FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
User ID: 1175
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1hr ago
The link in my comment worked. The only difference between the two comments is that backslash.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2hr ago
Looking at the markdown, there's a stray backslash between "film" and ")".
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2hr ago
I would prefer if they actually used fragments from real novels as examples and spend their effort on explaining less obvious problems than "don't make your characters too perfect or completely pitiful".
Sounds like a great way to make a lot of enemies in the publishing industry.
Evidence in favour
- Minority Report is based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, for whom
the question of what's "real" and what isn't is a nigh-omnipresent theme. - More specifically, the film was originally pitched as a sequel to another adaptation of a short story by Dick,
Total Recall, a film which constantly, explicitly toys with the idea that almost the entire film is the protagonist's fantasy during a failed memory implantation.
- More specifically, the film was originally pitched as a sequel to another adaptation of a short story by Dick,
- In its depiction of a dystopian, authoritarian future United States, the film is one of the most bleak and cynical in Spielberg's filmography, right up until
Anderton is imprisoned, at which point the film's tone undergoes a complete 180. Anderton's ex-wife Lara frees him from prison; at Lara's request, Anderton's old colleague Jad helps expose Burgess (the man who framed Anderton for murder); Burgess commits suicide; the Pre-Crime program is shut down; the Pre-Cogs are sent to a quiet cottage in the countryside to recuperate in peace; and Anderton reconciles with Lara, closing the film with a baby on the way. - The last words spoken before Anderton is imprisoned in a comatose state are from the prison sentry: "It's actually kind of a rush. They say you have visions. That your life flashes before your eyes.
That all your dreams come true. " - Some of the plot developments after Anderton's imprisonment strain credibility. Perhaps the screenwriters got lazy, or perhaps these implausibilities are deliberate hints:
- In the world of the film, retinal scanners are omnipresent and the primary means of identification for everything from targeted advertising to paying for public transport. While on the lam, Anderton has his eyes replaced with those of a Japanese man to avoid getting caught out in public, but hangs on to his old eyes, which he uses to get back inside the Pre-Crime headquarters. It is certainly surprising that his access privileges wouldn't have been revoked after he was accused of pre-murder, but in the film's defense, the scene in which he re-enters Pre-Crime HQ happens only one day after said accusation: it's not beyond the realm of possibility that, in all the excitement, someone might have neglected to revoke his privileges. But later,
Lara uses Anderton's original eyes to access the containment facility, forcing the prison sentry to spring him at gunpoint. That no one would have bothered to revoke his privileges after he'd been convicted of murder, at least several days after being first accused, after he'd already used his eyes to gain illegitimate access to a secure facility, strains credibility rather more. - After having done an admirable job of covering his tracks up to that point in the movie (and for several years prior),
Burgess carelessly slips up by revealing to Lara that he knows more about the murder that prompted Anderton's escapade than he's letting on. - Prior to Anderton's imprisonment, none of Anderton's colleagues (with the exception of the Pre-Cog technician) allow their loyalty to him to get in the way of their professional responsibilities. But after Lara springs Anderton from jail,
Jad agrees to publicly embarrass Burgess, against the explicit recommendations of his colleagues, purely because Lara asked him to on Anderton's behalf.
- In the world of the film, retinal scanners are omnipresent and the primary means of identification for everything from targeted advertising to paying for public transport. While on the lam, Anderton has his eyes replaced with those of a Japanese man to avoid getting caught out in public, but hangs on to his old eyes, which he uses to get back inside the Pre-Crime headquarters. It is certainly surprising that his access privileges wouldn't have been revoked after he was accused of pre-murder, but in the film's defense, the scene in which he re-enters Pre-Crime HQ happens only one day after said accusation: it's not beyond the realm of possibility that, in all the excitement, someone might have neglected to revoke his privileges. But later,
Evidence against
- The film is directed by Steven Spielberg, no stranger to happy endings and not known for directing films
designed to make the viewer question what's real and what isn't. - As noted above, the containment sentry suggests that, while comatose in prison, the inmate will have visions in which
all their dreams come true . At first glance,the post-imprisonment sequence would seem to meet this description: Anderton escapes, Burgess is exposed, Pre-Crime gets shut down, Anderton reconciles with his ex-wife. But would a long-serving lawman like Anderton really dream ofBurgess evading justice for his crimes by committing suicide? One would imagine that Anderton would either want justice or revenge: Burgess killing himself would be disappointing on either count. - If the audience was intended to interpret the film's ending as
Anderton's dream, one would reasonably expect his subjectivity to be more foregrounded in the first two acts of the film. But it isn't, and the film adopts an objective, omniscient perspective, with numerous scenes in which Anderton isn't present.
Climax. Weird.
I watched one of his earlier films, Irréversible, during Covid. I'd read a summary of the plot well over a decade prior, and essentially spent the intervening years building up the courage to watch the film. It was exactly as gruelling and punishing an experience as I'd expected, and easily one of the most disturbing films I've ever seen. It's a film that achieved exactly what it set out to do, for which I can only admire it, and yet not a film that I'd recommend to anyone, and especially not to a woman.
I rewatched Minority Report the other night. There's a popular theory that
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
10hr ago
the 90s
It's set in the 2010s, The Weeknd plays himself.
It's perfectly fine as a rhetorical technique, to illustrate the idea that history as written has tended to privilege the perspective of males over females. But there are a distressingly large number of midwits who seem to think that "his story" is literally the etymology of the term.
More than halfway through Eliza Clark's Penance. In some ways it's a frustrating book to read. When Clark is describing the social dynamics of teenaged girls in secondary school (the sniping, the passive-aggression, the jokes that aren't really jokes, the abandoning of one friend as soon as a better one comes along), she's in her element, and I can't put it down. It doesn't just feel "true to life": it makes me literally feel like I'm back in secondary school, like these are girls I personally went to school with. The period detail is also spot on, with pitch-perfect descriptions of pink clamshell Motorolas, or sneaking bottles of blue WKD into a house party. Anyone who was a teenager in Ireland or the UK in the period 2005-15 would read this and feel a shock of recognition.
It's everything else that doesn't work. I imagine Clark was worried about getting pegged as a YA novelist (even though this novel, despite its primarily adolescent cast of characters, is not suitable for teenagers), so she pads out the novel with digressions about the main characters' parents, the backstory of the town itself, the socio-political context in which the murder occurred. In these chapters, Clark sounds hesitant and unsure of herself, and rightfully so. While the chapters written from the girls' perspectives are confident enough not to lead the reader by the hand, these other chapters are anything but: far more telling than showing, lots of underlining for emphasis. Worst of all, they compromise the novel's verisimilitude: while the teenaged girls feel like people I've personally met, their parents are two-dimensional at best. The worst offender in this regard is the father of one of the guilty girls, a stock caricature of a Telegraph-reading, UKIP-voting blowhard with delusions of grandeur, who immediately rushes to the defense of a friend of his (a thinly-veiled stand-in for Jimmy Savile) when he's accused of pederasty.
I predict that when I finish the novel (which I fully intend to), I'll come away thinking it could have lost a hundred pages without compromising any of its themes or effect. Clark would have been wise to stay within her comfort zone for the sophomore effort.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
23hr ago
Have you ever gone to see a film in the cinema, and left early? If so, why?
I'm pretty sure the only film I left early was They Wait in the Dark, leaving within the first half hour. It was a low-budget independent horror film, and it was just so amateurishly assembled that any expectation of enjoying it was quickly abandoned. It was bad, but not even in a "so bad it's good" campy way. It just felt like a student film with an inflated runtime.
The first film I went to see in the cinema by myself was Unfriended. I remember considering leaving early (because I was so scared: indeed, this is a testament to its effectiveness as a horror film), but in the end I stuck it out. I'm glad I did.
My mum told me the only films she left early were Trainspotting (which I've seen several times and love) and Dangerous Liaisons (which I haven't seen). In both cases I think she left because she found them offensive, rather than poorly made. I can certainly understand in the former case: as a parent, watching a movie in which
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
I assume he meant that he holds a lot of opinions that Rowling would not share, and so would be considered evil in her book.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
Yeah, that's fair. But Scott was quick to point out that, even if this is the definition you're ostensibly using, it's not applied at all consistently. No one would be accused of racism for asserting that Ethiopians and Kenyans have an innate advantage over white Europeans in long-distance running.
I thought I replied to this but it seems my internet connection was spotty.
I do think that, in a very basic sense, the Israelis do have more agency, because to begin with, unlike the Palestinians they have a very plausible option to simply abandon their project of conquest and gtfo. If they used a fraction of the lobbying power that they have accumulated, they could secure citizenship in a rich Western country of their choosing for every one of their people, generous starting package of funds included.
You know, even leaving aside the logistics associated with securing foreign citizenship for 7 million people (9 million if you include the Arabs) and uprooting them from their homes – I think it only requires a very cursory understanding of the last nine decades of European history to appreciate why Jews might be reluctant to put themselves at the mercy of one or more Western governments. "Fool me once" etc.
It's this constant two-step with Jew-haters. They order the Jews to leave the Middle East and move to Europe or the US where they belong – then as soon as they do so, they start complaining about how many Jews there are in Europe or the US. Someone on Substack noted that Europeans spent well over a millennium ordering Jews in Europe to go back where they came from (and inciting the occasional pogrom to underline their point) – but as soon as the Jews did so, these same people still weren't happy and immediately began accusing them of founding an illegitimate genocidal settler-colonial state. (Curiously, it's usually the only state they so characterise, and the only state whose name is followed by the slogan "does not have a right to exist". Wow, what a crazy coincidence huh? The only state that doesn't have a right to exist is the one meant to be a safe haven for Jews? Who'da thunk it?) Wherever Jews go, Jew-haters aren't happy and wish they'd go somewhere else. Sometimes I wish Jew-haters would be honest and admit that the place they want Jews to live is not Israel or Madagascar or Europe or the US, but simply "nowhere".
Yes, I'm invoking the memory of the Holocaust to explain why Jews are uncomfortable about the prospect of abandoning their national self-determination project and leaving themselves at the mercy of Western governments who might turn on them and scapegoat them at any time. Maybe you'll say that's tasteless and unfair, that nothing like that Holocaust will ever recur and that Western Gentiles have learned their lesson. But have they, really? In most Western countries, antisemitic hate crimes are one of the most common kind per capita (cue the Joo-posters saying that these hate crimes are an understandable response to Israel's "genocide" in Gaza, a logic they conspicuously do not apply to hate crimes targeting Muslims). A significant proportion of Westerners deny that the Holocaust ever happened, or think it's been greatly exaggerated, and the proportion tends to be higher among young people than old (how can you learn the lessons of something you don't think took place?). There was a mass exodus of Jews from Poland beginning in the sixties in response to persistent ostracisation and scapegoating, with government leaders blaming things that went wrong in Poland on "Zionists" (wink wink nudge nudge). In your honest opinion, has the modal Pole become more or less friendly to Jews in the intervening six decades? And perhaps the most frightening thing is, this phenomenon is not restricted to Westerners of a particular political persuasion. Jew-hatred is a pathology which transcends ideology. Jews are blamed both for rapacious capitalism and surreptitious socialism. There is simply no Western political block that Jews can reasonably trust to be anything more than temporary allies of convenience.
"Abandon the country you spent the better part of a century building and scatter its citizens to the winds, to be left at the mercy of governments who barely even pretend not to despise them" is not a serious proposal. It is either the product of staggering naiveté, or a proposal made in bad faith.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
But there's nothing intrinsically bad about holding the belief that black people have lower IQs, on average, than white people. It's analogous to saying that believing in gravity is bad, because it might lead people to the decision to push someone off a cliff. Factual statements and beliefs are morally inert.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
The belief that black people on average have lower IQs than white people in no way leads inevitably to the decision not to bother interviewing black people for an intellectually demanding role, any more than the belief that Kenyans and Ethiopians have a massive advantage in long-distance running leads inevitably to the decision to ban Caucasians from competing in marathons.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
Nick Fuentes
There's nothing surprising about a closeted gay man who hates women.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
Maybe you only did it for rhetorical effect but the word "history" is not a portmanteau of "his story".
That is to say: openly, unapologetically sexist men, who don't even try to hide it or justify it.
I think we need to be careful about how we use this word, and disambiguate it the same way we would "racist". In "Against Murderism", Scott argued that the word "racist" is generally assigned three mutually exclusive definitions:
- Definition by Belief (belief that races are different from one another)
- Definition by Motivation (a desire to bring harm to races other than one's own)
- Definition by Consequences (racist things or beliefs are those which cause harm to people of other races, even if that was not their intention)
Of these, the only one that really makes any sense to me is the second one.
Along the same lines, I don't think most chuds actively wish harm on women. I think when these men are accused of being "sexist", it's based on the first definition: the belief that men and women are different. Spoiler alert: they are, and the belief that they aren't (or that they would be, if not for the patriarchy/social conditioning/culture) is one of the silliest beliefs the human race has ever produced. Stereotypes exist for a reason, and most stereotypes about women (and men!) are true far more often than not.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
Seconded, Nice Guys is pretty good but Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is one of my favourite comedies ever.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
My "type" was established from a very young age.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
Can you show me where you think I said they have no moral responsibility?
The fact that, in your first reply to me, you described the October 7th attacks as having "happened", the exact kind of evasive euphemistic language I decried in the OP.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
@hydroacetylene: conservatives tend to have much more agency (emphasis mine)
you: a couple of examples of progressives actively doing things
This seems very "but I know a woman who's really tall!" or "I know an Asian guy who's bad at maths!"
But a lot of the examples of bad writing they cited were distinctly modern ones, whether at the stylistic level or in terms of plot construction (e.g. the array of plots that no longer work since the invention of the mobile phone).
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