Heart of the City by Steenz for March 06, 2012

If Dean enjoys his Star Wars obsession, he should stop telling Heart how unhappy it makes him!

Technically, that’s not negative reinforcement, but punishment. If she whacked him continuously and only stopped when he DIDN’T think of Star wars, that would be negative reinforcement.

…got band aids?

“If he hates the job Lucas has done then why does he watch the films?”

I like the first two. I LOVE the first ONE (my only real problem with “The Empire Strikes Back” is that it’s so clearly a middle chapter). “Return of the Jedi” was like…like…like getting clothes for Christmas? Like getting pajamas with feet in them from the aunt who thinks you’re still five? I would have said “like a turd in the punchbowl”, but that didn’t really happen until the prequels.

“You don’t like the comic relief of the Ewoks? I suppose then he shouldn’t have had the droids in the first as the comic relief there, just totally inhuman robots with no funny moments? "

When comic relief is actually funny, I like it fine. When it’s unfunny and distracting, I don’t like it.

I repeat: it’s not negative reinforcement, it’s punishment. Please don’t use the terminology if you aren’t going to use it correctly.

“I think you are a very tiny minority concerning Ewoks and perhaps humor in general escapes you?”

I may be in the minority, but it’s a sizeable one. The best thing I can say about the ewoks is that at least Lucas didn’t populate Endor with Smurfs.

Reinforcement (positive or negative) encourages you to continue a behavior. Punishment encourages you to stop.

If I happened to be Dean’s psychotherapist, I would advise him to get into some of the classic 1950s science-fiction films—The Day The Earth Stood Still.The Thing From Another World.This Island Earth.Forbidden Planet.It Came From Outer Space.Earth vs. The Flying Saucers.And many more…

“You are the only person I have ever heard find fault with Ewoks”

You must not get out much.

I’m not a computer gamer myself, but I understand tha one of the selling points of the later “Rebel Assault” installments is that they allow you to play as Storm Troopers and slaughter ewoks.

I’ve read that Lucas’s original idea for the battle of Endor involved the moon being inhabited by Wookies, but that he couldn’t find a pool of actors tall enough to do it. Instead, he repopulated the moon with remarkably small fuzzballs. Can you imagine the slapstick gags in the climactic battle, the warriors getting caught up in their own bolas, etc., working if the principals were 7-foot tall instead of 3-foot tall? It’s cheap slapstick; it’s “cute”. It;s pandering. "Empire Strikes Back: gave us Luke climbing inside a dead Tauntaun in order to survive the ice planet Hoth. “Return of the Jedi” gave us Care Bears tripping over their own feet. Alec Guinness hated the fact that the moest memorable role of his career would be from a dumb children’s movie. “Return of the Teddies” justified those fears.

If you want to see how somebody did it right, watch “Toy Story 3”. No kid has any business watching the third movie unless they’ve seen the first two, and no kid could handle the third movie until they’ve aged a few years after watching the first two. With “Star Wars”, the first movie was great when you’re 12 (which, coincidentally, was how old I was when it came out). The second movie was great if you’re 15 (which, coincidentally, etc.). But the third movie was made for 7 year-olds…

Obviously, I’m not of Dean’s generation. But, as I’ve said, I’m probably not far from Dean’s dad’s generation, Dean’s dad whom we know to have been a Sci-Fi fan and to have impressed his tastes upon his son. It seems to me that Dean’s dad has done an admirable job teaching his son to separate the wheat from the chaff. Perhaps I go farther in my abhorrance ot Late Lucas than Dean does, but to the extent that I’m more closely aligned to the sentiments being espoused in the strip upon which we all are commenting, it’s rather disingenuous to suggest that I’m the anomalous voice, let alone a minority of one.

@ JP Steve Nope! As Saucy1121 pointed out, reinforcement—negative or postive— increases the occurrence of a behavior; punishment decreases it. The method and result are completely different. If Heart were using negative reinforcement, Dean would be thinking about Star Wars even more than he normally does.

But not CASH, right?