Been awhile since we've done this thread, and it's always fun. Here are some of my picks:

  • The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) is really bad. Will Smith's inspirational moment is going to the New York Stock Exchange and seeing all the happy rich guys in suits walking around, and wanting to be like them. Having to do stuff like brown-nose executives, sleep in train station bathrooms and pull his son out of daycare due to lack of money are presented not as flaws of the system but evidence of Smith's smart bootstraps-oriented thinking. This movie is the Mein Kampf of liberalism.

  • Air (2023) is really bad too. Literally a feature-length Nike commercial coupled with a fuckton of Michael Jordan worship, the message being that a bunch of rich guys deserved to get even richer because they signed a sneaker deal. The closing 5 minutes of the movie are a "where are they now" montage showing how much money all the Nike executives made, yay!

  • Anastasia (1997), which portrays the Russian Revolution as the result of a wizard's curse and communism as bad because it got in the way of the Romanovs living in big palaces and wearing fancy dresses.

  • The Post (2017), about a wealthy, heroic girlboss newspaper executive who makes the heroic decision to...uhh...not block the publication of a story that would expose the lies of a corrupt president threatening our democracy (take THAT drumpf)

post more.

  • Great_Leader_Is_Dead
    ·
    9 months ago

    I mean, yeah he keeps some nice furniture but he also moves back into a garage. Also he turns into a horse at the end.

    I think the ending was a little weak, but I also think perhaps you're reading into the character keeping a TV a bit too much. Him throwing the TV into the dumpster wouldn't solve anything, it'd be a purely symbolic move. Socialism isn't asceticism, and almost all products are tainted by capitalism so really anything short of a full Unabomber lifestyle in the woods isn't going to free you of it.

    • anarchoilluminati [comrade/them]
      ·
      9 months ago

      I know socialism isn't asceticism, but it isn't temporarily working as an arms dealer to make hella cash, buy nice shit, then renounce the unethical lifestyle to stay humble but keep the nice shit either.

      It would be symbolic, but you yourself said Riley's works are more symbolic than substantive, and this would be an appropriate symbol.

      • Great_Leader_Is_Dead
        ·
        9 months ago

        I think Sorry is supposed to be somewhat autobiographical, Riley was a broke indie artist, his work got popular enough that he could "sell out", he did for a bit but got grossed out by it and quit, now he's back to being an indie artist but he's a bit more mature and smart now and can capitalize on his work enough to live decently without full on selling out, but even when he's "independent" he's still a slave to capitalism, hence the final transformation into a horse. I think making it arms dealing and not writing for HBO or whatever was just some hyperbole to get the point across. At least that's what I think he's getting at if I had to guess.

        It would be a symbol but also an empty one. He's still back in the garage, I think him remodeling it is more meant to be a sign that he's taking shit more seriously now, just because he's not loaded anymore doesn't mean he has to be a slob. If I talked some guy who worked at Northrop Grumman into quitting his job and he moved out of his condo into a studio on the bad side of town I wouldn't exactly berate him for bringing his Playstation and electric toothbrush. But also he still turns into a horse at the end, which could be a sign that Riley actually AGREES with you, Cash still hung on to the trappings of his bourgeois life and it corrupted him? Idk there's various ways you could read it.