site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   26526 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024

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.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Last year, a new film adaptation of The Three Musketeers came out. (French, Part 1, Part 2)

I watched Part 1 first; the fight scenes are amazing. The scene of the arranged duel between D'Artagnan and the three musketeers that turns into a brawl with the Cardinal's men is particularly fantastic. The style has a flavor of Cinéma vérité in that it's a continuous and somewhat shaky take from a point of view of an unseen witness who keeps turning to catch the action while ducking away from danger, but it deviates from Cinéma vérité in that everyone fighting is super-competent. In this seemingly-continuous shot, one catches glimpse of feats of martial arts moves, all geared towards dispatching the enemy, none are for show. It's very cool and impressive, and worth watching for that scene alone.

Every film adaptation makes decisions about how much of the original material to use, and how closely to stick to the plot. When it does, that's a deliberate choice on the part of those who made the film. Sometimes it's a little change: Porthos is bi; Constance is not married and yet runs a hostel while working in the queen's chambers. It's annoying to have such present-day sensibilities undermine the portrayal of a society very different from mine, but I figured that at least these changes didn't utterly contradict an essential part of the story.

And then I watched Part 2.

Milady from the book is one of my favorite villains. She is smart, adaptable, ruthless, resourceful, flawed, vicious, and above all feminine. She wields femininity as a weapon far more effective then mere swords and muskets. Why dirty your hands, when you can manipulate men to do it for you?

In this adaptation, Milady is a sword-wielding girl-boss.

When an otherwise-good adaptation takes an awesome feminine villain and replaces her with someone who might as well be a man, that's a deliberate choice. That choice dismisses the idea that femininity can be dangerous to one's enemies or efficacious for achieving one's goals. It's therefore ironic that the people who made this choice consider it a feminist move.

Fiction is not associative: strong (female character) != (strong female) character.

Never attribute to feminism what can be adequately explained by endumbening.

Substituting cartoony physical stuff for nuanced dialogue and subtle social powerplays has been a trend in youth media for a while now. Women's YA novels should be the peak medium for wordy scenes of deception and covert social manipulation, and even those regularly pull out some kind of broad screen-ready Loony Tunes thing these days, not necessarily girlboss swordplay but someone being punched or shoved, or physically restrained, or exploded (!), in interactions that would have been subtle verbal insults or manipulations a few decades ago. There's maybe some element of fantasy about women wreaking physical revenge, but equally often it's evil moms and boyfriends inflicting violence on girls, or just the universe conveniently providing violence to fill up plot holes, so I don't think it can be purely a girl power thing.

My bet is on a combination of progressively lower social intelligence in younger cohorts (if you're raised without freeform peer play, how would you learn to recognize and understand negotiation or manipulation strategies?), worsening verbal/logical ability in writers, and possibly some studio mistrust of audiences. Say what you will about sword-swinging girlbosses, but they're easy to write, don't need to say much, and reliably capture a viewer's attention.

Milady from the book is one of my favorite villains. She is smart, adaptable, ruthless, resourceful, flawed, vicious, and above all feminine. She wields femininity as a weapon far more effective then mere swords and muskets. Why dirty your hands, when you can manipulate men to do it for you?

Cardinal Richelieu is smart, adaptable, ruthless, resourceful, flawed, vicious. He manipulates dumber men to do his dirty deeds for him. And yet he's a magnificent bastard worthy of respect, while Milady is put down like a viper. She's not exactly portrayed as a role model by Dumas.

Men hate when women characters like this are empowered. We've had a discussion of Heartbreakers on the Motte recently and I think we have discussed Gone Girl as well. So of course the old manipulative Milady was replaced with the new one, the one that can escape in the final reel.

Glad you brought up Richelieu. In the book, he and Milady are aptly juxtaposed because of these very qualities: smart, adaptable, ruthless, resourceful, and seeking power. The difference is that Richelieu (for the most part) uses that accumulated power to make the state of France strong, while Milady (when not kept on a tight leash) uses it to pursue her own passions, including murder and revenge. That is Milady's one ultimately-fatal flaw: whatever her intelligence and talents, she ultimately serves her baser instinct. It's what makes her such great villain, while Cardinal Richelieu is merely an antagonist who aptly pursues goals contrary to whose of the protagonists.

She's not exactly portrayed as a role model by Dumas.

Exactly: Dumas develops her as a villain, not an anti-hero. And as a villain, she is absolutely the tops. She has her own clearly developed story arc. She has a great back story. She grows as a character. Her resourcefulness gets developed and revealed and stages. By the time of the "boss fight" scene, the reader really believes that it indeed takes four musketeers and a professional executioner to finally kill her. All that, and the only time she lifts a weapon is to pretend to wound herself.

Men hate when women characters like this are empowered.

You know, I have never met a man who likes the Dumas books but was incensed that too much time gets devoted to this Milady character, or how it's bullshit that she's so powerful. Dumas chose to devote many more chapters to Milady. The chapters about her mission to kill the Duke of Buckingham are from her point of view. Dumas published the chapters serially, a lot of his readers were men, and I take it as evidence that he responded as much to popular demand as he did to his own creative urges.

I mean, how much more empowered can a character get? The Duke, forewarned by a lucky fluke, captures Milady, imprisons her, puts an incorruptible guard over her. In a few short days, she not only gets that guard to help her escape, but to carry out her ultimate mission: kill the Duke. I mean, damn! that's Power!

You know, I have never met a man who likes the Dumas books but was incensed that too much time gets devoted to this Milady character, or how it's bullshit that she's so powerful. Dumas chose to devote many more chapters to Milady. The chapters about her mission to kill the Duke of Buckingham are from her point of view. Dumas published the chapters serially, a lot of his readers were men, and I take it as evidence that he responded as much to popular demand as he did to his own creative urges.

I think I wasn't able to communicate my idea clear enough. You are correct that Dumas wrote her as a competent villain of the selfish, ignoble, scheming kind. And she meets her end in a way that is appropriate for this kind of villain: desperate, groveling, clutching at every straw until her head is struck down into the mud. However, this puts the modern writers in a bind: they need a "strong female character" and Milady as she has been written doesn't work as one:

  • if she meets her end on the bank of the Lys, she's no longer a suitable self-insert for female viewers
  • if she ultimately escapes her punishment, this will anger male viewers

The writers chose the easiest way out: Milady now competes with men in the male sphere: she's a dashing rogue now, someone who, even after sending Constance to her death, has the possibility of a redemption arc. No longer are underhanded tactics implicitly coded as feminine. Could the writers have come up with a different Milady, one that could attract female viewership, not alienate male viewership and at the same time not be an ahistorical girlboss? In theory, yes, but no one has time for this kind of tightrope walking in practice.

Or they could... y'know... follow the book. A pox on directors who think that they should make significant deviations from the source material when adapting books for the screen.

But it's so... outdated and sexist! How can modern audiences relate to Dumas' female characters if they aren't brought up to date and empowered?

I believe that the classic answer in this scenario is "fuck em". But seriously though, the idea that all things need to try to appeal to all possible people is ruining art. It's ok if some people don't enjoy the character of Milady, or even the movie as a whole. The director shouldn't water down the material just to try to be inoffensive to all (which, ironically, is itself offensive to some people).

There is no good reason to ever watch or read anything made after 2012 and doubly so after 2016. There's enough great material to last you a lifetime from before then.

But that would mean not watching Tár, which is perfect.

Huge exaggeration, in my opinion.

I think it’s unlikely that you’d find a triple A piece of media produced after 2012. Indy stuff can still be okay, but if you’re looking at big companies producing art, you aren’t going to find much worth the effort. I dunno, so much of it just feels like people ticked off boxes in a spreadsheet and had ChatGPT produce the script. It’s boring, predictable, politically correct, and generally lacks things like plot, characters, or charm. Indie stuff is better simply because you can still find stuff that genuinely creates characters and situations that you actually care about, plots that don’t feel like long setups for the cool action sequence to follow, or contrived “will they won’t they” love interests (who totally will).

The Substance was fantastic and definitely had a lot to say, and that came out just this year.

I enjoyed Witcher 3 tremendously. Cyberpunk seems very well liked, though I haven't played it myself. Civ VI also seems well liked. I usually only buy games on steep discount so more recent stuff isn't exactly on my radar.

I really liked Beau is Afraid, which had a budget of 35 million. And I liked Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Top Gun: Maverick was solid. Joker was a good experience in the theater, although it may not be a work of pure genius.

Also true of music, but arguably not true of videogames. While most AAA games continue to be disappointing, dumbed-down, DEI-addled trash, there have been some spectacular successes in the last few years. BG3, Factorio, Disco Elysium, RDR2, Rimworld, Sekiro, Stellaris, Crusader Kings 2 & 3, Doom 2016 and Eternal, etc.. Nintendo also producing some of their best work on the Switch (Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Odyssey).

BG3 is mid. The game is okay but the writing is crap.

Stellaris is also mid and in many ways more of a role-playing game than a strategy. In terms of depth it has the same sort of 'fake' depth other Paradox titles have, and is not in any way deeper than an ordinary Civ-game from before they got hit by the stupid ray.

Also true of music

There's been very very little of worthwhile music made since the mid to late 90s outside metal, some niche genres (which don't include so-called "indie", anything related to EDM or what most people call "electronic music") and legacy artists who are now at or beyond retirement age.

This is a hill I'm willing to die on.

This is likely the classic case of musical preferences solidifying around age 18. I get plenty of music I like in my Spotify recommendations released post 2000 (although I must admit I do see the 90s as a special period for music).

I generally agree with BurdensomeCount, but I don't think he's trying to say there is literally nothing made after 2012 or 2016 that is worth your time. It's just that so much of it isn't, that the juice isn't worth the squeeze attempting to sift through it. Especially when you can just pick virtually anything that was considered "good" prior to 2012 and not find it offensively ideological. Compared to today where even the "good" games are often full of marxist or gender ideological talking points in degrees from "I can roll my eyes at this and get on with my day" to "My Disappointment Is Immeasurable And My Day Is Ruined".

I actually agree with the fact about great videogames still being made today. Some of the very best video games ever came out not too long ago (of course mixed in with all the usual trash) even if you rule games out for having even a single morel of prog shit.

Even continually updated video games like Dota are hitting it out the park at the moment (the mechanics and content that is, not the bot and win trader addled playerbase) and I'd say have never been better. Dota is miles nicer to play from a mechanics point of view today than it was in 2012.

I attribute this to improving technology. Technologically books today are no different from books of the 1970s but the average PC today is many orders of magnitude more capable than the devices running Pong half a century ago. That on its own opens up huge amounts of design space in video games that was locked off back then. This is not true of either books, television or music though.

My intuition is that films and TV have dropped off a lot more in the last 8 years than videogames, with some incredibly vivid and memorable successes very recently. While the Sweetbaby stuff has definitely tainted a lot of AAA games, the kind of games most affected are those that were mass-market slop anyway. I can’t think of many titles where it’s true to say “this would be great were it not for the DEI nonsense”.

I would suggest that the reason for this is that the total number of people designing video games is growing much faster than the same number producing TV and film*. If you had mentioned Stardew Valley and Dwarf Fortress, you'd have one- and two- man games, but Rimworld and Factorio are small groups heavily inspired by mods. The newest Factorio expansion came about because they hired a modder who did it for free. The dedicated auteur, working alone, is thriving in video games in a way that is not true for hardly anything else.

*The existence of the youtube professional is the comparable medium. These are episodes of TV, or sometimes movies, and they pay the bills. It isn't exactly high art, but this is where a similar sort of small enterprise is thriving.

I would argue that game devs are worse than ever, even the auteurs.

By way of comparison, I was listening to a podcast Dan Carlin did, talking to some boxing historian. And they mused over the fact that most athletes today are better than they ever were. I mean, just look at the records for any particular sport.

And then there is boxing. Boxers of old had a much higher pace of fights, as well as much more polished defensive capabilities because they didn't want to risk injury and losing their meal ticket. While a champion today might have 20 fights, a champion back in "the day" might have 200. Compare anyone who has competed in 200 events versus 20, and who is superior is usually obvious.

If you don't buy that argument, there is always the story of The Beetles, and how they played tens of thousands of hours of gigs before they emerged as The Beetles and went down in history.

Game devs these days might ship 2 games in 10 years. In the 90's it could be as much as 10 or 20. Look back at id software's pre-Wolfenstein days for Softdisk for instance. For a good chunk of the 80's and 90's, if you weren't on a yearly release schedule or higher, you were struggling. It wasn't until the late 90's that id software and Blizzard took on a "when it's done" attitude, but even that might be 2 or 3 years tops. Concord was supposedly in development for 10 years.

Concord was supposedly in development for 10 years.

Everytime I see facts about this game, the budget and development time grow larger.

Wikipedia currently lists an 8 year dev time for Concord. But it's not directly sourced, and it doesn't seem to match reality. The studio that created the game wasn't even founded until 2018. Maybe some of the founders were had an idea for a hero shooter in 2016, but if you included all ideation for a game everything would have ridiculous development times

On the plus side, bugs actually get noticed and fixed now. We don't usually get deus ex style "hey we broke a bunch of maps, all the plasma weapons, and some random character interactions, have fun dealing with that for the next 25 years. Buy the sequel. Devs out"

I would suspect that boxers and musicians of today lack something that old-time pugilists and rockstars had: chemical enhancement to aid that greater grind.

Games specifically take longer because they're often scoped bigger, are more complex, and the technology that builds them is more complex. In a few hours, one could crank out a barebones Mario-style platformer in 2D. Making that same game into a Metroidvania-style game would take an order of magnitude more time (let's say weeks). Make it 3D, and the time horizon for development extends to months at the minimum.

id Software managed the pace they did at Softdisk because their games were relatively simple, used simple graphics, weren't (yet) trying to push the limits of what was possible with computer games, and knew the hardware they were targeting (in the days before the Pentium and 3D accelerators). That Romero and Carmack were fairly skilled definitely helped, but in hindsight, you might not expect that looking at Rescue Rover or Dangerous Dave.

Games can be made in short timeframes like the old days, but you will notice the difference that lack of extra time makes. Go look at any game jam on Itch and play a few submissions, they're often very barebones, sometimes obviously crude, and typically quite short on content.

old-time pugilists and rockstars had: chemical enhancement to aid that greater grind.

You think boxers used to be on more effective drug stacks than they are now? I'm quite skeptical of this for any sense of "used to", but particularly a sense of "used to" that includes, like, John L. Sullivan. For that matter, I'd be sort of surprised if it was true for musicians either.

More comments

Why does a shorter development cycle mean that game developers in the past were better? I mean yea, I'm not sure any modern game developers could come up with fast inverse square root but I don't really follow the inner workings of modern games so maybe they are doing equally shocking things and I just don't know about it?

I do think there is something to be said for raw numbers of fights. A similar thing happened in baseball where basically every record based on sheer volume has some unbreakable record from 1910 when pitchers pitched complete games every day. This is undoubtedly largely a result of player pay, if your pitcher has a 300 million dollar contract you are going to treat him like a priceless artifact and handle him incredibly gently, you're never really going to want to push him to the absolute breaking point. When contracts were at most a few hundred thousand a year, yea you can ride him like freaking Secretariat until his UCL turns to dust. So I think there is some truth to the idea that the most resilient players today are probably being held back from achieving their true potential out of fear of injury. Nolan Ryan definitively shows that some humans are capable of throwing at modern speeds for a vastly higher volume of games than pitchers today ever approach.

Why does a shorter development cycle mean that game developers in the past were better? I mean yea, I'm not sure any modern game developers could come up with fast inverse square root but I don't really follow the inner workings of modern games so maybe they are doing equally shocking things and I just don't know about it?

And lets lump @HalloweenSnarry in with this too

id Software managed the pace they did at Softdisk because their games were relatively simple, used simple graphics, weren't (yet) trying to push the limits of what was possible with computer games, and knew the hardware they were targeting (in the days before the Pentium and 3D accelerators). That Romero and Carmack were fairly skilled definitely helped, but in hindsight, you might not expect that looking at Rescue Rover or Dangerous Dave.

My point in bringing up id software's Softdisk days, or Westwood's workmanlike porting jobs, or Bullfrog's start writing business software or ports, is not that these were obviously geniuses from the jump, who've godlike talent was plain as day in everything they did. It's to point out you don't get good at anything working on a single project for 10 years. You need to crank out 10-20 workman like finished projects before you make your first Doom, or your first Command & Conquer. I'm not harping on the notion that the programming was better (though I think it was), or that the games had better core gameplay loops (though I think they do). I'm pointing out that these game developers racked up feedback on their products at a much faster pace than game devs today who slave away on a single mediocre arena shooter for Sony for 10 years straight.

More comments

Well, like I said, depends what your threshold for bullshit is. I'm so fucking exhausted by it, I nope out the moment I see "Body Type" instead of male or female, or if a game lets you pick your pronouns. Is that petty? Perhaps. Am I missing out on otherwise good games? Once again, perhaps. I just fucking can't anymore. I'm tired. And yet those are increasingly standard features across AAA and indie games. Even a lot of those Switch games being held up as standout titles in a world of AAA slop are getting that nonsense.

Well, like I said, depends what your threshold for bullshit is. I'm so fucking exhausted by it, I nope out the moment I see "Body Type" instead of male or female, or if a game lets you pick your pronouns. Is that petty? Perhaps.

It doesn't seem petty to me at least. I have much the same reaction. It's often not even because things are obnoxious in and of themselves, but because I know (given the current climate) that they are likely to be deliberate inclusions of politics. Like, 20 years ago I wouldn't have thought much about "body type A/B", but these days the odds are very high that someone made the game that way as a deliberate reflection of their culture war beliefs. And like you, I have very little patience for it because games (and other entertainment) are my escape from all the unpleasantness of the world. So when they push it back in my face, it's so much more annoying.

I'll be frank, this does look like deliberately seeking to be offended by woke, given that phrasing "male/female" as "body type" is about one of the least intrusive things ever. Are you "exhausted", or are you hypersensitive?

Is it materially important? No.

it is a signifier that the whole "Sex is not the same as gender!" argument is attempt to dismantle the opposing argument rather than a genuinely held belief, because it should be rather uncontroversial to simply state that you are choosing whether the character's sex is male or female.

I'm far less aggro and boiling with resentment than @WhiningCoil, to say nothing of some of our other posters. But I recently posted this about my own exhaustion with the eternal celebration of rainbow folx, and got a response from @HaroldWilson that was much like yours: "Why does this bother you? It's not intrusive, no one is making you do anything, it's just basic decency!"

And yeah, I'm not exactly being forced to wear a pronoun badge (yet), but it is just really exhausting to be constantly reminded that these are the most marginalized and oppressed people ever and the slightest hint of impatience or annoyance with them is a genocidal wish for them not to exist, and meanwhile we have to celebrate them everywhere every day, in films, in games, in books, nothing can be published without Representation and god fucking forbid any work feature all gender-conforming straight white people (or any two out of those three) because that's a hate crime.

I want to "just show basic human decency." I do show basic human decency. I do not hate anyone and I do not want LGBTQ people harmed, harassed, or shoved into a closet. And that's not enough. Because I have hateful, bigoted, genocidal beliefs (like maybe trans women shouldn't compete in women's sports, and it's just possible that some sex offenders with penises who want to be sent to women's prison are not sincere about their gender identity, and also they are like 0.5% of the population so maybe everything doesn't have to be about them!). Like, I can say this (and I do), but I know I am picking a fight when I do, so I have to decide if it's worth it, and which people I am going to alienate.

What is "basic human decency" to you?

Are there some righties looking for opportunities to flip out every time they see "woke"? Yes. Just like there are lefties looking for excuses to call anyone who doesn't hate JK Rowling and Trump enough a Nazi. I try very hard not to let myself get sucked into that hate-and-seethe rabbit hole (i.e., every day on Twitter, and most days here on the Motte - seriously, some of you people do need to touch grass). But, you know, it's pretty tiresome when you can't find good faith on either side.

(like maybe trans women shouldn't compete in women's sports, and it's just possible that some sex offenders with penises who want to be sent to women's prison are not sincere about their gender identity, and also they are like 0.5% of the population so maybe everything doesn't have to be about them!). Like, I can say this (and I do), but I know I am picking a fight when I do, so I have to decide if it's worth it, and which people I am going to alienate.

Isn't this just part of the 'no politics at work' taboo? Now I know you're complaining about the asymmetry that you're frowned upon for expressing your views but a certain kind of affirmation politics is permitted. But I don't think they're necessarily equivalents. I doubt even a DEI seminar would ever take an explicit position on policy questions like prison or sports legislation.

everything doesn't have to be about them

I don't think everything is...

Who are these people who need to touch grass, the implication being that they are so opposed to the woke they make this (and @WhiningCoil) look tame in comparison -

it is just really exhausting to be constantly reminded that these are the most marginalized and oppressed people ever and the slightest hint of impatience or annoyance with them is a genocidal wish for them not to exist, and meanwhile we have to celebrate them everywhere every day, in films, in games, in books, nothing can be published without Representation and god fucking forbid any work feature all gender-conforming straight white people (or any two out of those three) because that's a hate crime.

I want to "just show basic human decency." I do show basic human decency. I do not hate anyone and I do not want LGBTQ people harmed, harassed, or shoved into a closet. And that's not enough. Because I have hateful, bigoted, genocidal beliefs (like maybe trans women shouldn't compete in women's sports, and it's just possible that some sex offenders with penises who want to be sent to women's prison are not sincere about their gender identity, and also they are like 0.5% of the population so maybe everything doesn't have to be about them!).

Because it looks to me like that there is precisely what the vast majority of the anti-woke - particularly on the motte - have been screaming exasperatedly for the past decade and it is the same gaslighting that you point out here - which has only started dying down recently (since the election made it clear the progressives weren't ordained by God is how it looks to me) and was previously much much more ubiquitous - that has made them apoplectic.

One side of this political debate believes in consciousness-raising uber alles. They deliberately seek opportunities to shoehorn (and then brag about shoehorning) their values. They want people more aware of this stuff and why they do it.

It works. People become "hypersensitive" (aware) as a result. Some people appreciate it and go along, some won't. But they don't get to pretend it isn't a result of their actions.

I don’t think so. It’s just that after a certain saturation point of woke, you just get tired of picking up a game that you just want to turn off the world for a while and play in another universe. Except you don’t ge5 to escape because the designer insisted that he can’t keep away from real world politics for 10 minutes.

I feel the same way, I’m rewatching old sci-fi movies from the 1980s because honestly it’s absolutely refreshing to jus5 see a story that doesn’t have to preach at you.

Hypersensitive, perhaps. Deliberate seeking, certainly not. I can assure you that the reaction (to the aforementioned video game features) is as spontaneous and vigorous as the left’s reaction to, say, confederate flags and statues.

You ever have the same argument with a family member over and over again for decades? To the point where the moment they slip in an oblique reference to your deep seated differences in world view, all those negative feelings come rushing back in. Especially because they give you a look when they do it that says they know exactly what they are doing? And yeah, the people who don't know might look at your (possibly restrained) anger towards what you know is a direct provocation like you are being over sensitive. But your antagonist knows exactly what they are doing.

It's like that.

Horse!

Mule!

Horse!!

Mule!!!

HORSE!!!!

MULE!!!!!

(Fiddler on the Roof, referenced by Slate Star Codex, March 2016.)

This is just the "what does it matter to you that we support Basic Human Decency, seems like you're the problem" gaslighting trick everyone's seen a billion times. It's manipulative and vile, and weird to keep using on someone who's immune to it.

"Our world-view is Basic Human Decency/Objectively Correct Reality; therefore, explicitly acknowledging it as true is un-remarkable, while disagreeing with it, or even not explicitly affirming it, is Shoving Your Politics In My Face."

What do you have against basic human decency? What it looks like is exactly the same as wokes getting triggered by a nonmixed heterosexual family because it's a dogwhistle for fascist racism or something.

And if I were, in fact, aiming to manipulate, it's not like I would be cowed by you declaring that you're immune to my manipulations.

  • -21
More comments

See I care less than I did a few years ago. My politics haven’t changed, but I think I’m probably less afraid of these people than I was, so I’m more willing to accept it in the “weird quirks of a foreign culture” way.

I would counter your assertion by raising the example of Hardcore Henry, but that was a year short of your second cutoff point.

Were there a table before me I should pound upon it, sir!

That choice dismisses the idea that femininity can be dangerous to one's enemies or efficacious for achieving one's goals. It's therefore ironic that the people who made this choice consider it a feminist move.

From my understanding, currently feminist deny there is anything female-coded women are better at. Not that femininity can be used for good or bad, rather they demand be erased. I think this is why cultural products from the more feminists countries, such as the US, feature mannish-looking women, acting in a masculine manner.

If they were to admit that women posses certain strengths which men lack, it would naturally to the question of existence of male strengths which women lack.

I'm so glad you linked that manga, it's a ton of fun.

I think this is why cultural products from the more feminists countries, such as the US, feature mannish-looking women, acting in a masculine manner.

I don't want to get too bogged down in the object level discussion of Aloy, but I think her having peach fuzz is a defensible choice. In our world, there are products to remove such hair. But Aloy is living in a post-apocalyptic world in 3040, isn't she? It's not hard to believe at all that grooming habits have changed, and women with peach fuzz just leave it as is.

Honestly, this kind of thing is something that takes me out of a lot of media. While we know that the Romans were big about hair removal, we also know plenty of ancient societies that weren't, and it's always strange to see "cave man" media where the women look like they stepped out of a modern Instagram photo, with shaved legs and armpits. I think a lot of creators across time have been cowards, unwilling to contend with the fact that humans are all, men and women, hairy apes.

At the risk of sounding like a pervert, I associate that peach fuzz with some pretty good memories. In particular, a couple of my more innocent exes had some light fuzz, but because they were relative ingenues they hadn’t absorbed the cultural messaging around hair removal. So I associate it with a certain kind of wholesome unaffected young womanhood.

When I read the first sentence I thought you were going an entirely different direction with that. Either way it’s based

In real life female peach-fuzz/vellus hair is normally very short, very fine, and barely-noticeable. Videogames generally do not depict details that tiny, so if a videogame model tries to depict something like that there's a good chance of it ending up being bigger and more prominent than it almost always is in real life. Compare to something like the left side of this stock photo. The real face has an incredibly subtle fuzz, with 3 tiny strands of longer hair, while Aloy's face seems covered in hair as long as those 3 strands. Or this set of 279 photos of women without makeup.

There is of course a range of exceptions (all the way up to women with full beards), and either those are the target audience for peach-fuzz removal products or they use them as examples while expecting the actual audience to be women with a more normal amount. But it's pretty far from typical. Now, I don't think the developers outright planned to have her be an outlier, I think it was probably "we have graphics so good we can have this incredibly fine detail", and then when that wasn't actually true and it was too prominent they were woke enough that nobody was willing to point that out.

IMO, the more recent Steven-Universe-style trend of depicting intentionally homely looking women came later. And you notice that the character here looks, at least in the still, pretty good, for what they were going for; she's less uncanny and more intentionally obese.

I am almost certain that is intended to be a male.

[EDIT] - Aw man, it was a good post! Why delete? I thought about adding a picture of Ellie from borderlands, to give a better example of the point you were making!

Agreed, I think the anger at Aloy is often misidentified, even by the people that are angry themselves. She’s just a 5/10, and there should be a place in media for people that aren’t attractive, there’s really nothing objectionable about her in isolation. The issue is that she’s a product of a movement that doesn’t just seek to establish representation for unattractive women but also seeks to abolish representation of attractive women: see replacing Lara Croft.

The frustrating thing about the Aloygate is that the changes to her are entirely plausible: not every woman ages gracefully, especially not a post-apocalyptic tribal. Well, not in six months, but such changes in six years are far from impossible.

However, this framing would require the creators to acknowledge that they've made her less attractive and defend this as a natural process that women go through and are very sensitive about. And since the unspoken rule is that every woman is 10/10, the whole thing devolved into a shouting match of "you've made Aloy ugly" - "no we haven't".

I think the moniker "a woman in real life" (as in "those incel gamers have never seen a woman in real life") is meant to acknowledge that Aloy is depicted below the 70th percentile or wherever "less attractive" starts for you.

Living the life of a rugged warriors, not always having enough to eat, wouldn't cause ones face to become more similar to that of Nikocado (before his weightloss) in terms of fatness.

But becoming a chieftain, settling down and having children would.

This argument suffers from linking a thread about Aloy having a bodily feature that women are known to have, rather than any examples of her looking mannish or behaving in a masculine manner.

I mean, you can clearly also see she has Ron Perlman's jaw. Which as it turns out is actually a disorder?!

I just think the picture is at a bad angle. In this picture, Aloy looks fine. She's not a supermodel or anything, but she looks like a woman.

That screenshot is from Horizon Zero Dawn in 2017, the one people complained about/mocked was her changed model from Horizon Forbidden West in 2022. Here is her 2017 model compared to her face-model Hannah Hoekstra, while here is a comparison with her 2022 model. Also here is her early Zero Dawn concept art and here is the famous comparison with mukbang Youtuber Nikocado Avocado.

This comment suffers from implying that a woman having a bodily feature that women are known to have can't also make the woman look mannish.

Shame about the character.

Have you seen the Three and Four Musketeers movies from the seventies? If so, how does this iteration compare? And if you can speak to it, then where does the 2011 version fit in?

I'm more curious as to how it stacks up with the 1993 version featuring Tim Curry as Cardinal Richelieu, which is objectively the most enjoyable to watch. Not the best, perhaps, but most enjoyable.

Alas, I can't comment on those three. I put the first one on my viewing list because on it's on the streaming service I have.

However, I do recommend the 1994 "Queen Margot" (French, "La Reine Margot"), which is a very good adaptation and does a great job developing the logic of that story consistent with the norms of the time. Its two main female protagonists (Margueritte and her mother Catherine de Medicci) use various aspects of femininity to secure their positions. They do not wield swords, and they're no strangers to wounds or death.

It's therefore ironic that the people who made this choice consider it a feminist move.

Well, no, it's not ironic at all actually. The writers know exactly what they're doing, at least at a subconscious level. The idea that femininity could be manipulative and dangerous is a bad look for women, so obviously they would rather not depict such characters.

Feminism as a concrete social movement is about advancing the material and social interests of women (or at least, the interests of a certain subset of women). It's not about "giving people the freedom to explore their identities" or "recognizing the complexity of every human" or any claptrap like that.

Well, no, it's not ironic at all actually. The writers know exactly what they're doing, at least at a subconscious level. The idea that femininity could be manipulative and dangerous is a bad look for women, so obviously they would rather not depict such characters.

I think it's far darker than that. They want to erase the notion that women can ever be manipulative or duplicitous from men's cognitive toolkit to make them easier abuse victims.

I remember when I first discovered the term "passive aggression" in my late teens. Somehow I had never encountered it, or any concrete definition of it, in all my childhood and teenage years under matriarchal rule at home and at school. And suddenly, when I discovered it, it made years and years of exiting every interaction with a female peer or woman with authority over me with profound negative feelings about myself make sense. "Oh, this is how they've been attacking me all these years, why didn't anyone ever tell me this was a thing?" Well, all the people guiding my intellectual development were women, so of course they never told me. And for whatever reason the men in my life were too cowed to pull me aside and explain to me the emotional weapons women have at their ready, or how to defend myself from them.

Maybe it's just me. I don't know. But it seems there is a constant conspiracy of silence about the ways women can victimize men, such that there is a perpetual effort to erase it from culture and bodies of common sense.

Possibly, in some circles even probably, but historically (I write that without solid support beyond my assumption) this type of behavior has been invisible. To be too brazen or overt (by, say, throwing a shoe, or, imagining Connie Corleone, breaking a bunch of dinner plates and sloshing the pitcher of wine over the veal) is to reveal oneself as an aggressor and thus drop the plausible deniability (if I may borrow a CIA term).

Any physically vulnerable or weaker player will necessarily develop strategies to compensate for this weakness, and passive aggression done well is like an art form. Its sisters, cattiness, backstabbing, intrigue, manipulation, these are the fey but effective weapons of the court (or dining table) as opposed to the battlefield or backyard. And to repay cattiness with a smack up the mouth is forbidden (and ineffective), just as to answer a blow to the jaw with a withering comment doesn't win fights.

This is nothing that everyone here is not already aware of (probably. Some might take issue ) I suppose my point is that this behavior gets modeled and copied, the same way swagger and volume of voice and strongarm get modeled for growing boys. Modeled without being so much overtly talked about.

Feminism as a concrete social movement is about advancing the material and social interests of women (or at least, the interests of a certain subset of women). It's not about "giving people the freedom to explore their identities" or "recognizing the complexity of every human" or any claptrap like that.

Until men or other women disagree with it, whereupon they retreat to "Feminism is simply the radical notion that women are people!" (This is why it is helpful to replace the symbol with the substance; yes, I Am Once Again Asking You To Read The Sequences.)

The idea that femininity could be manipulative and dangerous is a bad look for women, so obviously they would rather not depict such characters.

Except that they are still portraying a woman who is manipulative and dangerous. The difference is that their character is dangerous in a direct way (sword-though-your-guts), and manipulative in a direct manly way (overt seduction). Why isn't this character a bad look for women? Is it because she is so unbelievable that the audience disregards her as an obvious fiction (like they would Wonder Woman or She-Hulk)?

If that's the case, maybe that's what makes the original Milady such a compelling character. She is extraordinary, but not beyond the realm of possibility. We can indeed imagine a smart, resourceful, and utterly amoral woman who is a master of feminine wiles.

Why isn't this character a bad look for women?

Because she is a man.

I don't think anyone is thinking about it that deeply - it's just a denial of difference born of the fear that women will be discriminated against if differences like this are acknowledged* (which you are right would hurt women inclined to full competition with men).

If progressives wanted to avoid the perception that femininity could be dangerous they wouldn't have imposed toxic femininity - e.g. totally unchecked forms of feminine-coded social combat like gossip and cancelling- on everyone, enforced by female HR reps and public figures.

* This is what also leads to the attempts to make big game hunting gender egalitarian. I guess going to hunt == work while doing all of the essential work around the community == 1950s suburban nightmare. So it can't be divided by gender.

1950s suburban nightmare

I am fascinated by this genre of "horror" (loosely described) having such a hold on women. I truly don't understand it. Don't Worry Darling, Revolutionary Road, Stepford Wives, Jeanne Dielman. To me it's reminiscent of a corresponding male genre that expresses existential horror at the idea of a boring office job (Fight Club, Office Space, The Matrix).

Although satirical I have to share this related classic

The universal root of horror is not death or pain, it's powerlessness. For women it tends to be loss of social power. For instance, desperately pleading to someone for help only to be ignored or dismissed, or being unable to exert any influence on others. That second one is what a lot of this "suburban 50s" genre is playing to.

I'd add onto this that it's not just powerlessness, but a dismissal of what people thinks gives them value in favor of something the victimizer cares about more. It's not just enough to be powerless, it's to be pursued and victimized because you could otherwise be something better as you see it, but that isn't the value in you that the tormenter sees and so your values are disregarded.

In Stepford Wives, the women could be better than stepford wives- more independent / autonomous / successful - but what they were valued for, and taken for, was their superficial femininity instead. The thing they cared about as raising them above Stepford Wives (independence / ability) was not what they were valued for, and so was thrown away. Similar things in the Handmaid Tale- the personal value is in the potential for emotionally fullfilling relationships (love on a personal level), but the oppressor is valuing women for another value (breeding).

In a very loose sense, this is analogous for the horror of 'the devil comes for your soul' genre horror. In those, the value people feel they have (the ability to live a good life / have healthy relationship) is disregarding for something they often care little about but which hell cares very much about- the soul. By taking the soul and damning the rest, the value of life and living is dismissed as irrelevant in the eyes of that higher power.

This contrasts with genres of existential horror in which the subjects have no value whatsoever. Worse than malice is disregard, as the negative consequences don't even have the selfvalidation of 'well my soul has value.' Lovecraftian cosmic horror is most notable for this in the sense that the old ones likes Cthulu don't portend the end of humanity because they hate us or need us gone for their plans, but simply as a consequence of their movements and our fragile, meaningless existence.

But this is less common than it appears outside of existential horror. There's a weird psychological dynamic in a fair bit of horror in that it is self-validating in some way.

For example, a revenge-horror rests on the premise that you once were strong and were able to torment your now-tormenter. Punishment-for-your-sins horror elevates the protagonist's agency as central to the events- if they had not sinned, this would not occur, so their sinfulness was important. Even monster horror typically places the protagonists in some form of competition or power relation in the context of the monster- either the monster is a result of human folly (humans have agency/responsibility), or this is a contest of survival (even if doomed, you had a chance and thus have ability), or even if you are prey the thing wants you (Alien is interspecies rape-murder, but you still have value to the cycle).

A lot of horror thus targets what people their place in the world is, but in doing so helps cement their centrality to it. Even if impotent, they are stilll important enough to be tormented.

It’s a civilizational horror of mediocrity. A deracinated and atomized people always, from every perch, know deep down that they don’t matter. In the Anglosphere you aren’t born someone unless you happen to be born into the British royal family; to not make something notable of yourself is to be no one.

In other societies- the ones humans are designed to live in- everyone is someone. Male or female, slave or free, old or young- there is a role, a set of marching orders from the top of society to the bottom, and it is no great sin to be average at whatever your role is. In the Anglosphere, to be average is to be so bad as to not have a role, not have a spot in society.

This may have gotten worse over time, but it is not a new problem- the plot of It’s a Wonderful Life is about Mr Bailey despairing at being no one and being convinced that he is some one. Further back, Great Expectations was already deconstructing the trope with Pip heading off to become someone.

Further back, Great Expectations was already deconstructing the trope with Pip heading off to become someone.

I've always considered that in particular to be a good demonstration of the sin of Pride. I've known plenty of people who thought only the Important People could be prideful, as if to be full of pride required something to be justifiably proud of. I've tended to disagree- the phrase 'temporarily embarrassed millionaire' seems suitable characterization of prideful people of modest means.

I am fascinated by this genre of "horror" (loosely described) having such a hold on women.

Heck, I'm surprised horror-qua-horror has such a hold on women! All the people I know who are into horror movies are women. Not to mention True Crime!

It seems like women are either really not into horror, or they're really, really really into horror.

I don't think anyone is thinking about it that deeply

Sure, but you don't need to think deeply about it to have an intuitive understanding of what things (policies, ethical commitments, artistic portrayals, etc) will be helpful or harmful to your agenda. People tend to have good noses for these things.

If progressives wanted to avoid the perception that femininity could be dangerous they wouldn't have imposed toxic femininity - e.g. totally unchecked forms of feminine-coded social combat like gossip and cancelling

I mean, the point of accruing power is that you have to exercise it at some point, and that's necessarily going to generate some pushback. That's unavoidable. That's where the thought policing comes in, to try and minimize dissent.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats