HereAndGone2
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User ID: 4074
HereAndGone2
10d ago
Glass Onion ends with burning the Mona Lisa because Teacher Lady has her feathers so ruffled, and I don't think "black woman destroys cultural inheritance of humanity because she's peeved" is that moral a narrative. If you wanted to look at it in a certain light, you could even claim it's racist: black people depicted as resorting to violence because they're incapable of responding to set-backs any other way.
But to be fair, Johnson's Knives Out universe is a very stylised one running on particular tropes and only tangential to our reality. It's artificial and chock-full of artifice, because it's recreating the Golden Age 'body in the library' detective stories where the more baroque the plot, the better, so long as you could be held to have played fair with scattering clues throughout the book (the early Ellery Queen novels routinely had a "challenge to the reader" about 'can you guess/work out whodunnit?' before the final chapter wrapping up the entire case).
HereAndGone2
10d ago
They do. And they turn "her sins are forgiven because she loved much" into "see guys, she wasn't really a sex worker (though there's nothing wrong with that!), she just had a lot of boyfriends whom she really loved, so Jesus says sleeping around is fine so long as you love the guy".
HereAndGone2
10d ago
EVEN THOUGH Rian sort of cheated and [SPOILERS] made a female character a killer this time, she never strikes the killing blow herself. [/SPOILERS]
I'm still convinced the real ending of Knives Out is that the nurse is guilty and she successfully plotted to influence the old man to change the will in her favour, etc. It just makes the ending more coherent and the entire story more satisfying; she played the "me? poor innocent angelic nurse brown immigrant lady?" card so well that she fooled Blanc, who is maybe not up there with Hercule Poirot even if he does like showy dénouements, by using his biases and prejudices, and the end shot is the family knowing she dunnit but unable to prove it. Standing there sipping her coffee out of her "my house" mug to rub their noses in it.
HereAndGone2
10d ago
I'm surprised, too. The last two movies were all over social media I consume, but this one? Not a peep about it. I was very surprised to learn a third movie had been made.
Again, just going off the synopsis, but it made me go "Yeah, this is a movie written by a Protestant" and that seems to be correct:
Johnson also drew from his own religious upbringing in Evangelicalism, with Blanc reflecting his own mixed feelings on organized religion. However, he chose to have the film focus on Catholicism for aesthetic reasons, admitting the churches he grew up in "kind of looked like Pottery Barns" and hence served as a poor visual basis for the film.
The church structure etc. as per the synopsis of the movie makes no sense in Catholicism. Where is the bishop in all this? Who is "Reverend Prentice Wicks, Jefferson's grandfather"? Does this mean his grandfather was a Protestant minister (if he has a daughter) and the daughter then had her illegitimate son who... became a Catholic priest????
Oh well, I guess we should be glad that we're still the movie face of religion, because when you need to show the church, you show the Catholics!
HereAndGone2
11d ago
It is pushing the angle that "it's all the fault of women" if the solution is only applied to women.
HereAndGone2
11d ago
It's like the 34 FELONIES!!! thing: oh, you're telling me he was convicted of 34 different crimes? yeah, that's bad. Wait, it wasn't 34 different crimes, it was 34 technicalities of the same case? about paying hush money to a porn star?
I don't think Trump should be committing adultery, and I don't think he should be messing up what was campaign funds from what was private money, and I don't think he should be paying hush money at all. But the best sense I could make out of it was that the prosecution was because he didn't pay her out of campaign funds, but some more convoluted way? So I'm still not entirely sure what I am supposed to be shocked about.
They're telling me for years he's a big awful terrible, evil rapist, now the bad thing is "he paid a hooker to keep her mouth shut"? That's rather a step down in gravity of offence from "and he raped this woman! and this woman! and that woman over there!"
HereAndGone2
11d ago
Okay, you want to be a husband and father and are honest about it. That's good. There's still a lot of men who are pushing the angle that it's all the fault of women for [spin the wheel and pick your reason] no babies but who would run off to Antarctica the minute they got "Honey, I'm expecting!" message.
They can't be forced to be fair, but it's the same problems that I think Mamdani is going to run into with his campaigns of reform; yeah, very nice, guys, but that's not how we do things here. Inertia, layers of bureaucracy, people protecting their own little fiefdoms, nobody wanting to get off the gravy train of bribes and backhanders, and about seventeen firms of sharks dressed as lawyers just hoping for a nice, drawn-out, billable hours in the hundreds if not thousands, lawsuit to drag through the courts for years.
Corruption is hard to measure, says this post, but here's a ranking of cases taken:
Still, federal criminal prosecutions for corruption, in which U.S. attorneys apply the same sets of laws across jurisdictions, do give us a general picture of corruption across cities. Since 1978, with the passage of the Ethics in Government Act, the Department of Justice has made data on corruption convictions available through its Public Integrity Section’s Annual Reports. Analyzing total convictions in federal districts from 1976 to 2021, New York’s Southern District — which covers Manhattan — is ranked the third most corrupt federal judicial area in the United States, only surpassed by Los Angeles and Chicago. However, if New York’s Eastern District — which includes Brooklyn — is included, New York City has far more corruption convictions with 2,285, compared to Los Angeles’ 1,625, and Chicago’s 1,824.
...For New Yorkers, the problem may be particularly problematic because the one branch of government that is known for being the most labyrinthine is its court system. Legal scholar Evelyn Malavé has referred to New York’s judicial system as a “courteaucracy” for its confusing rules, backroom appointments and lack of transparency. This may lead at least some corrupt officials to expect that, as long as they are sufficiently connected, they can avoid accountability.
HereAndGone2
11d ago
We've had the "I was 14 13 when Trump and Epstein raped me" case, and it's gone nowhere because the alleged victim never showed up, the lawsuits were mediated through various men so everything was at second and third hand, and even the journalists going in to the story hoping for a juicy scandal piece got so frustrated with the roadblocks that they gave it up.
In April 2016, an anonymous woman using the pseudonym "Katie Johnson" filed a lawsuit in California accusing both Trump and Epstein of forcibly raping her when she was 13 years old at underage sex parties at Epstein's Manhattan residence in 1994. The case was dismissed the following month. A second version of the lawsuit was filed in New York in June by the same woman as "Jane Doe" claiming to have been raped and sexually assaulted by the pair at four 1994 parties when she was 13. The lawsuit was refiled in September, and on November 2, Doe was scheduled to appear at a press conference at the office of Lisa Bloom before abruptly canceling; Bloom said Jane Doe had received multiple threats. The lawsuit was withdrawn two days later.
HereAndGone2
11d ago
Agreed. We've already had the Bill Clinton Sex Scandal, and approximately nothing came of it. And Monica Lewinsky wasn't the only case, there were several others as well. The reaction to this is already being demonstrated by a few comments on here to the extent of "so what? nobody cares, Clinton is irrelevant".
If anyone does care, it will be "yeah we knew Bill was a horndog, everyone knew that, so there are photos of him with pretty young women? And?"
Trump in photo with young woman: Aha, we told you he was a paedophile! Bill in photo with young woman: Who cares, that was years and years ago, now let's get back to how these files prove Trump raped 13 year olds on his best buddy Jeff's private sex slave island
HereAndGone2
12d ago
I haven't seen it, as I said I'm just going by the synopsis. But there's certainly room there for a deeper digging into "are the Stones really this cool family in truth, or are they just as uptight and repressive, just in a different form that is masked by 'we're all liberal and accepting here'?" By the sound of it, they absolutely did their best to force SJP's character into the mould of what they deemed 'correct', until they managed to break her down to be rebuilt in the acceptable format.
HereAndGone2
12d ago
Yeah, I think the French Revolution is the ur-example though. I'm still astounded how it went from, say, Camille Desmoulins being firebrand revolutionary to not being revolutionary enough and eaten by the same monster he had helped create.
It does help explain how they went from Republic to Empire under Napoleon, they had killed everyone who they could kill, so there was nobody left to kill off and that left a gap for the old model to return.
HereAndGone2
12d ago
What's that quote from Flannery O'Connor? “She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.” That's me! 😁 Up against the wall, just make it fast!
HereAndGone2
12d ago
You can. Just that it's a surprise that you weren't expecting. Or maybe you already have one kid. Needn't even be your wife, as I said.
I'm very curious about the reactions when it comes to "oh, you expect me to put my money where my mouth is when it comes to having kids to save our crumbling TFR rate?" There's a heck of a lot of guys posting on here about "the solution is to force women to have babies", with one person exampling Afghanistan under the Taliban as the "you may not like it, but this is how you do it" as to getting women pregnant whether they agree or not.
I want to see if they're as eager about having three/four/six kids if the chickens come home to roost in their coop.
HereAndGone2
12d ago
There are no principles involved, on any side, it's all "can we use this to smear Their Guy?". That's the problem. "Their Guy was hanging around with noted bad apple thirty years back, that proves he's a bad apple as well! Our Guy was also hanging around with said bad apple? Who cares, that was ages ago".
HereAndGone2
12d ago
Oh, I expect plenty of hypocrisy on this about Bill from the Democrats. I don't think he was fucking 17 year olds, but given that he had no problem fucking Monica Lewinsky when she was young enough to be his daughter, that's a very damn low bar.
The hypocrisy was the feminists going on about "so long as he keeps abortion legal, I'd strap on the kneepads and give him a blowjob myself". Sexual harassment and power differentials and age gaps are bad - except when it's Our Guy.
Sort of the reverse that happens with Republicans as seen by the Democrats: X was Literal Hitler when in power or running for office, give it a few years and now X is the only good responsible statesmanlike Republican, Y is Literal Hitler.
Clinton was the greatest guy, this is why we should elect Hillary because she was as good as co-president during his terms, give it a few years and it's Bill who? Oh that guy, nobody cares about him anymore.
HereAndGone2
12d ago
If they tried getting him on real estate corruption, then they'd have to prosecute everyone in New York from the mayor's office on down. Yes, it's sleazy, but c'mon: you've been telling us for years that he's sleazy and corrupt.
The Letitia James effort rebounded on her (if the bank involved didn't prosecute, how bad a crime was it really?) and it's amusing that she got dinged for fibbing on a mortgage application after making such hay out of Trump doing likewise. But again, everyone expects that doing business in New York involves a lot of, um, differently ethical practices.
As to Mar-a-Lago and the golf courses, those are probably okay from a legal standpoint (that's not to say there isn't or wasn't any corruption involved, but the golf courses do seem to be straightforward 'buy 'em and develop 'em' deals). As to failed projects like the Atlantic City casino, yeah possibly dodgy there, but again - par for the course for such deals. It seems to have been involved in a lot of financial troubles, but if it was possible to get him on such properties, that would have happened already from disgruntled creditors.
HereAndGone2
12d ago
What will happen to marriage and family formation if your typical woman no longer needs help or financial support from any man?
On a tangent, and relevant (I hope) to the vexed TFR question which gets debated on here: I don't know how many on here are married/partnered with children, but let me pose a question to the guys.
If you came home from work this evening and your wife/girlfriend says "Honey, great news, I'm expecting a baby!" what would be your reaction:
(1) Wonderful, now we can start having the big family I always wanted! This is the best surprise I ever got!
(2) Wait, you're what? We didn't plan for this. Isn't it too soon? There's so much we haven't done yet, are we even ready to start having kids?
HereAndGone2
12d ago
I have a sneaking suspicion some of the reasoning behind the Chinese anthropologists was (1) fitting in with the local political theories of 'China has always been at its best when pure and free of meddling foreign influence which brought us to misery' and (2) good old racism: 'no we are not descendants of those monkey-people in that continent!' and (3) 'see, China has always been to the forefront of civilisational advance, we have our own local evolutionary pathways to modern humans!'
I could well be mistaken here, though.
HereAndGone2
12d ago
Even the most "liberal" members of the Motte (myself included) are at best the sort of heterodox classical liberal that leftists today call fascists and rightists still promise to put up against the wall with all the progressives.
I thought it was the tankies who were "liberals get the bullet too"? Though to be fair, I'm a rightist and I do sometimes feel the urge for À la lanterne! reading some of the news (applicable to both right and left, very online SJW/woke/progressive or regressive/far-rightist, civilian or politician).
HereAndGone2
12d ago
That will be "it's different because he's Our Guy" and "The GOP/Trump is hiding all the really incriminating stuff".
HereAndGone2
12d ago
As others have pointed out, "tell them to wear everyday clothes" rather than getting dressed up in Full Escort Kit would be a way of maintaining the illusion that 'these are just ordinary girls hanging out and if one finds you interesting, that's because of your sparkling repartee, not because these are professional hookers'.
HereAndGone2
12d ago
Too young to be emperor, too old to be fodder - probably the sweet spot 😁
HereAndGone2
12d ago
You are correct!
Because due to the sexual revolution, unmarried people having sex is now socially acceptable. Back then, two unrelated people showing up for the afternoon was likely to be prostitution, and the hotel didn't want to get a reputation for tolerating such leading to prosecution by the police.
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