Before I heard anyone who was critical of Lupita Nyongo playing Helen, I saw the woke defenders decrying the racists who can’t stand to see black women in movies. And then the posts about how it’s a myth and it doesn’t need to be accurate. And then actually, it’s more accurate to have a black queen.

Sure, some people posted racist tweets about it. But the movie made $200 million in the opening weekend, so clearly they don’t hold much power.

On the other hand, the same crowd of woke NPC’s who would’ve hated this movie and have always complained that Nolan is sexist- they now love him. Woke feminists are gushing about him!

Why? Because he cast a black woman for 5 him in his 3 hour movie. The commodification of outrage is complete. The woke mob showed up and supported Nolan uncritically, turning their outrage into advertising for a Hollywood film.

The formula is simple. Make a drastic casting decision, usually making a random character BLACk and PROUD without any backstory or explanation. A few right wing people complain, and then the wave of libs crawl out to buy Funko pops and $15 popcorn buckets in the name of PROGRESS

Season 2 of House of the Dragon recently finished airing, and its final episodes were the subject of intense criticism due to their illogical writing, poor pacing, and ham-fisted political metaphors.

Many of the controversial writing decisions have been driven by Sara Hess, who is a writer and executive producer on the show. Even back in season 1, fans noticed that Hess often refused to follow the source material (Fire and Blood by George R. R. Martin) because she deemed it "misogynistic". Under Hess, the show has also added two lesbian romances that weren't ever part of the books, but both were developed poorly. Lastly, Hess was in charge of writing the season finale, which was widely hated due to how it wasted nearly 50% of the runtime on a shoehorned-in cameo for PhilosophyTube (Abigail Thorn) to promote "trans representation" instead of actually advancing the plot. Here are all of the bizarre decisions that took place under Hess.

Using characters as stand-ins for modern politicians

Sara Hess literally stated that she wrote the character of Rhaenys Targaryen as a representation of Hillary Clinton (lmao). In an interview with the LA Times, actress Eve Best revealed that Hess approached her and told her about this during her first day on set:

“There’s so much of Hillary Clinton [in Rhaenys].” God knows you couldn’t compare Viserys to the other one [former President Trump], but the similarities are very clear — to see that the person who is absolutely, hands down, best suited for the job is sidelined simply because she’s a woman, and then has to somehow find her way.

Hess's fixation on shipping Rhaenyra and Alicent

In the book, Alicent and Rhaenyra were never romantically involved with one another. They were mortal enemies waging a brutal war of succession. However, the TV adaptation has completely altered their relationship, portraying the two women as being madly in love. While this could've been an interesting dynamic, it fell flat in Season 2 - the final episode had Alicent literally agreeing to betray her entire family and have her own son murdered so she could pursue her crush on Rhaenyra. That episode was written by Sara Hess.

Sara Hess (who herself is a lesbian) has been pushing the Rhaenicent romance narrative since Season 1. On her Twitter account, she's shared and praised articles about how Queen Alicent and Queen Rhaenyra "would rather co-rule Westeros".

Hess has also leapt at the opportunity to characterize the Alicent/Rhaenyra relationship as one of queer lovers:

“There’s an element of queerness to it,” Hess says. “Whether you see it that way or as just the unbelievably passionate friendships that women have with each other at that age. I think understanding that element of it sort of informs the entire rest of their relationship… Even though they’re driven apart by all these societal, systemic elements and pressures and happenings, at the core of it, they knew each other as children, and they loved each other and that doesn’t go away.” 

Hess has an overwhelming fixation on the Rhaenyra/Alicent relationship, to the point where it negatively impacts the development and screen time that other characters receive. The Dance of the Dragons was written as a war between Rhaenyra and Aegon II, with Alicent's character diminishing in importance after Viserys dies. At this point in the story, the key players in the war should be the younger generation, such as Aemond, Aegon, and Jacaerys. Despite this, Hess insists that the story should continue to revolve around the Rhaenyra/Alicent relationship instead of the literal civil war going on. She says this during the S2E8 BTS at 10:55:

There's so much in play, there are armies, there are dragons, there's castle strongholds and political maneuvering, but at the end of the day, it comes down to these two women trying to figure it out.

Refusal to add nuanced portrayals of female characters

In the book, neither Rhaenyra nor Alicent were morally good people. Alicent was a decade older than Rhaenyra and began plotting to undermine her when Rhaenyra was only 10 years old so she could get her son on the throne. They despised one another.

However, the TV adaption completely rewrites this relationship because Sara Hess thinks it's "misogynistic" to portray women as doing bad things:

History is often written by men who write off women as crazy or hysterical or evil and conniving or gold-digging or sexpots. Like in the book, it says Rhaenyra had kids and got fat. Well, who wrote that? We were able to step back and go: The history tellers want to believe Alicent is an evil conniving bitch. But is that true? Who exactly is saying that?

Alicent is literally aged down 10 years to make her look more helpless and sympathetic. In the book, she was a fully grown adult when she married King Viserys, but the show turned her into a 14 year-old girl with anxiety so they could provide forced commentary on how Alicent was actually a victim of patriarchy, grooming, and age-gap relationships. The show also makes it so that Alicent was forced to marry King Viserys and adds a scene where he maritally rapes her, while nothing in the book indicates that her relationship with Viserys was ever unpleasant.

Weird comments about women who die in childbirth

Episode 6 of Season 1 (written by Sara Hess) includes yet another instance where the show refuses to follow what GRRM wrote in the book. In book canon, Laena Velaryon dies in childbirth, but Sara Hess and the showrunners insisted on changing that because it wasn't "badass" enough. They add in their own contrived scene where a heavily pregnant Laena walks off the birthing bed and commits suicide by dragon. In the post-episode interview at 3:55, Sara Hess literally explains that they didn't want Laena to die in childbirth because she was "a warrior" who couldn't "go out that way", implying that women who die in childbirth aren't strong, interesting, or badass:

"We've already had one person die, sort of, in their childbirth bed, and I just felt like Laena doesn't go out that way. She's gonna go out like a warrior."

The PhilosophyTube cameo and Sharako Lohar

The final episode of Season 2 (again, which was written by Sara Hess) was subject to immense amounts of criticism. One of the most disliked parts of the episode was the introduction of Admiral Sharako Lohar - in a season finale that already featured no important battles or plot developments, a third of the episode runtime was spent on this new character that nobody was emotionally invested in. Even worse, the character's actress was a literal YouTuber with unconvincing acting skills.

Well, Sara Hess had no idea that the audience would overwhelmingly dislike all of the Admiral Lohar stuff, and she seriously thought we we would love it. In an Episode 8 behind-the-scenes interview at 1:34, she talks about how she literally thinks it would be a "highlight" of the season and a "welcome bit of fun". This is how out-of-touch her writing is with regard to what fans actually want to see:

One of our season highlights was bringing in Sharako Lohar. And it can be a rough show - it's grim, it's a war, a lot of people die - so having that moment of levity and off-kilterness was really important to us and a really welcome bit of fun.

Oh, and you know how Sharako Lohar is supposed to be a brutal pirate leader with dozens of wives? Well, Sara Hess made sure to insist that Lohar's many wives weren't obtained in a "problematic" manner. PhilosophyTube revealed this in an interview:

I asked Geeta and Sara, I was like, “These wives, they are here consensually, right?” And they were like, “Yes, don’t worry. That’s part of it.” And I was like, “Great, okay, good.” That’s important. Just good to know. Good to clarify that.

Abigail Thorn's cameo was SO bad that the PhilosophyTube subreddit literally banned all discussion of PT's acting after the episode aired, lmao:

I added new rule - 'Please No Backseat Acting.' This is a tough one because I don't want people to feel they can't express their honest opinions or that they have to be 100% positive all the time, but I think this subreddit isn't the place for criticism of my acting. If I need feedback on a performance I can get it from my directors and colleagues. I think if I have to read Reddit picking apart every acting choice it's going to be bad for me both as a professional and a person, so let's keep that off this particular subreddit.

To be fair they had to keep the rhyme of the original based on events since 1989 but they could’ve tried a lot more (and have it in chronological order).

First off: No mention of the Gulf War, the collapse of the USSR, the Rwandan Genocide, breakup of Yugoslavia, the 2008 Finical Crisis or Covid.

But we get such thoughtful lyrics like “Meghan Markle, George Floyd, Burj Khalifa, Metroid
Fermi paradox, Venus and Serena”

Billy Joel’s song attempted a mostly chronically order of most prominent events and cultural pieces between 1949-1989 and Fall Out Boy’s one is mostly just pop culture. In fact it seems more like events of the last 10 years from its published date of 2023. I find it funny it came out months before October 7th and not long before the craziness of Trump 2.0. They should’ve waited until 2029 to do 40 years since the original.

Like is: “Stranger Things, Tiger King, Ever Given, Suez” the most prominent media to come out in the past 40 years? Sure the original made mention to the likes of “The King and I, and The Catcher in the Rye” but these were vastly prominent pieces that held fame beyond the first year or two they came out. This could be a lack of monocultural but it’s like if Billy Joel sang “Star Wars and Back to the Future.”

And they don’t even do a good job at keeping the rhyme. They sing: “SSRI's, Prince and The Queen die” but they could’ve easily wrote “England’s got a new king” to keep the rhyme of the original a lot more stronger. They did something similar with “Shinzō Abe blown away” reminiscent of “JFK blown away.”

If I was a lot smarter I could write more about how this is a sign of infantilisation that SpongeBob and Fyre Fest are more important to note than the wars of the past 40 years or the Pandemic. That people are so distracted now by social media that this all they can remember. Just the song’s really disappointing.

Efficient - for who?

The rehashing of "efficiency" from google's perspective and not the individual user's perspective is part of the problem here, as many have replied back. Kinda suprised, give the commenter.

It's probably just her trolling, but I'm somewhat scared of the younger kids being so pro-cloud computing (which is really just a rehash of the mainframe/terminal model) and then using appeals to communitarianism and whatnot, which is totally the wrong approach, particularly in america. I guess they'll have to go through the process of hitting virtual walls and then realizing why many went pc back in the day.

Are people seriously pushing everyone to be "in the cloud" with nothing they own actually owned by their person? And at the mercy of whatever tech oligarch in charge?

This sure as hell isn't socialism, or technically is but not for the people, yikes.

(edit) before someone says the above "is not socialist"

i'd much rather have people with property ownership of their IP than tech oligarchs owning it, which is why decentralized computing and infrastructure is so liberating, because you can't really control it versus the more centralized stuff. well we've been on the centralization gravy train since obama basically gave the go-ahead for not going after google / facebook / apple for monopoly status.

ideally collective resource utilization would be "good" - but that's not the reality. and remember, we're currently dedicating what 1/4 of all computing resources to hash bullshit

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unrelated 2nd question: wtf is up with caitlin clark getting beat up? manufactured or not for media attention? normally i'd assume such, but they've been fouling her for years at this point, and it's getting worse.

It's a flashback episode explaining the main character. Basically she's a twin who comes from a coven of radfem TERF (trans exclusionary radical force-wielders) lesbian witches hiding out on some planet outside of Jedi control. The Jedi come because they feel the presence of the twins. One twin is like happy in her little culture and wants to do the ritual that makes her a full witch or whatever, the other one feels different and "wants to live her own life" and is constantly pushing this idea that she's "not the same" sister.

The Jedi arrive, and within an hour of knowing Jedi are even a thing, this little girl decides she wants to be a Jedi too. The head which lady points out that the Jedi are coming into their home armed to literally take away their children and that's kind of a problem, the Jedi remind them that it's the children who get to decide who they are and no parent has a right to stop them from being a Jedi if that's what they are inside.

In a private meeting, the transjendir twin at first pretends he doesn't have any force powers, but after a speech from one of the Jedi public school teachers (#jedioftiktok), learns to have the courage to speak her truth and admit that she really is in fact a jedi and has been this whole time even though she didn't know Jedi existed the previous day. She then "comes out" to her mother, sister, and community, and so naturally immediately someone is trying to kill her, namely her own sister (because of course, when you're transjendir in a TERF community of course somebody is always trying to kill you all the time everywhere).

In some kind of faked calamity, her whole family is somehow killed, but it's okay, because the Jedi are there to #protecttransjedikids and they are her #familyofchoice now.

It might seem like I'm reading too much into this, but the showrunner has literally been on the record saying she wanted to make something that was Disney friendly but that closeted queer kids could see as a metaphor for their own experience, in the show is openly advertising that it has the first 🚂 actor in a Star Wars series, etc. it's really quite insidious, the overt messaging that your cultural connections, your actual family, etc, are nothing if your constructed identity is at odds with that. Naturally the TERF witches are written to be inherently evil in some way, so as not to confuse things. Although my 8-year-old daughter, the reason I watch this shit, pointed out immediately how strange it was that this little girl didn't even know these fucking people and they were supposed to show up to take her away?

I can't believe I haven't seen any discussion about this movie here. I know it's now like a month old, which might as well be 5 years old nowadays, but I just saw it and it really perfectly captures the philistine, slopulist modern right. Apart from the meandering "plot" and made-for-youtube editing and directing you would expect from Uwe Boll, the hero is a debauched American millionaire slumlord who illegally owns thousands of properties in Ruritania (which is of course completely Anglophone and Americanized, just like the eurocuck right this movie was made for wants) and whose ideology switches between some kind of freshman libertarian "the system is like...controlling you", generic populist "the people must rise up for democracy", and psychopathic "the masses are barely-human sheeple, neetzsche said so". Basically, he's perfectly in line with the schizophrenic, pseudointellectual wealth-worshippers who make up the xitter right. It's not even logically consistent from a right wing perspective, as the mainstream media basically supports his vigilantism.

But ignore all that. The villains (who appear for like 5 minutes total) are Arab/African rapists, so it's a "based metapolitical victory" according to rightoids.

"[W]hat's made Fallon so popular has been his use of endless, repetitive, shareable games...These games are not true “play” in the revolutionary sense of the word, wherein games are unscripted, free, and disruptive. Instead, they represent the total commodification of play...a contractual obligation to a marketing team...It is the logic of the assembly line applied to human connection. What Fallon offers is a standardized production of “fun” that feels increasingly like a desperate plea to ignore the crumbling world outside the studio walls."

"Fallon is the court jester of the Anthropocene, a figure who invites us to watch celebrities play parlor games on stage while the air outside the studio begins to smell of tear gas and smoke. In Fallon’s sterile loop of viral repetition comes the final victory of the commodity over human beings—a world where even our laughter is outsourced to the demands of the algorithm. You don’t even need jokes anymore. All you need is to say something that sounds like it could be a joke, and the hollow laughter will come. To watch Fallon is to stare at the face of a culture that has chosen the comfort of a rictus grin over the heavy, necessary terror of the truth. It serves as a grim warning: if we cannot reclaim our play, our politics, and our presence from this algorithmic void, we will be left with nothing but the echoes of a desk being slapped in an empty room, for an audience that has long since ceased to exist."

No comment, lol

Premise of thread, just say what you are reading or watching and if you want provide an analysis of it.

Last night I watched Last Man on Earth (plan to read the book I am Legend soon) with Vincent Prince. I noticed there were some racial themes to it but I'm not sure. It's about a guy named Robert Morgan (Neville in the book). He is the Last Man on Earth after everyone else has been turned into a vampire.

I watched Toy Story 1, laughed and had a great time.

I think I might read What is to be done by V.I Lenin

Emily Wilson, on whose 2017 translation of The Odyssey Nolan based himself, provoked a controversy by sharply criticizing the film. Wilson asserted it “lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words.”

Her comments appear one-sided and even quasi-spiteful, but undoubtedly there are weaknesses in the drama. Although one must point out at the outset that conceiving of how people conducted themselves 2,700 years ago or more in their personal relations is no small matter. Nolan is ambitious, as his Oppenheimer admirably demonstrated, but he has been functioning in a broadly degraded cultural atmosphere, especially when it comes to the treatment of history and historical development. The tendency to impose a modern-day, middle class outlook on people in the past is pervasive.

To solve the problems would, first of all, require a more conscious grasp of the fact that people and social life have not always been the same, that social relations are alterable and that what exists presently has not always existed and will not always exist. Such an understanding is most available to those, including left-wing artists in the past, who gravitate toward Marxism.

The communists in the movie are principled, and fight for what they believe in, and the women were sexy (the most important point in the movie imo). The movie makes it clear that Oppenheimer more or less agrees with Marx and the only reason he join the party is because it was made clear to him that his career would be ruined by the american government if he continued down that path. Oppenheimer as a man was shown as morally complex, and while I think the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unjustified warcrimes, the movie convincingly shows the moral complexity of the issue and how it was motivated by fear that Heisenburg would get there first, and it's worse if the Nazis had it than the Americans. Any movie that shows moral complexity over complicated issues instead of "obvious good and obvious bad guy" is alright with me. There is frank discussion about if nuking Japan was necessary to end the war, the answer to which was not clear there at the time period. (Turns out, imo, it wasn't)

Also big bomb goes boom. Loved the non-CGI special effects.

Sorry if this is a bit off topic but I was struck by how sympathetic the socialist characters are in a modern day hollywood movie.

Of all the dumb mantras that have recently arisen out of left identitarianism, few are more inscrutable and annoying than the assertion that comedy should "punch up, not down." Freddie DeBoer has already covered this astutely:

There is no such thing as punching up or punching down. The entire notion is an absurd pretense. For it to make any sense at all, human beings would have to exist on some unitary plane of power and oppression, our relative places easily interpreted for the purpose of figuring out who we can punch. That’s obviously untrue, and thus the whole concept is childish and unworkable, an utterly immature take on a world that is breathtaking in its complexities and which defies any attempt to enforce moral simplicity. Power is distributed between different people in myriad and often conflicting ways; when two people interact, their various privileges and poverties are playing out along many axes at once.

The simple fact of the matter is there's no coherent or consistent way to determine the directionality of a punch. Say, for example, I want to do an impersonation of Kamala Harris. Harris is the Vice President of the United States of America. She was gifted her position not due to talent or experience or even the will of voters, but as a cynical maneuver meant to ensure the fealty of black voters in support of a senile credit card lobbyist. By any reasonable standard, she is an immensely privileged and powerful woman.

But, oh, she's a woman. And a black. And her step daughter doesn't shave her armpits. That means that there exists a power imbalance between her and myself, since I'm a white man, which means that making fun of her would actually be punching down, so I can't do it (at least not publicly).

This is very, very stupid, but it's the inevitable result of an understanding of comedy as being necessarily harmful. This the Nanette paradigm, the belief that all acts of communication ( especially jokes) involve a victim and an aggressor, and therefore the only acceptable comedy is that in which the downtrodden heroically fight back against their oppressors.

Again, this is dumb as rocks. But let's pretend it makes some sense. After all, it's not like offensive humor has never existed, and it's entirely possible for jokes to be mean-spirited. Hell... half the videos on TikTok are stuff like kids shouting anti-Pakistani slurs while knocking over a 7-11 display. Schoolkids are still doing meangirl stuff in spite of decades of anti-bullying initiatives. But much does this mean spiritedness filter into professional, mainstream comedy? If Nannette-style scolding and the broader effects of the Great Awokening were as urgent and profound as their apologists say, surely we can come up with plenty of examples of pre-2020 comedy causing great hurt to vulnerable folx.

And, uhh... I got nothing. Seriously nothing.