The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) has to be up there. Literally glorifies the stock market and presents a finance bro job as the key to happiness. There's a scene near the start where Will Smith is outside the NYSE looking at all the suits going in and out and narrating how he was inspired by how happy everyone was, and how this inspired him to bootlick his way into some internship, the pursuit of which literally requires him to alienate his friends and family and sleep in subway bathrooms with his five-year-old son. Everyone in the movie is a lazy, unscrupulous asshole, except for the rich people, of course, who are portrayed as generous and open-minded for allowing Will Smith in the door after he kisses their asses the whole movie. All of his struggle with homelessness and poverty etc. is portrayed not as injustice but as the ideal scenario, rewarding the hardest, most dedicated worker with a job. It is literally r/upliftingnews: the movie.

  • wombat [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    And of course, the perennial answer, Anastasia (1997), which portrays the Russian Revolution as the result of a wizard's curse, and communism as evil because it got in the way of the Romanovs wearing fancy clothes. The stage version took things one step further by having an NKVD agent as the villain

    • jwsmrz [comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      A few friends of mine were talking about how great this movie was last night and I drunkenly yelled about how it was EXTREMELY GOOD that they were deposed / killed. I'm fun to be around, can't even talk about cartoon movies

      • disco [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Didn't Mao make the emperor and his family get factory jobs?

        Seems way better to me.

        • Sklorp [she/her]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Puyi got a variety of jobs. Amateur actor, street sweeper, gardener, tour guide. His sister got a normal job, Empress Wanrong was dead, his second consort Wenxiu had a really sad life but divorced him years before, His third consort Tan Yuling was dead, this fourth consort Li Yuqin divorced him in 58 after the CCP mandate that she get along with Puyi had failed and ended up living with some working class dude and suffering a lot of harassment for having been married to Puyi (Harassment Puyi didn't get) she was also really mad at having been a mere sex object for Puyi for her entire adult life, and his "cousin" Yoshiko Kawashima had been executed. Really he just had his sister until he found another wife.

          I know too much about puyi. He's just a really fascinating figure

          • LoudMuffin [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            His time in prison greatly changed him, and he expressed deep regret for his actions while emperor. In 1962, he married a commoner, Li Shuxian, for whom he had a deep affection

            bloomer energy tbh

            • Sklorp [she/her]
              ·
              3 years ago

              They were married almost as soon as they met, and apparently they were very affectionate. She requested to be buried next to Puyi but the CCP nixed it.

              Possibly because her specific request was that Wanrong also be there, and nobody knows where Wanrongs body is, possibly they don't want to put people in the qing tombs for historical reasons.

          • Sklorp [she/her]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Also as a side note everyone who spoke of his job performances notes that he was bad at most things and very clumsy (Except acting, he was a good actor). But he genuinely seemed like he's been reformed. He would be embarrassed by waitstaff serving him, and he refused to board vehicles until everyone else was seated which meant he missed his ride once when he waited for the conductor to get seated before he'd go in.

            He also reprimanded Pujie for reconnecting with his Japanese wife.

            I'm sorry for the posts but Puyi is just so interesting.

            • The_Jewish_Cuban [he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              You should make a big post about it if it hasn't been done yet. This sounds really interesting

              • Sklorp [she/her]
                ·
                3 years ago

                You know I might. It'll be my one chance to write a historical essay touching on complex human emotions and a nuanced historical subject and entitle it "Puyi is stored in the balls"

        • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I have a particular ethnic affinity that makes me partial, but I'm glad little Nicky got got. It doesn't usually work out that way. He was also a major negative protagonist in the lives and deaths of many ancestors, so again, fuck that guy.

        • Rem [she/her]
          ·
          3 years ago

          It didn't happen in a vacuum. They were being held in a city that was under threat of being captured by the white army. If the whites took the city or smuggled the Romanovs out it would be a huge boon for the reactionary forces.

      • ssjmarx [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Man I've had this argument. Libs will never move on it, I swear to god that if Hitler hadn't committed suicide and instead had been killed by the Red Army they would argue that that was bad too.

    • Sklorp [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Anastasia is frustrating because it's all "Oh everyone loved the tsar. Communism is a result of wizard casting a spell making everyone mad. Hot Nicky did nothing wrong and exiled Rasputin straight to hell" but HE ALSO MADE AN AMERICAN TAIL. A movie where the inciting incident is the fucking tsarist progroms with catssacks hunting down jews mice

      • crime [she/her, any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        AN AMERICAN TAIL. A movie where the inciting incident is the fucking tsarist progroms with catssacks hunting down jews mice

        Oh shit I just got that