Things One Does in Grad School

Title: A Bill to Preserve Our Popular Culture

WHEREAS, the mission of Bowling Green State University is that it Aspires to be the premier learning community in Ohio, and one of the best in the nation; and

WHEREAS, in accordance with this mission Bowling Green State University has an interest in promoting the best and most outstanding forms of cultural expression; and

WHEREAS, Universal Pictures is scheduled to release a movie entitled "The Incredible Hulk" on June the 13th of this year; and

WHEREAS, on the 20th of June, 2003 - only five years ago - Universal Pictures release a movie entitled "The Hulk"; and

WHEREAS, both of these films purport to be adaptations of the classic comic book character "The Incredible Hulk," originally created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby ; and

WHEREAS, these films are inconsistent, both with the plot lines presented in the comic books, and with each other; and

WHEREAS, this means that both films are retroactively altering the continuity of and already established plotline, a practice known to fans as "retconning"; and

WHEREAS, comic book plot lines are already hard enough to figure out, and some of us just recently discovered you could use wikipedia to catch up on them; and

WHEREAS, by releasing two mutually inconsistent movies within a mere five years of each other, Universal Pictures threatens to make the entire Hulk plot line an indecipherable morass, confusing fans and wasting thousands of hours of work by wikipedia editors; and

WHEREAS, the only possible reason Universal could have for committing such an atrocity is the desire to bilk consumers out of their hard earned money with more warmed-over garbage; and

WHEREAS, it totally looks like they even recycled the CG model of the Hulk from the Ang Lee movie, how cheap is that?

BE IT RESOLVED, that the Graduate Student Senate condemns "The Incredible Hulk" as a totally gratuitous retconn and crass commercial move on the part of Universal Pictures, even if it might be a better movie than the Ang Lee picture; and

LET IT BE FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Graduate Student Senate does not mean this resolution to reflect poorly on Ed Norton, who has done a lot of nice work