- Effectronica
- May 31, 2011
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Fallen Rib
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Sorry, I wasn't very clear there. I was attempting to provide a quick example of when children's art can be cool and interesting, so I thought I'd read the characters of Jungle Book as representing the underclasses of the inner city. Like, Baloo is obviously homeless, Bagheera is a manic street preacher (a Black Panther!), the wolves/vultures are street punks, Louie is a gangster or lounge singer (jazz? I dunno, some kinda old-timey stuff), Kaa is I guess a pimp, Shere Khan a murderer of some sort, the elephants would be cops. All these groups want to claim the orphan Mowgli in some fashion.
To be clearer, Baloo's culture-gender mixing is good. He is a hero, who successfully seduces Louie and topples his palace, freeing Mowgli.
It's amazing how your subversive "reading" comes within the orbit of deliberate choices by the filmmakers and camp readings without ever actually touching them.
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Oct 6, 2014 03:14
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May 16, 2024 08:46
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- Effectronica
- May 31, 2011
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Fallen Rib
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I thought death of the author was about NOT assigning dumb interpretation and intentions into everything
Barthes's argument in the original essay is that it's impossible to believably assign a single authoritative meaning onto things, and so it's not really what anyone does, in CD or elsewhere.
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Oct 7, 2014 02:08
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- Effectronica
- May 31, 2011
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Fallen Rib
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Fair enough, I won't break up individual posts anymore, although I do worry about some of y'alls ability to figure out what I am responding to, since a common complaint seems to be that CR is allegedly unclear or duplicitous (while simultaneously being too dumb or basic, even to the point of being childlike).
Meh, it was a quick idea off the top of my head meant to serve as an example. It's certainly not a strong one.
The target audience is anyone who interested in what movies are coming out and what some goons thought about them. It is the same audience that reads other front page material, the same that reads the forums. You and me and any other terrible nerd.
I have not noticed a “marked” difference between CR and other features. The reviews are usually straight, with the occasional experiment (like the Gone Girl one) and some that outright mock the film without any attempt at review. But even the serious ones still fall within the general dorky point-of-view that is Something Awful. Sometimes they are good and I agree, other times they are good yet I disagree, and yes sometimes they are bad (like the Gone Girl one), but those aren't often enough to elicit much emotion from me. WTF D&D is pretty consistently creative and funny imo, but some of them are boring too. It happens.
Don't forget, if you don't like the CR review about it, there is usually a thread in CD where other people with widely different opinions and notions are talking about the movie.
If you don't like something, you should definitely criticize it, but try to criticize it well. A lot of the previous noise was not good criticism, because they were not attempting to explain what was wrong with the review of a given kid's movie, but just expressing endless incredulity over the fact that a kid's movie was reviewed at all.
And there are several main and sub forums on here for people to blow off steam with low effort insults, if that's all they want to do. This thread as near as I can tell is intended for constructive (or what passes for it) feedback. Now some of y'all are being coaxed into doing so, that's good!
This is what I mean about bad criticism – it appears like you didn't really read any review. The infamous Boxtrolls review (for example) discusses all of these things that I bolded. Feel free to check if you think I'm lying, which brings me to the paranoia:
Tatum Girlparts, you understood the Gone Girl thing correctly. So did I, and I haven't seen the film nor am I interested in doing so. It's one thing to fear being mislead by the reviewers, but don't you even trust yourself?
I don't really think CR is very “leftist”, the reviewers as a group seem to have both progressive and conservative opinions. And in spite of being a crazy gay retard, I'm not the one trying to ascribe weird motivations/inner thoughts to others. You could be right, but it's more likely that we can safely take them at their word. Criticizing anyone's politics is good, but ranting about vague left-wing bias, well, you should know how that comes across as.
How do we know the reviewers have a “perceived social obligation” and are “outraged”, that they decided a movie was “problematic” before they saw it? It's far more likely they enjoy watching and thinking about film, and call problems as they see them.
How do you determine this merit? I hope you don't use “pre-approved” opinions
There's that paranoia again. They are colluding with the “leftist” hivemind! I bet that gamer girl is involved somehow, perhaps she cuckolded the film industry as well!
Your first reading is actually pretty good. The second falls apart, but you did that on purpose.
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” - Freud
“Yeah? And sometimes it's just a big brown dick in your mouth!” - Carlin
Actually, both the psychologist and comedian are wrong (or only half right). It's always both. And that's ok, seriously. Penises are good. Vaginas too for that matter. Fear them not, goons.
More paranoia. If someone is actually saying they are the end-all be-all of anything, that's life giving you a big hint: ignore this person. Your silly Speed analysis is great, and not dumb at all. Of course you are free to say that it is, as I am free to say that it isn't. No one is silenced, unless they silence themselves. Don't give in to weakness.
Masturbating is fun and healthy (don't overdo it though. I shouldn't have to say that, but y'know, nerds).
And I never said the Jungle book was about King Louie (this is what im talking about when I mock reading comprehension). It's about Mowgli becoming a man. Louie is definitely the most interesting villain, as opposed to the tiger and snake, but the story isn't about him. His quest for weapons of mass destruction is a subplot, at best. But it wasn't a strong reading, as I admitted, so whatever
DUDE! Someone should tell the mods/admins! WE CANT THEY'RE PART OF IT! What?! Alas, we did not heed the warning of Nolan's Batmen
I read through all of this, and I was impoverished by the experience. I think you should take the advice people are giving you to heart.
Oh, wait, that's a "low effort insult", so let me put it to you this way: the sum total of your mental powers comes out to one part nonsense, one part especially inane conspiracy theories, one part weaksauce anger, and one part bathos, and these all produce zero meaning when put together.
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Oct 7, 2014 04:33
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- Effectronica
- May 31, 2011
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Fallen Rib
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'Reading' only looks difficult friends, it's actually pretty easy once you get some practice at it. Good luck!
I read every bit of your nonsense. It took me a while because every time I started something new would lead me to make pained expressions, but eventually I read all the way through it, and I concluded that there was literally nothing in there that had any meaning whatsoever, and I would have been better as a human being and a reader not to read through it, and instead just tell you to gently caress off.
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Oct 7, 2014 04:38
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- Effectronica
- May 31, 2011
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Fallen Rib
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The problem is that internet feminists/gender-benders/marxists/jingoists/lacanists/desconstructionists think they have the monopoly of the truth (the moral being relativized as social constructs) that they have found a way to eternal paradise and end of social conflicts. If you don't think like us, you are a republican/conservative/alienated/privileged white male.
That's not a problem unless you're willing to go out on a limb and say that it's impossible to be funny or communicate clearly if you're any of those things.
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Oct 7, 2014 21:30
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- Effectronica
- May 31, 2011
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Fallen Rib
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I don't think that's possible. I never saw anything funny coming from radicals and fundamentalists.
have you ever seen slavoj zizek talk?
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Oct 7, 2014 21:44
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- Effectronica
- May 31, 2011
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Fallen Rib
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It's been less than a day, yeesh, give me some time.
A movie is an inanimate object. It doesn't have thoughts or feelings, it doesn't have have goals or ideals, and it certainly doesn't have any intentions. Defining a movie's quality by "how well does it accomplish what it intended" is a fool's exercise because there's no way to measure what a movie intends.
Even if you don't believe in "death of the author*," that old CineD chestnut, it's impossible to say that a movie shares intentions with its creators because movies take thousands of man-hours from hundreds of people to be made. The classic argument is that Ridley Scott doesn't think that Deckard is a replicant, but Harrison Ford does. Who's correct!? They were both involved in the character's creation! The answer is neither of them are technically "correct," and the ambiguity and people discussing what THEY thought the answer was is what makes the movie fun.
*This phrase gets abused a lot by CineD to mean to basically ignore every tertiary piece of info about a movie, when really it just means that everyone's interpretation of a movie is valid (and just as worthy of criticism), including the author's. This mutated definition is probably what lead to CineD declaring the movie as "misogynist garbage!" when it was written and single-handedly adapted to the screen by a woman (who has said that feminism in literature depends on female villains just as much as female heroes), and directed by a guy who's made multiple movies touching on the pressure on men to be masculine.
Yep, I agree completely. Thanks for phrasing it better than I ever could.
There's no way to measure what a movie intends, and yet interpreting Casablanca as a fantasy epic would be either a joke or a sign of severe brain damage.
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Oct 16, 2014 21:16
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- Effectronica
- May 31, 2011
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Fallen Rib
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It's also really, really hard to be effective at something you didn't set out to do in a work of art. I've never seen a comedy that made me have an existential crisis, I've never been entertained by the high-intensity action of a British Period drama.
Citing a film like Blade Runner that where two people involved have a different opinion on it's ambiguity basically shows that the movie succeeded in it's aim of being ambiguous. (Fine, the creative team succeeded, if I can't use metaphor and shorthand for some weird reason).
For that matter, in a case like that, there's generally often a stronger answer and you can determine it from the rest of the movie. In the case of Blade Runner, it (arguably) weakens Deckard and the movie if he's a replicant.
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Oct 16, 2014 21:35
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- Effectronica
- May 31, 2011
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Fallen Rib
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I made a simple mistake of switching the two around, sorry! It doesn't invalidate the rest of my argument.
So does it make equal amounts of sense for Casablanca to be interpreted as:
a) a sword-and-sandals fantasy movie
b) a period piece
c) a drama with heavy political overtones
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Oct 16, 2014 21:56
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May 16, 2024 08:46
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- Effectronica
- May 31, 2011
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Fallen Rib
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As long as you can back your argument up, absolutely. The problem - one of them, at least - is that CR either can't or just doesn't.
The broader point with those three is that the first one is basically impossible to back up in a serious way, while the second one is supportable fairly easily as long as you ignore that this 1940s "period piece" was made in 1942, as a response to, "It's impossible to determine intent at all for films".
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Oct 17, 2014 04:23
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Oct 6, 2014 03:14
