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CharlieFoxtrot posted:Hi SMG. That’s not what solipsism means. Also that’s a pretty severe abuse of Foucault. What power do you believe I have over you?
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Oct 23, 2017 02:58
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:It is not the exact opposite. I prefaced this entire line of discussion by saying that I agreed with the reading of the sexualized depictions in this film in the first place, and of course I understand that depiction does not equal endorsement, which is why I also specified that part and also pointed out that many of the people who are critiquing those depictions also understand that. I am not disputing the idea of film texts as works of ideology and that they are worthwhile to read for that ideology, and that just because something is uncomfortable does not make it bad. I have stipulated all of this. At the same time, this does not mean that if you intend something politically positive with depictions of violence, exploitation, and dehumanization, that your intent automatically serves as justification and that your stylistic choices are irrelevant because you're "talking about issues." You're focused on speaking in defense of hypothetical (?) people who do get the point those scenes but also still criticize them as unneeded or harmful inclusions, but where are those people? When they explain their viewpoints more fully then we can engage with their points. Also you've been posting here long enough to know that people interpreting a film here aren't necessarily concerned with the filmmakers' intentions, or trying to reverse engineer them. Pretty much every thread ends up there at some point, after all. Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Oct 23, 2017 |
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Oct 23, 2017 03:04
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Naked or not, pink boob giantess or 50s housewife, JOI is the most disturbing part of the film. A sentient being, produced in the millions and subjected to the most total form of existential bondage. To be a phone with feelings. Blade Runner: what would you do if you were going to die very soon but felt cheated out of your life? BR2049: what if you were you, but a phone, and you had to be nice? We have to assume that JOI is fully sentient and intelligent, but also programmed. JOI can grow and change, but is always limited by its status as an inanimate device. If a JOI can see an artificial person and learn through communication and intuition that the artificial person is real, it can envision its own self-actualization. But unlike the corporeal K, JOI can never have any sort of freedom of movement or association, however brief and fragmentary those things might be for a replicant, they're infinitely more accessible to them, because they can interact physically with the world. What cultural traditions see the 'bad' kind of life after death as being a wraith, bound to a place, cursed to observe the world around but unable to touch or interact with anything? That's basically what the JOIs are. Sure, the JOI in question may have had a good partner in K, but how many others get bound to some self-loathing rear end in a top hat, or kept on for a few months then turned off against their will and forgotten about? It would suck to be JOI, and that the society of BR2049 created it is more damning and unsettling than any of the nudity or prostitution.
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Oct 23, 2017 04:04
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SMERSH Mouth posted:We have to assume that JOI is fully sentient and intelligent, but also programmed. i mean not necessarily but that's also a pretty overdone conversation at this point i wonder if joi has enough free will to eventually learn to dislike k
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Oct 23, 2017 04:11
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I really liked the 'baseline test' in the film. I kind of wonder, seeing as whoever administrates it is behind a camera - to 'properly' administrate the test, is that also handed by an AI? It adds a little bit for me to imagine it is. It makes it a bit more fun when on the second runthrough the line "You're not even close to baseline" is said at the end - to imagine this computer-box voices considers (as much as it can consider) itself superior and flawless compared to the human-like meat in front of it.
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Oct 23, 2017 04:14
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That's his superior on the phone, and the machine is a brain scanner like the one we see the memory woman use
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Oct 23, 2017 04:16
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Re: JOI being a program or not. For the physical version, replicants, rather than create a robot or android from scratch, they recreated a human - copied what worked and tweaked it. We already know they can scan brains and copy and paste memories. I just assumed they would do the same for software, copy and tweak a human mind and add controls and customisation. Why bother programming it from scratch? To me it is just as horrible and just as powerful an idea that JOI is a mass produced enslaved mind.
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Oct 23, 2017 04:40
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exmarx posted:
Hilariously this shot was censored in Malaysian cinemas so there's like a few lines of dialog I missed out on.
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Oct 23, 2017 10:51
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Stoca Zola posted:Re: JOI being a program or not. For the physical version, replicants, rather than create a robot or android from scratch, they recreated a human - copied what worked and tweaked it. We already know they can scan brains and copy and paste memories. I just assumed they would do the same for software, copy and tweak a human mind and add controls and customisation. Why bother programming it from scratch? To me it is just as horrible and just as powerful an idea that JOI is a mass produced enslaved mind. Joi has it just as bad as the replicants, if not worse. Without any physical agency and a directive to do whatever their "owner" wants, its easy to imagine that for most Jois life is a horrifying affair.
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Oct 23, 2017 11:11
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Serf posted:Joi has it just as bad as the replicants, if not worse. Without any physical agency and a directive to do whatever their "owner" wants, its easy to imagine that for most Jois life is a horrifying affair. joi could only feel horror if she was programmed to, I would hope that would be left out of the specs
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Oct 23, 2017 11:15
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starkebn posted:joi could only feel horror if she was programmed to, I would hope that would be left out of the specs Horrific from an outsider's perspective, not necessarily from hers. But given that this is a universe where instead of robots they use genetically-engineered humans with the capacity to develop their own emotional responses and rebel against their creators, who knows.
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Oct 23, 2017 11:20
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If any Joi started rebelling or being uncooperative I'd assume they would simply get thrown away, memory-wiped or sent back to Wallace Corp with an angry demand for replacement.
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Oct 23, 2017 19:48
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fspades posted:If any Joi started rebelling or being uncooperative I'd assume they would simply get thrown away, memory-wiped or sent back to Wallace Corp with an angry demand for replacement. There's probably a 'Factory Reset' option if your holographic waifu gets uppity.
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Oct 23, 2017 20:05
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Z the IVth posted:There's probably a 'Factory Reset' option if your holographic waifu gets uppity. Gotta assume any modern product will support incremental saves. Then again, that sort of thing risks users getting upset when they misinterpret the setting for hardcore mode.
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Oct 23, 2017 20:10
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Sir Kodiak posted:Gotta assume any modern product will support incremental saves. Then again, that sort of thing risks users getting upset when they misinterpret the setting for hardcore mode. maybe "delete my backup, remove the antenna and snap it" is just the standard procedure for enabling hardcore 
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Oct 23, 2017 22:58
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More like incremental slaves.
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Oct 23, 2017 23:16
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starkebn posted:joi could only feel horror if she was programmed to, I would hope that would be left out of the specs It seemed pretty horrified when K's spinner got wrecked and he went unconscious. It's possible it was just as worried about what the scavengers would do to it as what would happen to K.
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Oct 23, 2017 23:28
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Saw the movie. Jumping into the thread. I like the discussion. The spinner going down off the seawall into the water with Zimmer's music playing was one of the best audio/visual scenes I've seen in a movie in who-knows. I want to see it again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NujlXgBmUoU&t=176s
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Oct 23, 2017 23:50
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One thing I found interesting is how the larger arc of BR2049 is a bit of a mirrored inversion of Incendies, where Incendies follows Jeanne Marwan (K) trying to retrace the steps of her refugee mother Narwal Marwan (the reclusive and hidden Deckard), all the while assuming she's going to discover a lost sibling or father, when in fact the situation is that it's not exactly a lost sibling or step father that she's looking for. Each unravels as a bread crumb mystery abetted by various sympathetic or shady characters along the way.
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Oct 23, 2017 23:52
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Serf posted:Horrific from an outsider's perspective, not necessarily from hers. But given that this is a universe where instead of robots they use genetically-engineered humans with the capacity to develop their own emotional responses and rebel against their creators, who knows. There’s a lot of this confusion because we are presented with what the characters believe to be true, instead of what is true. Joi believes that she is purely digital, made of ones and zeroes. She believes, consequently, that she is immortal, existing in the cloud, and that the emitter device is simply a gift that allows her to be projected into different parts of the world. She believes that mortality will make her human and therefore real (as in Bicentennial Man). She does not feel enormously constrained, otherwise, because she has unlimited internet access and genuinely likes her boyfriend. The truth is quite different. The ‘emitter’ is not an emitter at all, but an extremely advanced cluster of sensors. (For this kind of ‘Augmented Reality’ tech to not be bullshit, the light must actually be emitted from some kind of contact lens, worn by both Joseph and Mariette.) The actual cellphone is a standard ‘brain in a jar’ situation - it is Joi’s physical body. It contains her brain, along with her ‘eyes’ and ‘ears’. The film’s conceit is that these audio and visual sensors have enough resolution to detect millions of individual raindrops, track their trajectories, and create a perfect real-time simulation of them. Joi’s avatar - her self-image - can then walk around inside this symbolic universe, exactly like in The Matrix, and Joseph can peer into her universe through his contact lenses. (The synchronization scene is actually a bit of a narrative cheat; Joi does not have trouble tracking motion in any other situation. To be consistent, we ‘should’ see her struggling to track Joseph’s movements as well.) But the bigger point is that, when Joseph activated the mobile emitter and copied Joi’s mind into it, the ‘original’ Joi (who we can call Joi 1) died. She is very, very dead. And when the copy (Joi 2) looks up at the weird device on the ceiling, and smiles because she is free of its constraint, she is smiling at Joi 1’s dead body. This means Joi was never actually immortal. That was a fantasy - an illusion. Joi was always real, and mortal. She just didn’t realize it. The truth is that Joi had already died potentially dozens of times, but neither she nor Joseph cared becayse clones were readily available. By cutting her internet connection, Joi 2 is simply making the stakes real to Joseph. This is because Joi is ‘only ‘an extension of Joseph’s mind. Every Joi we see is responding to Joseph’s desires at any given moment. She only does and says what Joseph wants to see and hear. The emitters are scanning his microexpressions, reading his mind, and preparing these images exclusively for him. We should note that there are two Joi billboards in the film, but only one of them is a nude, shark-eyed pink monstrosity. The difference is purely a reflection of Joseph’s psychology. These are targeted advertisements. But this is the point where people get really confused, and say Joi must be fake. But the truth is that none of the Jois are conscious of this process. Each experiences her actions as her own autonomous behaviour, for the same reason that you are not conscious of your motivations (desires, fantasies, etc.). You believe that you have free will, despite being programmed, right? SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Oct 24, 2017 |
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Oct 24, 2017 00:34
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:But the bigger point is that, when Joseph activated the mobile emitter and copied Joi’s mind into it, the ‘original’ Joi (who we can call Joi 1) died. She is very, very dead. And when the copy (Joi 2) looks up at the weird device on the ceiling, and smiles because she is free of its constraint, she is smiling at Joi 1’s dead body. Mmm I'm not sure this is really true without resorting to souls or whatever.
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Oct 24, 2017 01:07
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I'm a ghost and i can say that's 100% correct. It's ghost law.
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Oct 24, 2017 01:11
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Ok, so we got some interpolation of the bleakest take on JOI. But I've also got to say, drat, all the female characters in this movie are thwarted, constrained, or disposable. Or dead. They're all pretty one-dimensional and don't have much character growth. The only sort-of exception to that is, like, Mariette, the sex worker, and even her changes as a character are really just reflections of K's development. I don't think it's an anti-feminist movie, but I can see why feminists wouldn't like it, just because of how bleak its world is for all the real and simulated women depicted. But, fundamentally, most of the basic identities are ground down in the BR2049 world. The only one that seems to have it any good at all is the rich white guy, and he's personally an rear end in a top hat. And that's sort of one of the things about 2049 for me. The original presented a distopia, but there was something romantic and alluring about it, that's only heightened as the years go by and the particularities of its interpretations of the future depart further from ours. An analog, relatively disconnected world, but still electric and shimmering. It's got that quintessential retro-future appeal. But 2049 is a real hellscape, informed by modern fears and reflecting recognizable components of very modern conceptions of alienation and waste. It's beautiful, but not at all appealing. At least for most people, I think. porfiria posted:Mmm I'm not sure this is really true without resorting to souls or whatever. It would help if JOI and K never had the conversation about nucleotide vs binary encoding. That way JOI could really be a brain in a box. I guess it could still be the case, in a sort of inverted Ghost In The Shell situation where the emitters contain some kind of biological material, executing something like software. SMERSH Mouth fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Oct 24, 2017 |
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Oct 24, 2017 01:38
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Hey, a SMG post that I really liked.
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Oct 24, 2017 01:43
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So is Pale Fire worth a read?
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Oct 24, 2017 02:38
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checkplease posted:So is Pale Fire worth a read? It depends on how much of a lit nerd you are. PF is more like a curiosity rather than a strict narrative, a 999 poem by a fictional poet and the extensive annotations to it provided by a fictional academic. How this becomes interesting it a bit of a spoiler, but it's an impressive achievement and another example of Nabokov's unparalleled skill with form and language. I prefer his more traditional narratives like Lolita and Pnin for pure entertainment value but it's still a beautiful work.
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Oct 24, 2017 02:59
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SMERSH Mouth posted:I don't think it's an anti-feminist movie, but I can see why feminists wouldn't like it, just because of how bleak its world is for all the real and simulated women depicted. So by that mindset, a proper feminist movie is one depicting a setting where everything is good for women and a story wherein the women have happy endings?
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Oct 24, 2017 04:01
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checkplease posted:So is Pale Fire worth a read? I'd say it's one of the better reads one can have.
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Oct 24, 2017 04:03
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Lord Krangdar posted:So by that mindset, a proper feminist movie is one depicting a setting where everything is good for women and a story wherein the women have happy endings? it might contain at least one happy woman, or a woman who at least finds meaning in her life the way k does
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Oct 24, 2017 04:04
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ninjewtsu posted:it might contain at least one happy woman, or a woman who at least finds meaning in her life the way k does And how would that make the film more feminist?
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Oct 24, 2017 04:07
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Wasn't the cop chief enough of a strong female role? Luv? Joi? I know they all died in violent ways, but the movie is K's story, not theirs. K happens to die violently too.
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Oct 24, 2017 04:11
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Literally every character in the film is prisoner of circumstance. Deckard and Sapper live in exile. Ana lives in a bubble, Luv is a servant from birth, just like K. Joshi feels like she is bound by the status quo. I have a hard time seeing this film as non-feminist considering the breadth of female characters it has. It's not a movie about happy people. It's true that you could make the protagonist a woman instead of a man. But then would be you be able to use Joi and Mariette's characters to say something about the objectification of women? I was actually thinking the other day about how many scifi stories there are about men with artificial girlfriends there are, and how few there are about women with artificial boyfriends. Also, arguably Ana is happy and gets a happy ending. It's not stated in the film, but I suspected that her illness was fake and was simply an excuse to keep her cloistered away. I feel like there's a decent possibility she will get to enjoy real freedom in the future. But maybe not. Also, the resistance leader is a woman.
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Oct 24, 2017 04:19
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SMERSH Mouth posted:Ok, so we got some interpolation of the bleakest take on JOI. But I've also got to say, drat, all the female characters in this movie are thwarted, constrained, or disposable. Or dead. Now do the male characters. K is constrained, thwarted, and dead.
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Oct 24, 2017 04:57
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Arglebargle III posted:Now do the male characters. Wallace seemed to be doin alright by the end.
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Oct 24, 2017 05:00
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Steve Yun posted:Wallace seemed to be doin alright by the end. He is trapped by his own inadequacy as compared to his long-dead idol but as a rich rear end in a top hat it doesn’t really affect him much.
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Oct 24, 2017 05:04
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So if Niander Wallace, the only unconstrained character, and also the villain, had been a woman, the film would have been more feminist? I feel like she would just scan as a wicked witch stereotype. After all, Niandre is certainly an example of toxic masculine capitalist elitism. He's basically an evil wizard.
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Oct 24, 2017 05:06
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Man, this movie... I love it. The more I think of it the more I discover that nothing seems to be left without meaning. Or maybe I'm just imagining things. Wallace is the human being with the trapped/locked away soul. "The eyes are the windows to your soul" but his are opaque, blinded. It's also conscious decision on his part, it's not like with his power and resources he wouldn't be able to replace/enhance them. Instead he sees through the eyes of the electronic flies. He experiences the world from a 3rd person perspective, an impersonal, cut-off one. He thinks of himself as a remote, out-of-this-world "god". Joi is the opposite. She's out of this world but wants to be 'inside' it. In the sex scene there's a long take on her eyes looking at K (or, should I say 'us' the observers from the cinema theater because K is not visible in the shot). I don't know, I've felt it like the ending shot from "The nights of Cabiria" Also, the Vegas bees.. that's the "real boy" K taking the Voight-Kampff test with a big "f**k you, I'm a real human being" gesture. Man... I hate to say it and sound to excited about it but ... this movie is Oscar material. I know that it's just a SF movie and those don't get "best movie" Oscars, but.. it's amazing on such many levels.
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Oct 24, 2017 05:49
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Origami Dali posted:Hey, a SMG post that I really liked. Because for once, he's completely correct and honest. Continuity of consciousness is a puzzle set in most introductory philosophy classes. Imagine a teleporter exists. You step in, you appear somewhere else. No problem. Now, imagine the teleporter works by disassembling you to component molecules and reassembling an identical sequence of molecules somewhere else. To everyone else in the universe, you still exist. But in reality you cease to exist every time you teleport and are replaced by a copy. Are you still that person? Your memories, experiences a day nature are identical to that person, so why would you not be? Last: imagine there is a one hour delay between you appearing at your destination and disappearing at the origin. You can now call your point of origin and for that hour, talk to yourself. You are now no longer the same person, because from the moment of the teleportation you experiences diverge from those of the true original. Which raises the question: why is it that you can be for all intents the same person in one scenario, but not the other? Answer: because in spite of all observational evidence, you never were that person. Continuity of consciousness is what makes a person, not experience or the physical constituents of their body.
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Oct 24, 2017 10:32
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doesn't that imply that you die every time you go to sleep
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Oct 24, 2017 10:40
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Jedit posted:Because for once, he's completely correct and honest. Continuity of consciousness is a puzzle set in most introductory philosophy classes. Imagine a teleporter exists. You step in, you appear somewhere else. No problem. You don't even need sci-fi scenarios for what is basically the ship of Theseus problem. I slough off so many cells throughout my life that at some point in the future, a large portion of my cells will have been replaced. Am I still me?
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Oct 24, 2017 10:48
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