Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

Aren't those two questions asking the same thing?

The title is the first part, the part within the (-) is the words put in the picture of the thumbnail.

I've seen people call Hades's Aphrodite "ugly" and "mannish".

"@Gaon I only saw Django Unchained once so I may have missed the implications about Stephen. I do recall one criticism that the movie was rather exploitative when it came to depicting the suffering and killings of black characters while the white villains got rather tame deaths."

I dont think tamer is right work, is more that white deaths in Django are comical(one guy blow up with dynamite, the proto KKK deaths, candy sister being suddenly shot in way across the room) while black violence was play as deadly serious(Django girlfriend being let in the hole, that moment Django was force to kill another slave,etc).

As for stephen, I will guess is part of tarantino writing so much revenge film that he is confortable in grey vs grey morality rather and black vs white(which is why framing Django as violent revenge film if often odd) and probably a decision to not have a white mastermind or anything of the sort to mantain is critique of confederacy as stupid idea.

I can see the idea of manish by the face, byt ugly?.

Once again, i doubt Django Unchained is "Gray vs Gray" considering that Django's opponents are super sadistic slavers, who feed their slaves to their dogs sometimes for fun and abuse and torture slaves constantly. Unless you want to claim "it was okay for it's time period", you can't honestly claim slavers "Grey".

We have Black-and-Gray Morality for a reason. In this case, the only reason Django would not be white is because, yes, he is driven by a powerful need for violence and revenge.

It's just he's faced against absolute Asshole Victim types.

This is a theme that Tarantino explores in Inglorious Basterds as well. At what point is overwhelming violence justified against the genuinely evil?

Hell, it even goes back til From Dusk til Dawn as the bank robbers are against the vampires.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jun 10th 2021 at 1:51:45 AM

People are not just pissed at that e-girl because she claimed to be socialist and then showed off her wealth, it was the specific way she did it. I haven't linked her personal video because I didn't want to give her more views, but it was the gleeful way in which she bragged having all of that stuff while saying she didn't actually need it. E.g. she shows a wine cooler and espresso machine and after that she says she'll never use them, same for the second bathtub, also showing off another bunch of useless stuff like a giant Snorlax plush.

What's more, she also shows a random beanbag in a corner and says that is the place where her brother sleeps while he visits her for the holidays. I mean, you have a huge apartment and don't even give your own brother a room to sleep in? The whole video seems almost calculated to make her seem as vapid and tone-deaf as possible.

It actually reminded me of that part in Dawn of the Dead where the rich celebrities broadcast themselves throwing a huge party while the world is in the middle of a global emergency, only in the movie they end up ripped apart, not by zombies, but by normal people lured by their constant display of wealth.

Also: maybe I should have made it clearer, but the comment about her weight is not mine, rather one of the criticisms I've seen in regards to her. She's not overweight to me, but it goes on to show what happens when the e-girls who use their physical charms and not much else become famous do something that upsets their fanbase, they immediately get attacked on that front.

That's still not a discussion of politics in media, it's a criticism of some random streamer you don't like.

I thought that was World War Z? Unless that also happens in Dawn of the Dead.

That definitely happens in World War Z, it could've also happened in Dawn of the Dead but that sounds like they misremembered it.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jun 10th 2021 at 7:44:43 AM

Regardless, I don’t think it’s something that you should just repeat uncritically. That whole line of reasoning feels pretty slut-shaming to me, like “That bitch got what she deserved for using her looks for fame”. Whatever her personal character is, I don’t see why that would ever be necessary.

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Jun 10th 2021 at 9:49:13 AM

Also… she’s a streamer. Everything people publicly put on the internet is inauthentic in some way: from celebrities doing IG lives to Twitch streamers to people who do video essays to you putting on your most proper behavior in the groupchat with your aunties. So I would not take anything she says or claims as 100% true or a real indicator of her character. She probably has a futon for her brother. That just how the internet be.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jun 10th 2021 at 10:17:20 AM

And just more evidence that she is not good with money (assuming she actually bought all that instead of renting it which is a possibility FYI). She has enough punishment with that, and again worst case scenario, she is still harming no one but herself.

Woody, as the young’uns would say, that post was pretty cringe, my man/woman/person.

Somebodykillmenow.

Edited by fredhot16 on Jun 10th 2021 at 11:50:01 AM

An article criticizing the idea of a movie based on the reporters who broke the story about Harvey Weinstein's assaults on numerous actresses. The article argues that such a movie, and the various films and documentaries are hypocritical given Hollywood knew about Weinstein for years.

After reading through a bunch of stuff and how various types of assholes use media to "gush" over horrible villains and villify good guys, which translates people in real life trying to use "Grey vs Grey", "doing what it takes" or "villain fights worse villains" trying to justify and defend horrible people and war crimes, do "Villain Origin" live-action movies and some works decision to portray villains descend in villainy in the past was because of someone else's fault helps to assist toxic fandoms, especially if the media try to make Nazis or someone at that level of horrible somehow fit into "Grey" or even "Darkly Grey" area?

VeryVileVillain your post is a bit of a mess. Correct me if I am wrong but it feels like what you are asking is somewhat in the vein of...

"Are live action movie villain origin stories intended to whitewash or enable toxic fandoms, like nazis?"

Well first I must ask why explicitly live action films? What, if I portray a nazi in an understandable light in a cartoon it doesn't count? Weird distinction to leave out.

But to answer the question well. I think the question is better framed around very specific works. For example, The Turner Diaries 100% attempt to whitewash the Klan, for example. I do not think anyone would dispute that. Other cases are not so clear. Does Warhammer 40,000 do it, with all its pseudo nazi imagery and how literal neonazis adopt their aesthetics? Does Kingdom of Heaven romanticize the crusades? Does Beauty and the Beast romanticize THE MONARCHY!?!?

There are arguments for and against each as there are nuances. Like. Personally. I would argue that a very popular franchise does deliberately flirt with radicalization for the purpose of financial gain, but it is extremely controversial and I am aware that the vast majority of people disagree with me and that's fine, I can live with that.

But I wouldn't sweep them all under the same rug.

Would you care to be a bit more specific with whatever film or work you suspect plays into the fears and desires of a certain specific subset of people, so we can better analyze it?

I'm assuming because LA firms are more high profile and or they were the only medium where they were attempted. And also because the ones that spring to mind for me were mostly adaptations of animated works (specifically the Disney Animated Canon) where the villains weren't whitewashed. Joker being an outlier in this regard.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jun 10th 2021 at 1:55:26 AM

I think you mean World War Z and that chapter always landed with a thud with me. All it meant was that a bunch of poor people had turned into monsters rather than being sympathetic.

What? The poor people storming the compound are very specifically not portrayed as monsters - the interviewee makes very clear those people were just looking for a safe shelter.

What that story does show is a bunch of rich idiots broadcasting "Hey, we have a safe place with food" to pretty much everyone around them.

They're a bunch of murderers who come to a place, slaughter everyone inside (if not worse), and steal. They don't ask for help, they don't seek to work with the people inside, and they engage in rape and pillage.

They are monsters.

I don't get why we're meant to be sympathetic. Just because their victims are rich?

My headcanon is they were all tracked down after the war and hung, their actions being broadcast to the world helping the public find the murderers.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jun 10th 2021 at 2:40:02 AM

.....

Uhm, are we sure we're talking about the same book?

The people storming the compound are explicitly poor refugees with women and children - they weren't trying to rape or pillage at all.

If anything, the rich people in the compound were the ones trying murder people, by having the mercenaries shoot the refugees.

Serving as one example of the book being way more optimistic about humanity than reality, the mercenaries for their part decide that they weren't hired to shoot at the living and desert.

Seriously, this has to be the weirdest misreading of a story that I've seen so far.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Jun 10th 2021 at 11:46:39 AM

You're right, it is not only live action films, it's just live action films are shown in threaters and attract more noticable for wider audience. For my example, it can be a lot of things, from live action Disney movies, where they make the villain of the original animated classic basically a hero and put them against someone more obviosly evil.

It can be the mentioned Warhammer 40K, where due to a lot of sympathetic POV Empire of Man comes across as less evil than it should be and its quest of extermination of the aliens comes across as more "justifyable" as a result, since the aliens come across as "more evil". It can be any type of media that tries to argue that "dictatorships and fascism clean the world of crime", regardless how much "freedom" will be lost.

For more widespread examples, it can be 300, where Spartans are portrayed as "manly heroes" fighting for "freedom" and who'se ways of "making" manly warriors are portrayed as valid. It can be Call of Duty, which portrays torture as super effective (literally every interrogation is torture), 24 is also very "pro-torture".

Yeah, I read the same book and Nordmann is correctly summarizing what happened in that chapter. Charles, I think you're getting World War Z mixed up with something else.

@windleopard

I do hope that the movie not only acknowledges how many stars turned a blind eye towards the abuse, but also that someone like Courtney Love was brave enough to speak out against him roughly a decade before it became public despite knowing that it would cost her.