The Caveman Analogy

(updated)

I have to admit to liking the new Caveman teevee show. I can see where some people might not, but I think it has a sly, not so obvious, sense of humor... and seeing 3 cavemen playing squash is funny by definition.

One of themes from last week's show dealt with discrimination. The cavemen are, rightly, indignant at the casual bigotry of the "sapiens". The sapiens don't think they are being bigots. They just see the obvious, to them, nature of caveman inferiority... and of course I saw it as an analogy for gay bigotry.

Gay people think we're normal in every way - at least as far as a distinguishing characteristic of sexual orientation goes. We may not be completely "normal", but that's irrespective of orientation. My disdain for most of humanity is probably not "normal" I suppose.. but that has nothing to do with being gay.. that's just cynicism.

Anyway.. being gay is simply a consequence of normal biology. It's like being left handed, or having green eyes... just on a slightly smaller scale. Therefore, when anyone has any sort of bigotry towards gay people, such as opposing same-sex marriage, we find them to be complete idiots and we're bewildered how a rational human being could possibly be that stupid.

I know.. none of this is terribly enlightening.. but offer it as a minor explanation for my cynicism towards humanity in general. There are a lot of seriously stupid people in this world.

and.. Barack Obama can go fuck himself for pandering to that stupidity.

/update

I think another reason why I like the Caveman show is because many other tv shows have become sadistic, and it's just a light show with good comedy, and fun characters. So many new shows are trying to port the dread of the Saw movies to tv. I understand that "light comedy" isn't "serious drama".. but so many new shows wallow in what they think is a chic twisting of a viewer's emotions.

Weeds is a great example. The first season they created some fun characters that engage in a alternative way of making a living. The second season, the characters were constantly in situations where they existed, literally, on the brink of oblivion. I think it's normal for a person to internalize the emotional frame of reference as the character they are watching. This can be disturbing after a while. I think a person would have to be emotionally unbalanced to enjoy being exposed to dispair for long periods of time.

Television is much different then, say, a movie or a play. The latter you experience for a relatively short amount of time, and then it's over. American Beauty is a great example of a movie that focuses on a character on the brink of oblivion. It's one of my favorite movies, and not just because it contains one the best lines of dialog ever in a movie ("fuck me your majesty!"). The viewer could identify with the protagonist, but after 2 hours, it was over. It wasn't the same dread week after week after week, year after year. It made it's point. It showed us the dispair of the boring middle class suburban life. Most of us don't want to face that over and over.