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Dr. Killjoy posted:does he have to murder the HR director too? that is the emperor, so yes, but a few years later.
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Nov 19, 2019 06:44
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Serf posted:incorrect. the movie is testing to see if you can have basic empathy for a being that doesn't look like you. the oppression of droids is built in from the base level of society. such that the "guardians of peace and justice" the jedi don't even deign to consider that droids are slaves If it's that important to the setting they'd have made non-organic personhood a more important part of the setting. The way it's established, droids are no different from a talking sword or fairy-like creature who befriends the main characters. Freaking Crumbum posted:i do like that vader's entire character arc from 4 > 6 is the story of a guy that really enjoys his original job (killing other wizards and flying space ships) and because he enjoys it he does really well at it, but then he does it so well that he gets promoted to a higher level of management, but his previous specialization in the skills of martial assassination and spaceship dueling are completely useless for his new role (being the project director of a massively bloated government defense contract) and he's clearly struggling to tread water with his boss (who is also going to look foolish if he promotes vader and then vader can't cut it) so he ends up having to fly through space to harangue various bureaucrats and other middle managers to make sure anything gets done on time and within budget, he has to hire with a bunch of 1099 contractors to cover up for his inability to effectively retain talent, and basically just shits the bed over every decision he has to make This is why the Auralnauts' version of Star Wars is valid
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Nov 19, 2019 07:03
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MizPiz posted:If it's that important to the setting they'd have made non-organic personhood a more important part of the setting. The way it's established, droids are no different from a talking sword or fairy-like creature who befriends the main characters. They are basically talking furniture with emotions I mean can you enslave a weeping side table, no you cannot it is self evidently ridiculous
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Nov 19, 2019 07:53
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i choose to believe that droids in star wars are like robots in futurama and were just created for the sake of it. like the droids that jabba is torturing were made just to be tortured, like how in futurama theres a robot that was just made to be fat or one to be a hedonist
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Nov 19, 2019 07:57
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sebmojo posted:They are basically talking furniture with emotions I mean can you enslave a weeping side table, no you cannot it is self evidently ridiculous ehhh, it's a living
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Nov 19, 2019 08:06
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i liked how the beauty of the beast remake dealt with this by drawing more attention to subject but not actually providing an ethical explanation the result being that the whole thing just makes beast look like more of an rear end in a top hat
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Nov 19, 2019 08:08
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the Beast is a PUA master
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Nov 19, 2019 08:50
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Last week, I watched "Aloha", the Bradley Cooper / Emma Stone rom-com The opening credits of the movie sets an interesting tone right off the bat, because it intersperses images from the space program, with native Hawaiian scenes, and US military B-roll from the islands. The initial set-up is that Cooper's character, Brian, is a washed-up former astronaut that was let go from the program after the 2008 crash, and has been bouncing between jobs ever since, and now he's working for a billionaire Elon Musk-type (played by Bill Murray). His latest assignment is to go to Hawaii and negotiate with the King of Hawaii to perform a ritual that will allow them to move bones in an ancient burial ground, because the military wants to expand its base (with funding from Murray's character) and the new base's gate is going to be placed right over the burial ground. In the interactions between the Brian, the King, and Emma Stone's Allison Ng character, who is supposed to be one-quarter Hawaiian, it's made explicit that they recognize that Hawaii was annexed by the US and is currently under permanent military occupation, and the wheeling-and-dealing is between the Hawaiians wanting more land (to be provided by the billionaire) and reliable cell phone signal, in exchange for the ritual. Allison is supposed to be the "in-touch with her spirituality and native roots" character, while Brian plays the part of the cynic that says it's all just about money and land. The main conflict in the movie develops when Brian discovers that the billionaire he's working for is trying to send a weapons system into space, piggybacking onto a satellite launch that the military is letting him use because he's got big bucks. Allison finds out about this and heads to her superior officer (played by Danny McBride), who then deflects by talking about it's a "new military" where "contractors run everything now", private firms tell the generals what to do, and that he's powerless to stop it. As the movie hits its climax, Brian makes the decision to sabotage the satellite to cause it to destroy itself, thus preventing the weapon from being deployed, even if it's going to cost him his career and possibly jail time. He later gets exonerated because it turns out he was completely correct - the billionaire was trying to put a nuke, that he controlled, into orbit, and Brian's act actually saved the US from unknowingly militarizing space and breaking a bunch of international treaties. In one of the final scenes of the movie, the general played by Alec Baldwin, as he's telling Brian of the nuke plot he foiled, leans over, shakes his head and goes "that's what you get when you trust civilians to go into space", which is OORAH ARE TROOPS dumb worship in a movie that's otherwise surprisingly self-aware.
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Nov 19, 2019 09:00
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:I started watching In This Corner of the World on Netflix just to have something to watch while I ate dinner and now it's got me all hosed up. A lot gets said about how it's impossible to make an effective anti-war movie, with Idi I Smotri being a major exception - but In This Corner of the World also really nails it from a very different approach. There are other anime movies about world war 2 that make you feel bad for the subjects like Grave of the Fireflies, but they mostly rely on base sentiments to string you along to its thesis. Corner really earns its emotional depth by building up its narrative and fully recreating the domestic life of imperial Japan. Every building and object has built up a historical significance because all of them are full of the same kind of stories that we see through the cast, which makes the impact of the war all the more devastating when it arrives. As the date counts down to the point that the raids and firebombings begin it metatextually takes on the tone of a horror movie. The protagonist also has enough talent to be a brilliant post-impressionist, but because of her domestic obligations and the burdens of the war can never work with colors until it ends up being far too late. Well this just hosed me up good
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Nov 19, 2019 10:57
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Stairmaster posted:the prequels are watchable ironic prequel obsession/swearing the prequels are better than the sequels etc is just another sign of disneys pervasive capitalist realism
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Nov 19, 2019 11:01
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the main benefit the prequels have over the sequels is that they received serious public critique from the beginning so defending the prequels requires making an affirmative argument as to their merit the sequels by contrast are assumed to be brilliant for very generic reasons and any suggestion to the contrary is dismissed as racsexism
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Nov 19, 2019 11:24
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sebmojo posted:They are basically talking furniture with emotions I mean can you enslave a weeping side table, no you cannot it is self evidently ridiculous The fun thing about discussing the completely unambiguous depiction of droids as slaves in Star Wars is watching nominally left-wing people spontaneously develop pro-slavery rhetoric to defend what is clearly depicted as slavery. Like, yeah, the Jedi are depicted as the good guys. Adjusted for inflation, Gone With the Wind is one of the highest grossing films ever, and had far less competition when Lucas created Star Wars. It advanced a narrative in which the Confederates were the good guys, defeated by an evil tyrant. But another historically important film promises that their lost cause will be taken up by a new generation, leading to the Birth of a Nation. When the Rebels win in ANH, they are honoured a ceremony explicitly based on a scene from Triumph of the Will- what could Lucas have been trying to say??? (Incidentally, Chewbacca is given a medal in a small private ceremony rather than at the main one, because like the Empire, the Republic is racist, just a little less explicit about it). Anakin is a slave who is not freed, but purchased, by a Jedi who is uninterested in freeing slaves. He then argues passionately that he should be allowed to be the boy's master. The Jedi want to disallow this because of an obviously bullshit argument that he has too much fear in him and that acting out of fear is bad, except when they decide not to train an incredibly powerful child because they are afraid he might not have been sufficiently indoctrinated and then spend two further movies being terrified of a kid who basically only wants their approval and a normal life. Of course, the idea that someone a good decade younger than Luke wouldn't make a good Jedi because he is too old to train should be absurd to anyone who has watched the OT, but frankly even the most ham-fisted irony is lost on SW fans. Speaking of which, the audience also know that Anakin will later be reborn as a being who looks almost exactly like a droid. The PT later features a villain who is also a cyborg who complains that everyone thinks that he's a droid. That no one even considers droids to potentially be people worthy of rights is the loving point. It isn't deep. It isn't subtle. If you don't see it, it is because you're so deep in nerd consensus that you can't even watch science fiction for kids at the level of a child. Hodgepodge has issued a correction as of 12:41 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 12:25
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Hodgepodge posted:The fun thing about discussing the completely unambiguous depiction of droids as slaves in Star Wars is watching nominally left-wing people spontaneously develop pro-slavery rhetoric to defend what is clearly depicted as slavery. the "pro-slavery rhetoric" is part of the text. this is why stories about AI almost all suck. you can't do serious commentary about human slavery and simultaneously make the slaves literal objects. if star wars is about slavery, it's pro slavery
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Nov 19, 2019 12:38
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the new star wars videogame, jedi fallen order, succeeds by the sheer act of having restraint and only focusing on a handful of characters that are all interwoven rather competently
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Nov 19, 2019 12:46
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i read a space western comic awhile ago called daisy kutter where the title character is very explicitly a racist rear end in a top hat when it comes to robots it wasnt really an important part of the story overall i just thought it was interesting how she both sounded like a real world racist and was explicitly called out on it by the only robot character she talks to and just like a real world racist she remains unrepentant although she does agree to shelve the topic to talk business
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Nov 19, 2019 12:48
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Mercrom posted:the "pro-slavery rhetoric" is part of the text. this is why stories about AI almost all suck. you can't do serious commentary about human slavery and simultaneously make the slaves literal objects. if star wars is about slavery, it's pro slavery The term "robot" and many of the associated ideas comes from a play about manufacted artificial people sold as slaves. The word robot is a Czech word that means "slave." Droids, robots, replicants- they're barely even metaphors. Narratives about them are narratives about slave and working class uprisings. Replicants, of course, being just robots that are hard to tell apart from humans. A thinking, feeling being possesses subjectivity. The only obstacle to your accepting this is that you readily accept dehumanization as an excuse for exploitation. That society treats some people as objects, that it dehumanizes them, is exactly what science fiction narratives about robots, etc, ask you to confront. Hard AI isn't likely in the near future. But do you really think Apple or Google will refrain from selling you a chair as a slave if they achieve it? That Tesla cannot make an artificial person to be your chauffeur is a disappointment to Elon Musk. And look, here you are, eager to hear why slavery is okay this time. Eager to defend it, to mock and deride anyone who says "maybe this thing with thoughts and feelings comparable to our own should not be a slave." Hodgepodge has issued a correction as of 13:06 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 12:54
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Some Guy TT posted:i read a space western comic awhile ago called daisy kutter where the title character is very explicitly a racist rear end in a top hat when it comes to robots R2D2 and C-3P0 are refused entry to a space redneck bar because space rednecks are space racists who "don't serve their kind here."
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Nov 19, 2019 13:01
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Star Wars without the space wizards is painfully generic barely-even sci-fi that could be done better without the franchise baggage.
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Nov 19, 2019 13:04
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Panzeh posted:Star Wars without the space wizards is painfully generic barely-even sci-fi that could be done better without the franchise baggage. star wars will continue until morale improves
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Nov 19, 2019 13:13
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Hodgepodge posted:Hard AI isn't likely in the near future. But do you really think Apple or Google will refrain from selling you a chair as a slave if they achieve it? That Tesla cannot make an artificial person to be your chauffeur is a disappointment to Elon Musk. And look, here you are, eager to hear why slavery is okay this time. Eager to defend it, to mock and deride anyone who says "maybe this thing with thoughts and feelings comparable to our own should not be a slave." no of course not. the fact that the robots have to be anthropomorphized in fiction to even work as a "slavery" metaphor proves it. humans have enslaved and tortured non-humans since pre-history and arent going to stop any time soon. at least google could program your chair to not feel pain when you sit on it
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Nov 19, 2019 13:17
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Hodgepodge posted:R2D2 and C-3P0 are refused entry to a space redneck bar because space rednecks are space racists who "don't serve their kind here." im not arguing with you i think its an interesting idea and i just find it kind of funny that this obscure print comic is the only other example i can think of
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Nov 19, 2019 13:18
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In TFA, the only reference to the droid slave thing is when Rey is tempted to sell BB-8, but refrains due to her sympathy for the robot's desire to return to its rightful master. She also becomes enraged when she believes that Finn stole the droid. Because she is a strong believer in rights- property rights.
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Nov 19, 2019 13:19
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Hodgepodge posted:In TFA, the only reference to the droid slave thing is when Rey is tempted to sell BB-8, but refrains due to her sympathy for the robot's desire to return to its rightful master. She also becomes enraged when she believes that Finn stole the droid. so bb-8 is a dog
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Nov 19, 2019 13:27
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I watched the manalorians first two episodes and it just passed right through me. Some ideas here and there but it was all confused over who exactly this show is geared toward
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Nov 19, 2019 13:37
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MizPiz posted:If it's that important to the setting they'd have made non-organic personhood a more important part of the setting. The way it's established, droids are no different from a talking sword or fairy-like creature who befriends the main characters. they do this, tho. as mentioned, in the first 10 minutes of a new hope you see a group of slave catchers capture the main characters, imprison them, and then auction them off to a literal plantation. your inability to recognize what's happening onscreen is your fault, not the movie's
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Nov 19, 2019 13:38
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Mercrom posted:no of course not. the fact that the robots have to be anthropomorphized in fiction to even work as a "slavery" metaphor proves it. humans have enslaved and tortured non-humans since pre-history and arent going to stop any time soon. at least google could program your chair to not feel pain when you sit on it They "have to" be anthropomorphized because of the very same belief you seem to hold, the same which enables all exploitation- that moral worth is based on arbitrarily chosen, superficial criteria of similarity to oneself and/or ability to evoke instinctive sympathy. Dehumanization enables this by presenting oppression as just because others are scary, dissimilar to oneself, and unable or unwilling to meet demands for ingratiating behavior. Of course, Star Wars does not completely anthropormophize droids. R2D2 does not look human and does not speak a human language. Nor does, for example, Moon or 2001. Let's go one step further though- why not create a being that wants to be a slave? That is distressed by the thought of freedom? A being that has every claim to equality, or maybe even superiority to us, except that we have prevented it from ever aspiring to know anything but its place. I would say that if we ever create such a being, every ideal of equality, social justice, communism, whatever else- all those will be forever beyond our reach. We will no longer be humans, and instead will have become the master race. Also, good job on arguing that cruelty to animals is just because we do it. Humans have historically tried to minimize the pain of animals they raise, even if they intend to eat them eventually. Of course, this has been necessary to survive until recently. But intentional cruelty towards animals is done out of sight. A person being known to inflict pain on animals intentionally is the most widely understood sign that they are a psychopath. Hodgepodge has issued a correction as of 13:46 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 13:38
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Droids are not slaves. It's like if your couch was programmed to say "ouch" every time you sat on it. Just real perverse world building that makes the star warp universe feel so alien and alive
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Nov 19, 2019 13:40
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Mercrom posted:so bb-8 is a dog Well, a dog that is at least as intelligent as her and an expert in computer repair, diagnosis, interfacing, programming, etc. Basically an IT worker that is also a dog.
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Nov 19, 2019 13:40
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Over Easy posted:Droids are not slaves. It's like if your couch was programmed to say "ouch" every time you sat on it. Just real perverse world building that makes the star warp universe feel so alien and alive Huh. Do you torture couches? Like, why? Strictly speaking, droids are fictional characters that are written and presented as various fantastical beings which are routinely enslaved by their fictional societies.
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Nov 19, 2019 13:42
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Over Easy posted:Droids are not slaves. It's like if your couch was programmed to say "ouch" every time you sat on it. Just real perverse world building that makes the star warp universe feel so alien and alive there is an implication that most of the technology that is of a certain level of sophistication in sapient in some way. threepio is asked to "talk" to the falcon to figure out what's wrong with it. they try to retcon this in the solo movie by saying that elthree was installed into the falcon but the non-lucas stuff is just fanfiction
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Nov 19, 2019 13:44
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what a bizarre retcon why would anyone feel the need to put that in there were they really worried about the original trilogys legacy in terms of normalizing racism against robots
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Nov 19, 2019 13:46
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Hodgepodge posted:Let's go one step further though- why not create a being that wants to be a slave? That is distressed by the thought of freedom? A being that has every claim to equality, or maybe even superiority to us, except that we have prevented it from ever aspiring to know anything but it's place. I would say that if we ever create such a being, every ideal of equality, social justice, communism, whatever else- all those will be forever beyond our reach. We will no longer be humans, and instead will have become the master race. but we are already the paternalistic master race. that wont change whether we destroy nature or save it Hodgepodge posted:Also, good job on arguing that cruelty to animals is just because we do it. Humans have historically tried to minimize the pain of animals they raise, even if they intend to eat them eventually. Of course, this has been necessary to survive until recently. But intentional cruelty towards animals is done out of sight. A person being known to inflict pain on animals intentionally is the most widely understood sign that they are a psychopath. why do you assume that because something is normal it is just. also lmao at saying "intentional" cruelty done to animals is done out of sight or seen as a sign of psychopathy. reveling in the misery itself is done out of sight and is seen as a sign of psychopathy. the cruelty is very much intentional to save costs. any attempt at minimizing the pain of animals only comes after every other material concern is fully satisfied
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Nov 19, 2019 13:53
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Over Easy posted:Droids are not slaves. It's like if your couch was programmed to say "ouch" every time you sat on it. Just real perverse world building that makes the star warp universe feel so alien and alive thank you
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Nov 19, 2019 13:59
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yhis conversation leads very naturally into us all talking about the woke flintstones comic where all the dinosaur appliances are coded as indigenous people or whatever
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Nov 19, 2019 14:00
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has there ever been a more problematic glorification of slave mentality than toy story. smh
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Nov 19, 2019 14:02
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Pokémon maybe
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Nov 19, 2019 14:06
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every new toy story movie they make punches willing suspension of disbelief in the dick by making it increasingly obvious that nothing about the setting makes any sense at all but good luck getting anybody to acknowledge that
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Nov 19, 2019 14:08
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Some Guy TT posted:every new toy story movie they make punches willing suspension of disbelief in the dick by making it increasingly obvious that nothing about the setting makes any sense at all but good luck getting anybody to acknowledge that every new toy story movie they make punches willing suspension of disbelief in the dick by making it increasingly obvious that nothing about the setting makes any sense at all but good luck getting anybody to acknowledge that
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Nov 19, 2019 14:10
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The crazy thing is that Astro Boy probably had everything beat Funny thing reading old Astro Boy aside from it being a bit all over the place (and ranging from having some very outdated racist stereotypes to some incredibly progressive details and storylines given it was the goddamn 50s) is that they deal with a lot of stuff about robot rights and treatment while also that robots aren't human and don't act or think like humans even when they can pass as human- and when given the opportunity, don't necessarily want to once they understand the full implications. Also, there's a bit where Astro meets a Japanese-American man who flat out says that he experienced racism from white Americans, and after that faded he noticed how badly they treated black Americans, and then when robots came along they basically just transferred the exact same behaviour towards them. Seems especially poignant since that storyline ends with him revealed to having been slowly turned into a robot to survive a terminal disease after Astro leaves, and goes to apply to be treated as a human, but is literally torn apart by a lynch mob on the front steps of the government office)
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Nov 19, 2019 14:16
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Mercrom posted:but we are already the paternalistic master race. that wont change whether we destroy nature or save it You presented the argument that cruelty towards animals is part of our intrinsic nature, which isn't surprising considering that you consider all humans a "paternalistic master race." Presumably, mentioning this as part of an argument against the idea that non-humans can be slaves means that you consider this just, since it is an example of our enslavement of beings that can at least feel. Or did you bring it up as a non-sequitur? Yes, most cruelty to animals is out of sight, and those who benefit from it take care to keep it that way. We mostly know of the worst examples through the work of people opposed to it. Historically, the first Western animal rights legislation dates to 1635. More broadly, the issue was controversial in ancient Greece, while despite giving man dominion over animals, the Torah forbids various forms of cruelty towards animals and even commands that one feed one's animals before oneself and that suffering of animals must be actively relieved. In India, Jainism has forbidden violence towards animals since ~600 BC. On the same principle, ahimsa, Buddism forbids cruelty to animals, and permits eating animals only due to necessity in the absence of other options. Hinduism is less unified, but frequently forbids violence towards animals on similar grounds. This is why vegetarianism has historically been mainstream in India. Islam allows killing and eating of animals, but forbids cruelty. Christianity is nearly unique in it's lack of compassion for animals, made worse by Greek and Roman traditions, particularly the influence of Aristotle, and much later, Decartes and Kant. Broadly, most remaining schools of moral and religious thought (animism, etc) see animals as not fundamentally different from humans. Cruelty is forbidden, even in the practice of hunting and farming animals- although slavery of humans and similar institutions are not forbidden in many of cases. Hodgepodge has issued a correction as of 14:25 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 14:17
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