Lindsay Ellis

It sounded to me like the kind of complaining you hear every generation, ie "These darn kids and their rock n' roll/rap/techno, it's not even real music''. Though I wouldn't be surprised by a guy from the 30's being racist on top of it.

There are certainly purists who will denounce anything that isn't strictly harmonic classical music.

Presumably he's using jazz as an example of hollow entertainment used to momentarily distract you from your problems.

OK checking and he was a classical composer, so probably resentment about that. I'm glad it wasn't about racism probably.

Either way, it definitely sounds like he was letting his personal biases seep into his theories.

I wouldn't be surprised if the stereotyping of jazz as a hollow, uncultured form of entertainment has racist roots even if that guy wasn't consciously berating it for racist reasons.

Its a bit of both, really. Part of it was associating it with racist stereotypes (and with criminality and deviancy in general) on the cultural side, and part of it was breaking with classical traditions on the musical side.

And if they reacted this way to JAZZ, imagine what they would have thought of the likes of rock and heavy metal.

And this sentiment still lives on today! I remember a professor at uni disparaging anything that didn't produce a nice harmonious graph in his musical analysis software.

New It's Lit video, this one's about romance novels

Edited by Nouct on Jul 30th 2018 at 6:19:07 AM

Apparently her channel's next video will be on the remake of Beauty and the Beast.

Yeah its out on Patreon.

It's publicly out now

Edited by Nouct on Jul 31st 2018 at 6:06:45 AM

Ooof.

She really tore into CinemaSins, huh? I tend not to like such reactionary videos (especially if they're as benign as CS), but the video itself was pretty solid. Not Lindsay's best work, but obviously worth a watch. Best part was the history lesson in the beginning, as is often the case. Love hearing the historical context for these films.

EDIT: Reactive, not reactionary. Leaving the original text up to preserve my eternal shame.

Edited by Larkmarn on Jul 31st 2018 at 2:09:24 PM

A few thoughts:

• Wow, I didn't imagine they'd turn Beast into such a prick. Guess that what happens when your remake is a cynical cash-in attempt.

• Hollywood needs to stop letting middle-aged white dudes telling "feminist" or "progressive" stories (read: transparent, awkward attempts at being "woke" that adds nothing of value to and also drag down the plot). Learn from the success of Wonder Woman and Black Panther, evil Hollywood overlords.

• So thanks to the magic of TV Tropes, I've learned that there was a reason why they didn't use that teleporting book to save Maurice, which is apparently revealed in the tie-in manga called The Beast's Tale. They sure aren't leaving any Plot Hole unfilled, are they?

• Too much (attempted) Author's Saving Throw can be detrimental to the plot. Who could have known?

.... reactionary.

When did Jeremy realize his video?

Reactive would've been the better word. Been hanging around in the US Politics Thread too much.

I mean, she tore into herself mostly (She outright lists herself in the "fake disney opening".

The issue really isn't even videos like CS, it's the idea Disney had that these needed to be answered or addressed.

You know, I'd never heard of "negging" before now. Lindsay mentioned the Beast doing it in an earlier video but I thought she said he was "nagging" and was confused.

I think the target of Lindsay's ire is less Cinema Sins and more the likes of clickbait articles pioneered by Cracked and the like.

The reason I say she particularly called out Cinema Sins is she goes "Open your heart like the pedantic fuck that opines (something or another that gets addressed by the remake). Plot Hole, DING!" which is a really clear Take That! to CS.

I'd buy that more if the "pedantic fuck" line wasn't attached specifically to the CS reference.

Edited by Larkmarn on Jul 31st 2018 at 2:39:13 PM

Well the "Plothole DING" line is pretty clearly about Cinema Sins (), and not without reason I might add, but yeah the whole thing about "pedantic fucks" was more about the nitpicky internet critics in general.

I'm surprised she didn't mention two other recent movies made by Disney seemingly entirely to answer to such nitpicks : Why Does the Death Star have a Weak Point and That's Not What Parsec Means.

Edited by Nithael on Jul 31st 2018 at 12:37:58 PM

The movie's portrayal of Gaston and the town seems really confused.

I'm honestly kind of more forgiving to Cinema Sins because part of the point of that channel strikes me as being that every movie, even good ones, has a crapton of things to nitpick about them.

Weirdly, this kind of phenomenon has kind of vindicated Jean Cocteau's original appeal to people not to overanalyse his film, as easy as his pre-film message is to make fun of. People will refuse to just grapple with a story on its own terms sometimes.

On the "negging" scene, how hard is it to tweak it so that the Beast seems less of a jackass? Maybe just have a scene later where they bond over their shared interest of books (the Beast can read now, apparently) and he confess that he's grown to like sappy books (even though I'm not sure Romeo And Juliet qualified as "sappy"). Like, Disney, stop missing the point of your own film by that much.

Also there are ways to have a spirited book debate without it coming off as condescending! like, have him criticize actual parts of romeo and juliet! not just the fact that it's sappy or whatever!

Like, criticize the fact that the plot has people dying to make the parents be nice to each other! that would be something belle could reply to and give an insight into the beasts personality, especially as someone who was abused!

I have to admit, making Belle a fan of Romeo and Juliet kind of makes me roll my eyes because it reeks of Small Reference Pools. She's smart, bookish, but also sentimental! That means she must like Shakespeare! In that sense, Beast's reaction kind of mirrors my own.

Would a French person, even a really bookish one, in what I assume to be the mid-1700s be likely to have read Shakespeare? I know Shakespeare's widely read, but France and Britain weren't exactly on the best of terms at the time, and it's not like France didn't have its own celebrated playwrights.

I wouldn't know, though as Lindsay said, historical accuracy in fairy tales isn't that big a deal, and Belle does seem like the sort of person who wouldn't really care about that.