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Have we discussed the live-action remake of 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs since it came out?
In an effort to drum up business my local theater is running a promotion that includes free movie tickets for spending money at local bars and restaurants. While it's not something I would've spent my own money on, I elected to use one of my free movie vouchers to see the new Snow White because I was curious, and wanted to form my own opinion of it.
I expect most readers of this thread have at least a passing familiarity with the various controversies surrounding this production and more knowledgeable people than I have already done the business and Culture-war narrative side of things to death. So I'm going to focus on the on-screen product.
As a movie Snow White is solidly "Mid". Not good, but not terrible. The writing, acting, and set-peices are all passable. The humor is bland and inoffensive, and the songs are mostly forgettable. Gal Godot may have the dramatic range of an Electric SUV on 5% charge, but "Sultry Femme Fatale" is well within that range, and she seems to be having fun vamping it up (As is often the case the "villain song" is one of the better ones). To Rachel Ziegler's credit she sings well and serves adequately in the role of "pretty princess" / "coquettish ingenue" coming across as substantially less "Girlbossey" than I had expected given her off-screen persona.
The movie wastes no time establishing it's left wing-wing politics. The opening song and dance number is essentially all about how wonderful life is when people give according to their ability and receive according to their need. The word-play between "fair" as in "light-skinned" or "pleasing to the eye" and "fair" as in "fair use" "fair trade" and a "fair contest" is a recurring leitmotif throughout the script and it gets established in this bit.
Because Disney princesses are not allowed to have a mother the good queen falls ill and dies at the end of the song which is when a wild Gal Godot appears. She is a beautiful noblewoman from a far-off land across the sea whose people, covet wealth, power, and beauty above all else, and have magical powers. The King (Snow White's dad) is naturally smitten and immediately marries Gal Godot presumably because she is wealthy, powerful, and looks like Gal Godot.
In her new position as Queen, Snow White's stepmother immediately begins to subtly corrupt the Realm and remake it in her own harder and more covetous image (think Pottersville versus Bedford Falls in It's a Wonderful Life). In case you haven't picked up on it yet, Snow White's canonical origin story in this movie is about a virtuous and happy left-wing government being subverted and taken over from within by an evil Jewish woman through a combination of sex-appeal, blood magic, and propaganda.
We skip forward an indeterminate number of years, Snow White has been kept cloistered in the castle "because it is not safe". The evil queen Gal Godot has been sowing fear about a nebulous threat on the southern border as an excuse to get Snow White's Dad out of the picture and to crack down on dissent. (I wonder what that was intended as an allegory for?) Snow White catches a thief named Johnathan played by Handsome McStrongJaw raiding the Castle's pantry, and he informs her that life outside the castle walls is not all sunshine and adorable woodland creatures. Snow White's response is to inform the Queen. You see, if only the queen knew what was going on she would put a stop to it. Johnathan is arrested and put to death, but Snow White helps him escape the castle because this is a Disney movie and he is the designated love-interest.
Snow White is getting a bit too uppity and too "fair" for her own good so Gal Godot convinces the one black guy in the palace guard to take Snow White out to the woods and kill her by getting all up in the guard's personal space and offering him anything he wants. Black guy takes Snow White out to the woods to kill her, but he gets cold-feet and decides to tell Snow White about the whole murder plot because she was nice to him and asked him how his day was going.
Snow White flees into the enchanted wood where she meets the Seven AI-Generated Dwarves we are all familiar with from the 1937 original. After some hijinks and another musical number the Dwarves inform her that the enchanted wood is also home to Seven Bandits. A troupe of erstwhile actors who are plotting to overthrow Gal Godot and have recently been joined by our "prince of thieves" Johnathan. Snow White sets out to find them and a bunch of stuff happens without any real rhyme or reason. There is singing, there is dancing, there is peril, but none of it really effects the plot or evokes a feeling.
The proverbial "final battle" of the movie is Snow White and the Seven Bandits leading a protest march against Gal Godot that ends with the Townspeople and Palace Guards
all drinking a pepsiturning on the queen and reinstating the socialist order from the opening musical number.In conclusion, for what is otherwise a very bland and boring movie in the watching there seems to be a lot going on. And im curious to hear other people's thoughts on it.
I also find it funny that what is easily the most "woke" movie in recent memory could plausibly be interpreted as endorsing dissident right ideals, Jews Bad, hereditary monarchy good, "the people" are sheep, etc...
So the movie was not very good, and also not Snow White.
I’m wondering if proof of concept for AI actors was the point, but surely that’s already done?
Fuck it I’m taking up the hlynka posting mantle- they’re the same thing. They’re both revolutionary ideologies calling for to radically remake society in a short period of time. They merely disagree about who gets cushy sinecures doing stupid bullshit(black lesbians or white men). The DR weirds out classical conservatives once they figure out it’s not a meme. There is a de Maistre shaped hole in the popular consciousness but the slow growth of more functional societies will eat the revolution alive.
You are not the only one.
If so many people are channeling @HlynkaCG, maybe we should let him back?
Maybe he already is back. OP is carrying the mantle of Hlynka with the kind of things he has been arguing. I actually believe that he is Hlynka but I am not 100% certain about it.
Random question. I just wrapped up the chapters in Gibbon about Belisarius, so I wanted to ask. Is he your namesake because you imagine yourself the greatest general of a degenerate and declining age, or because your wife is one of the top 10 most flagrant whores of history?
I kid, I kid. But man, what a way to go down in history. Greatest general of an era, and the biggest cuck.
Are you a Whining Coil?
That is pretty a stupid and insulting question but I will answer earnestly against my better judgement.
I picked the figure Belisarius because he was the greatest general in the fight for the restoration of the roman empire, but I certainly don't see myself as a general, or great general. And it was a bit random I chose that name over different ones. Just one of the figures of history I liked. It is good for us to be inspired by history and part of a degenerate and declining age is this hostility to a positive historical heritage. Why should I have to be attacked by you for picking the name of a great general?
Procopius was generally considered unreliable writer who promoted plenty of sleaze which is what is these claims are based on. Even if one was to accept that his wife really was a whore, he is still a positive figure in general.
It is your choice to take this kind of framing on a figure that is certainly much more known for being a great general than his wife's alleged exploits. We have enough problems dealing with much more common collective cuckholdery of our times to worry about the purity of Belisarius wife.
I truly, truly wish you could see from my perspective how hilarious all this is. I mean, I know now that you can't. But I wish you could.
This was not drive by derailing, I've actually had a hard time keeping up this week since I've been building my wife a new chicken coop, and reading Gibbon in the evening to unwind. I literally did just read the chapters about what a (apocryphal?) whore Belisarius' wife was, and thought it'd be a fun conversation starter since you are obviously a fan. I don't literally think you are a cuck.
Also, I mean, I guess it's uncouth to talk about this. But I've been getting all these notifications tonight that I can't see because I have Amadan blocked. I find his argumentation style tailored to try to get me to break the rules and then punish me. I had to check the thread in incognito mode to even see what the hubbub is about. So yeah, no love lost there.
For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to literally imply your wife is a whore. It's like if someone said they were a huge fan of Bill Cosby and you asked "They show.... or the other stuff?" The joke is how obviously it's not the other stuff. Obviously Belisarius is notable in history for being the greatest general of his age, not the biggest cuck.
Don’t brag about blocking people, it’s a shameful thing. Then you can spare us the excruciating story on how you had to remove your own barriers.
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Be less antagonistic, and get a sense of humor.
I would expect this quality of moderation from 4chan, not TheMotte.
Of course you know I have had a beef with your partiality and believe that you treat users and tribes you are sympathetic to favourably, but this is an entirely new level of tendentiousness. User A makes an off-topic post trying to relate User B's username to a common slur/fixation, User B responds in a mildly standoffish manner but actually clarifies the origin of the username, and User B - only User B - gets a modhat reprimand? Of course, I fully expect that any objections will be met with the same old "I disagree, and no, I am not going to justify anything" sort of response from you. Is that what it is going to be, or do you have something better to offer?
(I don't even understand what you find so funny. Is it just "haha bro just called him a cuck"?)
The fact that you think I am being favorable to @WhiningCoil, of all people, or his "tribe," is much funnier than anything posted in this thread.
I have occasionally been accused of reading people wrong, and I'll cop to it when it happens. I read @WhiningCoil as injecting a bit of jocularity concerning a historical name he happened to have just been reading about. Not literally accusing @Belisarius of being a cuck with a famously whoreish wife, or being general of an empire in decline. I read it this way because I know @WhiningCoil's posting habits, and I also know @Belisarius's tendency to be aggressive and overly serious with anyone who argues with him about anything.
If the post was just an attack on a user for his username because WC didn't like him and saw an opportunity for a cheap shot, my response would have been different. Instead, I told @Belisarius to cool it because the exchange doesn't warrant this kind of heat and he is prone to escalation.
Is that a sufficient answer for you? Because that's as much as I feel like justifying myself to you, because yes, per that post you linked to, I think you're a bad faith objector whose objections are purely tribal, and I will continue to dismiss your demands that every time two people have an exchange, I carefully admonish everyone involved and make sure I am evenly distributing my admonishments along tribal lines.
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You can't just ask if someone imagines himself a great general or is a cuck with a whore wife and then say just joking. You might find it funny if you dislike the target, but you are only showing a lack of impartiality.
WhiningCoil was being antagonistic and I assumed I offended him when I suspecting Hlynka was the OP and I replied with relative restraint all things considered. Or offended him by arguing against the people I argue, and by my type of argument. Hence "Great General". Saying that it is stupid and insulting to ask if someone imagines himself a great general or a massive cuck is not a particularly antagonistic response to an actually antagonistic post.
Knowing you, and your own sense of humor, I know that you would have responded harsher manner and likely at least threatened a mod action if you have been the target of this kind of "joke", adapted to your circumstances.
If someone wants to be funny about historical figures in a manner that is insulting he can easily do so without making it personal about the user but instead make it about the figure.
Well, yes, actually you can, and if you had even the tiniest sense of humor, you'd know it. Just like when people ask if my username means I am a great fool.
If there is one thing I am nearly 100% certain of, it is that @WhiningCoil is not @HlynkaCG. Hlynka is very recognizeable and shitty at disguising himself (he's tried a few times), and @WhiningCoil has a long history here and on reddit going back multiple usernames.
You're mistaken. I have no sense of humor, but that's in the job description.
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FYI my respect for towards you didn't move when Coil made the crack but dropped when you proved unable to roll with the punch. Self-seriousness will make you a target.
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I think you are taking someone obliquely implying you picked your namesake for his cuckoldry entirely too seriously. This is an internet forum for witches, not the UFC ringside. Profuse defense of masculine honor looks out of place here, IMVHO.
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