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.
They've made so many of these blatantly not anti-war anti-war movies and not a single movie from the other side sympathizing with Vietnamese people and the NVA, or with Iraqi soldiers or Iraqis or Korean soldiers, or literally anybody. There's probably more sympathy in American WWII movies for Nazis than there is in American movies for victims of US imperialism.
How is it supposed to be anti war when you show an hour of troops gunning down children and women and yelling dehumanizing slurs at random civilians
Because directors/writers wrote these with their audience being emphatic human beings in mind, not bloodthirsty sociopathic fascists who gets off on these.
In conclusion, if you want to send an anti-fascist message maybe don't cast Brad Pitt or Edward Norton as your anti-hero.
Point. Inglorious Basterds was pretty solid. The only mark against it I can think of is Hans Lansa memes.
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
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.
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’m not sure that a lot of english-language viewers even necessarily really know what the setting of Pan’s Labyrinth is even supposed to be. Like, I’m not sure that the average American moviegoer is even aware of the fact that Spain actually did have a civil war in the relatively recent past.
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.
No, he won't even know your name.
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
That movie goes to show the depths chuds will go to find defensible nazis. I've heard the scene where the commander gets his head caved in with a bat derided because the nazi was 'honorable.'
Not to mention his 'noble sacrifice' is completely undone because the system of fascism is ultimately a death cult of back stabbers anyway.
Also, Kristoph Waltz is a charismatic actor, and his portrayal of evil will go over the heads of people who were already sympathetic to the nazis.
Well then you'll get scenes like cw: nazis dying this. And the comment section is full of people crying about the poor nazis, and how those french soldiers are cowards and whatever else.
Once a upon a time when you could view all the users that liked a page or site or whatever on facebook I viewed all the people who like American History X. All white supremacist assholes. The venn diagram between people liking American History X and Stormfront (the actual website) was practically a circle. Really made me rethink satire and how people process stories.
Yeah that's a great example. Jordan Belfort is on twitter still selling his Gordon Gecko shtick I think.
wolf is a good. it reflects the perversity of capitalist greed and the american grift -- that some people see the grift and see it aspirationally, rather than with disgust, is not a fault of the film, and should be no surprise.
I think Blakely's read on Breaking Bad is misplaced. I could see where the fash could read those things into the show, but it would take a fair bit of warped logic to get there. I mean yes, the entire point of the show is Walter engaging in a power fantasy but that goes on to ruin his life pretty soundly. He poisons a child and kidnaps his own infant daughter. His wife hates him. His son hates him. His sidekick hates him.
One of the parts of the show I didn't like was where Walt shows up to quasi-redeem himself by killing the nazis. Because Walt was just as bad, if not worse, of a person as they were, but the ending lets the sympathetic viewer pretend that's not true. In my ideal version, Walt dies in anonymity and Jesse escapes some other way. Maybe someone else shows up to kill the nazis—Badger and Skinny Pete show up with a bazooka or something, maybe he just files through the bars of his cage and gets out. But I don't need Walt the Antihero, big mistake.
I will agree with Blakely's take that the show doesn't engage with the reality of the narco-state and instead portrays narcos as uber powerful psycho terrorists.
Though I haven't actually watched Breaking Bad since my political views, uh, matured so maybe I'd feel differently if I watched it now.
breaking bad was always bad. there is no judgment for white (he's happy to trade everything for his pride/vanity); by the fifth season, it's just a series of many opportunities to indulge in how clever he is, all to the audiences amusement and vicarious gratification of their will to power. grubby, hot couch trash.
I think the director of AHX realized how pro fascist it seemed late into production. He wanted to use the Alan Smithee moniker, but he couldn't due to rules or some reason.
Fight Club (the movie, i haven't read the book) is pretty ambiguous to me. yes, it ends with him destroying the macho hot boy in his head and entering into an emotionally open and heterosexual relationship with the woman he previously objectified, but like, he still blows up all the credit card companies. and this happens concurrently with his moment of personal growth.
also i know it was and probably still is loved by dumb jocks, but i practically never see it mentioned by manosphere guys, not even "red pill" guys, who you'd think would be all over it. i think we just associate it with them because it's partially about them.
anyway my position continues to be you can't judge art by what effect it has on dumbasses
The book is arguably more effective in it's messaging bc it doesn't have Brad Pitt and Ed Norton, and it's much more grotesque. It shares that in common with a lot of Chuck P's writing, the grotesqueness. I don't know how else to describe it.
I think it's old enough to be out of the cultural zeitgeist, but in the 00s it was everywhere. People were forming fight clubs in their gyms and basements.
also i don't really think the work functions as an argument against getting beat up by other dudes. that sounds cool and i don't get why it shouldn't be.
Following pop culture is a fallacy. How often has pop culture become captured by it's national identity or pseudo-ethnicitiy to reflect reality? Japanese cartoons of 1945 portrayed the successes of 1942 while ignoring the horrific losses of the previous 3 years.
Yes there is.
Novecento, by Bertolucci.
The film starts with the 2 fascists running from a mob, then we see during the film why those pieces of shit are being hunted. It also ends with Depardieu looking at the camera (really) and explaining the relationship between capital and fascism.
and the sex scenes are awkward as hell
:volcel-police: seal of approval
I've read a lot of Palahniuk. Didn't know that was weird till recently
I have too. I liked him when I was younger but it's been a long time since I've went back.
Read Beautiful You recently, genuinely felt sick about halfway through.
This is why trying to convince a fascist to stop being a fascist never works, you need to put them down
oh hey, we've been here before
https://hexbear.net/post/154423/comment/1883190
it's a bad one. there is value to art outside its impact on masturbatory disconnected internet discourse.
This is why “The Beleiver” is a better movie about Neonazis than American History X
There's a horror movie starring Martin Sheen with that name. I'm guessing it's a different movie.
