Was Simon Pegg's comments childish?
Yes, I know that Pegg already has apologized for his comments and I'm not saying that the man isn't entitled to his opinion. However, I do think his comments are rather revealing. If you don't know what I'm talking about and I talking about Pegg's controversial comment with The Guardian in which he said. v
Pegg, who played chief engineer Scotty in the recent Star Trek films, added: “Obviously I’m very much a self-confessed fan of science fiction and genre cinema but part of me looks at society as it is now and just thinks we’ve been infantilised by our own taste.
“Now we’re essentially all consuming very childish things – comic books, superheroes. Adults are watching this stuff, and taking it seriously.
“It is a kind of dumbing down, in a way, because it’s taking our focus away from real-world issues. Films used to be about challenging, emotional journeys or moral questions that might make you walk away and re-evaluate how you felt about … whatever.
“Now we’re walking out of the cinema really not thinking about anything, other than the fact that the Hulk just had a fight with a robot.”
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/may/19/simon-pegg-criticises-dumbing-down-of-cinema
Again the man is entitled to his opinion and defend his right to say not and not have to apologize for it. However, I felt the need to roll my eyes while reading his comments. Pegg has point that there needs to be more diversity in current cinema. Yet to claim that sci-fi/fantasy genre automatically equal chilidishness is in itself a childish comment. By making such a comment Pegg confirms the stereotype that most geeks are in indeed childish. Because it's very childish to want to appear "grown up" by wanting to watch "grown up" films. The acclaimed novelist C.S. Lewis said it best. v
“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
Geeks like Pegg should adapt this same sentiment, when it comes to comic book movies and genre films. But too many of them are like Pegg in which they want to appear "grown up" much like a ten year old child.