Maxwell Lord posted:

Yeah, so Armond White is a Respectability Politics, "Welfare state is slavery!" conservative, and THAT'S why he's writing for NR.

Good to know.

Gyges posted:

According to Stephen Root, it's all part of the process that helps prepare them for a successful transplant. The hypnotism and acceptance of the situation seem to both be vital components, plus while they're prepping the victim for the procedure they do still have to put on a nice party/auction for all the local rich people.

Acebuckeye13 posted:

That's, uh, not an urban legend. At Auschwitz, new arrivals would be split into two groups-healthy young-to-middle aged men and women, and children, the elderly, the sick, and the frail. Those capable of work were sent to be worked to death at adjacent camps, while everyone else would be routed to the 'showers'. And because they were new arrivals, they wouldn't know that nobody came back.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

In the logic of the film, he would literally have the brain of a white person, losing his talent in the process. Chris believes, to some extent, that his talent comes from his blackness.

It's important to keep in mind the photographs in those early scenes. It's fairly generic 'urban' imagery: a pigeon flying between skyscrapers, a chained pitbull in front of a brick wall, a vulnerable child on a city sidewalk.... Chris fears that, in making too much money, he will lose the ability to capture these things. Moreover, he would be producing inauthentic images for 'the man'.

The truth is, of course, that Chris was 'a sellout' from the beginning, making his modest success with palatable images of children and animals. Like, those are what he uses to convey 'the black experience': children and animals. Think about that for a second.

Chris absolutely doesn't fear going unrecognized or unappreciated - white liberals eat this stuff up. What he's afraid of being embraced by the wrong people and, moreover, that he will like it.

Darko posted:

I know white (and hispanic) "liberals" who saw the movie and don't get it at all. I had one guy talk about how great it was to me...and then explain the movie and point of the movie sounding exactly like Rose's brother. I just made a Chris face when it happened.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

Racism, particularly the very idosyncratic kind we have in the US where nothing matters other than Black and White, is economically motivated. Racialization is a justifcation for conquest and domination. I have no clue why people are acting like it's just gratuitous cruelty.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

Not anyone in particular, I just mean in general, what do people think the point of racism is?


He doesn't see color. He sees value. It's nothing personal, of course. This is much more insidious.

Hat Thoughts posted:

still obsessed with the guy i heard saying the problem with the movie was that "once again scientists are the bad guy"

Darko posted:

I had to ask the person I was with what was said, I'll let you know if she remembers. I kind of let stuff like that go in one in and out the other unless it's especially egregious.

Darko posted:

Tribalism is a huge part of it to. In fact, the economic part works so well because of the natural inclination of tribalism.

Darko posted:

Tribalism is definitely a natural inclination; primates do it, and humans have historically done it since we can trace back.

Grouping people according to skin color and features is something that European colonialism created, as this was the first time it could be done on a universal, near-worldwide level, and it "naturally" stuck because we're visual creatures and group things according to visuals constantly (probably).

Appealing to tribalism doesn't mean appealing to race distinctions in itself, but people grouping themselves due to some similarity (including location) and creating an "other." Europeans just making a dumb visual grouping like that is something that easily works on a lot of people.

Magic Hate Ball posted:

Of course, white people are extremely goofy, this could just as easily be a film about getting tricked into going to a Christian pizza party.

Magic Hate Ball posted:

The mean joke is that it works.

Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:

So it's a metaphor for the internalized process of Ice Cube going from Amerikkka's Most Wanted to Are We There, Yet??

Or Eldridge Cleaver pushed into The Sunken Place and having his brain replaced by an old Mormon grandpa?

Groovelord Neato posted:

rosemary's baby and stepford wives weren't "it's all in their head". just like the twilight zone episode improperly cited. do you folks even follow the posts you're defending.

i could certainly read all the shapeshifting alien poo poo in john carpenter's the thing as the whiskey dreams of macready since none of it happens until everyone goes to sleep. he's become paranoid after seeing someone murdered. he finds solace in the bottle at the end of the dream. it's certainly a reading but it isn't particularly interesting, and is far less interesting than a "straight" discussion of the film.

weekly font posted:

Discussion becomes more than "IT GOOD?" Yeah.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

Hmm.


It originates from the film itself, with his studio photography set to neo-soul. This whole idea that either you're authentically black, or you're a white person trapped in a black person's body is odd, to say the least, because it doesn't even take into account the differences between the black characters. It's as if they're just "black" and the threat is "turning white". It's somewhat more complex than that.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

Wesley Snipes.

ruddiger posted:

Dave Chappelle joked about Eddie Murphy being called "Darkness" by Rick James because he and his brother were so much darker toned than other black celebrities at the time. It'd be naive to not realize there's a very real problem within black communities about the blackness of one's skin as well.

See also: Hollywood pairing up lighter mocha skinned women with white leading men. Jungle Fever's a great movie for this type of discussion.

Isaiah Washington, Mekhi Phife, Delroy Lindo, Keith David, Charles S. Dutton, and Don Cheadle are all black as gently caress tho.

Darko posted:

American black people generally aren't as dark because many of our ancestors were raped by white people somewhere down the line (if we weren't mixed post-slavery on top of that). We also lost a lot of our African facial features with those mixtures as well (which is why black Africans and Americans can immediately tell each other apart). So, just by numbers, many black actors won't be Snipes-dark. Europe, especially, doesn't have that same history, so you get more black people that are closer to their African heritage.

Groovelord Neato posted:

no.

Criminal Minded posted:

I mean, once you travel down this road, you have to contend with the facts that: there is no person named Chris, he has no girlfriend, they don't visit her family, etc.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

Yes, they want to degrade him in order to literally make him like them. That's what's meant by "belonging in this neighborhood". Not that "black people shouldn't socialize with white people". This is also why John Nada wants Frank Armitage to put on the glasses. He doesn't have a vocabulary to describe what Frank Armitage likely already knows. (In the short story They Live is based on, it's literally a botched hypnotic trigger that wakes John Nada up.)The trauma of seeing for the first time is compensated for with with a totally fleshed out, internally consistent conspiracy theory.

This isn't a plot description of what happens in the film, this is describing the experience of the POV character. This is also crucial to the sister films about resistance to assimilatory elitism, Rosemary's Baby, The Stepford Wives, They Live, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, etc.

Magic Hate Ball posted:

"fear of a mulatto planet"

Magic Hate Ball posted:

The real villain is multiculturalism, which only seeks to take the best of any culture and leave behind the impurities.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

So then, again, what Chris stands to lose is something he's mostly afraid he never had. That's the subtext of his relationship with Rose. Why are they a couple in the first place?

Simplex posted:

essential elements of being black.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

This is actually a quick aside in The Invisibles.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

It's really rewarding to go in and bite chunks out of it once in a while.

Hat Thoughts posted:

I don't think that meshes with the logic of the film, I mean the one lady's married to Logan so its not like it would've been out of the ordinary for them to show up as guests at the party & then they could hang out with the ppl @ their party instead of having 2 serve them the whole time.

King Vidiot posted:

But you can apply that to literally every movie, even to documentaries because no matter how hard a doc tries to be totally impartial it's always a reconstructed reality.

Magic Hate Ball posted:

If only he'd given her a Pepsi.

Hat Thoughts posted:

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

he's doing pretty standard undergrad-type lit crit in a forum of people who get super loving mad if you make a post that's "markedly off from the popular reading of the film", and whether it's intended to be or not it's the best troll on the forums.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

It should be the ending to Thriller, with Chris comforting Rose, suggesting they go get something to eat, then turning around to reveal reptiloid eyes.

Escobarbarian posted:

I believe the apartment is just intended as a normal apartment that someone doing fairly well for themselves in New York City would have. There's plenty of political imagery in this movie but that isn't part of it imo - the idea that the apartment is meant to have some bland white Starbucks drinker style to it and that therefore Chris is a sellout seems completely invented. It's literally just an apartment.

i am the bird posted:

So, to complete the reading, Chris constructs Root the bodysnatcher to affirm the paranoia of 'stolen black essence' but then imagines that the bodysnatcher explicitly rejects the idea of black essence because [reasons].

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

I wouldn't say "utterly typical" but "aspirational" is dead on. It's bougie but in a really specific way. Stunting for the 'gram, as the kids would say.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

I don't know if Chris would ever put on Gummo for mood. Hard to say.