https://twitter.com/the_nerd_skull/status/1760261533555372265
Seeing so many people misinterpret Star Ship Troopers, Disco Elysium and other obvious stuff, makes me think that every piece of media should have the writer, director and all protagonist characters come on screen at the end and say into the camera "The usa and capitalism are the big Satan. Communism is good. This is the actual unironic core meaning of this piece of art." before the credits roll.
"The usa and capitalism are the big Satan. Communism is good. This is the actual unironic core meaning of this piece of art."
"What did the director mean by this?"
"Here's why this explicitly anti-capitalist media is actually anti-communist"
This is something I'm sure I remember reading about Squid Game
Wouldn't do a damn bit of good. People were quoting Verhoeven explicitly saying what this movie was about to these fash, and the fash were just replying "well just because he made it doesn't mean he knows what it means."
I guess "death of the author" pleading has reached them, lmaoo.
The disco elysium people gave a shout out to marx in their award acceptance speech, it hasn't changed shit.
Yeah, taking a look at the subreddit, some were even saying this meant the Disco Elysium creators were anti-communist.
That wouldn't work. FYI fash are a bit more self aware then I think most of us realize, when they say shit like this they kinda know they're taking the piss, but they don't care. Fascism is a narcissistic ideology, they literally think reality warps around their mind, so it doesn't matter if God himself descended from the heavens to tell them they're wrong, if they want to be right they will be right.
It don't work. For example Frank Herbert at some point got annoyed by reception of especially "God Emperor" that he basically said straight what the message was and yet, 40 years later chuds are still wanking to the great (literal) gusano despot - which is especially fun in context of the tweet in OP since who is now identifying with a hideous murderous hive insect (Leto II considered himself a hive being - amalgam of all the personalities in him with what was the Leto himself only existing as an equilibrium between them).
Verhoeven also openly said his movie was satire but they still going too.
Frank Herbert has two problems working against him though, one is his own son systematically sabotaging the ideals of his works for a human lifetime, the second is how many of his actually kinda shitty beliefs are in Dune.
how many of his actually kinda shitty beliefs are in Dune.
I only know the bare basics about Dune. What beliefs are those?
He was a lib idealist with zero historical materialism, so his 15000 years of human history are unavoidably carricatural. Also had this iritating manner, especially in last two books of being circular in most thoughts, where nearly no question or problem is ever asked straight and never answered straight, just with more circular non-answers to appear deep.
You know the good narration method of "show, do not tell" which a lot of authors violate by telling and not showing? Herbert neither show nor tell (but was good in that).
You know the good narration method of "show, do not tell" which a lot of authors violate by telling and not showing?
"Show, don't tell" in its correct form is about pacing economy and the use of scenery and practical effects in theater: it's better to literally, physically show a visual detail than to try to have actors take the time to mention it so you know that it's a stormy night or whatever. "Show, don't tell" as it's taught to authors is vapid nonsense about obfuscating and dancing around messaging instead of being blunt. It's this idea that meaning is a special clever good boy treat as a reward for readers educated enough to get the references you're using as allegory, instead of something integral to the purpose of a work which needs to be clear and make its point in an unambiguous fashion.
In fact, I'd almost say a proper interpretation of the original meaning of "show, don't tell" to writing is nearly the opposite of its literal original use: you need to think about pacing economy in what gets a full "showing" treatment vs what's simply "told" about as a passing detail, since strictly speaking everything a novelist is doing is "telling" in prose form and you have to prioritize what gets talked about the most.
his own son systematically sabotaging the ideals of his works
I think that's mixed problem. Sure it's partially true but recent rereading of Heretics, Chapterhouse, Hunters and Sandworms make me believe Brian seemingly ridiculous stories at least somewhat. I would say Heretics and Chapterhouse are more consistent with Brian works than with previous 4 books.
This is why I think people are wrong when they say that "Don't look up" is too heavy handed.
Feel like part of the theme was just how explicit you had to be for people to understand your metaphor. And even then you had a bunch of people saying it was about covid.
You need your main character to spend 2 minutes screaming at the camera about what the movie is saying to reach these people.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you are writing and have a point you need to literally, textually beat the reader over and about the head with it while unambiguously yelling exactly what you mean, or they will miss the point and walk away with the opposite conclusion that you intended. Every work of fiction should be at risk of turning into a polemic. Symbolism, subtlety, and allegory are tasty treats that authors are only allowed to have after they've bluntly made their point.
Ok but counterpoint, that sounds like a really unfun, boring, and artistically questionable way to write fiction.
Honestly i think the solution is just accepting that morons are not the responsability of the author lol
The real solution is more just being conscious and aware of how things can be misinterpreted and how the expected audience's biases will effect how they interpret it (so Starship Troopers to a leftist audience is funny satire, but to an American audience is just saying what Americans unironically believe but in a silly way). But that's soft, easily forgotten advice compared to an exhortation to always be blunt and hyperbolic, delivered in a blunt and hyperbolic way.
That plus accepting that art follows politics, not vice-versa.
The director of squid game said that it was an allusion to capitalism but people still thought it was about communism
I forgot about Squid Game and thought you were talking about Splatoon and was kinda confused.
Maybe a time for the comeback of greek choruses, where they like explain everything at the beginning of the play.
I wanna read terrible Disco Elysium takes, that'd be so funny.
You sometimes see OPs in the Disco subreddit who are like "I don't why people think this is a commie game, it makes fun of commies all the time!"
They usually get thrashed.
It's not a bad idea but even that doesn't work. Didn't the creator of Parasite say exactly that, followed by article after article explaining why he was wrong?
I love that film. I have to give it credit for how ingenious it was. Similar to the film How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, you really have to pay attention to what’s going on, otherwise the humour is likely to go over your head. In fact when I first watched it it never occurred to me that the makers intended it to be satirical (and I have a feeling that most of the others who watched it didn’t know either).
Starship Troopers spoilers
Some ironies that I noticed:
- The press baselessly claims that the bugs somehow ‘launched’ meteors at the Earth, when the meteors could have easily just been natural disasters. On the other hand, we know for a fact that Earth has assaulted another planet.
- A bug catches one of the troops and severely injures him. The general doesn’t shoot the bug, but instead the victim, to end his suffering, then the bug gets away. A perfect example of how wasteful capitalist militaries can be.
- One of the troops somehow concludes that a fellow human sent a distress signal not because they were under assault, but to lay a trap for the troops. Shortly afterwards somebody obliviously sent a distress signal to others, presumably ‘trapping’ them too (by his own logic).
- Somebody seriously suggests blowing up the entire bug planet, which is hypocritical given that a meteor’s devastation of Buenos Aires was the excuse for reinvading.
- Somebody suggested that human intrusion on the bug planet was exactly why the bugs were so upset with us in the first place. They brush this question off. So the entire conflict could have been avoided had humanity simply minded its own business.
- Late in the story there is a graphic scene of the ‘brain bug’ sucking out somebody’s brains, but it isn’t vastly different from a scene earlier in the story when the students were dissecting dead bugs.
This is what a good satire looks like. The only time that it bonks you over the head is when an officer nonchalantly says that his service was what ‘made him the man that he is today’, then the camera immediately shows us his missing legs. Everything else is very subtle.The only time that it bonks you over the head is when
Don't forget right at the end, when Niel Patrick Harris shows up in a full on SS outfit.
The press baselessly claims that the bugs somehow ‘launched’ meteors at the Earth, when the meteors could have easily just been natural disasters. On the other hand, we know for a fact that Earth has assaulted another planet.
Been a while since I watched the film but I recall one of the propaganda sequences talking up Earth's ring of fortifications around the moon. The clip even shows a shot from the space station blowing up a space rock.
The Arachnids are never shown with any FTL and their territory is shown as being clear across the galaxy from Earth. The clear implication is that Beunos Ares was an inside job.
Kind wild how only 4 years later the entire plot of Starship Troopers became reality.
Real US propaganda entirely passed those levels in 2022
The press baselessly claims that the bugs somehow ‘launched’ meteors at the Earth, when the meteors could have easily just been natural disasters. On the other hand, we know for a fact that Earth has assaulted another planet.
It's virtually impossible for the bugs to blow up Buenos Aires with an asteroid It would difficult to achieve even with the tech of Star Wars and other sci-fi settings. You pretty much need to go to WH40k level shenanigans where an alien civilization shoot an asteroid through the warp that materializes right next to Earth.
Movies like this, American Psycho, Flight Club, and Clockwork Orange are just massive self report mechanisms to me depending on how you "like" them.
Just a guess but
"Libral society brainwashes you out of being a cool milk-drinking gangster and makes you soy"
I'd think I'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would think that. The main character is so thoroughly horrible and unlikable that anyone would revel in his torture later in the movie.
I hate to break it to you, but the same people who thought conservative was the new punk rock twenty years ago also unironically identified with Alex.
"I like hurting people, these dudes are so cool for hurting people"
amerikkkans will think they live in a free country as long there is a clown on TV, or rich people just exist.
Show
I just rewatched that segment. It wasn’t a debate over having a war, but how the creatures were able to execute their military tactics so competently:
Federal scientists struggle to explain the intelligent military actions of the Arachnids.
Whether it was intentional or not, that paralleled how Fascism (like other ruling political theories) drew distinctions between ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ dissent. For example:
Not all publications are formal organs of the Party, but unswerving obedience is a sine qua non for their existence. Certainly an occasional feeble and minor criticism is not considered incompatible with such fealty. But on all basic issues there can be only one language. In consequence, Italian newspapers have descended to a ridiculously phonographic level, monotonous and uniform.
It is similar to the situation in occupied Palestine: criticizing how the war is going is acceptable, but questioning its very necessity is not.
there is voting
even non citizens like Rico’s parents are extremely well off.
Ditto. But seriously, that is part of the setting: it’s supposed to be a highly idealized, neofascist utopia, where there is little to no crime and traditional social evils such as racial discrimination and misogyny have been replaced with a speciesism towards fictional creatures.
Tell us again how the film is about fascism?
Listen to the DVD commentaries!
Lmao when clicked on the "ditto" link first thing i thought is "i think i need to recommend Grunberger book" only to see my own post from 1,5 year ago recommending Grunberger book under that post few seconds later.
Heroism is when you land wave after wave of unsupported light infantry onto a hostile planet with no preparatory bombardment, air support, armor, or even crew served weapons. Beauty is when you have your fleet orbiting dumbly above said planet, not providing any support, being easy targets for ground fire.
Klendathu drop was such obvious satire scene that probably the only people who could never get it are dudes raised on US movies about Vietnam and Market Garden Operation. Which is probably exactly what we are seeing.
Starship Troopers is an incredible movie which I love very much but unfortunately it fails as a satire, simply because it was made for Americans who are too stupid to understand its themes or subtlety
I don't think we are a fair judge of that because we are like top 1% of people in snooping out the kind of thing Starship Troopers wants to say
Snooping out is when you do snoop dog amounts of drugs till you pass out.
I don't think it fails as a satire, I just don't think satire is an avenue to change. It can be entertaining, but it's not going to convince anyone of anything they didn't already know and the people who don't already know will miss the point.
100% agree with this. Satire entertains us very much but ends up being absorbed by fascists and becoming part of their propaganda sphere. Even something unambiguous good vs bad can be absorbed such as the Star Wars Empire.
In the unambiguous good vs bad I think the good it does in warning people of the bad outweighs their absorbing it but not in the case of satire where fascists are portrayed as good.
I think this is less the fault of the movie, and more the fault of satire having a minimum requirement for understanding too high for Americans
Unfortunately if you're writing for an audience you have to take that kind of thing into account, especially so when you write satire
I'm sorry Auron, I wasn't identifying with the bugs. I was actually identifying with Rico's parents, who were crushed under the consequences of
AmericanWorld empire after begging their son to not go off and fight as a fascist.I also identify with Verhoeven, who thinks you're a dumbass.
Similarly I've noticed this with boomers in my life (big crossover with them being kinda fashy) . Totally incapable of understanding anything outside of what is literally happening on screen.
The sheeple are horrible at reading between the lines, and that's what makes them perfect fascists. Normies only care about what's 'cool' rather than what's right. I'm stuck in this society where I have to fake being a douchebag to save face!
Consider for a moment that literal children are currently playing Helldivers 2 and then going on to imitate it and absorb it into their personalities.
The satire is lost on them, they only see "i really enjoy this thing" and "it's really cool when they say these words in such an over the top way".
Satire depicting fascists as cool and the good guys does considerably more harm than good.
Consider for a moment that literal children are currently playing Helldivers 2 and then going on to imitate it and absorb it into their personalities.
90s/00s kids played with their Starship Troopers action figures and watched the Starship Troopers animated series on syndicated TV, and people wonder why Starship Troopers 1 is taken sincerely by many people. Surely being able to buy the action figures of the satirized characters does much to undermine the satire.
That's a good point. You don't satirise the Nazis, then make collectibles out of the characters. Well, you and I don't. Some people would. And libs will not object so long as the characters are a step removed.
No please just one more anti facists satire please i promise please the facists are not gonna miss the point this time please
A friend of mine kept saying this film was dumb because "how could insects send a rock halfway across the galaxy to strike at earth" and no matter how many times I tried to explain to him he just couldn't grasp that the fascist human government faked the attack and that the bugs are literally no threat to humanity.
He's a really good friend and has not a malicious bone e in his body, but he's also credulous as fuck and falls for the false flag narratives constantly.
Aaaaaaaaaaahhhh
Its been a while since I saw the movie, and I think I get it mixed up with the book sometimes. Was there something in the movie itself that even hints that it was a false flag?
I personally didn't pick that up. I don't think there was but also like I was watching it on a plane and a was kinda tired so idk??
It's subtle but that's because it's echoing Nazi propaganda films about their own false flags.
The system is far from earth (even if you assume it's warped there), the bugs have limited interstellar capacity, the asteroid is thrown against all odds straight into the patrol path of a starship. Iirc it's the ship political officer that says coms are down.
Buenos Aries is populated by Albert Speer capitalists who are critical of the fascist regime (while benefiting from it). The fash lieutenant is clearly isolated and sad (he's a retired field offier recommissioned in a collapsing army and he gets the rank of lieutenant ffs, he's pissed someone off or he's an incompetent, likely the latter since his unit gets sacrificed.)
You'll even note the reporter uses the fascist trick of mimic-ing liberal talking points in front of an audience from the city and guaranteed to be hostile to it.
The the recommissioned officer who was the teacher was just combining two completely different characters from the book.
Why do the bugs have limited interstellar capabilities?
The movie definitely takes some of the fascist ideas from the books and amplifies them effectively. I think Heinlein was really asking a what if in the original book, similar to a lot of his other (also, 'problematic') work.
None of this implies a false flag.
If they wanted to amp up the fascism they could have used the opening of the book which was nuking the 'skinnies' a bug ally.
I wasn't sure Starship Troopers was satire the first time I saw it. It was the Bush years, so it just didn't seem that far outside of the realm of what mainstream culture had become. But it was still pretty obviously either satire or terrible.
I didnt get the satire and thought it was cool shoot bugs movie and also theres sex! But i was like 14 lmao. I can be excused.
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Learn how to engage with media, you dorks - it's obvious which side is good and which side is bad! How can you be so oblivious??
The Black Mirror Men Against Fire discourse is always great because leftists inevitably end up identifying with hideous murderous roaches while passionately rejecting everything that is beautiful and heroic
Chuds wouldn't associate with that one because it doesn't pass the
test.
