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

FYI - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) is really good. I am really surprised to say that but it was stunning to have a work that addressed the sheer amount of bullshit that American military action and Russian have done to a bunch of innocents. It's also sad that their "surprise twist" that the Americans were going to hang their Not-Kurdish allies out to dry....unfortunately came to pass.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 8th 2019 at 10:02:59 AM

The game has only been out for barely a month. Please spoiler that last sentence.

On that note, I enjoyed the story of Modern Warfare 2019. My problem: one of the antagonists is the Russian general sent to the game's Quarac but there's no exploration behind his obsession with curtailing the Quarac, in his words, "producing terrorists". Sure it rings with what you hear in the news in real life but there's no depth to him as he's just another Russian villain you kill like in past Call of Duty games no less. And at the hands of the female leader of the not-Kurdish rebel troops no less, whom the general personally antagonized when she was just a child.

It's fine to have a character be a mouthpiece for real life issues. Keeping it within Call of Duty, you have Raul Menendez for that, a victim of US political meddling in his native Nicaragua during the Cold War who leads a terrorist organization in revenge and that his views were Occupy Wall Street if memory serves.

With Menendez, you get a villain who spouts real-life views while having depth. That Russian general in Modern Warfare 2019? None.

Edited by HallowHawk on Nov 9th 2019 at 12:35:08 AM

To Raziel: I meant more as, maybe it's just given my interests, but I feel leftist authors have created far more influent works and tropes than rightist ones.

Yeah, I understand what.do you mean. Though you also have to considerate what type of opinions an author considerates worth of sympathy.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Nov 8th 2019 at 3:36:03 PM

Raul Menendez is one of the most enjoyable villains in a Call of Duty game but he's an incredibly silly villain using a lot of buzzwords. It's just he was a breath of fresh air compared to later idiocy in the games.

The Federation in Call of Duty: Ghosts for example is how Venezuela conquers all of South America and then proceeds to launch a retaliatory attack (for killing their evil dictator) against America that kills 60 million people. Then proceeds to invade and try to kill all other Americans.

Shockingly...I think that was kind of racist in a way Modern Warfare 1-3 (4?) was not.

Oh and did you know that South Americans have Amazonian brainwashing techniques?

Then there was Advanced Warfare which was just nonsensical trash designed to offend nobody and have a sci-fi bond villain (aged poorly by having Kevin Spacey as the actor).

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 8th 2019 at 1:01:21 AM

Yeah, I don’t think Menendez had any more depth than the MW villain, maybe just a more enjoyable delivery and better character development.

The motivations of the villain in MW seemed perfectly clear to me when viewing the story as a reflection of current events.

If anything, i found Vladimir Makarov to be more believable villain than Menendez, because i have met quite few of russians, who want exactly what Makarov wanted aka Russia taking over the world in a bloody conquest.

This attitude of "Nevermind, this is realistic anyway" hit everyone of us

How the fuck you discovered it, maldito gringo.

Also. I can't but be a bit amused that both Venezuelan Evil Armies (Ghosts and Jack Ryan) on fiction are nuclear armed and in the case of Ghosts, technologically developted because if there's something PSUV's Venezuela isn't...

In general, it's rather difficult to come up with plausible villains in 20 Minutes into the Future military-themed stories starring the US military, since the US is something of a Boring Invincible Hero, at least in the context of a nation attempting to invade the US.

There's also always the issue of offending people, which is part of why you rarely see China as the bad guy in these sorts of stories, even though they're the only nation that could even conceivably be a Worthy Opponent to the US (even if war between the two nations isn't super-likely). Often, North Korea is used as a stand in for the PRC, though NK is something of a harmless villain. And of course, you do always run into the legitimate issue of Yellow Peril, though with North Korea it does help that they have a very obvious Good Counterpart in the form of South Korea.

And by offending people we mean risking that sweet sweet Chinese box office money.

I remember the Chinese being changed to North Koreans in the Red Dawn remake and then being resoundingly mocked for it since nobody took that idea seriously. Though in the context of the film it actually did make sense.

Getting Banned in China is, essentially, a result of offending people-specifically, the powers that be in China.

The irony of Red Dawn is that John Milinus is actually a fairly good writer of insane premises. It's a surprisingly deep story about how a bunch of Teen Heroes TM DO NOT overcome, the enemy is Just Like USTM, and the invasion is both dehumanizing as well as destructive rather than emboldening.

It's a good film. Ridiculous idea of a land invasion of the US it may be.

It's just its author is so crazy that apparently The Big Lebowski's deranged charcter played by John Goodman is based on Milinus. Yes, the one who went into the rant about nihilism, Vietnam, and conversion for love.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 8th 2019 at 2:33:48 AM

As a venezuelan I most said I dont take offend of call of duty ghost(well I do but for is abysmal gameplay than anything else), in part because the whole "reunited south america and atack the US" sound like a wt dream of chavismo, in fact I play the game only to see how they make the non-caracas.

Im more amused of how edgelording the whole game is and sound, with the US military depending of a family of super right edgelord who are that good because....fuck it, they are.

Ghost is bad game, that is what im saying.

Honestly, the only scenario in which South/Latin America is reunited to lash against the USA could happen requires two things:

1) The USA has, for some reason, lost access to its nukes and had its army crippled.

2) Latin America has a steady economic partner or partners that can give it the weapons and stability to fight off the USA.

I would include having a legitimate reason to retaliate against the USA to the list if history had not given the region enough reasons to fend off the USA.

At this point, I've growth cynical.enough that I believe that Deep Hatred to USA is pretty much "Authoritarian trait Number 5"

@Red Dawn: I feel that despite being a Right Wing country, all truly transcendental art in USA is done for Left wingers.

For what I see, the film is a curious case in that it is set on the story of a small guerrilla group rather than the army and Right Wingers like it because they believe it validates their Survivalist ideas while the film is far more nuanced.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Nov 8th 2019 at 11:37:06 AM

Considering how often Overpopulation is presented as a problem, which only solution is wiping out part of the population (and that there are countless people in the real world, from ordinary civilians to directors and writers, who agree with it), i found this video, quite refreshing:

It also make me question, how many pieces of media actually argues against "Overpopulation theory" instead of "giving points" to it?

Few. Overpopulation has being a common dystopia trope since the 90, it would be hard to argue against it. Modern writers that are aware of it just tend to ignore it than argue the now obvious.

Of course. The irony is that that modern Developted country have the exact opossite issue, Underpopulation. China will hit a demographic crisis...for underpopulation.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Nov 9th 2019 at 3:53:45 PM

You got to admit, underpopulation is not a matter that can be tackled without knowledge of the big picture, specially considering that the trend for all developed countries is to have a negative population growth curve.

It's a bit of a mixed bag with overpopulation. On one hand, not a lot of media actually gives logical dissections of overpopulation. On the other, however, population control is almost always portrayed negatively.

This is actually something that comes up with Thanos. His plan is stupid, but that's not necessarily a flaw in the movie, since he's very much a deliberate straw character to begin with. This is something that came up in a facebook group I moderate (Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur, for a youtube channel called Isaac Arthur). Since we talk about the logistics of spacefaring civilizations, it's pretty apparent to any channel regular that Thanos's argument is "Not Even Wrong". Someone once said something to the effect of "Thanos would have to be a Malthusian twat to believe in his plan", to which my response was "Well, yeah, he's a Malthusian twat. That's the point the movie's trying to make!"

Mind you, Infinity War doesn't really explain why his plan is evil, it just sort of assumes the audience will be hesitant to agree with any plan that involves killing trillions of people. Endgame actually does explain why his plan is stupid, however, so there's that.

Listen, Thanos was right.

If you wipe out half of all races without any regard to everything then surely all resource problems will be solved!

And yes, I think he's a fine villain.

Because, again, he's insane.

^^^^&^I mean, the thing that video argues against is that overpopulation's solution is culling people instead of sharing the food more evenly or using more efficient energy production methods. It wasn't about denying the problem, it was about the proposed methods to solve it.

The video is about capitalistic eugenic idea of "kill the poor" to solve overpopulation problem And that no, Thanos' doesn't actually kill half the universe at random because he talks as if he knows he will be there to see the result after the snap so he is outside of the half that dies which is similar to how the irl folk who propose killing people to solve overpopulation never include themselves in that category. Same way its similar that Thanos' didn't use the glove to solve resource problem same way irl capitalists wouldn't consider using alternate methods to improve quality of life for everyone.

(and that is bit poor summary of what is in video, so just watch it because otherwise it kinda sounds like you are arguing about the video while arguing about separate topic)

But yeah, bit shocked to hear that there is tons of surplus food that goes to waste but is never given to anyone because it'd be more expensive to give it for free than disposing it O_o;

Edited by SpookyMask on Nov 9th 2019 at 11:47:37 AM

I wills aid that even by Marvel standars thanos motivation is dumb, is REAAAAAAALLY dumb but is present as serious because the actor, brolin inject him with a very serios gravitas that make is insane ramblings as somethign worthwhile.

If anything, the fact people take him seriously for a while is the "polite nazi" efect were people will take insane ideas with more credit because is said with plain sincerity and without sound like a madman.

Which is itself kinda an issue, in the same vein of "Fascist, but Efficient", in that it assumes that the audience will know its bad because its immoral. Or rather that people will respond with the immorality of the act with a "yeah, so?", or worse "hell yeah!". Some will not realize that the lack of ethics would be reason enough to see that he is the bad guy, but others will still think the ends justify the means, especially if they just so happened to be privileged and thus shielded from the consequences of population control. When it comes to everybody agreeing that the ends does not justify the means if said means are sufficiently cruel, It is as he says, Reality is often disappointing.

That being said, it also doesn't help that with the Infinity Gauntlet fully slotted with godlike cosmic rocks, that was the first thing he does instead of say, creating enough resources for the current population. So there is an element of self-serving rationale to his character, considering his backstory.

On a different note. I did find a couple of blog posts on Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse that posits, among other things, that the conflict of the game and its prequel is a Deconstruction of a Hobbesian worldview and specifically what kind of "benevolent god" would condone such a world.

EDIT: fixed a rather glaring omission

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Nov 9th 2019 at 4:22:47 AM

To be fair, the movie dosent argue it because the movie is about thanos, is HIS movie, not much diferent about how cap and tony motives dosent get challange enough if they are pure as it mean to be until civil war at least.