I was having a little online fun with some friends of mine the other night (while drinking a reasonable quantity – for me – of Buffalo Trace Bourbon), when one of them mentioned they had some lilac bushes at home. Of course, being the old nerd that I am, I immediately thought of the ridiculously campy and entirely entertaining 1960’s Batman TV series (starring Adam West as the titular hero, Burt Ward as his somewhat naive and overly-earnest sidekick Robin the Boy Wonder, the frankly delicious Yvonne Craig as Batgirl, and often guest-starring A-list acting luminaries as the villain of the week).

The lilac reference, of course, brought to mind the arch-criminal Louis the Lilac, as portrayed by the great comic Milton Berle. That’s him, as Louis (pronounced “Lou-ee”, not “Lou-iss”) in the photo above.

The whole exchange reminded me of how important entertainment is to our society as a whole.

This blog – it’s entire premise – is to bring attention to the effect big money and the media (which are so closely related as to be incestuous) have on our fragmented society. It’s not necessarily an intuitive link, but entertainment plays a role. A big role…

Entertainment – as opposed to the current Infotainment echo-chamber “news” media we’re subjected to – is a very important aspect to our society. A lot of money gets spent – and made – trying to appeal to the greatest number of people. Tom Cruise’s “Mission Impossible” movies, Sly Stallone’s “Expendables” movies, pretty much anything produced by Disney or Pixar (wait – Pixar is owned by Disney now, isn’t it? Along with several other studios and properties…). And we know Universal Studios can’t recognize a potential franchise when they see one.

Entertainment – and escape. Psychologically, we need some escape from the real world, however briefly. We need to decompress from the stresses of the day – and particularly in today’s world, that’s important. We need hope, we need positivity. Frankly, it’s been important for the last quarter century, and more. Pity we see so little of it.

In my bio I mention that I’m a sci-fi nerd. I started early; reading sci-fi my mother gave me in the early 1960’s, like E.E. “Doc” Smith’s “Lensmen” series. I also own Edgar Rice Burroughs “John Carter of Mars” series (and all of his “Tarzan” books), and the classics of Verne, Wells, and others (like J.R.R. Tolkien, H. Beam Piper, Orson Scott Card, Steve Perry, Jean Auel, Bob Vardeman, and I can’t forget my late friend Janet Kagan on this list). Just between us, I think science fiction is the most versatile of any literary genre, since it allows us to examine any human foible or tendency through “alien” eyes, giving the reader a fresh perspective (a perfect example of this is Kagan’s “Hellspark”).

The “action/adventure” of “Mission Impossible” or “The Expendables” or the “John Wick” movies allows us to embark on a couple hours of fantasy where the good guys win against all odds, with a lot of flash-bang excitement, blood and guts we know aren’t real, and we leave the theater with just a bit of adrenaline in our systems and feeling like there is some justice in the world after all. Same with the Star Trek movies, Star Wars, the Marvel multi-verse (when it doesn’t get tedious)…

Battlestar Galactica. The 1978 show is what inspired me to start writing. The world-building in that show was incredible, and quite rare for television; humans that were clearly related to us, but obviously not of Earth… The positivity, showing us the incredible resilience of the human race, the strength of family and faith against the ultimate enemy…

Incredible premise, so-so execution (which was actually the fault of the network execs, but we won’t go into that), the show has a cult following that thrives to this day.

In the early 2000’s we were being beaten up by recession and high unemployment rates, and Universal decided to remake Battlestar. However, instead of producing the kind of positive, affirming content we really needed in that time, the production staff decided to jettison all the carefully-crafted world-building of the original production and gave us a dark, morbid, anti-American screed that include genocide, infanticide, and sexbots driven by a religious imperative straight out of Osama Bin Laden’s al Qaeda.

Some people loved it. As someone who recognizes the need for positive, hopeful entertainment, I didn’t (I hated it, in fact, but not just for that reason…). The supposed “good guys” never won – they turned out to be the enemy, too.

That production bled viewers from the premier on, but it was the early days of streaming so it counted as a modest success and lasted a few years, longer than the original show they tried – and still try – to overwrite, but it never attracted a fraction of the audience the original had throughout its single-season run. Which should have been longer – but Universal is Universal, after all.

The point to be made is this: Entertainment is important, and hopeful, positive entertainment is critical to the health of our society. Sometimes it needs to be serious, sometimes it needs to be silly, sometimes smarmy, and, yes, sometimes dark – but with the hope that whatever the odds, we will push through and survive – and succeed. That kind of entertainment is out there – we just have to find it among the money-making agenda-driven drivel.