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Any fiction portraying a society or aspects of a society is, nessicarily, ideological. As a narrative interacts with the portrayed social structures and characters representing those social structures, the author cannot avoid making critiques and value judgements that are applicable to real world societies. Authors are typically aware of this to a greater or lesser extent, and deliberately include overt or covert ideological messaging in their works. More interesting and telling, however, is the messaging the author does not intend: where their assumptions based on their cultural, class, and individual values and experiences inform their created world and narrative; these unintentional influences are at least as important as the deliberate ones to understanding the critique being made. Equally vital is the examination of the differences in expectations between the author, the intended audience, and the current reader; social critique is highly contextual, and the ideological messaging of a piece eighty years ago and two thousand miles away is frequently not exactly the same as today. This thread is for debating and discussing social critiques in works of fiction. Any fiction is fair game, post about whatever you find interesting. Remember that social critique is contextual; two different interpretations doesn't nessicarily mean that one is incorrect, provided both are logically, textually, and subtextally supported. Read- of watch- alongs, or even let's plays, of interesting media are allowed and encouraged, as are posts about different theories of critique or quality analysis by others.
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Nov 2, 2021 18:50
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Can we include pop culture items (like movies, comics and video games) here or is "fiction" meant to keep discussion grounded in short stories and novels?
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Nov 2, 2021 18:55
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Eric Cantonese posted:Can we include pop culture items (like movies, comics and video games) here or is "fiction" meant to keep discussion grounded in short stories and novels? Any sort of fiction that you think is making explicit or implicit social critique (which is basically all of it).
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Nov 2, 2021 18:57
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The ending of Black Panther was the most cynical deployment of identity politics in a long time in a movie. They lied to the audience. If Wakanda was truly going to do what they said they would, America would look fundamentally different in later movies and properties. Because every Marvel movie clings to a setting of “right now + superheroes” without meaningfully confronting what even the presence of super humans would mean for humanity (fascism, lol) the premise of the ending of Black Panther is itself an impossibility within the construct of the MCU.
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Nov 2, 2021 19:01
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selec posted:The ending of Black Panther was the most cynical deployment of identity politics in a long time in a movie. The power of American cultural hegemony can't be countered with vibranium... once T'Challa opened up Wakanda to the rest of the world it was lost. Poor thing.
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Nov 2, 2021 19:08
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selec posted:The ending of Black Panther was the most cynical deployment of identity politics in a long time in a movie. Its also very funny, to me, that Afro-futuristic Wakanda was a hereditary absolute monarchy with a contested succession by mortal combat clause, and that everyone went along with the outcome of a genocidal outsider taking the throne because thats just how succession works. I get that its a Marvel movie but its still very funny that regressive Wakanda was hailed as some kind of utopia because the military backed homogenous oppressor class was black.
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Nov 2, 2021 19:10
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selec posted:The ending of Black Panther was the most cynical deployment of identity politics in a long time in a movie. I mean, forgive me if I'm wrong but the end of the first movie shows exactly what Wakanda's big new peaceful campaign for black liberation, and it's... building rec centers in poor areas, specifically instead of revolutionary change. It really couldn't be more cynical messaging.
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Nov 2, 2021 19:12
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So have any of you guys seen Eternals yet? It seems to be a lightning rod for all sorts of culture war crap, with people often either blindly supporting it because of the diversity of the cast or blindly hating it because of the diversity of the cast. I have thoughts on Nomadland too, but I don't know how cool it is for me to repost comments I made in C-Spam here.
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Nov 2, 2021 19:14
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selec posted:The ending of Black Panther was the most cynical deployment of identity politics in a long time in a movie. If you wanted to take a diegetic approach, Wakanda's pledge to help black communities with capital investment and educational outreach took place less than a year before the Infinity War and the Snap. Falcon and the Winter Soldier explores the fact that during the snap things changed dramatically in socio-economic terms for a lot of people, and we know that T'challa was one of the people snapped away. While we're not privy to Wakanda's internal political issues and economic problems specifically in the Snap's wake, its reasonable to assume that like many countries they suffered massively from labor shortages and similar problems that made keeping T'challa's policy going untenable. That show ALSO digs into the fact that when the Snap was undone there was a concerted effort by the monied interests and politicians to restore as much of the old order as possible at the expense of what was made during the Snap years. The famous "Falcon applies for a loan," scene illustrates how systemic racism in America seems to have been actively shorn up as a way of clawing back gains made during the Snap years in the interest of "fairness," to those who were gone. Access to capital and power are being even more tightly controlled to exclude the Other as if to make up for lost time when the Other had some actual leverage. We even see Wakandans in FATWS, and they're... doing a covert ops military intervention in Europe, where the leader gives a speech that Wakanda has jurisdiction wherever they want to CAPTAIN AMERICA (who is currently Captain America because the US government lied to a black man to get the shield so they could make a white man with strong government loyalty their new Cap of choice). The irony of the situation aside, it implies a political shift in Wakanda and its goals after the undoing of the SNAP (not the mention the possible in-universe death of Black Panther to co-incide with the actor's real death) that is commiserate with a stronger push toward racist policy in America. The maintenance of the Status Quo in the Marvel Universe can thus be read as not laziness on the part of the writers or an effort to force the Current Day aesthetic, but rather something that is being actively perpetuated by the Powers That Be to spite the efforts of the heroes to improve society. Hence the value of Sam Wilson becoming Captain America, and his arc wrestling with the nature of supremacism and the best ways to change society. Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Nov 2, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2021 19:28
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I can't speak for most any Marvel or superhero movie because usually I'll see one that seems promising, say "it's HOW long?!", and then be done with it, but it appears the two big factors in why they're so consistently ideologically incoherent is that 1) they get a lot asset access from the DoD on the condition that they don't cut against the grain of American Exceptionalism as personified in our armed forces and 2) it's just fundamental to the genre at this point. The whole thing kicked off with a movie, Watchmen, that almost everybody missed the point on and it's now spread even into writing rooms as you can see with stuff like Batman movie with Bane where they threw in a weird nuclear side plot because he was too popular with focus groups to be a villain even tho one of the best things about the franchise is having really interesting Dick Tracey villains Truly refined people enjoy high brow and well-crafted prose such as that found in lunatic commbloc sci-fi writing and Venture Brothers edit - I'll watch a Nomad Capitan America arc movie if they make one tho
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Nov 2, 2021 19:34
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selec posted:The ending of Black Panther was the most cynical deployment of identity politics in a long time in a movie. I felt this has turned out to be true of almost the entire movie. The ending's already been covered, but what I've gathered by listening to black retrospective analysis of the film as a whole, Wakanda is both conceptually and structurally unacceptable as a portrayal of afrofuturism — it takes the premise of the void/loss of robbed african self-determination, and asks the question: what would Africans have accomplished by now were they to have been spared from imperial conquest and allowed to create their own future with the same sort of empowered agency that other parts of the world kept for themselves? What would be the product of black african self-determination? Then it decided the answer was, uhh, a pseudoconfederate tribal absolute authoritarian monarchy with ritualized blood duels, topmost sociological levels of ethnostate rigidity and intentional diversity exclusion, social harmony preservation based in appeals to ethnic traditionalism, gender essentialism embedded in top circles of power, and by the way it's so obviously vulnerable to dictatorial overthrow that oops lol that just inevitably happened, what are the odds? As someone close to me put it, it wasn't afrofuturism, it was basketcase afrofascism. And there lies the worst insult — the immediate presentation of an african state allowed to evolve free of outside influence or colonial pressure and it creates a monarchist, extremely corruptible structure so foundationally flimsy that immediately falls to a coup, violent loyalist purge, and restructuring to dictatorial regime militarism — less than an hour into being reverentially displayed as the inspirational conceptual outcome of African self-determination under impossibly ideal circumstances.
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Nov 2, 2021 20:14
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fool of sound posted:I mean, forgive me if I'm wrong but the end of the first movie shows exactly what Wakanda's big new peaceful campaign for black liberation, and it's... building rec centers in poor areas, specifically instead of revolutionary change. It really couldn't be more cynical messaging.
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Nov 2, 2021 20:17
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Sanguinia posted:The maintenance of the Status Quo in the Marvel Universe can thus be read as not laziness on the part of the writers or an effort to force the Current Day aesthetic, but rather something that is being actively perpetuated by the Powers That Be to spite the efforts of the heroes to improve society. Hence the value of Sam Wilson becoming Captain America, and his arc wrestling with the nature of supremacism and the best ways to change society. See also WandaVision, where the real villain is ultimately a DoD middle manager who makes speeches about Making The Hard Choices to Save America, such as drone striking civilians and whatever they did to Vision's corpse, which I'm counting as extraordinary rendition. These actions prioritize "Going back to normal" above civilian casualties and other unintended but foreseeable consequences
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Nov 2, 2021 20:20
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Dune(2021) is nearly unwatchable in terms of the blatantly obvious middle-eastern appropriation while casting it to be superficially "race-blind" but very much not. The main characters are incredibly white, the boys mother is played by a woman too young to actually be his mother, and all the people who die are visible minorities who do so in sacrifice for the Important White Protagonists, who will white savior them. I haven't seen a movie more into appropriating cultures that it refuses to actually put into the cast since The Last Airbender, where nearly the only asian person in the cast was the bad guy. And that's just scratching the surface of the gender and race issues in the text. Jaxyon fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Nov 2, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2021 20:58
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Jaxyon posted:Dune(2021) is nearly unwatchable in terms of the blatantly obvious middle-eastern appropriation while casting it to be superficially "race-blind" but very much not. I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but a lot of that is intentional text. The Empire to which House Atreides belongs is explicitly imperialist occupiers of Arrakis there to extract their space oil while giving no benefit to he native population. Paul is almost literally Lawrence of Arabia plus Jesus, and part of the overall message of the franchise is "Messiahs aren't always good even when they're trying to be." I haven't actually seen the new movie yet, but I do know in the book that while Duke Leeto is a friendly guy and does care about his men and even ostensibly the Fremen population's welfare, he's also looking to exploit them not just for the spice, but for their prowess as warriors so his House can potentially counter the Emperor's elite military power, the Sartocar. He's still there to exploit Arrakis, just in a Velvet Glove Over The Iron Fist sort of way. He's only "good," in comparison to House Harkonen, who were literally butchering the Fremen like animals for fun. Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Nov 2, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2021 21:06
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Jaxyon posted:Dune(2021) is nearly unwatchable in terms of the blatantly obvious middle-eastern appropriation while casting it to be superficially "race-blind" but very much not. This all sounds like it is completely in line with Dune's intentional warning against occupiers, charismatic leaders and messianic figures on their "hero's journey" It would actually be concerningly weird of the producers to intentionally eschew the imagery of paul as literally white savior from the Dignified Royals coming to bring purpose and greater order
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Nov 2, 2021 21:11
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Yeah, that's just Dune. Not to be a dick but have you read the original source material or are you attempting to make a reading on something that's only half of the text?
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Nov 2, 2021 21:13
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Importantly, Paul is not the savior that the Fremen want. He doesn't give them their better world, he turns them into zealots for his own political ambitions. Paul isn't really a heroic character and both the author and to some extent the character is aware of this.
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Nov 2, 2021 21:14
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Gumball Gumption posted:Yeah, that's just Dune. Not to be a dick but have you read the original source material or are you attempting to make a reading on something that's only half of the text? To be fair, judging the material as presented rather than in the context of its original source is reasonable. And like I said I haven't seen the new version. But I do feel like if you're saying things like "The Fremen are appropriating Arab culture," or "Paul is a bog standard White Savior," or talking about the problematic treatment of women in this neo-feudal society, you might be failing to grasp the fullness of the text, because that is all very much 
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Nov 2, 2021 21:16
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I've not read the series, I couldn't get into the first book enough to even finish it. That's on me. Having said that, the movie needs to stand on it's own without having to read a long franchise of books. And that is seperate from my other criticism, of the fact that it borrows heavily from middle eastern cultures but fails to cast many people from that area. Instead I get to watch one dark skinned character nobly sacrfice herself for the whites, and then Paul stabs another one. Arab, persian, etc? Not a lot there. Javier Bardem is Stilgar. Sanguinia posted:To be fair, judging the material as presented rather than in the context of its original source is reasonable. And like I said I haven't seen the new version. But I do feel like if you're saying things like "The Fremen are appropriating Arab culture," or "Paul is a bog standard White Savior," or talking about the problematic treatment of women in this neo-feudal society, you might be failing to grasp the fullness of the text, because that is all very much That's great and all. Does the 2021 movie make that clear? Because the 1984 one doesn't seem to.
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Nov 2, 2021 21:20
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Sanguinia posted:To be fair, judging the material as presented rather than in the context of its original source is reasonable. And like I said I haven't seen the new version. But I do feel like if you're saying things like "The Fremen are appropriating Arab culture," or "Paul is a bog standard White Savior," or talking about the problematic treatment of women in this neo-feudal society, you might be failing to grasp the fullness of the text, because that is all very much Oh yeah, and having seen the movie I do get where Jaxyon is coming from since I think they tossed out some more overt references for modern sensibilities and wanting to be more race blind while making a story that just isn't. But if you're noticing that Paul is a bog standard white savior, yeah, good noticing, they'll deal with that in part 2. Edit: the movie can't stand on it's own in that it's one half of one book. It's 2 movies that are one whole. Got to sell those tickets. Gumball Gumption fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Nov 2, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2021 21:21
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Gumball Gumption posted:But if you're noticing that Paul is a bog standard white savior, yeah, good noticing, they'll deal with that in part 2. I don't have a lot of confidence in big budget hollywood movies to address that in a good manor, several years and hundreds of millions of dollars on, even if it is in the text. I'm glad to find out it's somewhat the point, but the movie isn't satire and not knowing what happens down the road is OK.
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Nov 2, 2021 21:23
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An important plot point in Dune is that the Space Catholics, the secret power behind the throne who have been running a thousand year long race science project to create The Ultimate White Boy who can see through time, have also spent thousands of years seeding religious myths about saviors from another world who will perform prophesied miracles on all the backwater worlds in case one of their order ever gets stuck somewhere and needs an out or an instant cult following. The story is very clear that becoming a local messiah is a pre-planned safety parachute and that Jessica is taking advantage of the seeded myths of a messiah as much as Paul is an actual messiah. My biggest complaint about the Dune movie is that it spends way too much time on establishing shots and vague prophecy visions and not nearly enough laying out the mythology of the universe. It looks very pretty but doesn't spend much effort establishing a story, which seems kinda key for the kind of story Dune is. I would legitimately take Lynch's flawed storytelling over Villeneuve's
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Nov 2, 2021 21:23
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Also I'd wager most of the people who are loving the movie haven't read the book and don't know what happens in Part 2, so they're taking the Paul story straight instead of as a subversion. That's how my partner is, because they haven't read the book and don't know what is happening in part 2.
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Nov 2, 2021 21:25
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This is like walking out of the intermission of Sound of Music and wondering why it was so kind and chill about the Nazis
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Nov 2, 2021 21:26
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Nix Panicus posted:An important plot point in Dune is that the Space Catholics, the secret power behind the throne who have been running a thousand year long race science project to create The Ultimate White Boy who can see through time, have also spent thousands of years seeding religious myths about saviors from another world who will perform prophesied miracles on all the backwater worlds in case one of their order ever gets stuck somewhere and needs an out or an instant cult following. The story is very clear that becoming a local messiah is a pre-planned safety parachute and that Jessica is taking advantage of the seeded myths of a messiah as much as Paul is an actual messiah. The Alan Smithee cut of the Lynch movie was actually fairly good about laying out all the background mythology. Unfortunately, doing that makes the movie a shade over 3 hours long.
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Nov 2, 2021 21:27
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Gumball Gumption posted:This is like walking out of the intermission of Sound of Music and wondering why it was so kind and chill about the Nazis If they split the movie into two 2.5 hour musicals and the nazi stuff was in the latter one maybe. Like, "oh I can get how you'd see that because it's not a complete movie" is an OK response. edit: And I still have the problem with the casting. If you're going to make it obvious appropriation and a commentary on white saviorism and oil extraction why are we not casting anyone from that region
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Nov 2, 2021 21:29
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Sanguinia posted:To be fair, judging the material as presented rather than in the context of its original source is reasonable. 
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Nov 2, 2021 21:32
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Jaxyon posted:If they split the movie into two 2.5 hour musicals and the nazi stuff was in the latter one maybe. Yeah that parts pretty dumb. It wouldn't make sense for any of the groups to be racially homogeneous but if you're filming in the region hire some actors from the region. It's easy.
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Nov 2, 2021 21:34
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Gumball Gumption posted:Yeah that parts pretty dumb. It wouldn't make sense for any of the groups to be racially homogeneous but if you're filming in the region hire some actors from the region. It's easy. Yes it is easy, which makes it a choice. I got a lot of issues with hollywood casting.
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Nov 2, 2021 21:36
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Jaxyon posted:Yes it is easy, which makes it a choice. Nothing ruins a movie like the movie business.
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Nov 2, 2021 21:37
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There's definitely room for a Rick Sanchez/Tyler Durden level misread of Paul Atreides. After all, he gets his revenge against the people who wronged him and drastically changes the status quo so that he comes out on top as the rightful ruler of a grateful universe. The nuance comes from the fact that he doesn't actually change anything for the better, and by the end he's just as much of a pawn in the sick game we call existence as anyone else. Something the books definitely hammered home more than once and the 2021 movie leaves up to a 1 minute hallucinogenic montage that Paul just kinda feels bad about
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Nov 2, 2021 21:38
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Jaxyon posted:Also I'd wager most of the people who are loving the movie haven't read the book and don't know what happens in Part 2, so they're taking the Paul story straight instead of as a subversion. That's how my partner is, because they haven't read the book and don't know what is happening in part 2. I think the goal of the director, at least its been my theory since I heard the movie was split into 2 parts, is to sell the first half of the book as Space Game Of Thrones, all gripping space politics and coming-of-age young hero strait out of a Hunger Games-like, and then when the Prophecy stuff kicks in to reframe a lot of what we saw with a fuller understanding. We will grow into figuring out what's really happening as Paul himself does. At least, that's what I might do in the modern media zeitgeist.
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Nov 2, 2021 21:39
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DarklyDreaming posted:There's definitely room for a Rick Sanchez/Tyler Durden level misread of Paul Atreides. It's exceptionally common. There's a whole group of people who either love or hate the book based on a misreading of it as celebrating Paul as an ubermensch white savior.
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Nov 2, 2021 21:47
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Yeah, I do think they need to do a lot of work to explain what's going on. I just don't think it's a great piece of media to look at what the story is saying if you're just looking at Dune 2021. It's one of two films adapting a book with the director being pretty clear the two films are one whole. It's a 2 year intermission for an incomplete work. Honestly overall I thought it was the most competent version while being boring. Nothing new to say so far, used most of its time establishing the most basic plot details, and I do think the casting choices are bad. I like Vilenauve but his entire career was so influenced by Lynch's Dune that this might be one of the less visually interesting films he's done. Edit: if I had to compare the two I think this one is better at helping you understand what's happening while not giving you much to care about and Lynch's Dune gave you a lot of interesting and likable characters with no understanding of what's happening to them. Gumball Gumption fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Nov 2, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2021 21:49
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DarklyDreaming posted:There's definitely room for a Rick Sanchez/Tyler Durden level misread of Paul Atreides. After all, he gets his revenge against the people who wronged him and drastically changes the status quo so that he comes out on top as the rightful ruler of a grateful universe. Its been forever since I read it, but I'm pretty sure Paul ends up blinding himself and wandering the desert and is never heard from again* because he can't bring himself to be the evil tyrant the universe needs to break itself of its infatuation with messiahs. Instead his kid has to become a monstrous tyrant who rules for millennia until humanity finally breaks itself free of prophecy and the desire for a strong daddy to take charge *I think Paul comes back in some of the later books but those all sucked and I didnt read them and refuse to acknowledge them
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Nov 2, 2021 21:52
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Dark Souls I hear has a lot of neat social critique, as does Bloodborne; I'm unaware if Sekiro's story has wider cultural ramifications though but that's probably because as a westerner I'm not going to immediately grasp the themes being conveyed.
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Nov 2, 2021 22:59
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Raenir Salazar posted:Dark Souls I hear has a lot of neat social critique, as does Bloodborne; I'm unaware if Sekiro's story has wider cultural ramifications though but that's probably because as a westerner I'm not going to immediately grasp the themes being conveyed. Armored Core has more immediately obvious themes. 4 and For Answer basically beat you over the head with what it's saying about corporations and climate change. DS1 and 2 have on their face something to say about kings and "chosen ones", 3 is strictly specifically about how much the devs want to not make Dark Souls anymore and almost nothing else.
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Nov 3, 2021 00:33
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DS1 is more about kings and chosen ones whilst DS2 is more about cycles.
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Nov 3, 2021 01:10
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Hunt11 posted:DS1 is more about kings and chosen ones whilst DS2 is more about cycles. DS2 has way more to say about a lot of things but I was limiting it to whatever would be about social critique
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Nov 3, 2021 01:15
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