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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The entire notion of academics hiding subversive messages in art is passé anyways. Yet Helsing reacts to this nonthreat with the cynical wisdom of ironic detachment: "don't you know corporations use movies to make profit? Nothing matters lol" What I'm saying is neither ironic nor detached, you're just kind of free associating a list of grievances you've apparently developed in your past arguments with other forums posters, levened with whatever warmed over Zizekisms were drifting through your skull at the moment you decided to type this response. I haven't criticized film criticism or analysis per se, nor am I advocating some kind of nihilism. I'm chuckling over this tendency to glorify blandly mediocre super hero or science fiction blockbusters. K. waste has this down to the level of a performance art: ya'll are so far through the looking glass that it's not even surprising when somebody claims that disliking super hero movies is the mark of both a reactionary and a philistine. Far from being an ironic nihilist, I'm really making fairly generic and unremarkable complaints about the tendency for producers having too much control over creatives, leading to bland and repetitive films that tred the cliched and focus group inspired plot lines again and again. It's great that you've found reasons why yet another film where generic enemies get wrecked in repetitive action sequences, culminating with the same dull plot about a super weapon which takes the form of a beam of light shooting into the sky, just like a million films before it, is actually another masterpiece on the level of such brilliant film as The Phantom Menace or Transformers. What's funny to anyone who isn't part of the CinneD hivemind, though, is the tendency many of you have to talk about these things as though they're high art.
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Oct 11, 2016 06:45
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Oct 11, 2016 06:53
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Helsing posted:What I'm saying is neither ironic nor detached, That you are unremarkable does not preclude you from being a cynical ironist. In truth, those traits reinforce eachother. That's why you keep watching "a million films", and reading the attendant threads for the lols, while maintaining a cultivated detachment because these aren't by 'creatives'. These aren't, uh, 'high art'. So you make self-declaredly generic comments about movies you see as generic. Nothing matters, lol. You claim to have read dozens of these threads, and studied my writing specifically, yet you have not figured out some basic recurring points. I will write even more simply: Suicide Squad does not subvert anything. Suicide Squad exemplifies things. For example, it exemplifies how underclass minority characters are kept in IP jail until such a time that they can be deployed strategically. Mexican Facetat is branded the 'worst hero ever' because of his race, and that's the sell. It's the literal purplish miasma over the opening scenes of the film. It is not high art. It's pop art, exploitation film. It's 129 Die In Jet, which is a good enough explanation as any for the recurring air-crash imagery. You are not clever enough to be a nihilist. You are a liberal pushing for Steve-Jobsian 'creatives' to gain control of corporations in order to produce better superhero movies for you. 'Creatives' would solve such as the aforementioned class issue with their, uh, creativity - if only they weren't held back by the suits, right? 'Nobody has to be vile.' Tasteful marketing. You're talking about masterpeices while your thinking remains on the level of plot. That makes you pretentious - a specific term, with a specific definition that applies directly to you. Note how many synonyms for 'bland' you've deployed. People can tell when you're fronting.
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Oct 11, 2016 08:01
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Helsing posted:What's funny to anyone who isn't part of the CinneD hivemind, though, is the tendency many of you have to talk about these things as though they're high art.
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Oct 11, 2016 10:08
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Art? More like fart.
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Oct 11, 2016 14:52
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:"secret genius" comes up a lot, as if you need to be some kind of a savant to write a novel or make a film. Michael Bay has been making super-broad satires for years and years now, to the extent that it's a completely valid critique to say "Bay's satires are too broad, petty, and repetitive to actually have any bite". But mention that Bay likes to do satires and you've just crowned him King Secret Genius
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Oct 11, 2016 15:06
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Jenny Angel posted:Michael Bay has been making super-broad satires for years and years now, to the extent that it's a completely valid critique to say "Bay's satires are too broad, petty, and repetitive to actually have any bite". But mention that Bay likes to do satires and you've just crowned him King Secret Genius Maybe people don't understand that it's okay to like things, and also okay to not like things, and that doesn't have to be bundled with a statement of quality. Michael Bay's Transformers might be brilliant, I can still prefer to slam my fingers in a drawer repeatedly than watch any of them again.
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Oct 11, 2016 15:32
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Has anyone used the term "masterpiece" to describe Suicide Squad?
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Oct 11, 2016 15:51
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I feel like what you just brought up has a lot to do with why CelticPredator owns, in that while he and I are on the opposite side the discussion for a lot of movies, he doesn't do that thing where folks cover their ears and deny the existence of really basic narrative and cinematographic techniques and inevitably get very upset at Slavoj Zizek. He just readily understands that his priorities for these movies are a lot different than a bunch of other goons', and that the points they bring up, while not invalid, are sorta perpendicular to how he approaches a popcorn movie
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Oct 11, 2016 15:52
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MacheteZombie posted:Has anyone used the term "masterpiece" to describe Suicide Squad? only prefixed with 'marketing'
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Oct 11, 2016 15:52
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I don't mind all manner of posts but when threads devolve into posters just insulting one another through thinly veiled wrappings of movie discussion, it gets pretty tiring. Especially because people here like to do the whole 'talking past/talking down' thing a lot in posts where things get prefaced with "I can't believe I have to explain this to you" or "here we have Exhibit A where the poster is attempting to do X but his feeble mind doesn't support..." type of stuff that is so insufferable. I didn't like this movie at all but I enjoy reading thoughts of people who did, even if it doesn't make me want to watch it again. I don't enjoy when people say "stop talking about this so hard" or when 20 people pile on the person who says that when they would probably just go away otherwise. Jenny Angel posted:Michael Bay has been making super-broad satires for years and years now, to the extent that it's a completely valid critique to say "Bay's satires are too broad, petty, and repetitive to actually have any bite". But mention that Bay likes to do satires and you've just crowned him King Secret Genius Satire is just something that gives some folks trouble, I can remember some pretty funny discussions from my college lit class around Breakfast of Champions and the 4th-wall breaking stuff.
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Oct 11, 2016 16:53
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Electromax posted:I don't mind all manner of posts but when threads devolve into posters just insulting one another through thinly veiled wrappings of movie discussion, it gets pretty tiring. Especially because people here like to do the whole 'talking past/talking down' thing a lot in posts where things get prefaced with "I can't believe I have to explain this to you" or "here we have Exhibit A where the poster is attempting to do X but his feeble mind doesn't support..." type of stuff that is so insufferable. HIJK posted:I'm not talking about -isms and it's foolish to talk about -isms when speaking about abstract concepts like "right" or "wrong." -isms create division and little tribes for people to rally around so they have an enemy to focus on. Concepts like "right and wrong" are produced by socialization, cultural expectations, and the nurturing we receive growing up. Politics is downstream of human nature, which is what I'm more interested in here. HIJK posted:I'm not rejecting any labels. If you asked me about my politics in real life I would give you an earful about those -isms and which one I espoused. I just don't give a poo poo about what -isms are driving Steve Rogers in the MCU. I never claimed to be objective: that's a label you're trying to foist on me because of your own confirmation bias.
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Oct 11, 2016 17:20
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Halloween Jack posted:I notice that when people lose their poo poo about criticism in CD, particularly at SMG, it's usually about something relatively straightforward. It's very weird that we've reached a point where one can point out obvious poo poo in popular movies like "Tony Stark lies a lot" and people will act like you declared the film is some complex thesis on Baudrillard's desert of the real. "Droids are people".
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Oct 11, 2016 17:21
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I mean, if an Honest Trailer took pains to point it out, it can't be that abstruse. Gravelly-voiced dude doesn't go on about Lacan that I can remember.
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Oct 11, 2016 17:22
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And even if we were to buy all this crap, what's hilarious is the movies you're attacking and which ones you're ignoring. Like, sure, this is all just mindless blockbuster explodey movies, whatever, but you and all your ilk choose your targets extremely carefully: The Phantom Menace, Transformers, now this film. Why aren't you in the Captain America thread mocking the people who describe Winter Soldier as "just like a 70s political thriller" or in the Star Wars thread pointing out how it's all just a nostalgia dump, and anyone praising the filmmaking is naive. Why aren't you in a thread for another blockbuster that is universally loved talking about how it's actually mindless crap, rather than one that is already extremely divisive and has been critiqued by multiple posters (who did a better job than you because they were talking about the film itself and not some imaginary collective of posters). Nah you chose to come in here with your extremely weak strawman about the delusional "CineD hivemind". Which makes it more ironic that you talk about SMg "free associating a list of grievances (he's) apparently developed in (his) past arguments with other forums posters" since you've done the exact loving opposite and "skimmed this thread" and decided that the "Cinema Discusso clown terrarium" was "reflexively interpret(ing it) as a brilliantly subversive work of political commentary". Wow thanks for doing your diligence on that one. You clown. You gently caress.
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Oct 11, 2016 18:08
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I've learned that whenever someone assigns motives to strangers it is usually their own motives reflected.
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Oct 11, 2016 19:01
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Jenny Angel posted:I feel like what you just brought up has a lot to do with why CelticPredator owns, in that while he and I are on the opposite side the discussion for a lot of movies, he doesn't do that thing where folks cover their ears and deny the existence of really basic narrative and cinematographic techniques and inevitably get very upset at Slavoj Zizek. He just readily understands that his priorities for these movies are a lot different than a bunch of other goons', and that the points they bring up, while not invalid, are sorta perpendicular to how he approaches a popcorn movie Shucks. And yeah.
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Oct 11, 2016 19:49
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Judakel posted:You never do much to break away from strawmen. *yawns and stretches*
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Oct 11, 2016 21:24
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Jenny Angel posted:Michael Bay has been making super-broad satires for years and years now, to the extent that it's a completely valid critique to say "Bay's satires are too broad, petty, and repetitive to actually have any bite". But mention that Bay likes to do satires and you've just crowned him King Secret Genius Even with Pain and Gain there was a little bit of that, but it went into some weird and interesting critical areas, like the pop-culture mania for sleazy true crime stories.
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Oct 11, 2016 21:26
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Even with Pain and Gain there was a little bit of that, but it went into some weird and interesting critical areas, like the pop-culture mania for sleazy true crime stories.
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Oct 11, 2016 21:49
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MacheteZombie posted:Has anyone used the term "masterpiece" to describe Suicide Squad? Not yet, but time will tell. I've only seen it once, and only from a crowded front row. Let me watch the extra trap lord cut from a more comfortable position, and who knows? I might even say it's the greatest movie of all time forever death to the lame-o Avengers or something like that
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Oct 11, 2016 22:36
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I've learned that whenever someone assigns motives to strangers it is usually their own motives reflected. "Whenever we encounter such a purely evil Outside, we should gather the courage to endorse the Hegelian lesson: in this pure Outside, we should recognize the distilled version of our own essence." Helsing's position is not difficult to understand. He is putting extreme emphasis on being a voice of 'common sense', and this specific brand of commonsense just so happens to involve marketing-seminar language and praise of liberal corporations. (In no other context is 'creative' a noun.) This is what happens your beliefs go unexamined. Helsing has likely never thought about this stuff, and has certainly never been in a position of communicating ideas to others. The repetition of synonyms and rephrasings of "it's bad"/"it's not good" demonstrate a difficulty formulating and articulating concepts, so the fallback position is a crude 'upvote' of preexisting internet opinions/memes. This is why Helsing pushes genericism as a form of populism, while simultaneously denouncing it. This has led to the contradictory notion of a populist antipopulism, which is ultimately just a pretentious and pseudopopulist elitism: 'I'm just an average guy who aspires to higher things'. An average guy who praises 'high art' as if it's something alien, something handed down by superiors - those 'creatives' who deserve more control. What's crucial to Helsing's stance is that 'creatives' are other people - other people who do the thinking - while 'the suits' are perceived as his equals: equally 'generic' thinkers, whose relative success is therefore undeserved. It's like a dystopian sci-fi novel. There are 'generics', 'creatives', and a supplementary outgroup: 'the crazies'.
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Oct 12, 2016 05:07
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:That you are unremarkable does not preclude you from being a cynical ironist. In truth, those traits reinforce eachother. That's why you keep watching "a million films", and reading the attendant threads for the lols, while maintaining a cultivated detachment because these aren't by 'creatives'. These aren't, uh, 'high art'. So you make self-declaredly generic comments about movies you see as generic. Nothing matters, lol. Well you and K. waste will have to sit down and work out whether my saying Suicide Squad was bland garbage makes me a liberal or a reactionary. This post is mostly interesting because it shows how your analysis is a sort of rhetorical sausage making machine. You dump whatever is in front of you, turn the crank, and the same generic SMG sausage dribbles out the other end. You could write these posts about any subject or in response to anyone and you'd produce the same haiku-like uniformity I mentioned earlier. In this case you've managed in the space of two posts to determine -- after some confusion over whether I was perhaps a nihilist -- that in fact I'm some kind of air-headed liberal pining for the creative types to resolve class antagonisms. I suppose the thought that you might start to sound slightly silly, going off on a tangent this lone with this much speculation based on such narrow source material, didn't slow you down. This is sort of like watching your analytical powers fail you in real time. Handed the smallest bundle of rope, you swiftly produce a noose for yourself. Turning back to the film itself: it's interesting to me that you immediately interpreted my most specific complaints so far as relating to the plot when they're just as much a complaint about the repetitive visuals. This is yet another film in which the same handful of visual images and situations are recycled. The CGI energy beams blasting apart a city, the over used "ultimate weapon" that serves as a plot token for the characters to collect, the uninspired mobs of henchman who exist only to provide fodder for the protagonists, the currently trendy over use of dadrock to establish characterization, the return, yet again, of the same over used characters. Suppose I went to a restaurant and ordered a new meal, only to have the same meal I ordered last time served under a different name. I learn that the management has determined this single meal is the most profit-maximizing item on the menu, so they've decided it's all they'll be serving. I complain that the food is bland and repetitive and that I wish the restaurant was under different management. Suddenly SMG leaps out from behind a corner, triumphant smirk in place, "Ah hah! Look at this liberal nihilist ironist revealing his true political colours!" Megaman's Jockstrap posted:
Look at how beautifully this post can be inverted  In reply to the line "whenever someone assigns motives... it is usually their own motives reflected" you proceeded to assign five paragraphs of motivation, based almost exclusively on the fact I called a generic film generic. The ol' SMG sausauge maker hard at work.
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Oct 12, 2016 18:56
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Now you've begun speaking in food analogies. I did not write that you are "pining for the creative types to resolve class antagonisms". I wrote that you are stridently 'apolitical', and such concepts as class are outside the scope of your thought. I introduced class in order to politicize the discussion, pointing out what is repressed when you 'do it for the lols' and 'just want tasty food'. (You have, accurately, been referred to as a reactionary because of your efforts to repress the political in this manner, as if anyone cares that you don't like Queen). The 'apolitical' cynicism and ironic detachment, the persistent claims of being non-ideological, generic, etc.... These are the support for your liberal-ideological stance. That's what I had already pointed out with the reference to those Pepe Frog kids whose meaningless outbursts of 'ironic' white supremacism are strictly codependent with liberal hegemony - posing no threat, by design. I am concerned with the formal qualities of your writing, not your secret inner motivations. That is another thing that you should have already figured out by now.
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Oct 12, 2016 20:34
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Helsing posted:Look at how beautifully this post can be inverted You misunderstood my post.
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Oct 12, 2016 21:58
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The only LesterGroans post that does not make my eyes bleed.
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Oct 13, 2016 03:10
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:You misunderstood my post. Death of the author.
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Oct 13, 2016 08:07
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ThePlague-Daemon posted:Death of the author. True, but he blotted out a very important qualifier. So now it's a remix.
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Oct 13, 2016 18:23
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Now you've begun speaking in food analogies. What's distinctive about your posting is that the formal qualities of the subject under analysis disappear into the hungry maw of the SMG sausage machine and what dribbles out the other end is the same barren and silly kind of dreck that you always produce. You are so eager to escape from a mundane discussion of the film as such that you'll take just about any avenue of escape. This is how you end up making the leap that criticizing a poorly made Hollywood blockbuster for being bland is an indicator that the speaker must be "stridently apolitical", as though taste in popcorn flicks is a crucial bellwether of one's political sophistication -- a position I suspect is close to the core of your beliefs. The formal quality of my writing is that I've said Suicide Squad was bland and repetitive, that this is related to the political economy of the Hollywood that produced the film, and that both of these observations are generic enough to have been made before. A more cautious writer than yourself would recognize that such basic and narrow criticisms could emerge from any number of directions -- that only a wounded and flailing ego would be brazen or foolish enough to fire from the hip in the way you're doing. I can imagine that if somebody didn't hold the elevator for your in real life you'd immediately label them a fascist and begin to plot out the world-historical significance of them closing the elevator doors in your face. This is interesting mostly because it parallels your approach to Suicide Squad, your celebrated paragon of Pop Art, in which the same sterile and dull visual motifs, characters and plot points are recycled yet again. Sure, we can identify points at which this film winks at its audience -- the treatment of the intellectual property in the franchise and the treatment of the incarcerated minority characters within the narrative, the implicit indictments of the American empire, the purgatorial nature of the city that the characters must enter -- the trouble here is that the film itself is so stale, so repetitive, so utterly replete with cliches. This is why my suspicion -- which you've done little to allay with your posts here -- is that your primary source of enjoyment of these otherwise mediocre films is the elaborate way in which you analyze them, and the subsequent thrill you get from debating your form of analysis here in CineD. It rather calls to mind a comment I once saw you make about vidya games -- that in essence the games are unenjoyable absent the criticism and game community that surrounds them. I confess I didn't find the argument entirely plausible on its own, but as a sort of a rough guide to how you approach media it speaks volumes. Megaman's Jockstrap posted:True, but he blotted out a very important qualifier. So now it's a remix. *record scratch*
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Oct 13, 2016 19:40
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Helsing posted:The formal quality of my writing is that I've said Suicide Squad was bland and repetitive, that this is related to the political economy of the Hollywood Well, now we've established that you don't understand the difference between form and content. "The movie was bland" is not a formal quality. So, as a nice illustration, the content of your post (the implicit assertion that you know what a formal quality is) is contradicted by the form of your post (the misuse of the phrase 'formal quality'). Again, "the movie was bland" is content. The form of your posts is the constant repetition of this phrase without elaboration over multiple paragraphs, bizarre terminology, digressions into conspiracy fantasy, and so-forth. The confusion of form and content is the likely origin of your weird thoughts, since you can clearly identify content ("there is a blue laser") but have no language to describe form ("it's, uh... bland laser... bland laser..."). Same with your attempts at reading my posts. You can identify basic content, but the form of my writing eludes you ("it's a sausage machine...???"). You are upset about something, but can't articulate it.
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Oct 14, 2016 00:26
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Helsing, you say that the "big bad laser thing" is an overused device, and I agree, not many Hollywood movies attempt to do as much with it as Mystery Men did with the Psychofrakulator back in 1999, but I think the way it's done in Suicide Squad, as a sort of whirling mushroom cloud of abstract machinery, is actually pretty interesting and helps reflect the bigger thematic criticism of the technocratic security state. The US government maintains global hegemony using machinery, so the government asset that turns against them creates this sort of abstract expression of Big Machine in the image of one of the greatest weapons of mass destruction of the 20th century.
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Oct 14, 2016 00:43
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I Before E posted:Helsing, you say that the "big bad laser thing" is an overused device, and I agree, not many Hollywood movies attempt to do as much with it as Mystery Men did with the Psychofrakulator back in 1999, but I think the way it's done in Suicide Squad, as a sort of whirling mushroom cloud of abstract machinery, is actually pretty interesting and helps reflect the bigger thematic criticism of the technocratic security state. The US government maintains global hegemony using machinery, so the government asset that turns against them creates this sort of abstract expression of Big Machine in the image of one of the greatest weapons of mass destruction of the 20th century. I actually got major Mystery Men vibes from Suicide Squad, but in the sense that it felt like Mystery Men managed to parody it almost 20 years in advance.
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Oct 14, 2016 00:53
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:I actually got major Mystery Men vibes from Suicide Squad, but in the sense that it felt like Mystery Men managed to parody it almost 20 years in advance. Suicide Squad feels like they put War Zone, Mystery Men, and Snyder in a blender and got a weird but still fun mess out. I'm not sure whether I'm interested in seeing the re-edited version because that weird tonal friction was part of the fun.
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Oct 14, 2016 00:59
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I Before E posted:Suicide Squad feels like they put War Zone, Mystery Men, and Snyder in a blender and got a weird but still fun mess out. I'm not sure whether I'm interested in seeing the re-edited version because that weird tonal friction was part of the fun. it felt like there was some League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in there as well.
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Oct 14, 2016 01:04
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:it felt like there was some League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in there as well. Ooh, It's been a while since I've seen that one, I should revisit it.
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Oct 14, 2016 01:06
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I Before E posted:Ooh, It's been a while since I've seen that one, I should revisit it. Not especially worth it but if you're going to chuck an American in there Tom Sawyer was an inspired choice. Apart from that it's a bit of a turd
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Oct 14, 2016 04:40
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DeimosRising posted:Not especially worth it but if you're going to chuck an American in there Tom Sawyer was an inspired choice. Apart from that it's a bit of a turd Oh I'm well aware, I just want to remember how bad it was.
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Oct 14, 2016 05:41
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https://twitter.com/ClayEnos/status/786613380580831233
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Oct 14, 2016 06:33
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This kind of thing is what I enjoy about Leto's Joker: that it's Jared Leto the person as The Joker, this complete goofball tryhard trying to put on this ICP-rear end killer clown facade and failing at it just enough that it's endearing how hard he's going for it even though he's objectively ridiculous.
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Oct 14, 2016 06:39
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I Before E posted:This kind of thing is what I enjoy about Leto's Joker: that it's Jared Leto the person as The Joker, this complete goofball tryhard trying to put on this ICP-rear end killer clown facade and failing at it just enough that it's endearing how hard he's going for it even though he's objectively ridiculous. more like, "Hey Jared, we gotta kick up the hype machine, do something super goofy, but edgy, for millennials!" *website movie aggregators* "Jokester Leto Clowning Around, What A Clown!!! Suicide Squad Does It Again!
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Oct 14, 2016 07:11
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