How do the dominant cultural narratives in art and mass media affect our politics?

The Confederate flag is still used to oppress black folks. It's gotta go.

Um, nobody here even mentioned Buffy. The show everyone was dissing (including me) was Firefly.

edited 15th Jan '18 8:01:24 PM by M84

Wheedon talk in general

I don't disagree , but I still dunno which other symbol could be used for Country music

Why does country music need a symbol? No other music style does, that I know of.

I didn't mean to start a Whedon hate-fest, although I do like the odd Whedon hate-fest. To elaborate, besides Reconstruction itself being interesting, I was musing that you could easily have a Lovable Rogue protagonist/protagonists who were on the good guy side of a Civil War/the Civil War.

On that not, another thing is that you can have a character who's a Loveable Rogue and not necessarily against the law.

For example: you could have a person be a Privateer of some sort, or a rebel against one regime being given the support of another.

"The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy? Complete with an far right edgelord who tried to murder his own parents?"

The Star Wars sequels don't have a pro- or anti-Reconstruction message. They're unquestionably progressive, but in terms of social message, they come off more as Millennial Kitsch than anything else. Kylo Ren looks like the oily emo boy we all grew up recognizing and his space nazism is straight out of the alt-right, but the narrative focus on the older generation being wrong and/failures whose mistakes the next generation must fix, burning down the past, etc. is basically just millennial pandering, especially since the OT generation is the Greatest Generation analogue of Star Wars.

I tried to talk about Ganishka and how he is based on Orientalist tropes and how that is bad even if everyone in Berserk is evil.

Well, the classic happened.

-Stop inserting your views into the story!

-Kentaro Miura looks like Trump to you? You think that Miura is evil?

-Everyone is evil in Berserk, and everyone raped or was raped if not both, why Ganishka trying to rape Charlotte is racist? (because a Middle Easterner Emperor appearing and trying to rape a White Princess lack any racial-cultural implications).

And my favorite

-You're the real racist, because everytime that you see a evil middle Easterner, you already think in them as racial stereotypes

The depiction of Kushans in the story was really terrible for a long time honestly, practically 300 levels of racist.

The only thing that eventually made it better was that in addition to Silat being a decent character for the entirety of the story, Daiba was eventually portrayed in a more sympathetic light in the newer chapters and you see some Kushans who don't look like horrible abominations in some of the panels (as minor as that is, when you're being compared to 300 it's an improvement). Even Ganishka who was basically an irredemably terrible monster had that chapter that explained his backstory and tried to show how he was just a person before he became an Apostle and became a cartoonishly horrible tyrant.

edited 15th Jan '18 10:18:17 PM by Draghinazzo

Is good to see that Miura is trying to fix it to be honest.

Honestly, Ganishka backstory actually makes it even more problematic if you ask me, but that's just me.

Star Wars is definitely not about the Civil War, at least not directly. It's more about WWII than anything else.

"300 levels of racist" and 50 shades of xenophobic?

That would actually be a good Simpsons joke or gag in my opinion.

The sign of the horns is unquestionably the symbol for metal. Granted, that's much easier to parade around than a freakin' flag.

Country music has that thing where people stick their thumbs behind their belt buckles, not sure if that has a name. And they have hats and pickup trucks. They're not hard to pick out, even without upping the Confederacy.

edited 16th Jan '18 12:22:27 AM by Unsung

I thought of that, but it's not truly an icon.

That just says rural person to me. I don't see why "country", "Southern USA", and the motherfucking Confederation to Defend Slavery to the Death have to be tied together like that. For instance, what about the West, Midwest, North, and coastal states with big agriculture?

edited 16th Jan '18 2:13:34 AM by TheHandle

When did everyone lose all respect Joss Whedon?

I'm guessing when he accepted the job to save Justice League.

Justice League was a not a good film, I didn't really feel that Joss's style fit the tone of the film.

Look, he did his best with what Snyder left him, OK?

I guess.

Whedon’s downfall has been a longtime in coming between people growing tired of his writing style (particularly his dialogue) and how influential it has been, and people questioning just how feminist he actually is.

That aside I do wonder with the rise of the far-right if we might see things like Gone With the Wind disappear from school reading list in the US. It would probably receive a lot of backlash from both-sides and then there is the question of what to replace it with, but I get the feeling that making kids read a book that glorifies the Southern Planter Aristocracy and depicts blacks in very stereotypical fashion is something that’s going to become less popular with time.

Nikkolas mentioned a series that argued against the idea of scientific racism... By validating it and showing the villain as a reasonable scientific that was racist and right about that because science and then saying that it don't matter if he was right and Whites were superior, racism is bad.

I have a Bile Fascination about it, which series was that Nik?

Because there just so much issues that I don't believe that it got aired.

First and more important, Scientific racism is a scam, it was ignorance at the very best but now, we have outgrow it and every scientist with a functional brain and a moral sense would say that is just bullshit. If someone believe that, he's literally at Flat Earther tier of bunk science.

Second, I love how fiction seems to associate intellectually with evilness, I don't have any issue with the trope of the Idiot Hero but the Anti-Intellectualism is pretty common in media. Especially jarring given that scientific racism was proven wrong for a while.

Third, and related, I think on the whole "I know that you are right but you are still inmoral and I should stop you anyway", it sounds cool but then you realize that your heroes are being all Honor Before Reason.

Also, why most Honor Before Reason heroes are Lawful Good? Chaotic Good can be as equally anti pragmatic, if not more

edited 16th Jan '18 7:08:55 AM by KazuyaProta

"Look, he did his best with what Snyder left him, OK? "

And did his best include that scene were flash he fall on diana top, like some stupid 2000 anime...

save the movie my ass.

The backlash started with Age of Ultron and that damned rape joke he wrote for it.