Seen enough marvel shlock, want something that isn't subversive within a system but directly fights against it and loudly
Keep your negative takes out please I've had it with the irony poisoned doomerism of late
Seen enough marvel shlock, want something that isn't subversive within a system but directly fights against it and loudly
Keep your negative takes out please I've had it with the irony poisoned doomerism of late
People (including me) ask this every week but its still not enough. Why is it so hard to find something genuinely revolutionary? Does some unspeakable fate happen to anyone who tries to make revolutionary art that everyone else knows about except me???
Anyway I recommend The Spook Who Sat By the Door
Edit: Sorry if that came across as doomer shit it wasnt meant to be doomer shit
Conditioning. People have genuinely been conditioned to see any big changes to the status quo as evil. Except when it's a glorious revolution against some totalitarian guy that establishes "democracy", like in Hunger games. The entire entertainment apparatus is aimed at showing revolutionary thought and fantasy about alternative social structures as bad. You only have kingdoms that are some good. Democracies that are sometimes corrupt but always good, cause voting and dictatorships, that are both fash and commie coded at the same time.
That said, I've been enjoying Red Rising so far.
What's that about?
English speaking people largely don't want a revolution, the amount of people who do is so small that there isn't a market for commodified froms of entertainment under the capitalist mode of production. The amount is so small that the size of the talent pool limits the amount of independently developed art I'd expect to see even. This is slowly shifting, but you usually end up with something "progressive" with an anti-capitalist veneer if you're lucky (I know Boots is cool, but maybe Sorry To Bother You fits in here?).
"Revolutionary" is still a step too far and sounds pretty crackpot to most English speakers
It's not even tha they don't want. They don't know if they want or not, and all they want is that change to status quo == ebil
Revolutionary themed films are insanely popular, when made. See Star Wars.
That may play a role in why they aren’t often made.
Nah.
People who fund movies don't want a revolution.
Nah you're not saying CIA or anything. But seriously, I can't be alone in wanting to see art that is absolutely seething against the way the world is and isn't afraid to want to burn it to the ground and optimistically show that better is achievable
It’s funny, there’s a shitload of movies about that one good Nazi (or films featuring that one good Nazi), but it’s hard to think of a single Hollywood film where communists are even mentioned, let alone portrayed as good.
Enemy at the Gate is a movie about how Communism can't work because Rachel Weiss wants to bang one dude but not the other dude.
I recently attempted a rewatch. The film begins with the Soviets shooting their own soldiers, something which never actually happened. I first saw enemy at the gates as a kid and didn’t know that I was being brainwashed.
That's mythical? I always figured it was real and another unfortunate consequence of the situation created by fascists.
There were blocking divisions tasked with preventing desertion. They did not sit behind half-unarmed rifle divisions machine-gunning them if they retreated. Instead blocking divisions were made up of seasoned, reliable troops. Their job was to help stabilize the line. They'd stay either on or just behind the line. If they encountered soldiers who were lost, separated, or fleeing they would send them to assembly areas to be re-joined with their units. Some fleeing soldiers were executed for desertion, but that was a small percentage. If blocking troops intercepted 100 fleeing soldiers then 1 of them was executed, 10 were tried and sent to penal units, and 90 were returned to their units and sent back to the front line.
They served other purposes like protecting rear areas from infiltrators and helping with communications and logistics. And they were all fully equipped soldiers who often fought on the front lines themselves.
The notion of Soviet "Not one step backwards" orders is oversold. There was never an incident where Red Army soldiers were machine gunned by their own side while trying to retreat, and to the best of my knowledge there were no mass executions for retreating when the situation was untenable.
Also the "One man gets ammo, one man gets a rifle" thing never happened. The supply situation was never so dire that soldiers weren't given rifles and ammo.
Overall the movie undermines the heroism and valor of the people who fought and died defending Stalingrad, and it's really very crass. They were heroes and they deserved a better and more honest story than what Enemy at the Gates gave them.
I've always had fun watching that movie, but there was definitely some painful both-sidesing, which is always an indicator that the narrative is dubious. Anyway, thanks for a counter narrative. American media can rarely admit that people fought to protect the Russian Revolution because they really wanted to.