On the Universal/Barbie deal, here's the link. It is a movie studio deal, for a film. No mention of any theme park implications.
Though we can certainly begin the speculation on who will play Barbie in the flick. And Ken. :-)
http://www.wlwt.com/entertainment/21043973/detail.html
http://www.wlwt.com/news/21102054/detail.html
I guess that my opinion is this. The McNair skeleton is campy, and questionable at worst, but it's Halloween...the time of year where human beings celebrate a day with buckets of blood, chainsaws, zombies and dead bodies. They put heads on a platter, coffins on their porch, and run around with toy knives, axes, and the like. This wasn't a graphic recreation, and other celebrities had their own skeletons. I'm sure that the McNair family wouldn't like the scene, but I'm also sure that the family of a non-celebrity woman who was stabbed to death, or family of an anonymous person that hanged himself wouldn't like a different scene that was on display. It shouldn't make it any different or more special because the guy was famous. If the male skeleton was wearing a black t shirt instead of a McNair jersey with the dead female draped over him, nobody would have said a word. So to me, it doesn't seem that the uproar is about someone dying. It seems to be that the person was famous, which to me isn't a valid reason to be offended. There are far more disturbing images to me used in horror movies and halloween displays than that one.
Now...Disney using cheez whiz...that's offensive, and quite frankly disgusting. How many more of these little stories are going to come out?
Whoops. Well, obviously the people didn't respond well to that little image. People are ok with walking through a maze of very realistic hanging dead bodies, but not this. This does bring up a thought about Halloween events and our culture. Here's some food for thought. Those who go to Halloween events see all kinds of morbid scenes. The parks become filled with (sometimes graphic) references to death. Look around you at a Halloween event or a haunted house, and you will see that bad taste an incorrectness is a very very blurred line during Halloween.
The answer to my question calls more for a societal observation than it does for personal opinion. Before you answer, consider this thought. Yes, McNair's murder was a real event, but I'm sure that somebody has really hanged themselves since then. There have been plenty of real murders and real car crashes leaving mutilated bodies, and many people were killed in the electric chair.
And now the question. Why would it be that a dummy being lit up in an electric chair or a body hanging from a noose, or a bloody, mutilated dummy is passed off as "Halloween fun", but a campy, non graphic depiction of Steve McNair and his "lover" using no more than skeletons and a helmet used for popcorn would strike a nerve?
Is it our insensitivity to violence? celebrity worship? Is this story just the media (you know...the ones with the old mantra "If it bleeds, it leads) trying to stir a little controversy? Is it hypocrisy? Is it anything at all?
Thoughts?