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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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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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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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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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Any social critique in Dark Souls is pretty allegorical, tbh. Dark Souls 3 is open to a meta interpretation of capitalism driving society to burning itself out rather than allowing things to end and proceed into natural fallow cycles, given that the subtext is "we would really like to not make dark souls anymore", and their subsequent failure to really escape the from it. Dark Souls 2 is extremely vague but centered around a generally Buddhist philosophical allegory of self-destruction via obsession and desire, and that if even if there's an escape from it (which is not a guarantee), there is no clear path. Social critiques can be drawn from this, but I don't think they're anything that couldn't be drawn from a cursory examination of Buddhism.
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Nov 3, 2021 01:24
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My point is that dark souls as a series don't really spend much time portraying a society or even interpersonal relations, and as such any ideological messaging is going to be several steps removed from the text. In dark souls 2's case, the main character's journey is fundamentally personal journey to escape their personal samsara. There's some tidbits of social commentary here and there but it's not really a focus of the narrative.
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Nov 3, 2021 02:17
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Sanguinia posted:I don't know about that. I think the Dark Souls story is pretty explicitly ideological, it's literally all about kings and god-kings doing atrocities and how they justify them, all learned after the fact in a world that has gone to poo poo as a direct result of their actions. It's been a while but as I remember dark souls 2 the kings' downfalls are either the result of literal temptress demons manipulating them or because their kingdom happened to be on top of demon spawning hell portal. Like allegory and all that, given the overarching themes of self-destruction, but I feel like this interpretation is at least a little fraught, especially given that, again to my memory, the cycles of fire and dark are referred to an inescapable inevitably, rather than any given individual or group of individuals faults.
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Nov 3, 2021 02:37
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Raenir Salazar posted:But why? I feel like we're talking past each other here; I don't think something has to be the focus for it to be interesting and worth discussing. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I find it offputting to be told the Simpsons did it first in response to bringing up something I found interesting on its own merits. I think if you want to make an argument about the social commentary you should probably make it, rather than largely just alluding to them. Noting that a theme exists is not, itself, commentary. What specific bits of social commentary do you think the Dark Souls games are making and why are they interesting?
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Nov 3, 2021 02:51
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Sanguinia posted:Yeah, but the whole impetus for the story is that Gwynn doesn't accept that inevitability. Almost every bad thing in the Dark Souls universe traces back to Gwynn and the Gods fearing the Age of Dark and enacting a increasingly horrific series of schemes and deceits to prevent it. And for that matter to prevent alternative to their own rule, as seen in the story of the Demons. Heck, there's some implication that the war against the Stone Dragons Gwynn led in the first place was unjust and that's why his son (probably) fled to help their kind rebuild. The Undead Curse mark which is the franchise's icon is indeed a mark of humanity being enslaved by Fire to keep the Dark at bay, when Dark was actually their own birthright. This was The First Sin. Dark Souls III DLC reveals that this even goes back to when they first waged that Dragon War. Gwynn's "reward," to the Furtive Pygmy was to deny him and all his descendents future through the "gift," of his daughter and their city. I admit that the connections between Dark Souls 1 and 3 are kind of lost on me, because I played DS1 a very long time ago and never revisited it because I didn't really enjoy it the way I did later games, so I'll tkae your word on the narrative here but I have to ask: what is the commentary here? That the powerful will sacrifice themselves and others to maintain their grip on power? Sure, but is that particularly interesting commentary? That's why I said the games have tidbits of social commentary; those themes are referred to in the worldbuilding but not really examined, again to my memory.
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Nov 3, 2021 03:03
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Sanguinia posted:In fact, Dark Souls 2's ending not having a choice I think really underscores that the other two do. When the DS2 protag learns the full truth of his circumstances, he's left with the inevitable understanding that there is nothing to be done about it, but the DS1 and 3 protagonists are in different circumstances and learn different truths, and thus have the power to act on what they've discovered. If that's no a game about fundamentally about ideology, what is? I think there's something interesting here actually: an interpretation of the games as an individual's interaction with the fallout of the ambitions of powerful people. Dark Souls 2 does actually have a choice with the DLC, though it's more of a true ending: the player character learns about the downfall of all four kings and, via their interactions with the scholar of the first sin, realizes that taking the throne for themselves will inevitably lead to their downfall, and thus sets out on an uncertain path to find another way. The game is somewhat dour on the possibility that another way even exists, but the ending narration still refers to this action as heroic. It's kind of hard to square this interpretation with the the sins of the DS2 kings being a product of their seduction by the forces of darkness, but I think there's something there at least.
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Nov 3, 2021 03:33
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I'm not super into either comic books or the MCU so I might be missing some context but I think the basic structure of Civil War is pretty interesting, the movie makes a bunch of noise about Cap's dedication to freedom and non-intrusion and whatever, but I think the more interesting reading is that the former weapons contractor of course has no issue throwing the power of Avengers behind a national interest, while the former soldier does. Despite his origin story, Stark is and has always been insulated from the effects of the American foreign policy apparatus and war machine, while Captain America deliberately bore the brunt of it out of nationalistic pride and is cost him everything, and that directly informs their worldviews.
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Nov 4, 2021 02:54
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Lib and let die posted:I've had the foggy notions of an idea rolling around in my head that All Might is a cop, and the hero rankings/merchandising is an extrapolation of capitalist exploitation in a supernatural society but maybe i'm too terminally online and it's just Joss Whedon's Cape poo poo: Japan Nah that's text. Well sort of. A major plot point is that hero society is hosed up: a lot of the heroes are more interested in playing rock star than they are doing their jobs, the nature of heritable quirks leads to dynasric wealth and eugenics, people with highly visible or creepy-looking quirks are discriminated against, and the mentally ill are badly demonized. Granted, this isn't particularly supposed to apply to All Might himself, as such. His flaw is that he created the whole lazy rock star hero situation by basically taking on every serious threat himself and never really leading, training, or delegating to anyone else until he literally was unable to keep it up, and by then the rot had set in.
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Nov 5, 2021 15:23
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Make an actual argument to support that thesis or go away.
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Nov 18, 2021 22:56
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I find it hard to believe that "what if there were hot babes everywhere?" is some sort of insightful social commentary. It's not insightful but it tells you something about the author and audience.
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Nov 19, 2021 16:44
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I think it was recently "revealed" that racial holy war was actually a plan by Thanos to get the infinity gauntlet.
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Nov 19, 2021 20:41
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Or even "I will rewrite reality such that population can no longer exceed carrying capacity, and will cull down randomly if currently exceeding it"
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Nov 30, 2021 18:59
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