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 -
Is this the beginning of a popular rebellion against woke Hollywood garbage?
Like (I imagine) a lot of you, I got fed up with mainstream Hollywood movies and TV a long time ago. For various reasons, but a big part of it was how they insisted on inserting heavy-handed woke propaganda into everything, even where it made no sense. I'm hardly the first to complain about that, but it seemed to be mostly anonymous online reactionaries complaining, while mainstream critics and everyone "respectable" still lapped it up. The Star Wars sequels, Nu-Trek, and all Marvel movies made $$$$$$$ while also gathering rave critical reviews, even though it became something of a joke when the "audience score" on rotten tomatoes was always so much lower than the "critic reviews" score.
And to be clear, I'm not (just) mad at those things because I disagree with their politics. I genuinely think those are terrible movies. They have bad plots, bad characters, bad dialogue, and often even bad at basic filmmaking stuff like editing, camera angles, and sound mixing. One theory I like is that, for quite a while, Hollywood was so focused on exporting big famous brands to foreign countries that they didn't care how it sounded in English. They'd all be watching it dubbed or with subtitles anyway, and then (hopefully) buying merch. But for a long time I felt like I couldn't say these things without getting labelled as a deranged culture warrior.
But now? I dunno. I'm seeing more and more open criticism of big hollywood brands, and some of it is coming from people who are not easily dismissed. Examples:
The last one was what inspired me to write this post. Lots have people have already criticized Star Trek over the years, most notably the RedLetterMedia guys who kinda got famous from it. But I associate most of them with the online right. This is a 4 hour review from someone who doesn't normally do movie reviews, and she felt compelled to keep saying how she normally loves seeing pro-diversity left wing messages in Star Trek. But it's such an amazingly bad series that even its target audience can't defend it. I'm not woke, but I used to love Star Trek as a kid. Picard season 1 was so terrible I refused to watching anything after that, and it made me completely hate the franchise as a whole. I know that "some people say" that it got better, or that some other new Star Trek shows are good, or whatever. I don't care, I hate that pile of garbage so much that I'm never giving them another dollar or view unless they publically apologize for it. It felt like someone (maybe Patrick Stewart? Maybe Alex Kurtzman? Maybe all the Star Trek actors who have been stuck doing silly conventions with crazy fans for decades?) genuily hated their fanbase and wanted to give them the finger.
I don't know. Maybe I'm being too optimistic here. But I feel like we've finally crossed the threshold where everyone is fed up with Hollywood's crap. They've taken pretty much every bit of pop culture we loved as children, and burned it all down to make a quick buck. They kept recycling the same crap in their little clique of Jewish Hollywood elites and refused to listen to any criticism. You can only keep doing that for so long before the audience gets sick of it.
And at long last, we can finally agree that the new Star Trek movies are bad, right?
I was onboard with this post, but this came a bit out of left field and seems largely unrelated to the main thrust of your argument.
Yes, Hollywood is disproportionately controlled by Jews, so it's strictly true that Jews are responsible for recent trends in Hollywood slop.
But Hollywood has been disproportionately controlled by Jews for as long as Hollywood has been a thing. From Goldwyn to Wilder to Spielberg, Jews were responsible for some of the most beloved films in the American canon.
Whatever the underlying cause of the downturn in quality in mainstream American cinema, you can't just point to the religion or ethnicity of the people in charge. They have the same religion and ethnicity as the people who were in charge when Hollywood was good.
I would actually be interested in whether the Hollywood decline coincided with a loss of Jewish control, like it did with the universities.
In both cases it always seemed like they kept a tight leash on the pet elements that could harm profits/donations: Hakeem Jeffries got the "woah there sambo" treatment in the 90s once he clarified that "soulless white ice people" included the jews.
Once the grievance-studies departments took over the admin staff, the Rudenstines and Bacows couldn't stop Harvard going Gay.
Perhaps Harvey Weinstein's casting couch was the one remaining meritocratic hiring process in Hollywood?
Hollywood is turning to garbage because it’s now run primarily on nepotism, connections, blackmail and propaganda. The Acolyte is a good example of this. The showrunner/writer was Harvey Weinstein’s personal assistant. She likely got this opportunity as a bribe to keep her quiet because she knows where some of the proverbial bodies are buried (blackmail). The lead actress Amandala Sternberg is then selected because her parents have industry connections and she’s from a racial demographic that Hollywood favors (connections, propaganda). The supporting actress is hired because she’s married to the show runner (nepotism). The male supporting lead Lee Jung-jae seems to have been selected mostly due to talent. Notice that we are now four rungs down into the selection process and this is the first time that vocational talent seems to have been considered at all. And from everything I’ve seen in reviews left and right, he’s the only bright spot in this whole shabby enterprise. Many many projects are like this now. In the early days of silent filmmaking up until the 2000s, who got to make movies was primarily dependent on talent and sales. Now it’s like a late feudal monarchy or the Soviet Union. The number of Jews has mostly remained constant and I don’t think it’s a factor in the early success or the later decline at all.
I find it amusing that the only two watchable people in this atrocity were east asian males.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't know about blackmail, but wasn't Hollywood always run on nepotism, connections, and propaganda?
Dafne Keen as the young jedi girl also brought her A game, and Carrie Ann Moss also brought gravitas. Both could work with facial expression, body language and limited dialogue to still bring character and intent.
You know, acting.
A good actor can be a shining gem in a bad script, but it just highlights how shit the script is and how much of a slog it is to get through. Bad actors in bad scripts just become exhausting, and right now there are no good young black actresses. Zoe Saldana and Zendaya are above average but not Halle Berry or Angela Bassett level, and Dominique Tipper is decent but can't do dialogue. Every other young black woman is some flavor of 'repressed racial rage' and can't fucking smile or joke because that's white supremacy or something. (Note: I heard good things about Abbott Elementary so maybe black talent is concentrated in comedy AS USUAL).
The Noticing variable for an enshittified show is a young black woman who don't take no shit from no man. Scifi is especially guilty of this, and thats why Discovery, Acolyte and Obi Wan sucked balls.
Interesting, I just realized the Expanse (which I really enjoyed) subverted this by having that character in the first few episodes, and then having her fall in love with and becoming a supporting partner with the (white male) lead. But then again, the show writers were constrained by the source material so probably they shouldn't get any credit.
Eh, they can get credit. Her name is Naomi Nagata, and could easily have been asian. They got an indian guy to play a texan hick as well, and no one really gave a shit because the series cleaved its racial differences as space palestine vs 2 faraway superpowers. In fantasy all colors of humanity unite to be racist against orcs, and speciecism is more appealing in scifi than racism still.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Not to the extent that it is now. If you look at biographies for actors and actresses before the 2000s, most of them were nobodies who broke out. Now they’re all some other famous actor’s son or daughter. Directors and producers usually got experience on smaller films or TV and then had one project that got really popular, catapulting them into the big leagues.
More options
Context Copy link
This was my question. If anything I'd assume it was worse in the past, given lack of regulation and transparency.
There has been an exponential increase in nepo-babies though, which is in a way only natural as time goes on and the industry grew but it also shows the lack of meritocratic guardrails in the industry.
Maybe there's a synthesis here: Hollywood did use to be pretty corrupt and nepotistic in a way that everyone knew about, but now it's corrupt and nepotistic in a different way we're not aware of.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link