Ghost in the Shell: White Wash Complex

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Ghost in the Shell: White Wash Complex

K. Waste: Feb 27, 2014; MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

Junior Jr. posted:

Wait a minute...so they mimic the visuals and shots of GITS '95, use characters loosely based on SAC, and go ahead with a completely different narrative about the Major's identity being wiped and the robo/cyborg corporation being evil?

Where the gently caress are they going with this?

The plot of the trailer is exactly the same as the plot of GitS '95: It's a 'broken fairytale' and subversive Eden myth. All that's happened is that the puppet master has been replaced by Kuze.

Brainiac Five posted:

I've gotta admit, responding to the racial politics of making the rebellious characters white people in a majority nonwhite society by dismissing it as "identity politics" and busting out some "no war but the class war" poo poo is an extremely alpha move.

That's not really what's going on - the trailer is a faithful adaptation of GitS '95, which was always implicitly about a quasi-imperialist/post-colonial border zone which mundanely summarizes the film's themes of 'identity' in a way that the bar-stool sophistry of the protagonists can't elucidate. It's the vulgar subverting the poetic. There is already clearly rampant light-skinned and First/Second world privilege, oppression of the global South, the exportation of Western capitalist hegemony. The whitewashing meme failed to clarify to audiences the intersectionality of ideological critique, because it was never, in fact, an ideological critique. It took for granted that GitS was power fantasy, they misunderstood that Section 9 are evil.

# ? Feb 15, 2017 18:02

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# ? May 15, 2024 04:37

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

The cyberbody corporation already was evil in GitS '95, trapping the spiritual Puppet Master entity in mortal clay to enslave them, at the behest of the American and Japanese governments. The Major's suspicion that she didn't exist before her cyberbody was put together is also a major part of GitS '95.

# ? Feb 15, 2017 18:02

Phone: Jul 30, 2005; 親子丼をほしい。

Junior Jr. posted:

Wait a minute...so they mimic the visuals and shots of GITS '95, use characters loosely based on SAC, and go ahead with a completely different narrative about the Major's identity being wiped and the robo/cyborg corporation being evil?

Where the gently caress are they going with this?

To dumb town.

It's where they were always going.

# ? Feb 15, 2017 18:03

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

K. Waste posted:

The plot of the trailer is exactly the same as the plot of GitS '95: It's a 'broken fairytale' and subversive Eden myth. All that's happened is that the puppet master has been replaced by Kuze.

That's not really what's going on - the trailer is a faithful adaptation of GitS '95, which was always implicitly about a quasi-imperialist/post-colonial border zone which mundanely summarizes the film's themes of 'identity' in a way that the bar-stool sophistry of the protagonists can't elucidate. It's the vulgar subverting the poetic. There is already clearly rampant light-skinned and First/Second world privilege, oppression of the global South, the exportation of Western capitalist hegemony. The whitewashing meme failed to clarify to audiences the intersectionality of ideological critique, because it was never, in fact, an ideological critique. It took for granted that GitS was power fantasy, they misunderstood that Section 9 are evil.

I am sure that critiques of the racial politics of GitS '17 are inherently meaningless because they childishly consider the context of an American remake to be distinct from that of the original Japanese film.

# ? Feb 15, 2017 18:05

Gyges: Aug 4, 2004; NOW NO ONE
RECOGNIZE HULK

Brainiac Five posted:

The cyberbody corporation already was evil in GitS '95, trapping the spiritual Puppet Master entity in mortal clay to enslave them, at the behest of the American and Japanese governments. The Major's suspicion that she didn't exist before her cyberbody was put together is also a major part of GitS '95.

Is there any Ghost in the Shell property where The Major isn't searching for her past from before she was cyberized in some form? I'm pretty sure Kusanagi always had missing memories and questions about whether she is a technological construct or a human.

# ? Feb 15, 2017 21:29

Halloween Jack: Sep 12, 2003; I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

My only exposure to the franchise is through the SAC series, which I'm about halfway through now. Every episode is "Wow, our politics are lovely. Immigrants get blamed for everything. Welp, let's go fix some secondary malfunctions of capitalism. Sod all else we can do." I'm waiting to get to the "Is there, like, a soul?" parts.

# ? Feb 15, 2017 21:38

Darth Nat: Aug 24, 2007; It all comes out right in the end.

The soul stuff isn't really SAC's thing, it's more about the political and societal ramifications of a cyberpunk world.

# ? Feb 15, 2017 21:45

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

Gyges posted:

Is there any Ghost in the Shell property where The Major isn't searching for her past from before she was cyberized in some form? I'm pretty sure Kusanagi always had missing memories and questions about whether she is a technological construct or a human.

I mean, I can't think of any offhand. It's less prominent in MMI and Innocence, if I recall correctly.

# ? Feb 15, 2017 22:09

Ersatz: Sep 17, 2005

Halloween Jack posted:

My only exposure to the franchise is through the SAC series, which I'm about halfway through now. Every episode is "Wow, our politics are lovely. Immigrants get blamed for everything. Welp, let's go fix some secondary malfunctions of capitalism. Sod all else we can do." I'm waiting to get to the "Is there, like, a soul?" parts.

Yeah, SAC doesn't deal with existential questions to anywhere near the extent that the '95 film and it's sequel did. If they're touched on at all (and I'm straining to remember because it's been something like a decade since I watched the series) it's only in a secondary way.

Conversely, '95 focuses hard on the existential questions, with the lovely politics being there to prop up the puppet master plot and make it move.

# ? Feb 15, 2017 22:26

K. Waste: Feb 27, 2014; MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

Brainiac Five posted:

I am sure that critiques of the racial politics of GitS '17 are inherently meaningless because they childishly consider the context of an American remake to be distinct from that of the original Japanese film.

I have never accused anyone of infantilism.

You clarify what I'm talking about with this similarly superficial, this time ethno-national observation. The "context" as you imply it has nothing to do with appreciating either Japan or the United States' history of colonization, imperialism, capitalism, or post-war ideology. Actual context leads to the inevitable observation: GitS, as both 'standalone' works and franchise, is postmodern and globalist. White North American women (following the lead of a black North American woman) have been taking Japanese roles from the beginning. It is only now that the mask of animation has slipped that it has become impossible to reconcile fantasies of ethical consumption with the reality of U.S. and Japanese capitalism as parallel, codependent forces.

Saying that Japan and the U.S. are different countries is an observation, not a critique. Both fans and liberal critics were perfectly satisfied with white supremacy until it was literally explained to them that either Margot Robbie or Scarlet Johansson would play a character named "Kusanagi." Contradictorily, the apathy and complicity of Japanese rights-holders, distributors, and anecdotal consumer public is treated as somehow less contextually relevant than the superficial inconsistencies of media produced between independent, but parallel national economies. The whitewashing meme merely supports an imaginary scenario where bottomline-driven 'Hollywood racism' allows POC roles to be taken by white people. The actual context is that the United States is an imperial, capitalist regime, where the value and appraisal of human beings is inextricable from their utility in service to management and capital - and in which, functionally, 'Asian identity' is expendable as a 'target demographic.'

A critique here begins with rebuking the entire cultural and ethno-national hierarchy intrinsic to capitalism: Casting an Asian-American in GitS'17 would not have 'trickled down' to the masses of Asian-American folk. It would allow anecdotal consumers to escape into ideological fantasies, alienated completely from the project of decolonization and antiracism.

The significance of GitS itself, on the other hand, was always unremarkable except in the mode of interpreting it through opposition, understanding that Section 9 are the strong arm of an inscrutably corrupt, globalist hegemony and police state. GitS'17 trailer #2 faithfully adapts, and clarifies, that the text was always about/from the perspective of the oppressors. Opposing this oppression has nothing to do with working through these compromised structures to achieve complacent diversity. There already exists an abundantly apparent, parallel system of diversity shared between Western and Eastern national economies (with, again, preference dependent upon utility). Liberal pragmatism is part of the problem, promulgating willful misreading in order to obfuscate more radical challenges to ideology; repressing the imagination and articulation of modes of cinematic, artistic, and political autonomy from capital.

# ? Feb 15, 2017 22:27

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

K. Waste posted:

I have never accused anyone of infantilism.

You clarify what I'm talking about with this similarly superficial, this time ethno-national observation. The "context" as you imply it has nothing to do with appreciating either Japan or the United States' history of colonization, imperialism, capitalism, or post-war ideology. Actual context leads to the inevitable observation: GitS, as both 'standalone' works and franchise, is postmodern and globalist. White North American women (following the lead of a black North American woman) have been taking Japanese roles from the beginning. It is only now that the mask of animation has slipped that it has become impossible to reconcile fantasies of ethical consumption with the reality of U.S. and Japanese capitalism as parallel, codependent forces.

Saying that Japan and the U.S. are different countries is an observation, not a critique. Both fans and liberal critics were perfectly satisfied with white supremacy until it was literally explained to them that either Margot Robbie or Scarlet Johansson would play a character named "Kusanagi." Contradictorily, the apathy and complicity of Japanese rights-holders, distributors, and anecdotal consumer public is treated as somehow less contextually relevant than the superficial inconsistencies of media produced between independent, but parallel national economies. The whitewashing meme merely supports an imaginary scenario where bottomline-driven 'Hollywood racism' allows POC roles to be taken by white people. The actual context is that the United States is an imperial, capitalist regime, where the value and appraisal of human beings is inextricable from their utility in service to management and capital - and in which, functionally, 'Asian identity' is expendable as a 'target demographic.'

A critique here begins with rebuking the entire cultural and ethno-national hierarchy intrinsic to capitalism: Casting an Asian-American in GitS'17 would not have 'trickled down' to the masses of Asian-American folk. It would allow anecdotal consumers to escape into ideological fantasies, alienated completely from the project of decolonization and antiracism.

The significance of GitS itself, on the other hand, was always unremarkable except in the mode of interpreting it through opposition, understanding that Section 9 are the strong arm of an inscrutably corrupt, globalist hegemony and police state. GitS'17 trailer #2 faithfully adapts, and clarifies, that the text was always about/from the perspective of the oppressors. Opposing this oppression has nothing to do with working through these compromised structures to achieve complacent diversity. There already exists an abundantly apparent, parallel system of diversity shared between Western and Eastern national economies (with, again, preference dependent upon utility). Liberal pragmatism is part of the problem, promulgating willful misreading in order to obfuscate more radical challenges to ideology; repressing the imagination and articulation of modes of cinematic, artistic, and political autonomy from capital.

So while your hot-air balloon of a post sneers at the thought of diversity and representation as meaningless (charitably, you could say that white supremacy will inevitably disappear with the end of capitalism in your view, but to be charitable in the face of such arrogance seems a mistake, and charitable or not, it's still an inane belief), I am talking about the particulars of this movie as they have been revealed. Your entire post relies on, well, it relies on colorblindness and post-racialism, though it seems likely you do not recognize that, but the content relies on the assumption that the US and Japan are perfectly parallel, and that therefore the one is interchangeable with the other.

Which is to say that denunciations of the Congo Free State by proud British and French colonialists never happened, the treatment of Japanese colonialism in Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria as especially brutal by whites in colonizing nations never happened, the whole process of displacing the nature of colony and empire onto an Other and denouncing their colonization as evil, unlike ours- well, this never happened, and if it did happen, at some point in the past, there is nevertheless a discontinuity such that a story where a white woman is captured, degraded, and oppressed by an Oriental Despotism cannot be said to be along these lines. Nor does a story where a white woman manages to see past the oppressiveness of an Oriental society where the natives cannot carry any connotations about the natural place of such people.

In fact, what this more or less comes down to is the belief that, in an American context, Japanese people are white, and therefore their depictions should be understood as equivalent to that of depictions of French people, or English people, in American art. Asinine.

Or from a different point of view, although the practice of performing clitoridectomies on young women to control and regulate their sexuality is morally abhorrent regardless of who is saying so, that does not make it impossible for someone to use their condemnation of this practice as a means to denigrate people as racial inferiors for performing it, and so we understand that context demands that criticism of FGM from the developed countries must be phrased more carefully than criticism of FGM from within the countries where it is practiced (which is not to say that developed countries do not perform clitoridectomies for the purpose of controlling and regulating sexuality, though it is primarily directed against people with certain intersex conditions) in order to avoid regeneration of racist structures about how x cultural practice reveals the inferior, degenerate nature of the people who practice it.

So, too, does an internal criticism of the US-Japan Mutual Defense Pact, the Japanese corporate world, the Liberal Democratic Party and Japan's dysfunctional political system, etc. carry different context from an external criticism. I mean, you could say that individual actions have no relationship to real racism, but then we have stopped talking about a movie and have instead moved into the subject of religion, specifically some sort of polytheistic form of propitiation against gods like "racism" and "sexism", which exist independently of human action.

That being said, the implication that it is bound upon us to watch every single movie that is released in a given year (for how else can we avoid the specter of "ethical consumption") is a charming mental image.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 00:04

SuperMechagodzilla: Jun 9, 2007; NEWT REBORN

It's extremely poor form to open a such lengthy post with a dismissive insult. It betrays bad faith.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 00:32

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

It's extremely poor form to open a such lengthy post with a dismissive insult. It betrays bad faith.

I prefer to tell someone up-front that I find them loathsome rather than bloviate about how people who disagree are moronic, blinded by ideology, etc., or worse yet, pretend that such things are not negatives and so can't be insults. rear end in a top hat.

EDIT: That is, there is politeness in the sense of "I make my insults general enough that it can't be proven I'm spitting on the person I'm arguing with" and there's politeness in the sense of refraining from insult altogether and the first does not, in my opinion, deserve anything but spittle.

Brainiac Five fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Feb 16, 2017

# ? Feb 16, 2017 00:33

K. Waste: Feb 27, 2014; MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

Brainiac Five posted:

So while your hot-air balloon of a post sneers at the thought of diversity and representation as meaningless (charitably, you could say that white supremacy will inevitably disappear with the end of capitalism in your view, but to be charitable in the face of such arrogance seems a mistake, and charitable or not, it's still an inane belief), I am talking about the particulars of this movie as they have been revealed. Your entire post relies on, well, it relies on colorblindness and post-racialism, though it seems likely you do not recognize that, but the content relies on the assumption that the US and Japan are perfectly parallel, and that therefore the one is interchangeable with the other.

Which is to say that denunciations of the Congo Free State by proud British and French colonialists never happened, the treatment of Japanese colonialism in Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria as especially brutal by whites in colonizing nations never happened, the whole process of displacing the nature of colony and empire onto an Other and denouncing their colonization as evil, unlike ours- well, this never happened, and if it did happen, at some point in the past, there is nevertheless a discontinuity such that a story where a white woman is captured, degraded, and oppressed by an Oriental Despotism cannot be said to be along these lines. Nor does a story where a white woman manages to see past the oppressiveness of an Oriental society where the natives cannot carry any connotations about the natural place of such people.

You have already undertaken three major misreadings: I have not said diversity and representation are meaningless; my reading is not predicated on postracialism and colorblindness and is, indeed, rather dependent on actually interpreting the racialisation of GitS conceptually; and I have not said that Japan's imperialist, racist, and capitalist history are exceptional with regards to Western imperialism, but rather that these forces are parallel and frequently complicit in a globalist context.

You are convoluting my very basic oppositional reading about GitS - which is that it depicts the invisible order of fascism latent within globalized, capitalist societies - by willfully misreading it as apathetic, when what I'm actually saying is that GitS was always orientalised and misread, and this was always bad. The impossibility of ethical consumption is the reason we alternatively have to repudiate myths that Japanese cartoons are about white people, that there is a collective inferiority complex, that their nationalists and reactionaries are somehow exceptional in their cultural normalisation, etc., but thankfully, these myths are just as easily debunked as more mundane misreadings of GitS'95.

For instance, GitS'95 is not an "internal criticism" of globalisation. It is a criticism of globalisation. You are convoluting matters by implying this self-reductive metatext, when all there is for you to do is pay attention to the plot and recognize the fundamental class, ethno-national, and political antagonisms which are constantly being covered up. GitS'17 trailer #2 is not an "external criticism" of globalisation - it is the same story.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 00:54

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

K. Waste posted:

You have already undertaken three major misreadings: I have not said diversity and representation are meaningless; my reading is not predicated on postracialism and colorblindness and is, indeed, rather dependent on actually interpreting the racialisation of GitS conceptually; and I have not said that Japan's imperialist, racist, and capitalist history are exceptional with regards to Western imperialism, but rather that these forces are parallel and frequently complicit in a globalist context.

You are convoluting my very basic oppositional reading about GitS - which is that it depicts the invisible order of fascism latent within globalized, capitalist societies - by willfully misreading it as apathetic, when what I'm actually saying is that GitS was always orientalised and misread, and this was always bad. The impossibility of ethical consumption is the reason we alternatively have to repudiate myths that Japanese cartoons are about white people, that there is a collective inferiority complex, that their nationalists and reactionaries are somehow exceptional in their cultural normalisation, etc., but thankfully, these myths are just as easily debunked as more mundane misreadings of GitS'95.

For instance, GitS'95 is not an "internal criticism" of globalisation. It is a criticism of globalisation. You are convoluting matters by implying this self-reductive metatext, when all there is for you to do is pay attention to the plot and recognize the fundamental class, ethno-national, and political antagonisms which are constantly being covered up. GitS'17 trailer #2 is not an "external criticism" of globalisation - it is the same story.

You have utterly failed to read my post, bucko. I specifically didn't list "globalization" because my list of things being criticized from an insider perspective, what you have scarequoted as "internal criticism", is of specifically Japanese phenomena. That is about the only thing in your post that isn't saying "I'm right and you're wrong". I, free to interpret, will conclude that you have been so utterly stunned by even my feeble abilities that you are literally unable to mount any kind of coherent response to how I asserted the form of Ghost in the Shell 2017 is connotative of past and continuing racist depictions of the Other, and especially the Orient. Furthermore, I have concluded that you believe it is impossible for criticism of FGM to be done in a way that reinforces racism. The only way to stop this assured misinterpretation would be to respond to what was said, rather than repeating yourself in slightly different wording.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 01:01

McSpanky: Jan 16, 2005

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

It's extremely poor form to open a such lengthy post with a dismissive insult. It betrays bad faith.

Not as poor as this weak attempt at tone shaming while your search engine works overtime for more neomarxist platitudes about the capitalist commodification of sexual identity and crusty eastern European philosophy.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 01:06

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO: Feb 28, 1985

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

It's extremely poor form to open a such lengthy post with a dismissive insult. It betrays bad faith.

Clarice.

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Feb 16, 2017

# ? Feb 16, 2017 01:20

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

McSpanky posted:

Not as poor as this weak attempt at tone shaming while your search engine works overtime for more neomarxist platitudes about the capitalist commodification of sexual identity and crusty eastern European philosophy.

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO posted:

Do you ever consider that you post like a cut price Hannibal Lector?

Both of you can gently caress right the hell off with these cheap shots.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 01:21

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO: Feb 28, 1985

Are you off your meds by any chance?

e- I fully understand SMG's comment now. Good show.

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Feb 16, 2017

# ? Feb 16, 2017 01:24

Mean Bean Machine: May 9, 2008; Only when I breathe.

This forum sucks.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 02:20

SuperMechagodzilla: Jun 9, 2007; NEWT REBORN

McSpanky posted:

Not as poor as this weak attempt at tone shaming

The term is 'tone policing', and you are using it incorrectly.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 02:21

Young Freud: Nov 26, 2006

Brainiac Five posted:

I mean, I can't think of any offhand. It's less prominent in MMI and Innocence, if I recall correctly.

I wouldn't say that it's less prominent in MMI, largely because the whole plot of MMI is Motoko fighting Motoko. It's just that Shirow's storytelling ability collapsed between GITS1.5 Human Processor Error and MMI.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 02:25

Clipperton: Dec 20, 2011; Grimey Drawer

Mean Bean Machine posted:

This forum sucks.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 03:23

UmOk: Aug 3, 2003

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

It's extremely poor form to open a such lengthy post with a dismissive insult. It betrays bad faith.

That's like your whole thing dude.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 04:38

K. Waste: Feb 27, 2014; MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

Brainiac Five posted:

You have utterly failed to read my post, bucko. I specifically didn't list "globalization" because my list of things being criticized from an insider perspective, what you have scarequoted as "internal criticism", is of specifically Japanese phenomena. That is about the only thing in your post that isn't saying "I'm right and you're wrong". I, free to interpret, will conclude that you have been so utterly stunned by even my feeble abilities that you are literally unable to mount any kind of coherent response to how I asserted the form of Ghost in the Shell 2017 is connotative of past and continuing racist depictions of the Other, and especially the Orient. Furthermore, I have concluded that you believe it is impossible for criticism of FGM to be done in a way that reinforces racism. The only way to stop this assured misinterpretation would be to respond to what was said, rather than repeating yourself in slightly different wording.

Those are not scarequotes, I was quoting you, and I was specifically rejecting your reading: "an internal criticism of the US-Japan Mutual Defense Pact, the Japanese corporate world, the Liberal Democratic Party and Japan's dysfunctional political system, etc. carry different context from an external criticism."

You have not specifically excluded globalization at all, and that you think you have is a statement unto itself. You have offered no evidence that the American adaptation of Ghost in the Shell is mounting an external criticism of foreign history and customs, with connotations of American exceptional. The trailer takes the same story as the '95 film, and reframes it into/clarifies it as a scenario where Western powers and European settlers - far from satellites to "specifically Japanese phenomena" - are inextricably sutured into a globalist hegemony. This proposed internal/external arrangement merely convolutes a very direct political scenario expressed in the aggressively expository narrative of the trailer. The instrumentality of the West in influencing, enabling, and coercing reactionary conservative political and economic policies abroad, is the subject of critique.

ScarKu has not been 'dehumanized' by the Orient or association with the Other, nor is she rejuvenated by a setting burgeoning with indigenous authenticity. She's a white* phallus standing in for the false, 'mutual defense' of two nations under globalisation, revenging rich white men who have had their brains sucked by terrorist-vampire-bug-robot-geishas. Her interactions within the classist, heterodox police state and border zone between orientalist fantasies and occidentalist reality, are repulsive and superficial, connoting not an 'authentic' image of the cultural setting, but denoting an environment of persistent and inescapable exploitation. She is then kidnapped and told by a terrorist that she is a slave. This is the context which you have willfully misread as an external criticism of Japan. But the sequence of the trailer is an internal criticism of the U.S. specifically, and globalization in general.

*Literally, even Kusanagi's pigmented body and closed system has been replaced by a segmented, white covering.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 05:14

Bugblatter: Aug 4, 2003

Junior Jr. posted:

Wait a minute...so they mimic the visuals and shots of GITS '95, use characters loosely based on SAC, and go ahead with a completely different narrative about the Major's identity being wiped and the robo/cyborg corporation being evil?

Where the gently caress are they going with this?

They are telling a new story using elements from previous incarnations. It's not complicated and there's nothing wrong with that. Hell, it's what most GitS incarnations have done? GitS '95 and Innocence were a grab bag of elements and images from different manga story arcs formed to make something very different and contradictory to the source material. SAC lifts images from GitS '95 to tell its own versions of stories inspired by the manga. Arise uses bits of everything to, once again, do its own thing. It only makes sense that GitS '17 would continue to tradition.

It's just unfortunate that the new story they've gone with seems like a mediocre execution of a generic premise.

Edit: whoa there's been a whole new page since that comment, and it is nuts.

Bugblatter fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Feb 16, 2017

# ? Feb 16, 2017 05:59

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

UmOk posted:

That's like your whole thing dude.

K. Waste and SMG are here to make posts that maximize voluminousness and fanciness regardless of any substance or context. SMG at least posts funny though.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 08:35

Assepoester: Jul 18, 2004; Can't post for 10 years!; Melman v2

Mean Bean Machine posted:

This forum sucks.

On the contrary, this is the best it's ever been since the legendary Transformers thread.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 09:56

Mierenneuker: Apr 28, 2010; We're all going to experience changes in our life but only the best of us will qualify for front row seats.

This thread suffices my hunger for philosophy and anime booty.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 10:55

Ramagamma: Feb 2, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

Mean Bean Machine posted:

This forum sucks.

Don't worry, itll be for more fun when the film comes out and all the senpai otaku go mental over it not living up to their first images of (animated) breasts.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 11:21

FuturePastNow: May 19, 2014

It's about ethics in movie poster butts

# ? Feb 16, 2017 14:19

Sage Grimm: Feb 18, 2013; Let's go explorin' little dude!

They are weapons of mass deconstruction.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:29

Rough Lobster: May 27, 2009; Don't be such a squid, bro

Cardboard Box A posted:

On the contrary, this is the best it's ever been since the legendary Transformers thread.

I for one await the wonders of the inevitable Power Ranger thread.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:49

SuperMechagodzilla: Jun 9, 2007; NEWT REBORN

UmOk posted:

That's like your whole thing dude.

No, I would not open a post that way.

For example, in the case of Brainiac Five, I would begin (and have begun) by noting how he jumps immediately into attacking the imagined identity of the person he is ostensibly communicating with. The target is the fantasy of K. Waste as 'sneering white supremacist blowhard' beneath his fairly straightforward argument against racism. Things quickly spiraled out of control, because he ignored the form of the post. That is why I speak in terms of form.

In the next post, Brainiac reveals that he considers ideological critique an insult - that criticism of his argument is perceived as an attack on his identity. Brainiac identifies as a liberal, so K. Waste is (and I am) secretly insulting him by criticizing liberalism - all while 'pretending' to be indifferent to him as an individual. "Don't pretend that such things [as ideological critique] can't be insults. rear end in a top hat."

And this is the crux of his entire argument: the fear of secret malice. The conflation of ideology with conspiracy. Brainiac's point is that you are not allowed to criticize global capitalism because that is implicitly a criticism of Japanese people. Because Japan is part of the globe, you see. Only Japanese people are allowed to criticize Japan, because it's the only way to be safe from potential external malice. (Note: Ghost in the Shell 1995 is not set in Japan but in a nameless fictional 'Asian' city modeled after both Hong Kong and Blade Runner's globalized future Los Angeles.)

So Brainiac's argument reduces to a statement that capitalism isn't that bad, because the true threat to the world is white supremacism. Getting causality backward, he effectively asserts that class conflict is simply a mask for race and culture war. Hence the extreme reaction to K. Waste's fairly basic statement that there are no 'good' corporations.

With that all out of the way, I can then conclude that he is kinda dumb.

SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 09:30 on Feb 26, 2017

# ? Feb 16, 2017 18:02

DeusExMachinima: Sep 2, 2012; This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!

Put this loser on ignore immediately!

poo poo, it's starting to pass the Turing Test now.

# ? Feb 26, 2017 00:55

AndyElusive: Jan 7, 2007

The killer geishas are so cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KosBvDyWgnA

# ? Mar 2, 2017 05:59

Bugblatter: Aug 4, 2003

AndyElusive posted:

The killer geishas are so cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KosBvDyWgnA

Yup. All of the production design is loving gorgeous, but those things especially so.

# ? Mar 2, 2017 06:05

Shirkelton: Apr 6, 2009; I'm not loyal to anything, General... except the dream.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

It's extremely poor form to open a such lengthy post with a dismissive insult. It betrays bad faith.

Hahahha, nice.

# ? Mar 2, 2017 07:53

MoaM: Dec 1, 2009; Joyous.

They look a lot smaller on the table than they do in the trailer.

# ? Mar 2, 2017 07:58

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# ? May 15, 2024 04:37

Knight: Dec 23, 2000; SPACE-A-HOLIC; Taco Defender

7c Nickel posted:

It reminds me of the comic We-3, where they decided to include the stupid detail that the animal cyborgs were originally housepets. THERE IS NO DOG SHORTAGE! THE EVIL LAB DID NOT HAVE TO STEAL A GOLDEN RETRIEVER TO GET THEIR HANDS ON ONE!

Maybe they have a good answer but I dunno...

This is an older post and I get what you're saying from a storytelling perspective, but the animals in We-3 were originally house pets because of some real-life cases where people's pets ended up being caught (arguably stolen) and sold to research laboratories, dying there. A lot of this developed into urban legends that Morrison, big on animal rights, must have been exposed to through his friends.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/pepper/2009/06/pepper_goes_to_washington.html

# ? Mar 2, 2017 09:20

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Ghost in the Shell: White Wash Complex

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