Bizarro Fiction

For Bizarro fiction Channel Zero wasn’t as bizarre as I thought it would be. Compared to other dystopian works I don’t see the concept of it standing out in weirdness. The style the artwork was done in, however, was weird.

The book did make me wonder how probable it could be that the US would pass something like a “Clean Act” and I completely agree with how Brian Wood see’s the numbing effects of television on the country. Only the news media in Channel Zero had a state TV kind of bias but at least they were actually talking about relevant global issues. Whenever I see what some daft station like CNN or its sister station HLN is talking about it’s usually something like celebrity gossip or a “story” equally un-newsworthy. But it was mentioned in Channel Zero how everyone is to busy watching Seinfeld re-runs to care about any important political issues. I see this sort of apathy as a real problem, with the occupy movement getting bashed for causing inconvenience and getting relatively little attention from the mainstream news media.

TiMER was definitely bizarre, and while I am inclined to avoid the romantic comedy genre, I actually ended up enjoying this one quite a bit. At first I thought it was a critique of the idea of soul mates but wards the end of the film I was no longer sure of that. My own take on soul mates has been expressed by the brilliant Tim Minchin in his comedic song “If I Didn’t Have You”. That is: we’re not made to be with any one person, we just make the decision to work on strengthening a relationship with a particular fish in the see. And that really, so many marriages fail because we expect to find a perfect soul mate, so the relationship is easy. This seemed to be what the movie was going for at first as the Emma was going to give Mikey a chance. But then she was indecisive about whether or not to stay with him even though she wanted to she thought it was fated to end in disaster, which may be why a lot of the younger generations hesitate to marry.

Whether it was the writer's or director's intent or not, the idea of TiMER's came across as very strange, but really only because it makes the idea of soul mates look that much stranger.