Upcoming movies you're anticipating

arugula2 · **#2341** by **arugula2** » Sep 05, 2019 11:24 pm

Well, the reactionary knife cuts both ways... part of the point of grotesque/repulsive characters is to shine a light on the grotesqueness in our human nature (sympathizing is the point). Censorship is a papier-mâché approach. For what it's worth, angry incels can rage and rage (they always have)... but 99% of them only attempt mass murder because of enabling gun laws. I'm sure there's a serious incel epidemic in the greater Tokyo metropolitan, but... I shouldn't have to finish that sentence.

I want to put this out there as an idea: pinning the ails of society on art is now almost uniquely a trait of the old, the religious, and Americans. True? Not true? If true, let's think about why sometime.

CdesignProponentsist · **#2342** by **CdesignProponentsist** » Sep 06, 2019 5:35 pm

Let's stir up some more controversy. This one is going to be about literal Nazis and God forbid, its... a... comedy!

It looks fantastic too.

CdesignProponentsist · **#2343** by **CdesignProponentsist** » Sep 06, 2019 5:37 pm

Whoops. Hit Quote rather than Edit.

willhud9 · **#2344** by **willhud9** » Sep 06, 2019 7:27 pm

arugula2 wrote:Well, the reactionary knife cuts both ways... part of the point of grotesque/repulsive characters is to shine a light on the grotesqueness in our human nature (sympathizing is the point). Censorship is a papier-mâché approach. For what it's worth, angry incels can rage and rage (they always have)... but 99% of them only attempt mass murder because of enabling gun laws. I'm sure there's a serious incel epidemic in the greater Tokyo metropolitan, but... I shouldn't have to finish that sentence.

I want to put this out there as an idea: pinning the ails of society on art is now almost uniquely a trait of the old, the religious, and Americans. True? Not true? If true, let's think about why sometime.

Art isn’t bad.

The issue is interpretation of art has societal costs. Birth of a Nation revitalized the KKK, which to many black Americans has had a huge negative impact on.

The Joker movie is not bad by itself. What is bad are the themes that people are pulling away from the movie. What is bad is that reviews of the movie seem to shower the character of Joker with pity, almost admiration. That’s scary. Why? Because incels and Nazis and other “victims” of today’s mean culture will identify with the Joker and be emboldened by the media response. This happens often. We have a lot of Nazis and incels openly identifying as such. The media and art have allowed them to.

The reality is we as a culture need to be cautious about the kind of support we give to certain characters. I love the Joker in the fact that I love my villains to be chaotic evil creations of just madness, and wit.

But what I don’t love seeing are villains being praised. Reddit had people legit agreeing with Thanos. That’s worrisome.

purplerat · **#2345** by **purplerat** » Sep 06, 2019 7:59 pm

willhud9 wrote:
arugula2 wrote:Well, the reactionary knife cuts both ways... part of the point of grotesque/repulsive characters is to shine a light on the grotesqueness in our human nature (sympathizing is the point). Censorship is a papier-mâché approach. For what it's worth, angry incels can rage and rage (they always have)... but 99% of them only attempt mass murder because of enabling gun laws. I'm sure there's a serious incel epidemic in the greater Tokyo metropolitan, but... I shouldn't have to finish that sentence.

I want to put this out there as an idea: pinning the ails of society on art is now almost uniquely a trait of the old, the religious, and Americans. True? Not true? If true, let's think about why sometime.

Art isn’t bad.

The issue is interpretation of art has societal costs. Birth of a Nation revitalized the KKK, which to many black Americans has had a huge negative impact on.

The Joker movie is not bad by itself. What is bad are the themes that people are pulling away from the movie. What is bad is that reviews of the movie seem to shower the character of Joker with pity, almost admiration. That’s scary. Why? Because incels and Nazis and other “victims” of today’s mean culture will identify with the Joker and be emboldened by the media response. This happens often. We have a lot of Nazis and incels openly identifying as such. The media and art have allowed them to.

The reality is we as a culture need to be cautious about the kind of support we give to certain characters. I love the Joker in the fact that I love my villains to be chaotic evil creations of just madness, and wit.

But what I don’t love seeing are villains being praised. Reddit had people legit agreeing with Thanos. That’s worrisome.

It's really not all that worrisome. I suspect most people "agreeing" with Thanos or the Joker are doing so either tongue in cheek or are outright trolling. Anybody unstable enough to seriously draw inspiration from those works of fiction was probably going to find it elsewhere anyways.

The difference is that those works are clearly fiction and entertainment while something like "Birth of a Nation" was basically propaganda. You could argue that there are films and other pieces of art which blur the line between the two but those examples are definitely not in that category.

What I'd love to see is if you can backup the idea that these types of portrayals of sympathetic villains or anti-heroes is harmful with any supporting evidence.

arugula2 · **#2346** by **arugula2** » Sep 07, 2019 6:48 am

Rhetorically, to illustrate my point:

willhud9 wrote:<snip>The issue is interpretation of art has societal costs.<snip>

1) I propose instead that interpretation of art reflects what individuals/societies already believe. Now the onus is on you to prove otherwise. To wit:

<snip>Birth of a Nation revitalized the KKK<snip>

2) there is no equivalent work of art possible today. It's like when someone invents a movable type press: the immediate result is the printing of religious hocum - not because the hocum is novel (having been 15 centuries on the scene), but because the medium is. Early cinema = the printing press = the birth of the Internet. We're sorta still in the bosom-years of the Internet, and that bad boy is still a rabble rouser, and it magnifies all toxic ideas... but we moderns have one huge advantage that 16th century German peasants and early-20th century Americans didn't: our noises are all very very loud, and everyone is sharing all the time and it's not going to slow down, and the clowns are outnumbered and always will be outnumbered. We've won this culture war. The regressives are just too bewildered to fully realize it yet.

<snip>and be emboldened<snip>

3) the worry is misplaced. The worry should be on the lax gun laws. A simple statistical comparison of countries should lead you there. But rungs 2-49 on that ladder of worry should take you through: funding of politicians & elections (legalized bribery), attacks on science & science education, slashing of public school funding generally, treading on women's rights, preferential treatment of religious cults, and a number of other topics lethal or threatening to the flailing incel subculture. Loudly and aggressively addressing those real problems is the secondary way to slap that subculture down.

But really, only the first rung is necessary. Take away their guns. In the USA, politicians are apparently too chickenshit to impose on guns the level of oversight they impose on Tylenol.

And point #1 stands: art reflects what we already are.

SafeAsMilk · **#2347** by **SafeAsMilk** » Sep 07, 2019 7:17 pm

If you've got people agreeing with Thanos, then that's a society problem, not an art one. Censoring Thanos won't solve that.

arugula2 · **#2348** by **arugula2** » Sep 07, 2019 8:14 pm

Internet chatter (& the old media) tend to magnify things beyond proportion anyway. Nihilism isn’t something new, nor is apocalypticism. I don’t think they’re a threat except in positions of power. Nukes, but also guns.

willhud9 · **#2349** by **willhud9** » Sep 08, 2019 3:55 am

SafeAsMilk wrote:If you've got people agreeing with Thanos, then that's a society problem, not an art one. Censoring Thanos won't solve that.

I wasn't saying we should censor it. I only mentioned censorship in the context of speech in other countries.

Again the issue isn't the art itself. The issue is the mentality around the art.

Thanos is objectively evil. No sane or rational person should sit there and sympathize with him as a villain or his motives or philosophy. Yet people do. The film portrays Thanos ideology as a "road to hell is paved with good intentions" kind of ideology.

Its not that they wholeheartedly agree with Thanos' means, but they agree that humanity is overpopulated and that action needs to be taken to curb said overpopulation and bring balance into the world.

https://oxfordre.com/criminology/view/1 ... 4079-e-189

This isn't a new issue, nor particularly unheard of. Media consumption affects people's beliefs and values.

I think you guys are reading a bit more into what I was saying. Im not saying the Joker movie will be bad. I am simply saying the message it is sending is not a good one. Entertainment or not the character of the Joker is not a character to sympathize with. :dunno:

arugula2 · **#2350** by **arugula2** » Sep 08, 2019 4:59 am

Not sure I know what that message is yet... but whatever it is, I think the point is that there’s a group somewhere reinforcing a nihilistic interpretation of something, and maybe obsessing over it. That’s always been a thing... humans obsessing in a noxious way, and/or nurturing fantasies of violence. So that’s not a new thing.

The easy proliferation of guns: that’s the new thing.

Fallible · **#2351** by **Fallible** » Sep 08, 2019 9:56 am

willhud9 wrote:
SafeAsMilk wrote:If you've got people agreeing with Thanos, then that's a society problem, not an art one. Censoring Thanos won't solve that.

I wasn't saying we should censor it. I only mentioned censorship in the context of speech in other countries.

Again the issue isn't the art itself. The issue is the mentality around the art.

Thanos is objectively evil. No sane or rational person should sit there and sympathize with him as a villain or his motives or philosophy. Yet people do. The film portrays Thanos ideology as a "road to hell is paved with good intentions" kind of ideology.

Its not that they wholeheartedly agree with Thanos' means, but they agree that humanity is overpopulated and that action needs to be taken to curb said overpopulation and bring balance into the world.

https://oxfordre.com/criminology/view/1 ... 4079-e-189

This isn't a new issue, nor particularly unheard of. Media consumption affects people's beliefs and values.

I think you guys are reading a bit more into what I was saying. Im not saying the Joker movie will be bad. I am simply saying the message it is sending is not a good one. Entertainment or not the character of the Joker is not a character to sympathize with.

Really? My view is that although in a fictional and highly stylised way, what we see with characters such as the Joker who experienced hardships and/or trauma during their development is a comment on what causes them to be ‘evil’ in the first place. Unless one is of the belief that people can be ‘born evil’, it seems obvious to me that it is possible and even beneficial to understand the development of individuals into ‘monsters’. If we do this, perhaps we can do something about the numbers of those who post that Thanos has it right, or shoot up the place because girls don’t like them. As with the prison system, do you want to punish them, or are you more interested in making sure they never reach the point where you have to?

Oh, also, people post quite a lot of crap on the internet, much of which doesn’t reflect their actual views.

aban57 · **#2352** by **aban57** » Sep 08, 2019 11:38 am

Fallible wrote:
Oh, also, people post quite a lot of crap on the internet, much of which doesn’t reflect their actual views.

Also, people write and say things without thinking them through before. They don't think about the consequences of what they want. If they did, maybe they would change their minds and offer different "solutions".

Animavore · **#2353** by **Animavore** » Sep 08, 2019 11:53 am

I'm exactly like this in real life. :lol:

Animavore · **#2354** by **Animavore** » Sep 13, 2019 6:22 pm

arugula2 · **#2355** by **arugula2** » Sep 13, 2019 8:38 pm

Please don’t give these people money.

purplerat · **#2356** by **purplerat** » Sep 13, 2019 9:24 pm

That trailer looks like a Christofacist wet dream.

Animavore · **#2357** by **Animavore** » Sep 25, 2019 5:35 pm

The U.S. military has warned service members about the potential for a mass shooter at screenings of the Warner Bros. film Joker, which has sparked wide concerns from, among others, the families of those killed during the 2012 mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado.

The U.S. Army confirmed on Tuesday that the warning was widely distributed after social media posts related to extremists classified as “incels,” were uncovered by intelligence officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/u-s-military-is ... E8J5gPJqwI

Animavore · **#2358** by **Animavore** » Sep 25, 2019 5:47 pm

arugula2 wrote::roll:

Please don’t give these people money.

I'll watch an inevitable YouTube video mocking it.

willhud9 · **#2359** by **willhud9** » Sep 25, 2019 11:28 pm

Animavore wrote:
The U.S. military has warned service members about the potential for a mass shooter at screenings of the Warner Bros. film Joker, which has sparked wide concerns from, among others, the families of those killed during the 2012 mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado.

The U.S. Army confirmed on Tuesday that the warning was widely distributed after social media posts related to extremists classified as “incels,” were uncovered by intelligence officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/u-s-military-is ... E8J5gPJqwI

purplerat · **#2360** by **purplerat** » Sep 26, 2019 1:28 am

Oh look, the US military which trains a disproportionately large number of mass shooters is preemptively trying to blame a movie.

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