It's All About The Backlash

You know the saying "Bad press is better than no press," right? Well then it's been a pretty good week for two key figures in TV and movies...

Let's start with Dr. Phil. Mr. "You need to make a change fer YOU" took to Twitter this week with a fairly controversial question to draw a response from viewers. It said "If a girl is drunk, is it OK to have sex with her?" Now, that's not to say that I haven't taken women out, gotten them drunk, then had sex with them. However, it was all consensual, and I think the question Dr. Phil was asking was about non-consensual stuff...also known as rape. Twitter users also believed that to be the line of questioning and kinda tore the Doc a new one. One of the responders wrote "If Dr. Phil is drunk, is it okay for him to tweet?" Look, America, I get it. The phrasing of Dr. Phil's question could have been so much better. Like "Do you agree with raping a drunk girl?" But let's consider this from a PR standpoint. The way the question was phrased started a major firestorm on the interwebs. It got people talking about Dr. Phil again, which, if you're not living in North Carolina looking for a missing teenage girl, no one is really doing (but he usually does some major shit in his season premiere, so I'll be watching for that...or not). People will tune in to this particular episode to see how the Doc effs things up...but will over the course of the hour learn a valuable lesson from "Big 'Stache." After all, the Doc has to make his money. He can't just offer those mustache rides for free. (I'm kidding, Big Phil!)

Now to the other big internet outrage...Ben Affleck will be the next Batman. No joke. He'll be playing the Dark Knight in the Batman/Superman movie that I swore I was so excited about just 4 days ago. Now, let's address something here...Ben Affleck is not a bad actor (see Argo). Ben Affleck has shown he can at least REASONABLY portray superheroes on film (see Daredevil...but pretend Jennifer Garner isn't in it). But can he pull off Batman? Sure, he can pass for an adorkable Bruce Wayne...which kinda flies in the face of the socially awkward but dashingly handsome Bruce Wayne we've seen for years. Shit, they relied so heavily on "handsome" they had George Fucking Clooney (seriously, that's his middle name) play him in one (godawful) film! But can he do BATMAN??? There are some people out there who say this is a response similar to the announcement that Heath Ledger was going to play the Joker. Y'know, the portrayal that got him a posthumous Oscar nomination. To be fair, there had been nothing prior to "The Dark Knight" that showed whether Ledger could or could not pull off a brutal villain like the Joker. So a lot of that criticism was probably unfounded. But we've SEEN Affleck do a superhero movie...with "meh" results. Honestly, a lot of it will probably come down to the script and directing. The greatest writer and the best director can polish a turd with relative ease. So I'll go on the record so I can come back to this in a couple years and see what I wrote...I hope Affleck does well as Batman. I think it'd be another great opportunity (like Argo) to step out of the Affleck/Damon shadow that Matt Damon leapt out of almost immediately into a successful career. Ben, best of luck to you. You're going to step into a franchise that I have a LOT of love for. Individually, Batman is amazing and I enjoy him enough I got the bat-signal tattooed on my arm. The Batman/Superman comics have been AWESOME for the most part. So you have been offered a great part in a great legacy. More power to you. But it will probably be the deal-breaker for me and I won't see it.

I'm done bitching for the day. Go back to your regularly scheduled activities of porn and cute cat videos (but never both at once...NEVER. BOTH. AT. ONCE.)...

-B-