The Good Place is one example.
is... is that Marx crossed with the joker and fiestacat ?
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his checks notes $5 million salary :cereal2: depends on his not understanding it.
I've always felt he knows exactly where he is, what liberalism is, and why he's a liberal. He's simply able to very clearly explain himself.
The Good Place was written by the smartest liberals because they started out with a lib approach to moral philosophy and wrote themselves into the corner of "oh shit, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism" and "rehabilitative justice is the only reasonable afterlife".
it's got some pretty good jokes for a sitcom that's so :LIB:. i remember liking the jason bits a lot. there are worse ways to spend your evenings.
The characters and premise are fun and the first few seasons where they're accidentally writing their way to :marx-joker: don't have many cringe takes, on account of the materialism. Gets a bit less good in the later seasons but still tolerable if you watched it that far
Watch until the end of the first season, and you'll probably figure out if it is or not.
It's slightly smarter than the average sitcom. But only by a little.
Jason is funny though.
They get so close, especially toward the end when we are introduced to the liberals who run the good place who are completely fucking useless, and how consumption is tied directly to the evils of capitalism. But then instead of "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" being the moral, it becomes "its complicated now, so we need to change the point system so consuming things doesn't count against you" to absolve liberals of the concerns that indentured servants make their treats. Its a version of "imperialism makes GDP go up, so its good actually". I also refuse to believe that anyone but people from the imperial core would end up in the bad place under their current accounting system. Liberals love flattening the difference between them consuming treats and a worker in the global south.
I loved my first watch of the show, but I can never watch it again because they are all insufferable libs.
The second Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr.
Moriarty is basically a well-connected war profiteer, yanking the strings of European politicians and industrialists to ignite WW1.
He points out that nobody but Holmes is trying to stop him from starting a war, because all the monarchs and politicians and weapons manufacturers want a war. They want an opportunity to use all these massive new weapons they've purchased and profited from. They want to send their surplus populations to die in a violent bloody explosion of conflict.
He basically says that the war is too profitable to not happen ........ and then he ascribes it as "human nature". The word "capitalism" isn't said once.
the toxic masculinity
Fight Club is an AIDS crisis allegory, influenced by Chuck Palanhuik's experience as a gay man at the height of the crisis. The fight club itself is a metaphor for anonymous gay sex: you construct intricate rituals to touch the skin of other men, you do this to feel alive and whole because you do not fit in with society, and you do this even though it is dangerous; during the daytime you recognize other people who are like you but society doesn't notice and wouldn't approve, even as your participation begins to show on your skin society pretends not to notice still. There's a lot more pieces there, but hopefully those dots are easier to connect once you realize that it is.
There's a lot of toxic masculinity associated with it, but I think that mostly comes from the (cishet) bro dudes that are its stereotypical fans — calling the work itself toxic masculinity misses the point IMO
It was really eye-opening to me when I heard that interpretation of the novel/film, but it feels so obvious after learning that lol
Edit: I'm glad this was my 10000th post, that feels right for me I feel good about that lmao
I've never seen this interpretation. I thought Chuck said it was him as a gay man commenting on the toxic masculinity (not the term used since this was a long time ago) of straight men. Basically "Are the straights alright?: The Book".
I think that's true as well — the synthesis is that the self-destructive nature of toxic masculinity is used as a metaphor for being gay at the height of the AIDS crisis (causing cishet men to overwhelmingly stan extremely queer art, which is cool)
I always liked the film.
The biggest problem with the Fight Club movie is that it cast hot, cool, charismatic people like Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, and Brad Pitt in the primary roles. Instead of seeming grotesque and weird and unhealthy (which the book definitely sells) they made it look cool in an anti-culture heroin chic way. If they cast Steve Buscemi, Willem Dafoe, and Tilda Swinton (just pulling "weird" actors out of my ass) the movie would have read very differently.
(I don't want to imply that Steve isn't cool and charismatic, he's just not Hollywood Handsome the way Pitt and Norton are).
Neo-nazis seem to really enjoy American History X. I guess they turn it off when Edward Norton turns lib.
Oh yeah that's a very good point — definitely seems to be an intentional choice on Palanhuik's part
If the fight club is a metaphor for gay sex, then what is project mayhem? And why are there hundreds of references in the movie to being emasculated or feminized if the movie is not about toxic masculinity?
spoiler
Why do the men of the fight club form a fascist militia to overthrow society if the fight club is a metaphor for gay sex?
Following Eve Sedgwick's classic queer theory essay, "The Beast in the Closet," the more that any hint of homosexual desire or eroticism is attempted to be eliminated, the gayer it, in fact, becomes
Overthrowing a society that don't care about you and actively wishes you dead is an understandable position, and probably one that a lot of queer people had during the AIDS crisis in particular
I don't really buy that. So much of the movie is just purely misogynistic. Project Mayhem is a rebellion against what they perceive to be a society controlled by women. The goal of project mayhem is to reinforce the patriarchy. To associate hating women with being a gay man comes off as homophobic.
spoiler
The narrator says that home decoration is a trait of women. That women should be homemakers.
Tyler says that men shouldn't know what a duvet is because woman should be homemakers.
Narrator says "Bob has b*tch tits". The martyr of the movie is a man who the narrator perceive as being forced feminized. Bob had his testicles removed because of cancer and grew woman-like breasts because of an estrogen hormonal imbalance.
The narrator hates Marla for being a woman. He calls Marla a "faker" and says she wants to steal what he has from him.
The narrator/Tyler explicitly state that the problem with society is that it is run by women.
The narrator/Tyler blame their shortcomings in life on being raised by single mothers, not having a father figure. They say that it made them woman-like. The reactionary trope of "fatherlessness" being the failure of society.
The narrator explicitly tells Marla that fight club is a support group for men. Marla sees the narrator on the street and asks why he hasn't been going to support groups any more. The narrator tells Marla that he is still attending a support group, but that it's for men only, referring to fight club. Fight club is a support group for men who are forced to be feminine by society.
The paper street soap company created by project mayhem is described as "selling women's fat asses back to them". The soap is made out of liposuction fat and sold to women at high prices. Tyler is described to be brilliant because he takes advantage of women who want fancy soap.
Women are not allowed to join project mayhem.
If someone disobeys project mayhem, project mayhem will cut their testicles off. There are dozens of references in the movie to having testicles cut off. In the ideology of project mayhem, not having testicles makes someone "not a man". Project mayhem seeks to make anyone who disobeys the militia into not men. Why would gay men be so obsessed with cutting of testicles?
Homosexual men don't hate women, they just don't want to have sex with women.
The thing about allegory is that it isn't 1:1, and using the fight club and project mayhem as an allegory for gay men during the height of the aids crisis does not mean that gay men disproportionately engage in toxic masculinity or in misogyny any more than it means that gay men routinely gather in parking lots to beat each other up for fun. Trying to conflate the plot of the story with its allegorical meaning will lead you to draw incorrect conclusions like this - that would be like reading "the ant and the grasshopper" and your takeaway being that if you don't work hard and prepare for the future, you'll be scoffed at by a literal ant.
Narratively, the exclusion of women from fight club allegorically aligns with the disproportionate effect of AIDS on men, particularly within the queer community. (That isn't to say that women don't get AIDS and that queer women don't get AIDS, but the impact of the virus was very different.)
I'd also like to reiterate that the author of the novel is a gay man who lived through that time period.
I also strongly disagree with your characterization of a queer interpretation of fight club as being homophobic in any way. The point of the story in this interpretation isnt "gay men are toxic and hate women" it's "gay men were treated horribly by society, abandoned and left to die, and some subset of gay men engaged in self-destructive behaviors to cope with this." The narrator is never cast as being in the wrong for doing what he does, it's presented as a logical response to his material conditions — if the moral was "gay men are toxic and hate women" the whole story would be focused on all the ways that the narrator was wrong, and would end with him getting punished. Instead, the movie adaption ends with him blowing up the banks and the records of everyone's debt along with it.
The trans Chinese are the real bad guys. I checked out during season 2. Should have been a 1 season show, they blew their load on the fight club twist
The meth was because he felt he squandered his life being passive and wanted to go out in a blaze of glory to prove his brilliance (which he felt was unfairly ignored)
It wasn’t for his family at all, it was for his ego
I feel like the show is more about toxic masculinity where Walt refused to swallow his pride and ego and as a result ruins the lives of everyone around him and his own just to claim something as petty as not asking for help.
Almost everything in the show is a problem of his own making and at the end realises it and tries to right those wrongs.
The interpretation of Walt as a cool villain character is an extention of that toxic masculine mindset where seeing someone who is literally destroying everything in his own life and others is cool actually cos edgy and manly. But the result of such a mindset is dying alone in a cabin abandoned by everyone.
Absolutely with the toxic masculinity but I'd argue that this particular 'rugged individualist man provider' facet is also very much good old ideology pushed by capitalism.
Kim also felt trapped because she was working a high paying job protecting pointless properties and evicting people and felt more fulfilled helping the average person. She would jeopardize her corporate job multiple times in order to escape the rat race and help vulnerable people even if the material reward was little to nonexistent - something most humans* can relate to
Edit: in addition to the man who refused to move
*not a human :billionaire-tears:
Let's not forget how Gus Fring is able to run probably the largest meth cartel in North America in plain sight, under the noses of the authorities, simply because he has an air of respectability, or in other words, because he's a business owner.
Gotham. Every single problem and every single villain is the direct result of capitalism. As a bonus the unintended meaning of the show is that capitalism's only response to this is brutal violence enacted either through the police or whatever that simply makes things even worse.
When Batman finally hits public domain I want every street criminal ever fed to the justice system by Batman to realize they were victims of Wayne Industries- through wage theft, hollowing out of public programs, and hideous pollution.
I want them to discover Batman's secret identity and understand instantly why he went to such lengths to conceal it.
Then it's simple,
Altered Carbon. The good guys in the books were communist rebel.
Season one was bout an old money sex traffic ring. Season two changed the rebeld to Christian democrats. After acheiving transhumanism and warching neoliberalism fuck it up, they try to go back to trad life. Gross
yeah when the rebels were primarily trying to end immortality instead of making it universally accessable and fair it really irked me. also was cringe that the rebellion was portrayed as a few dozen main character supersoldiers in the woods doing nothing instead of a popular revolt.
Are the books worth reading? I don’t want to get to the end and it’s ultimately Lib but that sounds cool
Oh man, I did not know this. Just skimmed through a post he did on his blog in 2020 where he was mad that people call him a TERF and, uh, it's pretty hateful stuff.
The books I think are very much worth reading. Just got every kinda violence so trust you gut on that.
They are sonfar as themes go about toxic masculinity, trauma, violence , and the absurdity of life.
The author basicaly only writes on those themes. He has another triliogy that is fantasy and gay with the same themes. Richard Morgan with the A Land Fit For Heroes trilogy.
I think a better work to start with would be Market forces or Thirteen. It is the same themes just condensed down to one book
I wanted to like that show, but I only watched the first season. After a couple episodes they seemed to really ramp up the hamminess and cheesy production. I felt like the writers/director wanted me to take the show seriously, but did not take it seriously themselves. I don't remember the details at all now, I just remember a lot of over-acting and corny dialogue from everybody except the lead. That and the goofy acrobatic fight choreography which I, personally, can't stand (though is by no means a deal breaker on its own).
It is kinda metatextual as how serious are you supposed to take the idle rich fucking around with eachother. But really they didn't handle it as well as they could of.
Jurassic Park. The bad shit is always either caused by profiteering or just clear cost-cutting, and the desire to make more money just always lets everything go to shit.
And yet the movie(s) tries to cut the entire message down to "People shouldn't play God" again and again. As if the research itself was the problem. The series also works hard to rehabilitate the greedy fuck billionaire that caused the shit to go down in the first place iirc.
I'm working on a few years old knowlege here though, I might be a bit off.
The author of the book was very religious and the intended message was supposed to be about the god thing. He tried to imagine a somewhat realistic way that the problems he saw with where science was heading would surface, and of course just ended up imagining a problem caused by capitalism, because almost every problem is caused by capitalism.
I remember thinking forever that that message and warning was overblown and then when my sister started doing bio work in her 2nd year undergrad that included gene manipulation of bacteria and fruit flies (like down to editing stuff with a computer to inject later) I definitely felt a brief pang of "my god weve gone too far."
There's that one webcomic where some cavemen make fire, but then the fire spreads too much, and then they're like "we were clearly not meant to make fire, we should not play god".
The answer is basically any show considered "speaking truth to power" and loved by Elizabeth Warren fans.
I think a more fun exercise might be "what pieces of media inadvertently show that capitalism is the problem?". A go to for me would be Batman. Gotham doesn't have a crime problem, the problem is that they allowed the Wayne family to consolidate all that wealth at the expense of funding social programs.
speaking truth to power
I used to really like this phrase until I grew jaded and cynical enough to realize that power isn't threatened by the truth and you really just need to stab power in the eye.
yeah like they recently did the :pepsi: scene and i died laughing, powered by juche necromancy as we speak
I remember watching a cartoon called Gravity Falls and there was an episode about a crew of construction workers and lumber jacks being betrayed and exploited.
Essentially, a rich family promised the lumberjacks that they would be able to utilize the mansion once finished. Many men died during the construction. Then finally, when it was finished, I think a flood occurred and the rich family ignored the crew and let them drown.
They came back as the ghosts to haunt the family and eventually kill them, but the end, the rich family allowed all the towns folks to come visit the mansion and the ghosts forgave the family because it meant the family saw the light lol (even though they did so hesitantly)
It’s a Disney show so you’re only going to get away with so much
Also, squid game :squidward-nochill: since it’s illegal to disparage the South Korean government
Gravity Falls is one of my favorite cartoons. A goofy monster of the week kids show goes full goofy monster of the week cosmic horror kids show. It's great. Very hopebright while still being bizarre and "scary".
Captain America: the Winter Soldier. CA had the perfect opportunity to say that "actually, perhaps the government doesn't have the people's best interests at heart, and we are the bad guys?" but shifts immediately away by saying "actually, the cybernazis who have secretly infiltrated our government are the one who have been making all the bad decisions! We're the good guys after all!"
The DOD did approve Winter Soldier, the one they didn't approve was the original Avengers.
https://www.cbr.com/captain-marvel-mcu-military-relationship/
Presumably, they were offended by the idea that the US government might nuke New York, but once it was revealed that it was just secret Nazis doing the bad things, it was fine.
Almost anything created by Mike Judge.
King of the Hill
There's a different societal conflict every episode. The conflicts are almost always explained by Hank to be caused moral failures and the conflicts are resolved by Hank's conservative values.
Office Space
Main character is alienated from his work, so he decides to stop doing his job but still collect his paycheck. The movie concludes that he should work a construction job instead of an office job.
Idiocracy
Dystopian future where corporations control all facets of life. The problem is deemed to be that low IQ people are breeding more frequently than high IQ people.
Silicon Valley
Struggling developers living in a "business incubator", the capitalist owner of the house extracts value from the software they make. Constant conflicts with giant corporations that want to steal their ideas. Conflicts are always resolved at the end of each season with some magic technological development.
Not sure about Beavis and Butt-head, Extract, The Goode Family.
Oh, I can name the capitalist bad stuff in Beavis and Butt-head. The metanarrative is that it takes place in a suburb whose identity has been completely destroyed by Reagan-era neoliberalism, and the implication is that the only people who can be happy there are two idiots who are barely capable of functioning. But it's not pointed at.
Bioshock? The first game is pretty clear about capitalism being the problem, maybe also lack of oversight over human experimentation is also a problem. Then the other two games have to go "Well, actually"
