I don't even mean a bad thing, necessarily. I mean a thing that is made to normalize the status quo, pave over inherent contradictions in late stage neoliberal capitalism, make even the idea of changing society somewhat seem evil or impossible, and have lots of performative gestures that hide the stench of affluent arrogance. :zizek-preference:
I know it came out well before 2020, but I finally got around to seeing Iron Man 2 and I stopped at the instant Tony Stark said "I've successfully privatized world peace." It was bad. Very bad. The original movie was entertaining even if it had some painful deliberate adjustments to the comic book character to make him more like :my-hero: but the sequel played out like Ayn Rand fanfiction, especially the big smart awesome genius giving a speech about how the evil government and the ungrateful moochers were taking the sweat from his brow and so on and so on. :zizek:
The flood of MCU movies wore me out to the point that I stopped watching them and because of that I have only seen maybe half of them by now. Maybe it was a mistake returning to try watching Iron Man 2 because I now have even less interest in seeing anything MCU ever again. :zizek-fuck:
The most concentrated would be something like Wonder Woman 88 but everyone knows about that so instead I'll refer to an HBO documentary I saw recently titled Class Action Park. It's about Action Park, an amusement park which operated in New Jersey from the 70's to the 90's, and had a reputation for being incredibly dangerous. However, it felt more like a pet project by a group of angsty NYC Gen-Xers, reminiscing about their carefree youth and how this amusement park was the one place they were completely free, even at the danger of their own safety.
What I found really curious was that there were no statistics comparing it to other similar parks, so there was no way to tell whether or not it was any more dangerous than average (although it's not hard to imagine most parks of that sort in the US being deathtraps).
It also described the park's owner-operator in mixed terms, describing him as a sleazy charlatan, but also as a sort of reckless innovator. The park eventually shut down due to financial issues (nothing to do with its safety record), and it seemed to pull a George W after this, portraying him with a strange wistfulness, rather than any judgment regarding the people who died under his watch.
Why did I think it was so lib? Because it gets your attention with a promise of a look at "the most dangerous park in America" (without even trying to demonstrate that this is materially true), from the perspective of a bunch of smug New Yorkers (because NYC is literally the only place in the US that has any culture worth discussing), and builds up the nefarious character of the owner (only to redeem him as soon as the whole thing ends, attributing responsibility to the people who actually got hurt).
Then again, the last minute might actually undo my entire analysis, because it ends with some of the interviewees thinking back that this was their childhood, and then realizing "Wait, we're all kind of fucked up, aren't we?" And the VERY last shot features that wistful nostalgic waxing, but on top of a shot of a couple visiting the grave of their son who died in the park.
Regarding Action Park, one of the things that I found illuminating researching it was learning that while everyone hypes up the alpine slide and the waterslide with a loop that gave a lot of people skimmed elbows and bloody noses, the place where people died that caused the park to be shut down was the overcrowded, poorly-lifeguarded wave pool.
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This was the only one near New York City, that's why. Because the rest of America doesn't exist except when you fly over it on the way to Los Angeles, the only other city in America.
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