long enough to actually finish out this column. With that all said, I think I’ll return to my blissful, mindless indulgent while the rest of you return to your own.