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I'm not sure if we're looking at a chicken-or-egg scenario here but probably the majority of spy/espionage/thriller fiction is suuuuuper misogynistic. Possibly inherited that from its grand-daddy pulp adventure. On top of all the racism. The Living Daylights is apparently kind of weird about it since M specifically points out that as they overcome racism, 'the negro races' are turning out plenty of brilliant scientists, artists, athletes etc, and thus it's only a matter of time til they produce a great criminal, who the antagonist of the book aspires to be. Also funny that apparently Bond's recurring friend in the CIA is always recast in every movie to keep him from getting too popular, even in movies that implicitly or explicitly share continuity.
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Feb 24, 2019 06:58
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:i can say though that the british do have an espionage culture that's pretty unique and sophisticated because hypocrisy is a british national sport: it makes for good spy recruitment material.
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Feb 24, 2019 06:59
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I'm not sure if we're looking at a chicken-or-egg scenario here but probably the majority of spy/espionage/thriller fiction is suuuuuper misogynistic. Possibly inherited that from its grand-daddy pulp adventure. it's fiction written by men for a male audience, there's no big secret here imo
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Feb 24, 2019 07:01
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Slasher films as a genre are a normalization of sexualized violence against women. It's loving crazy that it's a genre at all. One thing I've noticed several times, and would love to see a grand list of, is when a woman in a film (of any genre) is punished for her sexuality. Like, a woman will be shown as a self-possessed sexual being at some point in the film and later (or sometimes immediately) is killed, not necessarily with any causal link. I've kept away from Hollywood films for a long time, but back in prison a friend of mine would go to all of the little Saturday movie screenings they had and I asked him to report back to me if any women were punished for their sexuality. Somewhere in the range of 1/3rd of the films he would report positive, but he was kind of a lunkhead who probably missed some of them. One example he gave was Valerian (which I haven't seen) - he said Rihanna showed up, was sexy, and died and the death made no logical sense.
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Feb 24, 2019 08:43
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Yeah, I remember thinking that was weird when I saw it too. Pretty sure she was the only major character to die as well, and the only PoC. Even the villain got to live.
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Feb 24, 2019 16:09
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it's academy awards time, baby. the grifter who made the safety pin box and the "Oscars So White" hashtag is coming as a guest, and you can bet she's not going to be talking about how hollywood's race problem goes deeper than an awards show
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Feb 24, 2019 19:22
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Christoph posted:Slasher films as a genre are a normalization of sexualized violence against women. It's loving crazy that it's a genre at all. that movie makes no loving sense in general. everything from the plot to the casting is just incomprehensible. like the very first scene is this complicated bullshit that no audience member would ever understand
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Feb 24, 2019 23:57
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I actually liked that trans-dimensional bazaar scene as complicated as it was, it was at least science-fiction and not just futurist fantasy. But then they go back to budget death star and it's all downhill from there. I mean for gently caress's sake, the computer voiceover introduces 2 or 3 alien races that are never heard from again, and actually describes the station's economy as being "in shambles" which at no point is relevant to the plot.
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Feb 25, 2019 00:22
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No. 1 Apartheid Fan posted:From Russia With Love's final confrontation is an old lady disguised as a maid trying to kick Bond with a poisoned blade that flips out of her shoe, and manages to make that ridiculous scenario genuinely tense red grant using a pretty basic counterintelligence technique to trap bond is still the most dangerous situation he's ever been in, and i'm including the time he was strapped to a table with a laser pointed at his nads
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Feb 25, 2019 01:54
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A Buttery Pastry posted:The fact that half their intelligence service was working for the USSR probably helped with the uniqueness. even though le carres spy novels were more realistic than flemings they still served the same propagandistic purpose of making english spies out to be way more competent than they really were and carre himself admitted this John Le Carre posted:For a while you wondered whether the fools were pretending to be fools as some kind of deception, or whether there was a real efficient service somewhere else. from an excellent article that took me a ridiculously long time to find again i got the link from a telugu message board google deciding that what i actually wanted to read about was those novichok guys from russia even though my search terms had nothing to do with russia Christoph posted:One example he gave was Valerian (which I haven't seen) - he said Rihanna showed up, was sexy, and died and the death made no logical sense. valerian with its weirdly stilted conversations between teenage cops about marriage is actually pretty tame on the luc besson misogyny scale i vacillate sometimes wondering whether the all time winner is fifth element where the perfect being is a ninety pound waif with the collected life experience of an infant or leon the professional which is maybe two rewrites away from being a sincere lolita story
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Feb 25, 2019 03:16
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Christoph posted:I've kept away from Hollywood films for a long time, but back in prison a friend of mine would go to all of the little Saturday movie screenings they had and I asked him to report back to me if any women were punished for their sexuality. Somewhere in the range of 1/3rd of the films he would report positive, but he was kind of a lunkhead who probably missed some of them. One example he gave was Valerian (which I haven't seen) - he said Rihanna showed up, was sexy, and died and the death made no logical sense. Did you keep a tally on the wall of your cell?
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Feb 25, 2019 05:58
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Some Guy TT posted:from an excellent article that took me a ridiculously long time to find again i got the link from a telugu message board google deciding that what i actually wanted to read about was those novichok guys from russia even though my search terms had nothing to do with russia LMAo the daily mail is responsible for the creation of MI5
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Feb 25, 2019 06:37
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General Dog posted:Did you keep a tally on the wall of your cell? I got a new teardrop tattoo each time. btw prison inmates watch the gently caress out of COPS and its variants, Law & Order, and read lots and lots of lovely novels where police are the heroes. Tough-on-crime prison inmates outnumber the ones who are like "the justice system sucks, we should be rehabilitated and not caged".
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Feb 25, 2019 06:48
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StuG Jeebus posted:I actually liked that trans-dimensional bazaar scene as complicated as it was, it was at least science-fiction and not just futurist fantasy. But then they go back to budget death star and it's all downhill from there. it would have been a fun scene if its established its rules clearly but its all over the place. also the protagonist sucked, what an unlikable douche babypolis has issued a correction as of 07:20 on Feb 25, 2019 |
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Feb 25, 2019 07:17
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Some Guy TT posted:valerian with its weirdly stilted conversations between teenage cops about marriage is actually pretty tame on the luc besson misogyny scale i vacillate sometimes wondering whether the all time winner is fifth element where the perfect being is a ninety pound waif with the collected life experience of an infant or leon the professional which is maybe two rewrites away from being a sincere lolita story Given that he just straight up admits Leon was inspired by his relationship with the 15 year old girl he started dating when he was 31, I'm not even sure it takes more than just squinting at the plot a bit to be a sincere Lolita story. "Oh noooo this 12 year old keeps trying to seduce me and desperately wants a relationship with me and just loves me so much what do I doooooo I'm ever so slightly conflicted" (the answer is marry her, get her pregnant, then dump her for the 90 lb waif of Fifth Element)
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Feb 25, 2019 09:14
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It's funny that Stallone is the star of two seperate franchises that started out thoughtful and well made and both devolved into 80s schlock propaganda.
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Feb 25, 2019 12:15
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Imagine what what would happen with a Nighthawks franchise Though I guess Cobra kind of fits in the schlock sequel category
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Feb 25, 2019 12:48
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I've been taking a trip down memory lane to when I was a teenager smoking hella mids and watching Adult Swim and man, satire from the early-mid 2000s has this retrospectively naive fear of fundamentalist Christianity permeating it. I know it was largely a result of Bush resurrecting and repoliticizing the evangelical movement and thus was a legitimate fear but in hindsight. But since those sort of Bush style "compassionate conservative" attempts to paper over the ruthlessness of the right-wing agenda (with a rhetorical cloak derived from the parts of Christianity to which fundies paid lip service) have been subsumed by the frothing insanity of the current conservative discourse in the interim, it feels a lot less threatening today. I'm not trying to claim Trump was some sort of rupture that changed the actual substance of conservative politics or anything but I think its fair to say it represented the end of the Bush-Romney continuum of smoothbrained religious lunatics, at least on a national level. I mean, fear of the Christian right was and is totally coherent, but their role as a cultural apologist for the nihilistic libertarian streak in American ideology are what make them most profoundly dangerous, not the sort of ignorant prescriptive impulses that most frightened writers in the early 2000s into joking about outlawing evolution, or sex ed or graven images or whatever. anyway, with that in mind, stuff like Squidbillies and Moral Orel remain good comedy, but I wonder how comprehensible their satire will be to subsequent generations that basically missed that period in American political life.
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Feb 28, 2019 02:25
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the fundies are right about one thing our media is pretty insanely antichristian you dont even have to go so far as adult swim to find examples disneys hunchback of notre dame went out of its way to turn frollo into a grand inquisitor who was burning everyone to death as heretics when in the book hes just a weird creeper i dont think its a coincidence that religious faith starts to plummet as these kinds of portrayals become more common it happened really fast too is whats easy to forget the simpsons go to church every sunday because thats what people did back when the show started but that aspect is now one of the cartoons many weird ancient artifacts only made doubly ironic because the simpsons was one of the bigger spearheads that caused explicitly antichristian messages to become more acceptable and mainstream in the first place
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Feb 28, 2019 03:17
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Some Guy TT posted:the fundies are right about one thing our media is pretty insanely antichristian you dont even have to go so far as adult swim to find examples disneys hunchback of notre dame went out of its way to turn frollo into a grand inquisitor who was burning everyone to death as heretics when in the book hes just a weird creeper i dont think its a coincidence that religious faith starts to plummet as these kinds of portrayals become more common It was always unusual to see sitcom families attend church. Tv has actually always been extremely secular, because religion is an impediment to the operation of capitalism. The Simpsons stands more or less alone on television in presenting the characters as having and participating in a religion (Christmas doesn’t count because only Charlie Brown ever acknowledged Jesus as having anything to do with it). Can you name another tv family that engages in religious worship? I know Rugrats had a passover episode.
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Feb 28, 2019 03:31
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Some Guy TT posted:the fundies are right about one thing our media is pretty insanely antichristian you dont even have to go so far as adult swim to find examples disneys hunchback of notre dame went out of its way to turn frollo into a grand inquisitor who was burning everyone to death as heretics when in the book hes just a weird creeper i dont think its a coincidence that religious faith starts to plummet as these kinds of portrayals become more common actually the reverse on Frollo- in the original he's the Archdeacon of Notre Dame, making him one of the most powerful clerics in France being intensely horny for some random brown girl. the disney movie goes out of its way to say no, that guy is someone else, who is good actually, Frollo is just some judge who really fuckin' hates gypsies and loves Jesus.
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Feb 28, 2019 03:37
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Frog Act posted:I've been taking a trip down memory lane to when I was a teenager smoking hella mids and watching Adult Swim and man, satire from the early-mid 2000s has this retrospectively naive fear of fundamentalist Christianity permeating it. since pop culture, and comedy in particular, is so obsessed with "punching up," they should bring evangelicals into that fold
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Feb 28, 2019 03:42
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:It was always unusual to see sitcom families attend church. Tv has actually always been extremely secular, because religion is an impediment to the operation of capitalism. The Simpsons stands more or less alone on television in presenting the characters as having and participating in a religion (Christmas doesn’t count because only Charlie Brown ever acknowledged Jesus as having anything to do with it). one reason we dont see that so much is that having religious people on screen makes them a lot easier to mock however inadvertently which is why simpsons was doing it in the first place i think there used to be more of an assumption that everyone was christian because america is a christian nation but hell i wasnt even alive back then and that assumption might have just come from hearing too many ahistorical right wing talking points Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:actually the reverse on Frollo- in the original he's the Archdeacon of Notre Dame, making him one of the most powerful clerics in France being intensely horny for some random brown girl. the disney movie goes out of its way to say no, that guy is someone else, who is good actually, Frollo is just some judge who really fuckin' hates gypsies and loves Jesus. this is why some christians tend to think of the movie as actually being prochristian but a lot of pop culture subsists in memory rather than the text the main memorable parts of disneys hunchback of notre dame in regards to christianity are frollos fire and brimstone stuff nobody remembers the existence of minor characters who prove that technically christianity is good except for this one rear end in a top hat its not like they had that much effect on the plot
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Feb 28, 2019 03:49
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The radical left/anti-war religious people are completely invisible to the media. People like Daniel Berrigan or those nuns who broke into the nuclear weapons facilities are, I assume, totally forbidden to enter mainstream consciousness. Otherwise leftist secular types might work alongside religious groups, which would make the elite poo poo their pants.
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Feb 28, 2019 03:51
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the simpsons started out as a subversive show, and showing the family in church gave it an opportunity to tell the audience that american christianity is just as corrupt as everything else in society at the time
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Feb 28, 2019 03:53
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Frog Act posted:I've been taking a trip down memory lane to when I was a teenager smoking hella mids and watching Adult Swim and man, satire from the early-mid 2000s has this retrospectively naive fear of fundamentalist Christianity permeating it. I know it was largely a result of Bush resurrecting and repoliticizing the evangelical movement and thus was a legitimate fear but in hindsight. But since those sort of Bush style "compassionate conservative" attempts to paper over the ruthlessness of the right-wing agenda (with a rhetorical cloak derived from the parts of Christianity to which fundies paid lip service) have been subsumed by the frothing insanity of the current conservative discourse in the interim, it feels a lot less threatening today. I'm not trying to claim Trump was some sort of rupture that changed the actual substance of conservative politics or anything but I think its fair to say it represented the end of the Bush-Romney continuum of smoothbrained religious lunatics, at least on a national level. I mean, fear of the Christian right was and is totally coherent, but their role as a cultural apologist for the nihilistic libertarian streak in American ideology are what make them most profoundly dangerous, not the sort of ignorant prescriptive impulses that most frightened writers in the early 2000s into joking about outlawing evolution, or sex ed or graven images or whatever. I mean the best part of Moral Orel is the part that's just about how being repressed weirdos hosed up an entire town and the only one to make it out is Orel because he actually becomes disillusioned so
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Feb 28, 2019 03:58
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Christoph posted:The radical left/anti-war religious people are completely invisible to the media. People like Daniel Berrigan or those nuns who broke into the nuclear weapons facilities are, I assume, totally forbidden to enter mainstream consciousness. Otherwise leftist secular types might work alongside religious groups, which would make the elite poo poo their pants. frankly, evangelicals cannot and should not be worked with by the left, because commitment to social justice is one of the first things that they will drop in the face of resistance. southern baptists did that with opposition to slavery, and it only took a few years after the establishment of the pentecostal movement for racial splits to happen. and that's not even getting into how Nelson Rockefeller imported evangelical christianity to Brazil as a way to counter the spread of catholic liberation theology
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Feb 28, 2019 04:02
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Regarding those Adult Swim shows: I don't know what it's like where you live, but there's a LOT of Orels out there. The fear of fundamentalism is appropriate and religious insanity on full display is regular enough that if you haven't seen it by middle age, you'll see it before you die. Squidbillies was pretty funny because the church was rundown and the preacher, while a bimbo, was at least a kind enough fellow sometimes. Contrast that with Dan Halen, whose business empire spans the entire world, still having time to (gleefully) torment and crush the hapless morons that live in that backwood town. But yeah, I agree with get that OUT of my face. There's plenty of drat good reason to hate evangelicals and fundamentalists. Wasn't long ago you'd get thrown in prison for being gay.
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Feb 28, 2019 04:07
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Evangelicals train themselves to justify anything and ignore any evidence or argument as necessary—they’re perfect hypocrites and actually pretty scary to talk to about even very mundane things. It’s like talking to a wall. It’s definitely a waste of time to try enlisting them for anything that would require appealing to human compassion, because they have none.
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Feb 28, 2019 04:32
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Hogan's Heroes is actually real good: 1. Transnational allied team of imprisoned heroes including a POC and a Frenchman. 2. White Russians depicted as sensual trash. 3. Lots of jokes about burning down german cities via firebombing. 4. Col. Klink is the perfect image people should have of Prussian officers. 5. Actually a ripoff of a Billy Wilder movie, and a pretty good one too. 6. British officers are shown to be morons. 7. Useful tips for our prison comrades. 8. Hogan in real life was a sex pervert, that isn't good, but funny. 9. Klink lives in fear of soviet justice. 10. Lovable Sgt. Schultz was a social democrat and toy factory owner before the nazis. Both social democrats and anti-social democrats will find that depiction to be accurate. The episode where he becomes commandant is a chilling tale of how power corrupts. 11. Erudite fan theories about Col. Klink being a secret allied master spy to keep fans mentally acute for struggle sessions. 12. Eleven episodes about stopping V-2 rockets entertains and educates. Hogan did more to stop the blitz than the whole eighth air force. 13. The inaccurate depiction of a show as a "laugh riot in a concentration camp" has faded from public memory as everyone completely forgets that the show existed. 14. Hogan shown to be a caring and skilled lover towards Klink's secretaries, while Klink is depicted as a typical incel not wanting to date on his level. 15. Literally better than the second season of Man in the High Castle (loving nazi time tunnel that's dumb gently caress you amazon) 16. All the Nazis were played by Jews, proving that people in the 1960s "got" identity politics. 17. They made a holocaust porno on the same set lmbo.
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Feb 28, 2019 04:45
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get that OUT of my face posted:the abolitionist movement and the civil rights movement. Nothing significant there. get that OUT of my face posted:frankly, evangelicals cannot and should not be worked with by the left, because commitment to social justice is one of the first things that they will drop in the face of resistance. southern baptists did that with opposition to slavery, and it only took a few years after the establishment of the pentecostal movement for racial splits to happen. and that's not even getting into how Nelson Rockefeller imported evangelical christianity to Brazil as a way to counter the spread of catholic liberation theology But seriously - I wasn't suggesting working with evangelicals, I meant the other religious groups, the ones that don't consist solely of bootlicking capitalists. Sorry, I should have specified.
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Feb 28, 2019 05:16
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get that OUT of my face posted:since pop culture, and comedy in particular, is so obsessed with "punching up," they should bring evangelicals into that fold In comedians’ social spheres, making GBS threads on evangelicals probably doesn’t feel like punching up anymore. It just feels like beating a dead horse.
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Feb 28, 2019 16:33
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Carl Von Awesomwitz posted:Hogan's Heroes is actually real good: Thanks for this thoughtful breakdown of a weird show. Don’t forget Bob Crane (Hogan) was murdered and even though there was an arrest and trial like 15 years later the suspect was acquitted so his murder remains unsolved.
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Feb 28, 2019 19:35
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The guy who played Colonel Klink escaped the nazis, and his cousin was a cool philosopher everyone should read.
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Feb 28, 2019 20:10
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General Dog posted:In comedians’ social spheres, making GBS threads on evangelicals probably doesn’t feel like punching up anymore. It just feels like beating a dead horse. has punching up ever really been a thing ive heard that philosophy forever about how great comedians always punch up but im honestly hard pressed to think of very many examples
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Mar 1, 2019 01:18
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Some Guy TT posted:has punching up ever really been a thing ive heard that philosophy forever about how great comedians always punch up but im honestly hard pressed to think of very many examples lenny bruce made a whole thing out of it, it was a major part of Carlin's career, the whole thing for the marx brothers was making fun of the dumb rich assholes of their day, Louis CK's whole deal was about how the trials and travails of The Average White Guy were so astonishingly minute, and Monty Python's single most recurring feature was what a stultifying, idiotic nightmare the british class system was. always is stretching a point, but "christ, our rulers are a bunch of assholes" has always been a rich comedic vein
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Mar 1, 2019 01:26
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the issue i have with that being described as punching up is the implication that the jokes are funny because the target is inherently superior in all the examples you mention the target of the humor is being attacked because of their obvious inferiority contrasted with the irony of their still being considered our superiors for technical social reasons like to use a more modern example making fun of trump is technically punching up because hes the most powerful man in the world but most humor along these lines emphasizes how hes a dumb pissbaby and its the exact same kind of humor that was used during 2016 when he was widely treated as a joke candidate meanwhile barack obama who used to be the most powerful man in the world and whose entire schtick was being excessively dignified and presidential in tone rather than action should have been an obvious target for punching up but actual funny people were completely unwilling to do so for pretty much the entire time he was president
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Mar 1, 2019 02:05
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Some Guy TT posted:the issue i have with that being described as punching up is the implication that the jokes are funny because the target is inherently superior in all the examples you mention the target of the humor is being attacked because of their obvious inferiority contrasted with the irony of their still being considered our superiors for technical social reasons barack obama was a man with an incredible number of faults, but being bad at retail politics was never one of them, and part of that was making it very hard to make fun of him. there was material, god knows. but there were no good angles of attack, and the most obvious ones, leaning on the country's profoundly racist history, he went to INCREDIBLE lengths to neuter. didn't actually stop anyone from hating him, of course, but it did guarantee most of the people inclined to crack jokes about how much they hated the guy stuck firmly in the "HE'S BLACK" space.
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Mar 1, 2019 02:16
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Some Guy TT posted:the issue i have with that being described as punching up is the implication that the jokes are funny because the target is inherently superior in all the examples you mention the target of the humor is being attacked because of their obvious inferiority contrasted with the irony of their still being considered our superiors for technical social reasons It’s not about inherent worth or superiority, but relations of power. People want to feel like maybe for a minute they aren’t completely subject to the whims of psychopaths or at the mercy of terrifying, indifferent forces. Punching “up” is about exposing the ways in which the system is broken and those with power shouldn’t have it. Trump isn’t technically powerful; he absolutely controls the life and death of thousands of people. That’s not a technicality.
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Mar 1, 2019 02:23
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Mel Brooks mostly punched up too
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Mar 1, 2019 02:26
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