The cold war propaganda has really been ramping up the last 10 years, hmm?
The funniest part about all of this is that the first season was literally about an exaggerated MKULTRA. You know, the experiment where American minorities were drugged without consent because the government was dumb enough to think North Koreans can read minds.
I know right? I still remember the vibe from the first season being that the 80s have some sinister secret with all the hip and fun stuff with the mall and shit are all just supposed to be a facade. But then it the show unironically becomes an 80s nostalgia ride like Family Guy.
Yeah, in season 1 the bad guys where the American feds. They literally kidnapped and tried to kill children. Then their bad gets destroyed, and apparently the evil commies build a secret base in their place under a mall?
Good summary of the vibe. S1 simply uses the 80s as the backdrop. They don't overdo the nostalgia, it just more or leas feels "authentic". But then starting with S2 it just become gen-x pandering, similar to what Forrest Gump was like for boomers.
the government was dumb enough to think North Koreans can read minds.
Oh shit, they're on to us. Shut it down, Comrade Kim.
i think it was originally about the US government thinking that the Czechoslovakians can mind control people, but i'm not sure on that
its true, the slavic brainpan predisposes the czechs to psychic manipulation and they can force you to pee and poop your pants
that's a lot better than my hidden superpower, which is not being bothered by cold coffee
i consider my real superpower to have happened early on in my transition. all genders were extremely, ungodly attracted to me for like 2 years due to my femme androgyny. now im just a boring old lady
i literally had a straight christian conservative male hit on me in a hallway, immediately followed by a straight christian conservative woman. then, i went to the lgbt resource center same day and a butch lesbian hit me up
i felt so powerful right then :sicko-fem:
me reading this while i'm about to dive headfirst into the androgynous phase of my transition: :turtle-pogger:
But alas, that superpower comes with the fatal weakness of having your mouth burned by room-temperature gazpacho soup.
I saw the first season because it was creepy, tense, and referenced MKULTRA. Highly recommend it.
I’m glad I never watched any other seasons because it looks like a goofy ass sitcom now.
It was good until the third season. They clearly only had 2 seasons in mind
I feel like the first season cut too close to the bone and so they went hard on the anti-communism to compensate.
WHO COULD'VE GUESSED THAT AMERICAN MEDIA DURING THE RED SCARE 2.0 WOULD DO THIS ?
Sadly the second season didn't get as much traction and it got cancelled. Still has a pretty satisfying conclusion though.
Loved Dark - not crazy about the third season but still, way better than Stranger Things
Yep. And I cried a little in that one scene where old Egon is talking about how parents have these kids, and they're only along the journey with you for a short time - like, you have a life, then you have these kids with you for a few years, then they're gone. Idk Egon was a lot more poetic than that.
I know it's not the point they're trying to make but I guess it's fair that Russia gets gulags and that in USA they unleash unspeakable world ending evil, then leave it to kids to just have to deal with it because everyone's busy at the mall and freedom or something
Yeah it's definitely kinda funny that as hard as they try to make the Soviets these super evil villains, even in the text of the show the US is unfathomably worse.
Hopper shitting on Vietnam was a step too far though.
Hopper shitting on Vietnam
Do not recall this, what happened?
When he's in the Gulag talking to the prison guard that gets thrown in with him, he mentions enlisting to go to Vietnam and how the "Commie bastards like you descended on the south like a plague". It's brief but I was like holy shit that's a bold take. Of course it wouldn't be out of character for an American cop to say but it still had me going "wait what the fuck".
Ah, its in the new season? Gotcha. That explains why I didn't remember. Also, at least the actor seems amenable to socialism?
“I don’t know that there’s anyone who could disagree with socialist ideology,” Mr. Harbour told the Guardian newspaper.
No shit. Well that's cool.
Yeah, next step is getting him to read State and Rev :sicko-charging:
this isnt just a bold take, this is straight up derangement, revision of history and just pure fucking undiluted propaganda. what the actual fuck.
I wonder what the actual CIA budget is. I bet it's greater than 50 billion a year.
That’s why i only watched one season of it, because it didnt need more
I'm actually watching it right now and yeah it's bad but I just turn my brain off and enjoy the slop.
If I can't both enjoy slop and also complain about how it's all anti-Communism garbage, I might as well disengage from media completely.
I'm glad I didn't care enough even to finish the first season. The characters were annoying and the 80s setting does nothing for me.
The cold war propaganda has really been ramping up
I think we have to view the brief period where cold war propaganda was sidelined by end of history stuff and the war on terror as an outlier, and position the cold war as the default state of post-ww2 America.
Unpopular opinion, and keep in mind I haven't watched 4 yet, but I'm working my through 3 again and while the "Scary Russians" are totally a thing, there's still a lot of critique of Capitalism and our sexist, classist, consumerist society. Like almost all of the real world struggles that aren't about the Big Bad are basically digs at capitalism and our society. Jonathan and Nancy getting fired reveals that they both have different ways the system is shitting on them, there's the corruption of local government and police, the mall killing main street, etc.
