This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Chinese entertainment — and to a lesser degree, East Asian entertainment generally — is dominating Western markets. Their products appear to be organically favored by Westerners. The Chinese-made video game Black Myth Wukong was released this week and is now sitting on Steam’s top 10 list for concurrent playercount and user favorability. It sits next to Elden Ring, a Japanese-made video game. The Chinese-designed 2020 Call of Duty Mobile game has made ~4bn lifetime revenue and has 60,000,000 monthly players; a Western-designed Warzone attempted to dethrone it this year and is unanimously considered a failure, losing most of its playerbase in the first month. Genshin Impact and PUBG mobile are other highly popular mobile games led by Chinese studios. Tik Tok is the most used social media company and is a Chinese product. League of Legends (130 million monthly active) is Chinese. Final Fantasy and Lost Ark are the most popular MMORPGs this year, Japanese and Korean respectively. Korean shows are increasingly popular in the West (and have actually slanted Korean tourism in favor of female tourists), and I don’t need to note anime and manga.
What explains this? Wukong in particular appears to be a genuinely loved game, and it makes no overtures to Western culture — it is firmly Chinese in story, music, and art design. IMO there’s likely American propaganda floating around against Chinese entertainment (billions in revenue on the line which compounds), but despite this the products are favored. So I feel safe saying that their products are better. So what has led China, and East Asia generally, to make better entertainment than America and Europe for Western audiences?
One thing I’ve always appreciated about Asian dramas in general is that they aren’t afraid to be themselves and tell a story without feeling the need to insert ironic humor or social or political fashions. It’s a story, and the needs of the story rule everything else going on. Thus the heroes can be really heroic, the love interests can be love interests, and so on. Western media has a harder time doing this because they have to insert corny ironic humor in the movie so it doesn’t seem super serious. They have to make sure the women in the show are badasses, feminist and not too feminine. Men cannot be too masculine, too competent, or if they happen to start that way, they must “learn their lesson” by the start of the third act.
Add in the insular world of movies and TV in which everyone has the same background, the same training, and are expected to follow “Save The Cat” to the letter, and I think it’s just a mess. Nobody can create an honest account of redneck masculinity because nobody in Hollywood comes from that background. If you’re going to film school and have the funds in hand to be effectively unemployed for 3-5 years, you’re not from anything like a working class background and more than likely have never had a ten minute conversation with someone from a working class background. It’s PMC class second sons all around and all they can do is ape media portrayals of things they’re generations away from first hand knowledge of. Here Be There Dragons.
I frequently see this blamed on Joss Whedon, but I think I've come to the conclusion that it's actually cargo-cult writers trying to capture the "quippy" vibe that his productions are famous for. But kind of like Michael Bay, the imitators fall well short of the greatness of the original. Not to say that Bay is the best filmmaker, but attempts to mimic his style (briefly: "make every single shot as awesome as possible") often don't really manage to make awesome shots, especially consistently.
Having re-watched some of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly recently, the quips are there, but they're not usually shallow "lol, so random" jokes: they tend to be deeper cross-references to scenes from far earlier in threads that span an episode or more. Imitations of this tend to just drop jokes randomly and assume they'll land, but, done properly, there's an established setup and payoff. I would cite specific examples, but I doubt any of them are well-enough known to make sense out-of-context.
That’s definitely a part of it, but it was also rare at the time. Like any other trope, you can only put it out there so many times before it becomes tiresome. I’m finding myself so bored with the trope that it no longer lands at all. Even the “save the world” trope of action movies seems a bit played out because it’s all that’s out there and eventually you no longer care about the world.
Hasn't that been a trope-complaint for, well, decades at this point?
Seems practically cyclic to me. New franchises come, and are often at their most intense / highest fan momentum when the stakes are relatively small. To go back just a few decades- Pokemon when Ash was a rookie trainer trying to advance to the first championship, Bleach's Soul Society arc when it was just rescuing a friend from an unjust execution, Naruto when it was orphan wants to be ninja president and has a team rival, My Hero Academia when super-power-less kid gets into super-school and has to keep up, etc.
A lot of series crest around the time that the stakes start to raise the stakes so high that it's narratively impossible for them to lose.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link