Xaris posted:

i'm not sure sure there's a whole lot to draw from the silent era, but i'm also not very familar with it. but yes westerns, for several decades, were the blockbuster movie de jour of the strong american self-made male and did a lot to rewire the brains of much post-war america into absolute mush.

TrixRabbi posted:

Catching up with Hell of Presidents and I'm on to the bonus episode on Presidents in film and goddamn, I always forgot just how bad the Chapos are at film analysis and history. Like, they think they're knowledgeable about movies but they leave so loving much on the table. Why is Will even here? There's so many critics and film historians you could find online who would gladly come in. I get that maybe this was suppose to be a lighter episode of the show, but for a series that's so deep in the trenches about contextualizing American character and politics through the way we mythologize the figure of the President there's an absurd amount of films they just do not even touch on and a number of straight up factual errors. Hell, there's a list on wikipedia of actors who have portrayed real Presidents they could have glanced at.

Like, absolutely wild to me to just skip right over the silent era and not discuss a single western -- i.e. the entire genre about how America conceives of itself throughout the ages. You could spend half the episode just on D.W. Griffith with his staging of the Lincoln assassination in The Birth of Nation (featuring a very pallid, already dead Lincoln), his 1930 biopic Abraham Lincoln where he's played by Walter Huston, and his mostly forgotten 1924 feature America about the Revolution that features Washington and Jefferson. They're right that no one has ever really embodied Washington on film the way that Henry Fonda and Daniel Day-Lewis have done for Lincoln, but they never really get into why that is.

And then they handwave away entire eras of the Presidency but it's in the esoterica that you can find some of the more fascinating poo poo. Like Ten Gentlemen from West Point, which comes out in 1942 and features William Henry Harrison leading a charge against Tecumseh. Zachary Taylor is a character in at least two westerns Rebellion from 1936 and Raoul Walsh's Distant Drums from 1951. I haven't seen it but there's an odd looking movie from a couple years ago called Raising Buchanan about a woman trying to steal James Buchanan's body where he's played by Rene Auberjonois in his final role.

The whole episode just could have been about Lincoln in movies, and they forgot Raymond Massey in the "played the same President twice" club in Abe Lincoln and Illinois and How the West Was Won. Grant's been portrayed way more than they make it out to be, though often in smaller parts -- Joseph Crehan played him nine loving times. Hell they didn't even mention the absurd plot of the Jules Verne adaptation From the Earth to the Moon.

There's The Price of Power a late 60s spaghetti western about the assassination of James Garfield that's a very on-the-nose metaphor for the Kennedy assassination. The 1932 Edward G. Robinson film Silver Dollar gets nicely into the whole gold/silver currency poo poo that took up the entire post-reconstruction era and has both Grant and Chester A. Arthur as characters. Grover Cleveland shows up in Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians.

There's a 1944 biopic of Woodrow Wilson just called Wilson. There's a one-man play turned film about Truman called Give 'Em Hell, Harry that netted a Best Actor nom at the Oscars. Also the Obama movie was called Southside with You.

poo poo, they could have even gotten into some of the weirder fictionalized president portrayals, like Gabriel Over the White House -- a straight up fascist 1933 pre-code film where a thinly veiled FDR analogue wins the Presidency but turns out to be a total schlub so he's incapacitated and possessed by the angel Gabriel who begins running the country as a hardline fascist (this is depicted as good) and also bootlegging mafiosos do a drive-by shooting on the White House. Absolutely loving insane movie and very, very on brand for Chapo to cover.

Anyway, this went way longer than I expected but just like, there's so much good poo poo they could have gotten out of this topic and they could have gone into what these portrayals say about the President and the era they were made. So it's a real waste.

exmarx posted:

i'm also catching up on hell of presidents and forgot how insanely bad chris is as a producer lol

“Wikipedia for From the Earth to the Moon posted:

Shortly after the end of the American Civil War, munitions producer Victor Barbicane announces that he has invented a new explosive, "Power X", which he claims is much more powerful than any previously devised. Metallurgist Stuyvesant Nicholl scoffs at Barbicane's claims and offers a wager of $100,000 ($1.9 million today) that it cannot destroy his invention, the hardest metal in existence. Barbicane stages a demonstration using a puny cannon and demolishes Nicholl's material (and a portion of the countryside).

President Ulysses S. Grant requests that Barbicane cease development of his invention after several nervous countries warn that continuing work on Power X could be considered an act of war. Barbicane agrees, but when he discovers that pieces of Nicholl's metal retrieved from the demonstration have somehow been converted into an extremely strong yet lightweight ceramic, he cannot resist the chance to construct a spaceship to travel to the Moon. He recruits Nicholl to help build the ship. Meanwhile, Nicholl's daughter Virginia and Barbicane's assistant Ben Sharpe are attracted to each other.

After completing the spaceship, Barbicane, Nicholl, and Sharpe board it and, amid much fanfare, take off. Once they are in outer space, the strongly religious Nicholl reveals that he has sabotaged the vessel, believing that Barbicane has flouted God's laws. When it is discovered that Virginia has stowed away, Nicholl cooperates with Barbicane in a desperate attempt to save her. Sharpe is knocked out, and he and Virginia are placed in the safest compartment of the ship. Barbicane and Nicholl then fire rockets that send the young couple on their way back to Earth, while the two scientists land on the Moon in another section, with no way off. They are able to signal to the young couple that they have reached the Moon safely.

Atrocious Joe posted:

this post is good content and the offended tone elevates it to a very good post

being offended the dry boys didn't discuss a 1944 Wilson biopic is fresh and informative content

exmarx posted:

i'm also catching up on hell of presidents and forgot how insanely bad chris is as a producer lol

some plague rats posted:

well done reading all of it

Atrocious Joe posted:

half the time I see people discuss the Searchers it's to call it racist

it was a good post

Trabisnikof posted:

do they talk about Seven Days in May at least?

TrixRabbi posted:

Catching up with Hell of Presidents and I'm on to the bonus episode on Presidents in film and goddamn, I always forgot just how bad the Chapos are at film analysis and history. Like, they think they're knowledgeable about movies but they leave so loving much on the table. Why is Will even here? There's so many critics and film historians you could find online who would gladly come in. I get that maybe this was suppose to be a lighter episode of the show, but for a series that's so deep in the trenches about contextualizing American character and politics through the way we mythologize the figure of the President there's an absurd amount of films they just do not even touch on and a number of straight up factual errors. Hell, there's a list on wikipedia of actors who have portrayed real Presidents they could have glanced at.

Like, absolutely wild to me to just skip right over the silent era and not discuss a single western -- i.e. the entire genre about how America conceives of itself throughout the ages. You could spend half the episode just on D.W. Griffith with his staging of the Lincoln assassination in The Birth of Nation (featuring a very pallid, already dead Lincoln), his 1930 biopic Abraham Lincoln where he's played by Walter Huston, and his mostly forgotten 1924 feature America about the Revolution that features Washington and Jefferson. They're right that no one has ever really embodied Washington on film the way that Henry Fonda and Daniel Day-Lewis have done for Lincoln, but they never really get into why that is.

And then they handwave away entire eras of the Presidency but it's in the esoterica that you can find some of the more fascinating poo poo. Like Ten Gentlemen from West Point, which comes out in 1942 and features William Henry Harrison leading a charge against Tecumseh. Zachary Taylor is a character in at least two westerns Rebellion from 1936 and Raoul Walsh's Distant Drums from 1951. I haven't seen it but there's an odd looking movie from a couple years ago called Raising Buchanan about a woman trying to steal James Buchanan's body where he's played by Rene Auberjonois in his final role.

The whole episode just could have been about Lincoln in movies, and they forgot Raymond Massey in the "played the same President twice" club in Abe Lincoln and Illinois and How the West Was Won. Grant's been portrayed way more than they make it out to be, though often in smaller parts -- Joseph Crehan played him nine loving times. Hell they didn't even mention the absurd plot of the Jules Verne adaptation From the Earth to the Moon.

There's The Price of Power a late 60s spaghetti western about the assassination of James Garfield that's a very on-the-nose metaphor for the Kennedy assassination. The 1932 Edward G. Robinson film Silver Dollar gets nicely into the whole gold/silver currency poo poo that took up the entire post-reconstruction era and has both Grant and Chester A. Arthur as characters. Grover Cleveland shows up in Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians.

There's a 1944 biopic of Woodrow Wilson just called Wilson. There's a one-man play turned film about Truman called Give 'Em Hell, Harry that netted a Best Actor nom at the Oscars. Also the Obama movie was called Southside with You.

poo poo, they could have even gotten into some of the weirder fictionalized president portrayals, like Gabriel Over the White House -- a straight up fascist 1933 pre-code film where a thinly veiled FDR analogue wins the Presidency but turns out to be a total schlub so he's incapacitated and possessed by the angel Gabriel who begins running the country as a hardline fascist (this is depicted as good) and also bootlegging mafiosos do a drive-by shooting on the White House. Absolutely loving insane movie and very, very on brand for Chapo to cover.

Anyway, this went way longer than I expected but just like, there's so much good poo poo they could have gotten out of this topic and they could have gone into what these portrayals say about the President and the era they were made. So it's a real waste.

some plague rats posted:

well done reading all of it

V. Illych L. posted:

firstly, their class concept is out of whack. they seem to equate "bourgeois" with having a certain degree of comfort and security, rather than with a social relationship. likewise they seem to think that people are determined to act in a fairly narrow self-interest, which is very vulgar (men create their own destinies, but they do not do so under the circusmtances of their choosing yadda yadda). third, their categorisation of consciousness and ideology is deeply idealistic: they discuss the national question not in terms of any marxist literature on the issue or how the socialists of the day would've interpreted it, but in the terms of modern identity politics. granted, the latter is not a completely fruitless perspective, but they're dealing with a historical text and should take some effort to look into what was accepted as one of the biggest controversies of marxism in this period.

basically they commit a series of anachronisms and category mistakes, some of which actually matter to the analysis they're trying to do. they're also consistently pretty formalist throughout the episode. these issues are in a sense understandable in that they're contemporary american nerds trying to figure this stuff out, but it all adds up imo and some of it is actually very important

TrixRabbi posted:

Catching up with Hell of Presidents and I'm on to the bonus episode on Presidents in film and goddamn, I always forgot just how bad the Chapos are at film analysis and history. Like, they think they're knowledgeable about movies but they leave so loving much on the table. Why is Will even here? There's so many critics and film historians you could find online who would gladly come in. I get that maybe this was suppose to be a lighter episode of the show, but for a series that's so deep in the trenches about contextualizing American character and politics through the way we mythologize the figure of the President there's an absurd amount of films they just do not even touch on and a number of straight up factual errors. Hell, there's a list on wikipedia of actors who have portrayed real Presidents they could have glanced at.



Anyway, this went way longer than I expected but just like, there's so much good poo poo they could have gotten out of this topic and they could have gone into what these portrayals say about the President and the era they were made. So it's a real waste.

crepeface posted:

re: point 2, i thought they were talking about the perception of men having control of their own destiny, rather than it being a fact. they even mentioned the marx quote "men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please"

interesting point about national identity, do you know what the marxist lit says about it or how socialists of the day perceived it? i thought they were trying to say the nascent national idpol had an effect as well as the fact the material wealth of the leaders of the SPD made them unwilling to commit.

TrixRabbi posted:

It’s literally a podcast about the U.S. Presidents so I feel like we’re already in the dorkiest nerd territory there is with it and I will gladly be indignant about this.

crepeface posted:

re: point 2, i thought they were talking about the perception of men having control of their own destiny, rather than it being a fact. they even mentioned the marx quote "men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please"

interesting point about national identity, do you know what the marxist lit says about it or how socialists of the day perceived it? i thought they were trying to say the nascent national idpol had an effect as well as the fact the material wealth of the leaders of the SPD made them unwilling to commit.

Smythe posted:

I listened to the hinge point episode thing a d I liked it a lot!!! did other people like it? I think I read ppl dunking on it itt???

Smythe posted:

I listened to the hinge point episode thing a d I liked it a lot!!! did other people like it? I think I read ppl dunking on it itt???

V. Illych L. posted:

Smythe posted:

I listened to the hinge point episode thing a d I liked it a lot!!! did other people like it? I think I read ppl dunking on it itt???

crepeface posted:

(also check out hell of presidents, imo it's better matt content)

Smythe posted:

well, i think the thesis was that the hinge point was the SDP going for the war instead of striking. the interesting part is that the structural forces plus the agency of the fattened-up leadership resulted in the eventuality, which they postulated (and i agree) was inevitable at that juncture. more interesting was the fact that the sdp not only went for the war but also abandoned their primary mission of fighting for international socialism. now THAT is very interesting to me! it is neat to consider a world where not only was WWI avoided by a huge SDP strike, but the message it sent could have rallied international class consciousness throughout europe and ignited a truly international workers movement like marx had wanted. what would the world look like in that case? unfortunately we will never know, but maybe someday someone smart will write something about that which i can read. the cascade reaction. historical fiction? =D

some plague rats posted:

I heard that John Wayne was a nazi. They tell me that he liked to play SS