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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Go back and watch media from the 2000s, you'll notice it's absolutely full of pot shots at religion. Different culture war, but it was absolutely a thing back then. But now it's your ox being gored/the Overton window has changed and you haven't.

He didn't ask why you think he cares now. And I think that answer is an easy way to dismiss people who talk about principles, but even if he did only discover his principles out of self interest, he wants to commit to them now and he has multiple real world examples of everything he talked about. Does free speech only matter when it's proposed by a being of perfect morality? Pretend I wrote that post.

He didn't ask why you think he cares now.

Nor did I?

And I think that answer is an easy way to dismiss people who talk about principles

I wasn't dismissing that, I was pointing out that his principle of 'keep politics out of movies' or however he formulated it was never really a principle in the first place

(I'm touched by your concern for me and my kine, by my ass was religious back in the early 2000's. Nevertheless, let's pretend I only start to notice wrongs when I'm being wronged). As Fruck points out, this is a strength of principles, not a weakness. Even if I only attach myself to a general principle once my ox is gored, you can hold me to it when it's your turn. But if we presume that nobody means it when they espouse a principle, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and all we're left with is power struggle.

I just don't think it's a particularly reasonable principle and it never was. Good movies are an art and art is for expressing themes which are sometimes political. It might be more reasonable to ask that politics be kept out of pornography.

Fair! This is something I think is actually worthwhile to discuss. I also sometimes like political themes (Ghandi is one of my favorite movies, for instance). I'm less happy about politics being sprinkled on mermaid movies for kids, in the same way that Rick and Morty gesture at at the end of "Story Train" -- even if the writer has sincere beliefs, sticking them into your work is going to immediately derail it. (Same deal with the Hallmark channel -- there's a market for people who don't mind that kind of thing, but it's really off-putting to everybody else, and isn't likely to produce a lot of literary classics, because it ends up obliterating anything interesting you might have said.)

I suppose there's no accounting for poor production, but then I'm not sure that kids movies we had before the 2010s (or whenever we wanna draw the woke dividing line) were particularly well made. Sure there are outliers, but you've got to remember that most of that stuff is and always will be crap. Find the good ones and show those to your kids. And while you're at it, don't give them unfettered access to streaming platforms.

As for adults who make a habit of engaging online with children's mermaid films, time to put away childish things/etc. And similar story to Show Which Will Not Be Named, if you give it your time, Bigcorp wins.

"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -- C.S. Lewis.