Non-chocolate Easter Eggs

 

By Wilson

There are so many Easter Eggs according to the media that the Easter Bunny no longer has to lay them.  Never since a car drove through the background of Braveheart, I love it when I catch an egg. The Marvel Cinematographic Universe loves to put them into their movies.  Advertisers learned to put their products a long time ago and called it product placement. Marvel does the same putting other comic book characters, story line tie-ins, and even other movies in their movies.

We are starting to have a problem with Easter Eggs.  People are starting to label almost everything added to shows, movies and videos are being called an Easter Egg. If you have read my articles before, you may have noticed I have a thing for defining things, and here I go again.

One definition of Easter Eggs:

an unexpected or undocumented feature in a piece of computer software or on a DVD included as a joke or a bonus.

At one point in time, it was called a blooper when an expected car drove through the background of an ancient Scots battlefield.  

Another definition for Easter Egg from a different source is:

a hidden item placed in a movie, television show, or otherwise visual media for close watchers.

It has become a common practice to add these at the end of a movie as a little extra surprise scene for people that stay for the end credits.   

Since Avengers Infinity Wars, the Easter Eggs often a subject of articles and conversations in person and mass media. In fact, Andrew Dyce of On SCREENRANT.com claims Avengers: 40 Easter Eggs You Completely Missed In Infinity War. It is an interesting read, but a lot of things Dyce calls Easter Eggs are just plot points or part of the characters personality. He even calls the choice Starlord’s playing of “The Rubberband Man” by The Spinners an egg reaching for it stating the writer of the song or the use in of the song in another movie a long time ago the reason for the use in the movie. You don’t have to work that hard for an Easter Egg.  It wasn’t something that was hidden or unexpected from the crew of the Milano. It would be unexpected if Starlord played opera or a Snoop Dog rap. Starloard and crew listen to 70’s music. Not an Easter Egg.

Another nonegg was the Hulk crashing into Dr. Strange’s sanctum.  First, it was played in trailers, but that isn’t why it wasn’t an Easter Egg.  In the comics, the Silver Surfer crashes into the sanctum, not the Hulk. When writing the script, Hulk being sent to Earth to let the heroes on Earth know about Thano’s is a plot point of the story. One of the writers either remembered or researched Dr. Strange comic’s and substituted the Hulk for the Silver Surfer in the crash. If Banner wore a Surfer t-shirt, had a Surfer action figure in his hand, or it was the Silver Surfer in the debris that would have been an Easter Egg.  The Hulk crashing into the sanctum was a way to move on the story, therefore a plot point or at best a substitution.

At the same time of all the Easter Egg talk in the Avengers so has there been talk about the Easter Eggs in Childish Gambino’s This is America.  This is a poignant music video that puts a critical eye on the condition of African Americans in America touching on everything from the way they view their culture to the way they are viewed by other cultures in America.  The way I found out about the video and decided to watch it was posting on Facebook with subtitles about the Easter Eggs in the Glover’s aka Gambino’s video. I watched it a number of times and got more curious about what the Easter Eggs in the video so I watched several people talking about the Easter Eggs in the video.  One of the eggs the reviewers talked about was Gambino standing in the position that a “Jim Crow” dance that was done in blackface by white minstrel performer cartoon from 1828 as Gambino shot a man in the head.  The reviewer is confused between the terms Easter Egg and symbolism. While geek Troy Barnes from Community would be proud of having Easter Eggs in his video, he would have trouble with the mistake of terms.

Case and point, symbolism:Non-chocolate Easter Eggs
Large claims of Easter Eggs in movies and Video has Wilson looking at the definition of Easter Eggs and misuse of the term.

 

1. the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities.
2. symbolic meaning attributed to natural objects or facts.
3. an artistic and poetic movement or style using symbolic images and indirect suggestion to express mystical ideas, emotions, and states of mind.

The people talking about This Is America on Facebook were all very intelligent and insightful but fell into the trap of using the word of the day. The video is a wonderful piece using a lot of symbolism to show Glover/ Gambino’s feelings and observation about the state of African American’s today. I believe in parts of the video he hopes to shock viewers into the same realizations as he had as well as put grow into action.  There is also advice in the video hidden in the symbolism.

Hopefully, mass media will get tired of its new word(s) Easter Egg soon and will go back to using the correct words in their writings.  Vocabulary is always growing and changing. Slang seems to change daily. If you look up Celli/Celly in the Urban Dictionary (where I got one of the definitions for Easter Eggs) you will get several different definitions going from a cellphone to a fat kid, but only two different definitions for Easter Eggs and they don’t have Symbolism or substitution.   

With Deadpool 2 out, I’m crossing my fingers that the media will not accidently add cameo to their idea of what makes an Easter Egg.  Not to be confused with the two eggs owned by Blake Lively in Ryan Reynold’s pants, but even Reynolds cameos his own movie.

It’s Deadpool. Everything is unexpected.