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Tehdas posted:They were a bit too heavy on showing the viewer that Tillman/Lorraine were the bad guys, like, literally for the first 5 episodes or such, every single scene they were in they were pissing someone off and painting targets on their backs. Which might be okay if they were supposed to be sociopathic losers, but they are the heads of pretty large crews. You don't get to be the head guy by pissing off everyone you meet. You don't get to be on top that way, but once you're on top you can do whatever you want. Tillman was a nepo baby too.
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Jan 21, 2024 14:49
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th3t00t posted:I thought Witt Farr's death was an allegory. He represents the American political establishment. While he wields the power to stop fascism, he fails to act and instead binds himself with decorum and stands there impotently until fascism stabs him in the heart. I don't think you're wrong, but it's undercut when Tillman gets arrested by literally the FBI like thirty seconds later.
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Jan 21, 2024 17:14
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uber_stoat posted:him and Juno. i haven't seen anything with her in it before i do not believe. Killer Joe
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Jan 21, 2024 17:43
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Anyways I recently came across this link (was it given here? Some other thread?) detailing Ursula Le Guin's (amazing sci fi/fantasy writer) Carrier bag theory regarding fiction, a pointed critique on genre tropes honing on Hero and violence worshipquote:In the temperate and tropical regions where it appears that hominids evolved into human beings, the principal food of the species was vegetable. Sixty-five to eighty percent of what human beings ate in those regions in Paleolithic, Neolithic, and prehistoric times was gathered; only in the extreme Arctic was meat the staple food. The mammoth hunters spectacularly occupy the cave wall and the mind, but what we actually did to stay alive and fat was gather seeds, roots, sprouts, shoots, leaves, nuts, berries, fruits, and grains, adding bugs and mollusks and netting or snaring birds, fish, rats, rabbits, and other tuskless small fry to up the protein. And we didn't even work hard at it-- much less hard than peasants slaving in somebody else's field after agriculture was invented, much less hard than paid workers since civilization was invented. The average prehistoric person could make a nice living in about a fifteen-hour work week. quote:It is hard to tell a really gripping tale of how I wrested a wild-oat seed from its husk, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then I scratched my gnat bites, and Ool said something funny, and we went to the creek and got a drink and watched newts for a while, and then I found another patch of oats.... No, it does not compare, it cannot compete with how I thrust my spear deep into the titanic hairy flank white Oob, impaled on one huge sweeping tusk, writhed screaming, and blood spouted everywhere in crimson torrents, and Boob was crushed to jelly when the mammoth fell on him as I shot my unerring arrow straight through eye to brain. That story not only has Action, it has a Hero. Heroes are powerful. Before you know it, the men and women in the wild-oat patch and their kids and the skills of the makers and the thoughts of the thoughtful and the songs of the singers are all part of it, have all been pressed into service in the tale of the Hero. But it isn't their story. It's his. quote:If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it's useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again--if to do that is human, if that's what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time. This season seemed like an especially in your face rebuke to toxic masculinity and, as Le Guin calls it, "the Ascent of the Action Hero". Dot doesn't kill the bad guy, the bad guy, who's deadly and capable, is shown to be a crazed serial killer whose resolution is as anti-climactic as it is inevitable (FBI group tackle), the other bad guy faces Dot, and is ultimately defeated and befriended through the power of kindness and a good meal. The food, gathered, cooked, and shared, an act of pure humanity. Feminist, in that it is a 180 degree from traditional masculine adrenaline laden narratives, and more heart sustaining than heart warming. Because it feels so much more real. Because this is the world I would rather live in. Shageletic fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jan 21, 2024 |
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Jan 21, 2024 17:58
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quote:But here a long time. From the age of the carrier pigeon and the 600 tribes. The Arapaho, the Cree and the Tonkawa. A man comes, never having seen a mountain. He cannot remember the year of his birth. He is paid to soldier. But one night, he wanders from his post, drawn by the songs of the river. Trying to put together a timeline for Munch (and tie him to the other seasons). Ater he makes it to America, Munch makes friends with some of the Native tribes, but somehow missed the Massacre at Sioux Falls because of "the songs of the river". He stops talking for a 100 years, after which, I'm guessing, he sees a lovely Ronald Reagan movie about the Massacre and gets angry and decides to become a hitman.
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Jan 23, 2024 00:18
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uber_stoat posted:him and Juno. i haven't seen anything with her in it before i do not believe. She had a minor rear end role in Dark Knight Rises. She was Catwoman's BFF. And holy gently caress does she look different compared to back then. When I saw her in this one I was like, "Wait, that's her?"
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Jan 23, 2024 00:42
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i'm just up through episode 3 and enjoying this a lot. some of the poo poo is too cute but i can roll with it. the plot is dynamic and interesting. although i haven't watched this show since s2 and it feels like it must just be a show where it is always a permutation of some seemingly boring couple getting into some murder. juno temple - yeah, she's really standing out. her accent is obviously fake but because he character is fake and she's just extremely beautiful - and i mean particularly in this cos i looked her up to see if she was in anything i'd seen (turns out she's been in a lot of famous poo poo i haven't seen) and she just looks like some standard actress before. but now. whoah. jon hamm's character made me laugh when i realised what kind of guy he was playing. he's so gross, and he's doing the S6 of mad men ugly don draper smile which is so much more welcome when he's playing a villain. did NOT like the '500 years earlier' segment in ep 3. that's part of what i mean by too cute. another part is how credulous dot's husband is. you can't just put 'minnesota nice' as a pretext quote and expect me to endlessly expect seemingly average people to adopt insane selective blindness. but this is a heightened world so like i said, i roll with it and hope it all works out.
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Jan 23, 2024 01:11
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Binged through the whole season and was completely let down by the writing and editing of the last episode. Why build up the stand off between the militia and FBI if you're going to show it in the worst way possible with 20 black out cuts?. It was unbelievably frustrating that the sheriff is dead to rights from Dot and the FBI interrupts it, lets the guy just wander off, doesn't follow him with more than one person when he's the main target, and then the idiot cop just gets himself offed in the dumbest way possible. Such strong writing completely ruined.
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Jan 23, 2024 02:50
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Doltos posted:Why build up the stand off between the militia and FBI if you're going to show it in the worst way possible with 20 black out cuts?. someone posted earlier itt that someone who claimed to be an extra in the scenes said a they filmed a ton of footage but it didn’t make the final cut. Maybe they didn’t want it to get glamorized or otherwise appropriated? I mean I too wanted to see the gravy seals slaughtered but I’m over it 
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Jan 23, 2024 03:09
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Doltos posted:Binged through the whole season and was completely let down by the writing and editing of the last episode. Why build up the stand off between the militia and FBI if you're going to show it in the worst way possible with 20 black out cuts?. It was unbelievably frustrating that the sheriff is dead to rights from Dot and the FBI interrupts it, lets the guy just wander off, doesn't follow him with more than one person when he's the main target, and then the idiot cop just gets himself offed in the dumbest way possible. Such strong writing completely ruined. Would recommend reading the older posts in this thread over the past couple pages, the creator has talked at length a lot about why they made these choices. And all that has been discussed at length here too. tl;dr, Fargo is not a show that glorifies violence. Personally I enjoyed that the time was better spent watching 20 minutes of Midwestern Nice trample over Olde Time Vengeance.
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Jan 23, 2024 03:14
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CatstropheWaitress posted:Would recommend reading the older posts in this thread over the past couple pages, the creator has talked at length a lot about why they made these choices. And all that has been discussed at length here too. I think there's way more satisfying ways to not glorify violence than 20 black out jump cuts
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Jan 23, 2024 03:36
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the point is that it isn't satisfying
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Jan 23, 2024 03:40
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"Satisfying" is in the eye of the beholder, but really the only people involved in the gun fight were the fbi agents and a bunch of nameless mooks. Maybe Jon Hamm could have participated in it, but like, what would you get out of actually seeing the shoot out? I think the way they did it robbed the militia a "glorious death", and that's better. I guess you could show it as gruesome, but even then I don't think that's time well spent vs. where it was.
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Jan 23, 2024 03:59
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CatstropheWaitress posted:tl;dr, Fargo is not a show that glorifies violence. You haven't been watching the same five seasons of TV that I have.
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Jan 23, 2024 03:59
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How many characters in those five seasons end up in a better place after making the choice of violence?
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Jan 23, 2024 04:01
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CatstropheWaitress posted:"Satisfying" is in the eye of the beholder, but really the only people involved in the gun fight were the fbi agents and a bunch of nameless mooks. Maybe Jon Hamm could have participated in it, but like, what would you get out of actually seeing the shoot out? I'm talking about the cinematography of it, not the point of the scene. I get that the ending was supposed to be deflating and non-cathartic. I would have just shown the mooks dying in the background without a lot of fanfare than the quick I got you oh nevermind lead up through a bunch of black outs. It felt rushed, not particularly creative, and frustrating in a way that seems more of a Rian Johnson gotcha than clever commentary.
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Jan 23, 2024 04:04
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CatstropheWaitress posted:How many characters in those five seasons end up in a better place after making the choice of violence? Just this season there was Lorraine and Dot and Indira and the 500 Year Old Welsh Dragon. Which depends on how violent you consider throwing people out of their homes when their parents or spouses pull them into the debtors swamp, but I'd say that's pretty violent. But Dot arranges for the death of a civilian in her husband's place and Ole Munch definitely killed a bunch of people who didn't deserve it (but off screen, give or take a poor cashier).
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Jan 23, 2024 04:05
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yes, there is no catharsis, that is the point also rian johnson owns lol
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Jan 23, 2024 04:06
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CatstropheWaitress posted:How many characters in those five seasons end up in a better place after making the choice of violence? That's a unique set of goalposts you have there.
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Jan 23, 2024 04:08
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The cuts to black communicate that it's chaos, but also that the chaos is utterly irrelevant. Nothing happening in the shootout matters, it entirely involves people we do not know. It's honestly very efficient storytelling to communicate that it's unimportant.
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Jan 23, 2024 04:10
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ChesterJT posted:That's a unique set of goalposts you have there. It's really not! I'm just bewildered that someone can watch this show and go "violence cool". It's like, one of the clear themes of 2 and 4 where the core cast is destroyed because of a single act of violence that blows up into big misunderstandings no one can let go or look into with clear eyes. It's like hearing someone watched Mr.Rogers Neighborhood and thought the point was that Mr Rogers doesn't want to be your friend. From this season Dot repeatedly says "let it go" and resorts to it only to save her own skin. The character that can't has his world destroyed, tho they are still alive at the end which is nice.. I can't argue with things working out for Old Munch, other than he's more elemental than an actual guy.
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Jan 23, 2024 04:17
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Arist posted:The cuts to black communicate that it's chaos, but also that the chaos is utterly irrelevant. Nothing happening in the shootout matters, it entirely involves people we do not know. I think that's just an opinion, not a fact. Again I think people get the point that it's non-cathartic it's not some clever set up that a keen eye has to find. It's just unsatisfactory story telling, in my opinion. Also the show might not want to glorify violence, but it absolutely does with how they portray who commits the violence. Where they end up is irrelevant if people gun down everyone all cool and badass like. If it was the director's intent to show that none of it matters why show the violence coherently with all the other scenes in this season? The Welsh guy taking out random schmucks on the ranch, for instance, occurs off screen but it quite obviously occurs in the viewers' mind. Seemed inconsistent to me. Doltos fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Jan 23, 2024 |
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Jan 23, 2024 04:56
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Doltos posted:I think that's just an opinion, not a fact. *posts opinion* *somebody posts a different opinion* "well that's just your opinion"
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Jan 23, 2024 05:25
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Wafflecopper posted:*posts opinion* Yeah I said that because I gave my interpretation of how I felt about the end of the season and it felt like he was trying to lecture in his posts like what he was saying was fact.
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Jan 23, 2024 05:38
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Tehdas posted:Also on Varga: someone opined that he was supposed to symbolise capitalism, mindlessly consuming far beyond that he needs. Vargas is like Mephistopheles. He carries hell around with him.
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Jan 23, 2024 06:02
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I think a better argument to make is that Fargo is a show with a lot of really good cinematography in it and a moment where said cinematography could have been really good, it was actually really not good. In the moment it felt like using fog to cover up the action was a means of cheaping out, to the point where it's actually wild to me they filmed a battle and yet we got this foggy, blinky stuff instead. And if they did film the battle, that means the show was made and filmed in such a way that they thought they would show this violence on the screen. To say avoiding it is somehow inherent to the underpinnings of the entire series is ignoring the fact that it was filmed. Someone was maybe gonna do some cool cinematography and, for some reason, it was dropped. I do not think that reason is "someone forgot the themes of their own show." I would absolutely sooner say it was to avoid giving the morons their blaze of glory but even that seems like something people would've figured out during filming. My occam's razor bet is either the editors couldn't make CGI squibs and blood look good or it was going to cost too much.
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Jan 23, 2024 11:49
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Doltos posted:Binged through the whole season and was completely let down by the writing and editing of the last episode. Why build up the stand off between the militia and FBI if you're going to show it in the worst way possible with 20 black out cuts?. It was unbelievably frustrating that the sheriff is dead to rights from Dot and the FBI interrupts it, lets the guy just wander off, doesn't follow him with more than one person when he's the main target, and then the idiot cop just gets himself offed in the dumbest way possible. Such strong writing completely ruined. The show itself is stepping in in a 'meta' way to make a point about how there is no glory in that alt-right mythmaking. I think everyone goes in expecting that stand off to be the bulk of the episode, and this is the show subverting your expectations (in a way that honestly is very in keeping with the series as a whole, which is always subverting your expectations for a TV show). In doing so, the show itself is robbing Tillman of any potency. He's not a big bad villain, he's just some dude, and of course he's going to go down like a wet squib. The show doesn't want his end to feel satisfying or climactic, because the whole argument of this season is that people like him are obsessed with puffing up their own chests and making their own myths about themselves, whereas in reality they're weak cowards. The show is cutting this short because it wants to communicate to the viewer that Tillman is ultimately not worth their time. In terms of the blackouts/cinematography/fog, I liked it. Having a big cool fight scene would have glamorised what was going on. Remember the Watchmen movie? It had all these cool slo-mo fight scenes and cinematography, which felt like they missed the point of the book, where violence is horrible and uncomfortable. This season is about the limits of the way people mythologise themselves as heroes, especially when that mythmaking hits reality (like January 6th), and I think the way the early episode unfolds is trying to capture that.
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Jan 23, 2024 16:38
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Arist posted:the point is that it isn't satisfying Yes this. The shootout isn't about the fight between two sides, it's about Tillman specifically, and so the editorial choices underscore that he ( and what he represents in the context of American contemporary politics and mythmaking) doesn't deserve any kind of 'epic' resolution. Although I really liked this season, if anything my one criticism is that it feels less like a meditation on America (like all the previous seasons) and more like a pointed rebuke towards Trump/Arpio/alt-right America. Which like, I don't disagree with, but it ends up feeling very didactic.
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Jan 23, 2024 16:40
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Well, in the end the most terrifying villain is actually Lorraine
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Jan 23, 2024 17:02
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thehoodie posted:Well, in the end the most terrifying villain is actually Lorraine though Roy is an absolute monster, Lorraine is responsible for vastly more harm than Roy and she'll never get her comeuppance
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Jan 23, 2024 17:28
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Pattonesque posted:though Roy is an absolute monster, Lorraine is responsible for vastly more harm than Roy and she'll never get her comeuppance She's also not a villain! She is obviously a flawed person but a (possibly anti-)hero in the context of the story. She is the favourite character of every woman I know who has watched this series. She has all the best lines, it's incredibly satisfying watching her belittle both Tillman and those dudes from the bank, and if you're not rooting for her in every scene from like the middle onwards then you're not letting yourself get swept up in the spirit of the show. I feel like this is Skyler White all over again. edit: also for a show so obviously, like, trying to be a bit artsy and not some comic book style whatever, has anyone else noticed the general discourse about this get to comic book levels of dumb, using the same kind of video game style language and logic to discuss it? I've seen tons of posts on Reddit that are like 'I didn't like series 3 because Vargas was too overpowered', like it's a shonen anime or something. Marvel has ruined everything. Imagine people bieng like 'season 1 of The Wire didn't work for me because Avon Barksdale was too OP' The Grumbles fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Jan 23, 2024 |
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Jan 23, 2024 17:41
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The Grumbles posted:She's also not a villain! She is obviously a flawed person but a (possibly anti-)hero in the context of the story. She is the favourite character of every woman I know who has watched this series. She has all the best lines, it's incredibly satisfying watching her belittle both Tillman and those dudes from the bank, and if you're not rooting for her in every scene from like the middle onwards then you're not letting yourself get swept up in the spirit of the show. ...this is a joke post right? Edit: apparently not She runs a predatory debt company and has close ties to Trump and gently caress I'm not going through all of this again can someone else tag in.
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Jan 23, 2024 17:52
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sure she's not the villain to our protagonists, but the ending between her and roy makes very clear that she is the avatar of an evil far deeper and more pervasive than roy. i was rooting for her as a character but i feel like a lot of people are missing in the ending that lorraine's sort of evil is tied to the very core of american institutions
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Jan 23, 2024 17:53
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The Grumbles posted:She's also not a villain! She is obviously a flawed person but a (possibly anti-)hero in the context of the story. She is the favourite character of every woman I know who has watched this series. She has all the best lines, it's incredibly satisfying watching her belittle both Tillman and those dudes from the bank, and if you're not rooting for her in every scene from like the middle onwards then you're not letting yourself get swept up in the spirit of the show. She's a monster that became a billionaire on the suffering of others and will continue to do so after the story concludes. She just happens to identify with several sympathetic characters because they're family or she finds them useful, and she doesn't like Tillman or his type, and so she does some good things in the story. And of course she has her cool victorious moments since she's very proud of herself. And she's definitely satisfying to watch particularly when she wins one over someone more viscerally evil than her. At the same time, her whole life is the exploitation and abuse of small vulnerable people, just with money rather than violence. Well, with threat of violence,but she does that by outsourcing to the police rather than by being the police like Tillman. We even see her using that control she has via debt to push uninvolved people into strange, uncomfortable, and even dangerous situations with no sort of hesitation or remorse. And again, she's a billionaire with eyes on expanding her reach even further into other fields good for exploiting the little people (banking.) While the harm she does to people is less personal, bloody, and misogynistic than Tillman's, it's also far larger in scale than his little fiefdom. On top of that, some of that exploitation manifests specific moments engineered to make the audience cheer for her, because it's good for the people the show guides you emphasize with, bad for the people the show guides you to hate, and usually comes at the cost of people the show doesn't guide you to think too hard about. Anti-hero is definitely apt in the context of the story, but her nature as a person and a force in the world is dark enough that celebrating her is a way of being complicit in the system. To be clear, I like all that and she's a great character. But she's a monster who happened to have shared interests with some good people this time. And I'm 100% sure that's intentional in the writing, including and especially the idea that rooting for her is itself acceptance of great evil.
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Jan 23, 2024 18:06
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The Grumbles posted:She's also not a villain! She is obviously a flawed person but a (possibly anti-)hero in the context of the story. She is the favourite character of every woman I know who has watched this series. She has all the best lines, it's incredibly satisfying watching her belittle both Tillman and those dudes from the bank, and if you're not rooting for her in every scene from like the middle onwards then you're not letting yourself get swept up in the spirit of the show. I'm not saying she's a villain because woman, like folks did with Skyler White, I'm saying she's a villain because she directly profits off the immiseration of others. It's extremely enjoyable watching her get one over on Tillman and the bank dudes. But she should also be in Superjail
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Jan 23, 2024 18:11
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The Grumbles posted:Yes this. The shootout isn't about the fight between two sides, it's about Tillman specifically, and so the editorial choices underscore that he ( and what he represents in the context of American contemporary politics and mythmaking) doesn't deserve any kind of 'epic' resolution. Again that point is missing the other point that people get that it was supposed to be non-cathartic. This isn't a brain wracker here. It's that they shot the non-cathartic stuff unsatisfactory for people who wanted the non-cathartic stuff. There are so many ways to deflate the situation than blinking black outs. That's frustrating in a way that isn't clever. It's poor cinematography in our opinion.
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Jan 23, 2024 18:14
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Killer robot posted:She's a monster that became a billionaire on the suffering of others and will continue to do so after the story concludes. She just happens to identify with several sympathetic characters because they're family or she finds them useful, and she doesn't like Tillman or his type, and so she does some good things in the story. And of course she has her cool victorious moments since she's very proud of herself. And she's definitely satisfying to watch particularly when she wins one over someone more viscerally evil than her. I think that in the context of a show that is often about playing with our expectations of narrative (across all its seasons), the character is an exercise in making a deeply 'bad' person still feel like a hero. It's the show playing with those tropes and seeing what happens. That's why I think it's reductive to be like 'look at this villainous monster' - and I think a big part of the ethos of this season is interrogating that kind of binary 'are you on the right or wrong side' that is pervasive in cultural discourse in America. Having a character who, as another poster said, runs a debt collection agency and has openly funded the Trump administration for her own ends, seems like a good candidate for the writing challenge of 'can she still be someone sympathetic that you end up kind of having a soft spot for and rooting for. Like, if she was a real person I would not like her or want to be associated with her. But I think the story does a good job of making her fun to watch and even find heroic in a weird guilty way.
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Jan 23, 2024 18:51
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goldmine
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Jan 23, 2024 18:59
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This is the polar opposite of a Skylar White situation.
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Jan 23, 2024 19:05
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a piece of media making you root for and somewhat like a villainous monster is pretty common. they do it a bunch of times in previous seasons of Fargo alone
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Jan 23, 2024 19:11
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