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Schwarzwald posted:They haven't been massacred, they've gone native. Ha. Good call.
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May 2, 2020 04:29
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Schwarzwald posted:They haven't been massacred, they've gone native. I would go even more specific than that: nothing is native to the planet. What emerges from the alien drug/disease is an entirely new form of subjectivity. It's less this common fantasy of abandoning Western society to adopt some holistically fulfilling indigenous lifestyle, and way more like how Wikus in District 9 is transformed into a homeless person. In any case, it's definitely not an allegory for Vietnam unless you have no idea what Vietnam was (outside of being a jungle where American troops rode helicopters and died unhappy). SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 04:41 on May 2, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 04:38
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:In any case, it's definitely not an allegory for Vietnam unless you have no idea what Vietnam was (outside of being a jungle where American troops rode helicopters and died unhappy). Was it an Imperialist military adventure that started off with complete confidence in the triumph of technological warfare ("technowar") and corporate-style management theory that ended in retreat after unsustainable casualties and the complete failure of both technowar and the management ethos that spawned it ?
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May 2, 2020 05:38
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Owlbear Camus posted:
A lot of Vietnam movies does say that though. In Platoon they're a coked up faceless horde that mutilates soldiers. In Full Metal Jacket a vietnamese sniper tortures Cowboy and the vietnamese character with the most lines in the movie is a prostitute. In Apocalypse Now they're mindless members of a cult dedicated to a white man. Arguably Hearts and Minds is one of the few Vietnam war movies that acknowledges that the vietnamese were humans.
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May 2, 2020 12:43
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mllaneza posted:Was it an Imperialist military adventure that started off with complete confidence in the triumph of technological warfare ("technowar") and corporate-style management theory that ended in retreat after unsustainable casualties and the complete failure of both technowar and the management ethos that spawned it ? Yeah, that’s what I wrote: American troops died unhappy in the jungle. While the film is evocative of many things, it’s not an allegory. Allegory requires way more specificity, and it’s in those specifics that the notion breaks down. Like, just for starters: Vietnam was not an American colony.
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May 2, 2020 16:19
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:
Not for lack of trying.
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May 2, 2020 19:18
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Is David^3 still happening? Haven't seen any news on that in a while.
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May 2, 2020 20:01
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Alhazred posted:A lot of Vietnam movies does say that though. In Platoon they're a coked up faceless horde that mutilates soldiers. In Full Metal Jacket a vietnamese sniper tortures Cowboy and the vietnamese character with the most lines in the movie is a prostitute. In Apocalypse Now they're mindless members of a cult dedicated to a white man. Well technically the people under Kurtz were not ethnically Vietnamese. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montagnard_(Vietnam)
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May 2, 2020 20:21
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Ersatz posted:Is David^3 still happening? Haven't seen any news on that in a while. Probably not, since Covenant didn’t do amazing business.
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May 2, 2020 20:24
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If Aliens isn’t an allegory for the Vietnam War (and lmao that we’re even seriously entertaining this conversation), then somebody forgot to tell James Cameron, who has been quoted repeatedly on the topic. There’s also this video; I try not to link this guy’s channel when I can avoid it, but it’s got a lot of the relevant quotes in one place if people don’t want to read the article.
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May 2, 2020 20:46
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SHISHKABOB posted:Well technically the people under Kurtz were not ethnically Vietnamese. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montagnard_(Vietnam) Also I seem to remember scenes of vietnamese being normal people and getting massacred by psycho Americans
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May 2, 2020 20:59
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Alhazred posted:Not for lack of trying. Ok so, under that interpretation, Aliens is a fantasy where America (or France?) controlled Vietnam from the beginning, Vienamese people don't exist, nobody is aware of the Soviet Union.... Suffice it to say that the forced allegorical read is far weaker than a more direct interpretation: Aliens is about a dystopian future, centuries after Vietnam, where American troops are used to put down a labor revolt in space. Ripley strives to prevent future conflicts through liberal reform.
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May 2, 2020 21:04
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Xenomrph posted:If Aliens isn’t an allegory for the Vietnam War (and lmao that we’re even seriously entertaining this conversation), then somebody forgot to tell James Cameron, who has been quoted repeatedly on the topic. Those quotes are all just Cameron talking about how he used motifs from Vietnam to ground the film in a set of experiences that the audience could recognise and therefore relate to, not that the film itself is supposed to be an allegory for the Vietnam war.
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May 2, 2020 21:09
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The Vietnam elements he brings up just reinforce how it’s an allegory for the Vietnam war. Like it’s barely even subtext, it’s practically text and as mentioned, it’s the coldest take on ‘Aliens’ that’s been around since the movie came out.
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May 2, 2020 21:27
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Xenomrph posted:The Vietnam elements he brings up just reinforce how it’s an allegory for the Vietnam war. Like it’s barely even subtext, it’s practically text and as mentioned, it’s the coldest take on ‘Aliens’ that’s been around since the movie came out. I think you’re confused about what an allegory is Like, what is Bishop in this allegory. What represents Ngo Dinh Diem? What are the facehuggers? The CIA? Etc
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May 2, 2020 22:13
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DeimosRising posted:I think you’re confused about what an allegory is I think you'll find that Star Trek 2009 is an allegory for Apple's dominance of the smartphone industry
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May 2, 2020 22:20
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DeimosRising posted:I think you’re confused about what an allegory is
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May 2, 2020 22:29
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Xenomrph posted:If Aliens isn’t an allegory for the Vietnam War (and lmao that we’re even seriously entertaining this conversation), then somebody forgot to tell James Cameron, who has been quoted repeatedly on the topic. I've watched a couple of this guy's videos, but not too familiar overall. What are your issues with his stuff?
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May 2, 2020 22:31
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MrMojok posted:I've watched a couple of this guy's videos, but not too familiar overall. What are your issues with his stuff? He plagiarizes the poo poo out of other people’s work and doesn’t bother citing it; he’s been called out on it repeatedly and has “apologized” for it, but never revises his videos to include citations. Like he’s been caught reading verbatim off of Wiki pages. Reading off of wiki pages has its place (similar to podcasts or audiobooks), but don’t claim you wrote the material.
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May 2, 2020 22:34
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Xenomrph posted:Not every element in an allegory needs to tie 1:1 to something else The really loving important central poo poo needs to be 1:1.
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May 2, 2020 23:11
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SHISHKABOB posted:The really loving important central poo poo needs to be 1:1. Yeah and it is - a force of carefree American soldiers (the space marines) are deployed for what they think is an obviously one-sided engagement (“rescue some colonist daughters from their virginity”) against a technologically inferior enemy force (the Aliens), and once they get in the enemy force’s home turf (the Alien hive) they get wrecked due to poor planning, lack of quality leadership, and overconfidence against an enemy force they can’t/won’t acknowledge as a threat (“what do you mean they cut the power? They’re animals!”). That element, that right there, is a really obvious 1:1 allegory for the Vietnam War. This is reinforced by the visual language (the Marines armor styling and color palette, literal M16 rifles on the racks in the armory, the Dropship being styled after a Huey helicopter) and dialogue choices (“Arcturian poontang”). That massive block of the movie, from the moment the Marines wake up until the dropship crash, and arguably until the siege at Ops, is totally a riff on the Vietnam War. Does more happen in the movie that doesn’t directly correlate? Sure, but if you don’t think the movie has really obvious plot/design parallels to the Vietnam War then I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. 
Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 00:19 on May 3, 2020 |
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May 3, 2020 00:16
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Animal Farm is an allegory for the Soviet union. 1984 is not, but contains references to it. Aliens is more like 1984 than Animal Farm in this comparison.
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May 3, 2020 00:43
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all this Aliens talk just convinces me more and more that it's the third best alien movie
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May 3, 2020 01:06
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Ok so, under that interpretation, Aliens is a fantasy where America (or France?) controlled Vietnam from the beginning, Vienamese people don't exist, nobody is aware of the Soviet Union.... Can you elaborate on this?
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May 3, 2020 01:15
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alf_pogs posted:all this Aliens talk just convinces me more and more that it's the third best alien movie You can’t count ‘Alien’ twice.
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May 3, 2020 01:18
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e: nm
MrMojok fucked around with this message at 02:57 on May 3, 2020 |
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May 3, 2020 02:18
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N/M misunderstood
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May 3, 2020 02:19
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A4R8 posted:Can you elaborate on this? Aliens is a variation on a typical zombie narrative - a centrist version of Romero's Land Of The Dead. The story is basically that workers in a corporate facility are pushed to hastily obtain a valuable resource, which leads to preventable accident that causes them to become sick. As in 28 Days later, the workers are 'infected with rage' and turn against their employers. (You can see some relevance today with people being pushed back to work prematurely under Covid-19.) Cameron's thesis is that companies like Weyland-Yutani can prevent these sorts of incidents - and therefore profit more in the long term - if they adopt practices to ensure a baseline happiness with their workers. Just look at the necessity of writing off this facility, with its substantial price tag. Better treatment of the workers now will prevent having to (ex)terminate them in the future. But Weyland-Yutani is already 'a good company'. Their android is programmed for political correctness. They had safety policies in place, which Burke violated. They could have done more, in gradual a sort of way (more caution around sites, taking care not to hire criminals like Burke, etc.), but no radical change is necessary. There's never any question that the revolting workers needed to done away with, and Ripley heads back to Earth so that she can be reinstated as a high-ranking crewman on a Weyland-Yutani freighter.
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May 3, 2020 02:46
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MrMojok posted:I've spent the afternoon watching quite a few of these. The technical aspects of the videos are quite good, using shots from films and panes from comics. But I found several where he was reading straight from Alien novels. His videos about the Earth War were cool, but the voiceover is entirely from THIS, written by Steve Perry. Is that Steve Perry related to SD Perry?
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May 3, 2020 02:58
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Leavemywife posted:Is that Steve Perry related to SD Perry? SD Perry is his daughter.
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May 3, 2020 03:28
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Allegory most definitely does not have to be 1-1 to an entire event. It just has to pull from a specific part of the event, at the very least, to paint a picture of. Whatever part is game as long as it is at least recognizable.
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May 3, 2020 03:38
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Xenomrph posted:SD Perry is his daughter. Steve’s Daughter Perry
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May 3, 2020 03:41
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Yeah, earlier I made a lovely post about the guy's videos, but then I watched his outro on one of them (I had been skipping to the next video when it got to that part) and he does at least say he's recounting this as written in the comics/books, so he's not actually implying that he wrote all this. I'm actually enjoying these, xeno. The Earth War saga was always one of my favorite things and listening to his voiceover while seeing the comics and his other video inserts is pretty cool. I don't understand how he's able to get around copywrite laws or whatever, but I am digging them.
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May 3, 2020 04:16
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Aliens is a variation on a typical zombie narrative - a centrist version of Romero's Land Of The Dead. The story is basically that workers in a corporate facility are pushed to hastily obtain a valuable resource, which leads to preventable accident that causes them to become sick. As in 28 Days later, the workers are 'infected with rage' and turn against their employers. (You can see some relevance today with people being pushed back to work prematurely under Covid-19.) Is Alien 3 the radical prison reform/salvation through Jesus break from this centrist narrative? I’m not trying to be facetious, genuinely curious to read your take. It never occurred to me how Alien 3 involves Ripley losing her adoptive daughter, having sex, and then getting pregnant. Man this series is hosed up in a fascinating way.
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May 3, 2020 04:22
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:But Weyland-Yutani is already 'a good company'. Their android is programmed for political correctness. They had safety policies in place, which Burke violated. They could have done more, in gradual a sort of way (more caution around sites, taking care not to hire criminals like Burke, etc.), but no radical change is necessary. By this logic, every corporation on Earth is a "good company," because they all have fig-leaf policies designed to make any revelation of malfeasance easy to pin on a single bad actor. That doesn't mean they actually follow these policies; in fact, this is the entire basis of malicious compliance as an anti-corporate tactic, as generally, following those fig-leaf procedures to the letter isn't supposed to be meaningfully possible (meaning that when you do follow them, you end up gumming up the works). In fact, this very tension is what makes Bishop interesting. All these procedures and moral standards are just fig leaves that the human bosses throw out the window whenever convenient; Bishop, however, was programmed to hold to them inflexibly rather than seeing them as conveniences, and is resultingly one of the most ethical characters in the movie. I'm fairly sure Ripley even has a line that points at this. Every time you bring up Aliens, you claim it portrays Burke as a single malicious actor acting independently of Weyland-Yutani, but I'm really not entirely sure that holds up, because given how W-Y as a company is portrayed (Ripley's hearing, for instance), it seems to be a company made up almost entirely of Burkes, who would have all done the exact same thing if given opportunity to do so.
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May 3, 2020 04:51
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General Battuta posted:Is Alien 3 the radical prison reform/salvation through Jesus break from this centrist narrative? I’m not trying to be facetious, genuinely curious to read your take. Alien 3 is absolutely a deliberate break from Cameron's logic. The common leftist interpretation that I've encountered, which , is that Ripley wakes up from the ideological dream at the end of Aliens (i.e. a nice job, husband, two kids, no trauma, a normal life...). Although the plot is that it's a simple accidental detour, the narrative is that Ripley actually does return to Earth and sees that it is not at all what she expected. She has gained this new alien perspective. (Alien 4 went somewhat too literal with that: literal alien blood, a literal return to Earth, and Ripley outright saying "I'm a stranger here myself".) WeedlordGoku69 posted:By this logic, every corporation on Earth is a "good company," because they all have fig-leaf policies designed to make any revelation of malfeasance easy to pin on a single bad actor. That doesn't mean they actually follow these policies; in fact, this is the entire basis of malicious compliance as an anti-corporate tactic, as generally, following those fig-leaf procedures to the letter isn't supposed to be meaningfully possible (meaning that when you do follow them, you end up gumming up the works). The point is not that Ripley or Bishop are bad people, but simply to note the ideological limitation of the film. Where does Bishop’s good behaviour reach its limit? What I mean is that Bishop very well be programmed for humanitarianism, and this may very well make him a better person than Burke. But that still puts Bishop directly at odds with the workers. If W-Y is indeed a company made up entirely of bad apples, as you say, then why has Bishop done nothing against them? Why does he pose no threat? Again, simply because he is there to serve the corporation, and the corporation exists purely to amass profit. The malicious Ash models were ‘glitchy’ and therefore less profitable. But no company is entirely made up of Burkes. Probably most of them are very nice people, because the problem is not individual people being greedy. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 05:23 on May 3, 2020 |
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May 3, 2020 05:08
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Alien 3 is absolutely a deliberate break from Cameron's logic. The common leftist interpretation that I've encountered, which , is that Ripley wakes up from the ideological dream at the end of Aliens (i.e. a nice job, husband, two kids, no trauma, a normal life...). I just realized that the ideal husband in both this and Cameron's T2 is a robot that can not/does not gently caress. Huh.
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May 3, 2020 05:16
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The point is not that Ripley or Bishop are bad people, but simply to note the ideological limitation of the film. Where does Bishop’s good behaviour reach its limit? Firstly: Bishop poses no threat to his masters because, even if he is programmed to hold inflexibly to a "best-case-scenario" form of W-Y corporate policy, he is still programmed to hold inflexibly to W-Y corporate policy. His opposition to his masters is, essentially, a consequence of their own hypocritical cognitive dissonance rather than him somehow developing class consciousness. Secondly, this may be mildly controversial because Burke is such a famously slimy and creepy character by the end, but... honestly, he's one hundred percent pleasant towards Ripley and co, up until the moment that their deaths become more profitable than their survival. It's also noteworthy that at no point is he ever actually shown to be individually greedy; he's simply attempting to curry favor with the corporation he works for by creating more profit for them. He's not an individually bad person who the film places all the blame on, and looking at him with the dichotomy between "nice" and "mean" you propose the movie follows leads to strange results; instead, he's an example of how the perverse incentives of capitalism corrupt people and lead to unethical behavior in the pursuit of profit and advancement. Every company, in fact, is entirely made up of Burkes, because being a Burke and being willing to prioritize your masters' profit over your own ethics is an absolute requirement to succeed in the corporate world. If you're not a Burke, you get fired or ousted and a Burke replaces you.
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May 3, 2020 05:57
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There's a lot in this particular episode that parallels what we are all going through now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcZAJAV29us e: and this one too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOduG8hgTf8 MrMojok fucked around with this message at 06:21 on May 3, 2020 |
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May 3, 2020 06:15
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WeedlordGoku69 posted:Every time you bring up Aliens, you claim it portrays Burke as a single malicious actor acting independently of Weyland-Yutani, but I'm really not entirely sure that holds up, because given how W-Y as a company is portrayed (Ripley's hearing, for instance), it seems to be a company made up almost entirely of Burkes, who would have all done the exact same thing if given opportunity to do so. Also for what it’s worth, most of the people at Ripley’s interrogation were government representatives - the only WY person present is Burke, actually. The movie doesn’t make this clear at all, but the script and other ancillary materials do.
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May 3, 2020 08:06
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