On April 19th 1987 the simpson family first appeared on television screens courtesy of the Tracy Ullman Show. Three months later the first metal gear game came out for the msx. Both these series are still running even if way past their expiration date they are still here, still kicking even if no one cares about their current incarnations, people once cared a lot. Metal Gear seen as a hallmark of what video game storytelling can achieve and the simpsons introducing us to the concept of adult animation in television. I don’t know if any show has been as formative to me as the simpsons, it’s not my favorite and hasn’t been since I was a child but when I was a child that family and the inhabitants of that town were my friends. I would fall asleep listening to the commentary tracks for all of the early seasons. I had storage boxes full of memorabilia of the show, I would quote bits and pieces from all my favorite episodes. One of my favorites always was cape feare from the fifth season of the show, which is in my opinion the most consistent and memorable season they ever produced. Cape Feare isn’t really the funniest episode of the show nor does it have any emotional high points that more creative episodes like the mysterious voyage of our homer or and maggie makes three or the wizard of evergreen terrace or even the simpsons movie but it is just insanely memorable in a way very few episodes of the series is. The rake bit is remembered to the extent it is for a reason. I rewatched the episode for the first time in years when it got added to Disney+ along with plenty of other episodes with my boyfriend who only had the faintest memories with the simpsons. The episode didn’t hold up nearly as much as I remembered and neither of us really enjoyed it that much in comparison to much better episodes but it was nice to watch something that meant so much to me as a kid with someone I love so much. We both laughed at the chainsaw bit and it was nice to share that with him.
In metal gear solid 2 sons of liberty, raiden and rose argue over what building is featured in the original King Kong movie, they end up watching that movie some time later when they end up meeting again. Raiden doesn’t seem like someone who particularly cares about media, given the fact that he has no television set or posters in his room and mentions how he was forced to watch old action movies to become a better child soldier, but yet that movie is so engrained into his first night with Rose. I think that’s really sweet, I think it’s really sweet that they don’t mention it as a movie they love or really even any specifics related to it, just that they watched it a bunch of times that night. The first movie I watched with my boyfriend as an official couple was the 2018 horror movie Hell Fest, it’s not a movie that really means anything to either of us but I look at it fondly as a movie that in some way was instrumental in bringing us together, no matter in what small way it did. Similarly I view cape feare and metal gear as a franchise in the same light, stuff that became enhanced because of the fact that I could share it with the person I share my life with.
I haven’t replayed this game in a second I just got to thinking of it again as I watched mr burns, a post electric play on YouTube last night. A play that deals with not only cape feare and the simpsons as a piece of immortal pop culture but the idea of media and stories and concepts being passed down from generation to generation in a similar way that sons of liberty does. Ideas get corrupted and malformed and with time you forget what Japanese monster movie the Chrysler building is in and what the name of hell fest is (I swore it’s title was hell house but no it isn’t) and what sideshow bob says back to the simpsons family in the theatre scene of cape feare. Ideas get transmitted to one person to the next to the next and maybe the person who will ultimately remember what sideshow bob says to the simpsons hasn’t ever actually seen the simpsons. Maybe they just remember that quote through osmosis, maybe they just know of it because their ex girlfriend would quote it so much. Memories corrupt with time and digital media makes that all that much more scary. The Metal Gear HD collection is gone off digital storefronts since the summer and it most likely won’t be up anytime soon, maybe it won’t ever come back, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for Konami to commit so much money and time to bring back a mostly dead series to mostly dead digital storefronts. The series is fairly cheap secondhand but something like the 3ds port of snake eater isn’t and there’s only so much time for them to add it back to the eshop before it’s lost to time and lost to people reselling it for too much. Something like Ghost Babel or Twin Snakes are in similar predicaments, both fantastic games and both lost to time for the most part. There’s obviously work arounds for this but it’s not a given for all people. Memories corrupt with time, the version of the play that I watched is from three years ago and filmed with entirely high school students, most likely seniors, those kids are my age now. Who knows if they have that concrete of memories of the simpsons given that they’re my age and maybe their family didn’t grow up with it, but through the passing down of media through generations they know the simpsons and know of at least cape feare more than most people.
A couple of weeks ago I watched 1992’s Noises Off, a screwball comedy about a theater troupe performing a play within a play. It was directed by Peter Bogdanovich, who for my money is the most interesting of all the New Hollywood guys, all of his work was deeply humanistic and loving and Noises Off despite being a relatively minor work was no exception. I got sad watching it, it was the first bogdanovich I had seen since his passing and that coupled with three other principal members of the cast passing away and the rest of the cast now being very old leaves a certain spectre of death hanging over the entire production. Who will remember this movie now that the director is dead and half the cast is too, especially when all of them did more critically beloved work. It’s a piece of media that’s forever lost to the ether, as far as I can tell it was only printed to dvd once and now it just exists hanging around in the digital landscape, memories of people who have been gone from this world, their work remains waiting to be rediscovered and reconsidered as a true hidden gem.
There’s a couch gag from the simpsons 26th season that’s directed by Don Hertzfeldt. It came out seven years after the simpsons movie, a movie that I really love and a movie that was kind of a jumping off point for my love of the series. The simpsons had been dead for ages at this point, further digging its own grave into self parody of what once was a very sincere and sweet show about a family that despite all dysfunctions did truly love each other. I think that short couch gag really understands what made the simpsons special, underneath all the merchandise and the catchphrases it’s a show about a family that truly loves each other but always fucks up in showing that love and now the family won’t die, stuck in a digital hellscape reduced to just catchphrases, consuming itself. It’s like a snake that has ate everything in sight but it’s tail and now it’ll eat that too, consuming itself. The simpsons was bought three short years after by Disney, it has consumed everything but it has left memories for generations and generations of people and me being an optimist I like to think it still is leaving people with actual memories that they’ll pass on to their children and their children’s children. The simpsons will never die, I’m sure they’d like to but they won’t.
In 2018 Konami released the most recent metal gear game, metal gear survive. Kojima had been officially off the series for three years at that point and metal gear survive still is the only thing they’ve produced for the series since. There was supposed to be a movie and thankfully it hasn’t had any real updates and there seems to be rumours every month of something new but all that’s come of the franchise in almost a decade is a game that got completely average ratings and the delisting of several games in the series. The snake eats itself.
I like to think metal gear can still be good, that Konami will turn it around like they have for silent hill. I like to think maybe the simpsons is good, maybe I’m missing out. I heard one of the recent seasons is pretty good all things considered, I’ve seen a few episodes from the late 2010s and I really did not like them but maybe it’s not made for me. I think it’s made really cynically and kind of grossly but I’m sure there’s some really old fans who think this of the movie. And I know there’s fans of metal gear who think the series stopped being good after snake eater or even after 1. But I like to think that there’s people introduced to metal gear through survive and people introduced to the simpsons through season 34 and they’ll go back and revisit older entries and both the new and the old will be memories for them, memories to pass down. Memories of Roland Emmerich’s 1998 Godzilla movie. Memories of a man driving a plane into the Chrysler building. Memories of Godzilla and King Kong. Memories of Homer and Marge. Memories of Raiden and Rose. Memories of your room, only a bed and a small desk.
Maybe the world ends tomorrow, but I will end the day with Memories of you, I will never forget you.
In metal gear solid 2 sons of liberty, raiden and rose argue over what building is featured in the original King Kong movie, they end up watching that movie some time later when they end up meeting again. Raiden doesn’t seem like someone who particularly cares about media, given the fact that he has no television set or posters in his room and mentions how he was forced to watch old action movies to become a better child soldier, but yet that movie is so engrained into his first night with Rose. I think that’s really sweet, I think it’s really sweet that they don’t mention it as a movie they love or really even any specifics related to it, just that they watched it a bunch of times that night. The first movie I watched with my boyfriend as an official couple was the 2018 horror movie Hell Fest, it’s not a movie that really means anything to either of us but I look at it fondly as a movie that in some way was instrumental in bringing us together, no matter in what small way it did. Similarly I view cape feare and metal gear as a franchise in the same light, stuff that became enhanced because of the fact that I could share it with the person I share my life with.
I haven’t replayed this game in a second I just got to thinking of it again as I watched mr burns, a post electric play on YouTube last night. A play that deals with not only cape feare and the simpsons as a piece of immortal pop culture but the idea of media and stories and concepts being passed down from generation to generation in a similar way that sons of liberty does. Ideas get corrupted and malformed and with time you forget what Japanese monster movie the Chrysler building is in and what the name of hell fest is (I swore it’s title was hell house but no it isn’t) and what sideshow bob says back to the simpsons family in the theatre scene of cape feare. Ideas get transmitted to one person to the next to the next and maybe the person who will ultimately remember what sideshow bob says to the simpsons hasn’t ever actually seen the simpsons. Maybe they just remember that quote through osmosis, maybe they just know of it because their ex girlfriend would quote it so much. Memories corrupt with time and digital media makes that all that much more scary. The Metal Gear HD collection is gone off digital storefronts since the summer and it most likely won’t be up anytime soon, maybe it won’t ever come back, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for Konami to commit so much money and time to bring back a mostly dead series to mostly dead digital storefronts. The series is fairly cheap secondhand but something like the 3ds port of snake eater isn’t and there’s only so much time for them to add it back to the eshop before it’s lost to time and lost to people reselling it for too much. Something like Ghost Babel or Twin Snakes are in similar predicaments, both fantastic games and both lost to time for the most part. There’s obviously work arounds for this but it’s not a given for all people. Memories corrupt with time, the version of the play that I watched is from three years ago and filmed with entirely high school students, most likely seniors, those kids are my age now. Who knows if they have that concrete of memories of the simpsons given that they’re my age and maybe their family didn’t grow up with it, but through the passing down of media through generations they know the simpsons and know of at least cape feare more than most people.
A couple of weeks ago I watched 1992’s Noises Off, a screwball comedy about a theater troupe performing a play within a play. It was directed by Peter Bogdanovich, who for my money is the most interesting of all the New Hollywood guys, all of his work was deeply humanistic and loving and Noises Off despite being a relatively minor work was no exception. I got sad watching it, it was the first bogdanovich I had seen since his passing and that coupled with three other principal members of the cast passing away and the rest of the cast now being very old leaves a certain spectre of death hanging over the entire production. Who will remember this movie now that the director is dead and half the cast is too, especially when all of them did more critically beloved work. It’s a piece of media that’s forever lost to the ether, as far as I can tell it was only printed to dvd once and now it just exists hanging around in the digital landscape, memories of people who have been gone from this world, their work remains waiting to be rediscovered and reconsidered as a true hidden gem.
There’s a couch gag from the simpsons 26th season that’s directed by Don Hertzfeldt. It came out seven years after the simpsons movie, a movie that I really love and a movie that was kind of a jumping off point for my love of the series. The simpsons had been dead for ages at this point, further digging its own grave into self parody of what once was a very sincere and sweet show about a family that despite all dysfunctions did truly love each other. I think that short couch gag really understands what made the simpsons special, underneath all the merchandise and the catchphrases it’s a show about a family that truly loves each other but always fucks up in showing that love and now the family won’t die, stuck in a digital hellscape reduced to just catchphrases, consuming itself. It’s like a snake that has ate everything in sight but it’s tail and now it’ll eat that too, consuming itself. The simpsons was bought three short years after by Disney, it has consumed everything but it has left memories for generations and generations of people and me being an optimist I like to think it still is leaving people with actual memories that they’ll pass on to their children and their children’s children. The simpsons will never die, I’m sure they’d like to but they won’t.
In 2018 Konami released the most recent metal gear game, metal gear survive. Kojima had been officially off the series for three years at that point and metal gear survive still is the only thing they’ve produced for the series since. There was supposed to be a movie and thankfully it hasn’t had any real updates and there seems to be rumours every month of something new but all that’s come of the franchise in almost a decade is a game that got completely average ratings and the delisting of several games in the series. The snake eats itself.
I like to think metal gear can still be good, that Konami will turn it around like they have for silent hill. I like to think maybe the simpsons is good, maybe I’m missing out. I heard one of the recent seasons is pretty good all things considered, I’ve seen a few episodes from the late 2010s and I really did not like them but maybe it’s not made for me. I think it’s made really cynically and kind of grossly but I’m sure there’s some really old fans who think this of the movie. And I know there’s fans of metal gear who think the series stopped being good after snake eater or even after 1. But I like to think that there’s people introduced to metal gear through survive and people introduced to the simpsons through season 34 and they’ll go back and revisit older entries and both the new and the old will be memories for them, memories to pass down. Memories of Roland Emmerich’s 1998 Godzilla movie. Memories of a man driving a plane into the Chrysler building. Memories of Godzilla and King Kong. Memories of Homer and Marge. Memories of Raiden and Rose. Memories of your room, only a bed and a small desk.
Maybe the world ends tomorrow, but I will end the day with Memories of you, I will never forget you.
2 Comments
thanks sm, I fucking love metal gear lmao
Seth
1 year ago