Testing123
7mo ago
Beautifully written.
Testing123
7mo ago
House M.D. as a time capsule.
House was on the air from 2004-2012. I watched it when it came out and then almost never since. Now I'm rewatching it (or rebinging it) and House has turned out to be an amusing time capsule of some culture war drift over the past decade. I get that House (the show and Character) was supposed to be kind of edgy, and an anti-hero, and straddle the line between likable and unlikeable, but I still think there were a lot of plotlines and Gregory House behavior that wouldn't fly in a modern tv show. For instance:
- House finds out that Dr. Wilson (his best friend) has an asexual female patient with an asexual husband. House says that asexuality isn't real because it doesn't make sense from an evolutionary standpoint. House bets Wilson $100 he can prove that the patient's asexuality is the result of a medical disorder. House eventually finds that the patient's husband has a tumor near his pituitary gland which crushes his libido, and that the patient has been lying about her asexuality since they met because she's in love with him.
- There's an episode where House and his team ogle and drool over a 15 year old model. In the same episode, House discovers that the girl has some rare disease where she actually has testicles in her body, at which point House insists on calling the patient "he" even though the patient hates it.
- House is casually racist towards Foreman (a black doctor that works under him) constantly. House never actually drops the N-bomb but he threatens to do so. It's clear that House isn't actually racist but he still says racist things to get under Foreman's skin. Even still, I don't think a modern tv protagonist could get away with this.
- Likewise, House sexually harasses Cuddy (his female boss) constantly. He makes lewd comments toward her and behind her back with colleagues. In one episode, House has a team of doctors competing with each other for job openings, and House tells them to try to steal Cuddy's panties as a game.
- There's a scene where Wilson gossips to House about a guy in the hospital dating a transwoman. House calls her a "tranny."
- There's an episode where House treats a dwarf, and House mocks the dwarf and her mother for being dwarfs (typical short people jokes).
- There's a character named "Thirteen" who is revealed to be bisexual. House and his colleagues act like this is a stunningly salacious detail at a level of like... if she was a hardcore swinger. Today, I don't think anyone would be surprised that someone of Thirteen's demographics - a highly-educated, white, early 30s, liberal female - was bisexual.
- Especially weird one: there's an episode where Dr. Chase (one of House's employees) goes to a party and ends up taking two girls home for a threesome. The next day, Chase's Facebook account is hacked and the hacker posts nude photos of Chase taken the night before with photoshop to make his penis look smaller. Chase runs around trying to figure out who the hacker is and eventually discovers it's the sister of one of the girls from the threesome. Chase confronts her, and she basically calls him a man whore and says he should stop having so much casual sex. Chase feels embarrassed and agrees with her, and then instead of calling the cops on her for posting revenge porn and hacking and maybe defamation, he asks her on a date. Note that the narrative of the episode frames this as a good outcome and a moment of growth for Chase (rather than a further extension of his man whoreness).
- On the opposite end of "House is too edgy for modern tv" is the way the show deals with religion. There are maybe a dozen episodes were House gets a religious patient and House mercilessly mocks them. When the show came out in the mid-2000s, this was probably par for the course amidst the online religion v. atheist wars, but watching it today, House comes off as a hilariously 2edgy4 me high school atheist.
Testing123
8mo ago
I bought Disco Elysium in 2019, immediately loved it, thought it was the funniest game I've ever played with fantastic writing. After about eight hours, the second area opened up, and I hit a wall. I was very fatigued by all the tangents and inner monologuing and not super interesting politicking, and so I got bored and stopped.
Two weeks ago, I gave DE another shot, and the exact same thing happened. I played slightly longer, but yet again hit a point where it was all too much and felt like a chore.
Is it worth me pushing through? Or should I just read a summary online?
Testing123
11mo ago
I very randomly watched A Time to Kill, a now mostly forgotten film that had some super-hot takes on the culture war back when it came out in 1996. Overall, I liked it a lot and thought it threw out some genuinely interesting moral considerations, but I also found the tone and message... wonky.
The premise - In the Deep South of Alabama (presumably in 1996), two drunk red neck good old boys who liberally say "nigger" and have a Confederate flag on their truck are trawling around town harassing random people. On a whim, they kidnap, rape, torture, and try to murder a 10 year old black girl. She survives, but is left with lots of injuries, including being unable to ever have children.
The rednecks are quickly arrested and everyone in town hopes they'll receive swift justice, but some people aren't so sure they will. Alabama is still considered deeply racist, and apparently a similar case a few years ago saw different perpetrators escape punishment. So the father (Samuel L. Jackson) takes matters into his own hands. While the two suspects are being marched through the local court house on the way to their trial, the father guns them down with an assault rifle, and accidentally wounds a police officer in the process.
The rest of the movie is a courtroom drama where a white lawyer (Matthew McConaughey) defends the father while the local DA (Kevin Spacey) tries to charge him with double first-degree murder. Meanwhile, the brother of one of the suspects tries to get the literal KKK to terrorize the lawyer to sabotage the defense. He's told that there is no KKK in town, but through some contacts, the brother finds the nearest Grand Wizard who then commands the brother to set up a local chapter. Throughout the trial, the KKK launches various terrorist attacks on the town and amasses 100+ members to march through the streets, and gets into violent encounters with pro-father protesters.
To get to the most interesting culture war-y part, I need to SPOIL the plot, so don't read on if you don't want to know what happens in a 25 year old movie.
The Defense mostly fucks up in the trial and it looks like the father is going to be convicted. The biggest problem for the Defense is that the jury is all white and presumed to be racist/unsympathetic. In one scene, the jurors are shown talking about the trial (illegally) the night before its conclusion, and all 12 jurors admit that they will vote guilty (one of whom even refers to the defendant as a "nigger").
Cut to the climactic closing statements of the trial. The DA gives a rousing speech about how he feels sorry for the father given what his daughter went through, but the law is the law, and you can't just murder two men in cold blood because they wronged you. Then McConaughey gives his closing statement: he recounts in gruesome detail every step of the 10 year old girl's kidnapping, torture, and rape, and concludes with... "now imagine if she was white."
The Defense wins the trial. The father is cleared of all charges and goes free. The film's narrative portrays this as an unambiguously good thing.
There's a lot to unpack here, but a few prompts:
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Was 1996 Alabama really THAT racist? Would the random average white person in Alabama at that time be considered racist enough by default that they would automatically side against any black defendant? Were there enough real, true, hardcore racists that the KKK could field 100+ protesters at a big racial trial?
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How differently, if at all, would such a trial be perceived today?
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What is a proper punishment for the father, if any? If I had to give a verdict, I'd say he should be found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison, which is an extremely short sentence for a double murder and maiming of a cop, but warranted given the context. I most certainly wouldn't be comfortable with finding him not guilty, not if we want to have a functional society.
Non-culture war addendum - the movie has an insane amount of contemporary and future movie stars. There's Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey, Sandra Bullock, Ashley Judd, Donald Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland, Kurtwood Smith, Oliver Platt, Chris Cooper, Charles Dutton, and I'm proud of myself for spotting Octavia Spencer as a literal extra.
Testing123
11mo ago
Maybe this has been brought up in one of your other dating posts, but have you considered going abroad? I guarantee that you can find better women than who you're talking about here in the Philippines or Thailand, and if you're white, it honestly doesn't matter how ugly you are.
Testing123
11mo ago
I haven’t seen the movie but that was my sense just from the trailer. I don’t know if that’s because Howerton just doesn’t have much range, or if it’s because I’ve only seen him as Dennis for 15 years.
And she gets the kiss too - https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ijuzvl8tv8k Later in the episode, the other doctors make fun of Chase (the adult male doctor who did the kissing) but the episode's narrative frames it as a good thing.
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