American History X is the ur-example of this. Nominally anti-racist and anti-fascist, the movie intends to depict a man's journey to recognize his own hatreds as built on prejudice and his own insecurity and anger. He learns to accept others, lets go of his hate, and returns to his community a changed man. But, at the end of the movie, we see that it's not so easy to escape the cycle of violence.
But it's also a movie that starts with a hot, ripped Edward Norton having bed-breaking sex with Fairuza Balk when he is interupted by black men trying to steel his truck. He proceeds to confront the men, gunning one down, before he wounds the other one and curb stomps him with near-orgasmic enjoyment.
And that's what the fash focus on. They laugh and mock the anti-racist messaging, choosing only to engage with the parts of the story they think glorifies their beliefs.
Fight Club is a great example. The story was written by a Gay man and the plot is pretty much "Are the straights alright?" The story follows a nebbish office geek, again played by ripped as shit Edward Norton, under going a delusional tail spin of self destruction where he becomes homeless, terrorizes his coworkers, builds a cult of disenfranchised young men, has hot sex with Helena Bonham Carter, and then engages in a major act of anprim terrorism. In the end of the book the hero defeats his depraved hyper-masculine alter ego but finds he cannot escape the consequences of his actions.
But most straight men focus on the "Ripped as shit" "Sticking it to the man" and "Fucking Helena Bonham Carter" parts and ignore how the protagonist ends up broken and completely alienated from society except for his psycho cultists.
There's a saying that there's no such thing as an anti-war movie (excepting Come and See), and in the same sense there's really no such thing as an Anti-Fascist movie. Death of the Author is in full effect. Whether it's Pink Floyd's the Wall, or something openly and enthusiastically fashy like 24, Fascists and nascent Fascists will engage with the material they like and ignore the rest.
this is why Guillermo Del Toro is BASED
CW: SPOILERS
https://youtu.be/yoN56mHkSJw
all the fascists in this movie are portrayed as depraved psychos
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Captain Vidal still gives me nightmares once in a while. But, he's frightening, intimidating, and has what he thinks is a noble and tragic past. I bet there are fash who stan him and sneer at the communists rebels.
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I can confirm I had no idea about any of that when I saw it back in highschool or college (I can't remember when, exactly, I watched it). Like the history education in American schools will go over the timeline of the colonization of North America and the formation of the US a dozen times over in the exact same very vague overview every time, but anything to do with the 20th century gets ignored completely outside a few big bullet points like "the triangle shirtwaist factory fire was a thing that happened, and that's why there's OSHA and everything's good now" or "The Jungle is why there's an FDA, and we don't have to worry about food being bad now!" or "there was a civil rights movement THAT WAS 100% PEACEFUL AND POLITE AND RESPECTFUL and that's why racism has been gone for 50 years!" or "yep, WWII happened and America won it for freedom!" and that was it, and that was if a history class even made it to the 20th century after spending 90% of the semester on the fucking late 18th century.
It's so hard to deprogram people. So much of what we're taught is lies, and so much more is deliberately left out of the story.
I actually got thrown into a Spanish 3 class in HS and since I can already speak Spanish fluently (???) and we wound up watching it with no subtitles and everyone was confused as fuck, like they thought the setting was something made up
I remember thinking the communist rebels were BASED though, it doesn't help that Guillermo deliberately makes them look all like good, decent people
EXTREMELY BASED ANARCHIST DOCTOR
https://youtu.be/HhSjnG5pMOY
"It's just that obeying, without thinking, just for the sake of it, is only for people like you, captain"
i love how they just recognize that he deserves nothing. he's no man of honor, no misguided soul, he's a piece of shit who will die knowing that the thing that meant the most to him, his legacy, went up in smoke, and they are unequivocal that he deserved that