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 -
Cross-posting from Small Question Sunday (with some addendcums) upon suggestion: Maybe I just missed it, but a little surprised to see no discussion of Knives Out, Wake up Dead Man on the forum given the culture war angles of the previous two (immigration, tech billionaires). Disclaimer - I haven't seen glass onion. I will avoid major spoilers but minor spoilers may be included. I wouldn't read if you haven't watched it yet and want to.
Wake Up Dead Man certainly seems to be set up to skewer the church, and conservatives, with characters including a sci-fi writer-> substack blogger who is paranoid of the "libtards", a failed right-wing politico, who is attempting to build a following through youtube videos, and Monsignor Wicks, the bombastic preacher who exclaims that he must "fight" the decay in the country as an excuse for his own failings.
However, despite this, I was drawn to the film by the character of Father Jud - a young priest who killed a man in a boxing ring before coming to the priesthood, he is a compassionate character who pushes against the excesses of Wicks while nonetheless being devoted to Christ and to his faith. He offers eloquent verbal parries to Detective Blanc's (the main character in the Knives Out series, played by Daniel Craig) rationalist, atheist worldview, and takes his vocation seriously.
One of my favorite scenes involves Blanc and Jud working to try to find a clue which involves Father Jud calling a construction company and getting their receptionist. There's the standard comedic setup of the super-talkative receptionist who won't let him ask the question they need an answer to, but the whole scene shifts when she asks him to pray for her (link here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7VHPrO3SX5A). It's a really beautiful portrayal of pastoral care and prayer, and played straight. It seems to impact Blanc as well.
The sacrament of confession also plays a role and is highlighted in its entirety, a scene that happens due to Blanc's realizing that the moment calls for personal grace more than his grand reveals.
Father Jud seems almost more apolitical than political to me despite his opposition to Wicks and the other more conservative characters - he comes across as much more above politics than taking any particular political stand.
It seems like Rian Johnson has had a history of being religious but fell away from the Church at sometime in the last few decades.
Anyway, curious to hear what others thought of it.
I dislike Rian Johnson's writing tone; it's very flippant, very contemporary in a way that will age it poorly, and seems tuned for getting Leftists to clap like circus seals.
I think this has definitely had moments of truth, but some of the spiritual scenes did not ring like that to me. Blanc and Jud's first conversation (ending in Blanc's "Touche, Padre"), the phone call, the final confession and absolution. There was something sincere there. It might just be Johnson still feels some fondness for his religious upbringing and time in his life that he doesn't for the conservative end of the political spectrum.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I loved Knives Out. It definitely came from a particular worldview, but at least the out-of-touch liberals were a target of fun-poking in addition to the alt-right teen and conservative assholes. Plus the plot was really quite brilliant, a truly novel twist on the genre (I think?).
Glass Onion was much less good. The plot was more convoluted and less satisfying, and the characters were over-the-top culture war stereotypes. As faceh pointed out, they really just make sure that the bad guys are 100% bad and worthless with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
I enjoyed Wake Up Dead Man, more than Glass Onion but less than Knives Out. A fairly interesting plot with explicit homages to the genre. The religious protagonist really is a good man, and he represents what is supposed to be the mainstream religious worldview, so Christianity does not come off as being mocked.
But despite the "moral clarity" that Rian Johnson tends to demonstrate in these movies, Jud's behavior at the end of the movie leaves me a bit confused, but can be explained with a boring CW angle.
[ MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE REST OF THIS POST] Near the end of the film, Grace, the Harlot Whore, is reframed as a "poor girl." Prentice's decision to hide her inheritance (and everyone's judgements of her?) are played up as a grave mistreatment, with multiple characters muttering "that poor girl."
But then... Jud does the same thing to Cy. He hides the insanely valuable jewel from its rightful inheritor, and this is played off as a "booh yah" because that smug prick deserves it. Jud is definitely supposed to be a good guy, so first off it's wild that a priest just decides to keep a lie for the rest of his life and there's no moral conflict presented. But furthermore, this is the exact same behavior Prentice had taken vis a vis Grace, and we're all supposed to feel bad for her. I was genuinely confused about what I was "supposed" to find to be good.
The boring culture war angle is: she's a harlot whore, which is something that is treated positively in Johnson's worldview, whereas Cy represents right-wing political aspiration, obviously a bad thing. Who/whom.
I agree there's a conflict there but it's heavily implied that Grace was raped by her father and actually stated by Blanc in a roundabout way. I think they thought directly stating it would ruin the tone of the movie. But that's what all the road to Damascus moments and realizations and exclamations about "that poor girl" where about,
More options
Context Copy link
Cy does seem to get treated poorly by the script - his adopted sister is super upset at him but its unclear when he found out (and was a literal child when he first met her).
I do agree in hindsight that it's odd for them to hide the jewel. Honestly, I don't know why Martha didn't just toss it in the acid? EDIT: I guess diamonds don't get hurt much by acid...
More options
Context Copy link
Well of course, he'd use that fortune to go into right wings politics/influencer world and that would be the worst possible outcome of all.
I'm used to this happening with Johnson's movies now, though. The rule is that wealth should go to whom 'deserves' it. If the person its 'supposed' to go to doesn't deserve it, better it goes to nobody at all. Hence he could be fine with literally torching the Mona Lisa.
And, uh, the "Harlot Whore" apparently WAS perfectly fine with beating the tar out of a CHILD over mere material wealth.
Rian also snuck a little jab against the whore's father clergyman in there, making the point that no, turns out that things DON'T turn into the body of Christ when you imbibe them.
Yeah but then we switch and see her desperation. I agree that Rian Johnson and the audience this is aimed at are totally fine with someone being a "harlot whore" But a big point of the "legend" of the harlot whore is that Grace was never offered Grace. She spent her whole life castigated by the town and controlled by her father (and implied rapist) and never given the chance to repent and change only held up as an object of sin.
More options
Context Copy link
Transubstantiation is orthogonal to ingestion. Anddiamond isn’t a valid host.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm surprised, too. The last two movies were all over social media I consume, but this one? Not a peep about it. I was very surprised to learn a third movie had been made.
Again, just going off the synopsis, but it made me go "Yeah, this is a movie written by a Protestant" and that seems to be correct:
The church structure etc. as per the synopsis of the movie makes no sense in Catholicism. Where is the bishop in all this? Who is "Reverend Prentice Wicks, Jefferson's grandfather"? Does this mean his grandfather was a Protestant minister (if he has a daughter) and the daughter then had her illegitimate son who... became a Catholic priest????
Oh well, I guess we should be glad that we're still the movie face of religion, because when you need to show the church, you show the Catholics!
I believe they specified his grandfather had a daughter, his wife then died, and THEN he became a priest
In the past, this might have been accepted in some places(notoriously Tolkien was raised by a Catholic priest) but today having a child is generally disqualifying from the priesthood absent exceptions for married priests, and allowing priests to be guardians is incredibly rare(there is literally a single case in the entire US where a priest is allowed to be a guardian of a minor child- and in that case, the mom abandoned her baby when the parish was offering free babysitting so she could work an unusual shift, then got arrested, and they weren't able to track down the grandma for something like a year, at which point she testified that the kid should remain with the priest).
The adult children of former Anglican-now Catholic priests and of Eastern rite priests are very different people, is all I can say.
Prentice Wicks would've lived a long time ago given the age of Monsignor Wicks.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Protestantism is either Catholic light, indistinguishable from surrounding society, or aniconic when it comes to the visual language. Orthodoxy is too foreign. Tridentine Catholicism- or a hybridized version with the novus ordo- is what filmmakers like shooting, because it shows up well on camera, it's distinctive, and it looks cool.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I managed to enjoy the movie 'in spite' of Johnson's politics being present because I went in knowing and expecting them so it wasn't like ordering a bowl of soup and being surprised there's a fly in it. I knew that the fly was part of the chef's specialty so I can just kind of 'eat around it.' Good performances, solid cinematography and good editing choices. A script that's too full of itself but is 'clever' and has decent dialogue moments (like the scene you alluded to).
Unfortunately that managed to sort of ruin the movie's twists because now Johnson's habits have made it easier to predict whodunnit and why.
Female Characters are generally 'good.' Poor, working class characters are ALWAYS heroic in understated ways. Characters that espouse right-wing views (even if they clearly don't believe them) are not good. Any tropes/cliches will always be subverted, even at the expense of the plot.
Those four rules by themselves get you approximately 90% of the way through the mystery.
EVEN THOUGH Rian sort of cheated and [SPOILERS] made a female character a killer this time, she never strikes the killing blow herself. [/SPOILERS] He really has an aversion to making his 'good' characters ever do anything that might make them less likeable. Likewise, he doesn't let his bad characters have any moments that might make them seem 'cool'.
I can actually envision this guy's writing process, he probably goes through like a dozen drafts refining the script to make sure there's no way an icky right winger is ever proven right in the slightest, that they're humiliated and sufficiently hypocritical to make it impossible for viewers to pretend they're 'better' than the protags, and finally to make sure nobody can criticize the protagonists' actions at any point, there's always some justification baked into the script. And to his credit, he's good at it, you don't get people pulling a "Thanos did nothing wrong" argument with his movies. He wants to make an airtight moral victory. In this film the Fire-and-Brimstone clergyman is [SPOILERS] an impotent drunkard scamster with an illegitimate son, and the reverence of his followers is entirely unearned, which they come to realize.[/SPOILERS] In GLASS ONION the hypersuccessful billionaire has to be shown to be stupid, petty, tasteless, secretly hated by everyone and not even deserving of his own success in even the tiniest way, it all has to be stolen. YET, as I mentioned at the time, I'm not sold on the idea that his defeat is complete and irreversible at the movies' end:
This was also how The Last Jedi played out. SAME FREAKIN' RULES. See how they elevated Admiral Holdo, deflated Poe Dameron and Luke Skywalker, and made the entire First Order leadership out as incompetents. And Mary Sue'd Rey harder than ever.
I think he screwed up just a little this time, in that while the 'victim' in this case was a bad guy (in contrast to the previous two movies) he didn't manage to make it seem like they deserved to die. A whole line of humiliations is inflicted on him, some contemptible decisions were shown, but all-in-all killing him was objectively indefensible.
But the mystery needs a dead guy to happen, so whatevs. That part was clever enough for me, although I could spot the one way the plan as portrayed could have failed in any 'realistic' setting. Red herrings were set up and executed well. Characters don't behave in stupid ways to make the plot move. And its mostly logically consistent except that one time (you're telling me a guy happened to be recording a baseball game, on broadcast TV, and that a particular device was powerful enough to interfere with the signal?).
Although Kudos to Rian for actively incorporating modern tech into his stories. Rather than trying to pretend cell phones don't exist or ignoring that they can solve most plots instantly.
Anyway. I grew up on mystery novels and shows. I've read Sherlock Holmes, Encyclopedia Brown, Hardy Boys, and more since I was very young. And I'm slightly pained to say that the entire Murder Mystery genre is played out and practically dead by now. It has been years since I saw a mystery resolution that actually made me go "WOW." And that mystery was in fact... KNIVES OUT. And thus I can credit Johnson with trying very hard to revive the genre with a fresh approach. But much like the actual corpse in this film, Johnson can only give it the illusion of resurrection, its still very much dead and no amount of mortuary makeup alone will solve that.
I'm still convinced the real ending of Knives Out is that the nurse is guilty and she successfully plotted to influence the old man to change the will in her favour, etc. It just makes the ending more coherent and the entire story more satisfying; she played the "me? poor innocent angelic nurse brown immigrant lady?" card so well that she fooled Blanc, who is maybe not up there with Hercule Poirot even if he does like showy dénouements, by using his biases and prejudices, and the end shot is the family knowing she dunnit but unable to prove it. Standing there sipping her coffee out of her "my house" mug to rub their noses in it.
More evidence for my theory that Rian Johnson is secretly a crypto-conservative who makes movies that skewer woke liberals, and only pretends to be woke so that he can get them made in Hollywood.
More options
Context Copy link
Rewriting that movie so its a parable about immigrants scamming Boomers out of their fortunes and/or scamming this country's generous welfare system would be hilarious and topical.
And yeah, the clear biases shown by Blanc SHOULD be a weak spot of his, but instead its basically him being aware of the rules Rian's universe works under.
As I said, 'Airtight Moral Victory.' Blanc's approach isn't so much putting together the clues to figure out what series of events happened, he solves the MORAL narrative of the case and then the rest of it clicks into place around that. This seemed ESPECIALLY true in the third film.
And even funnier, the fact that in EVERY movie, the protags needs a high IQ white male to actually fix things while they, the downtrodden, do almost all the dirty work is absolutely patronizing if you think about it for more than a minute. He tried to undercut that with this film. The final Blanc film should absolutely have Blanc himself being the murder victim and the out-of-depth protagonist manages to solve it all on their own for once.
Glass Onion ends with burning the Mona Lisa because Teacher Lady has her feathers so ruffled, and I don't think "black woman destroys cultural inheritance of humanity because she's peeved" is that moral a narrative. If you wanted to look at it in a certain light, you could even claim it's racist: black people depicted as resorting to violence because they're incapable of responding to set-backs any other way.
But to be fair, Johnson's Knives Out universe is a very stylised one running on particular tropes and only tangential to our reality. It's artificial and chock-full of artifice, because it's recreating the Golden Age 'body in the library' detective stories where the more baroque the plot, the better, so long as you could be held to have played fair with scattering clues throughout the book (the early Ellery Queen novels routinely had a "challenge to the reader" about 'can you guess/work out whodunnit?' before the final chapter wrapping up the entire case).
>”Humanity? That’s the white man’s cultural heritage and no one else’s.”
sjw_hitler_combined_speechbubble.jpg
More options
Context Copy link
I can steelman that one. If your sibling was brutally murdered, and your response is to freak out and break some 'property,' is that really morally objectionable? Are we genuinely weighting the continued existence of the Mona Lisa (of which there are many copies, its not some hidden gem) over a human life at that point? Its a thought worth weighing, at least. I think one can sympathize enough to see why from the sibling's perspective a piece of artwork is not worth preserving over the life of a loved one.
And yet, it is also pretty hard to believe the point "genius black lady invents something which is stolen by mediocre white guy" since that's something that has probably never happened in all of history.
The concepts in Glass Onion were actually really good and were probably dragged down by the Johnson's absolute need to get his message across at all costs.
It’s worth a great many human lives by most reasonable measures
Can we quantify it? How many family members would you sacrifice to preserve it?
I think people's moral intuitions will diverse pretty aggressively on this.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That's not what is being compared though, rage over the loss of a human life is what is being compared to a priceless painting, not the life itself.
But even then, on various videos of Just Stop Oil and similar protesters defacing works of art, you'll find plenty of commenters whole throatedly supportive of slitting the protestors throats.
I'm just saying, is it not at least sympathetic for someone to have a crashout and destroy stuff (even irreplaceable stuff) because their loved one was killed? "My brother/father/daughter was killed, you think I give a shit about your painting right now?"
Hell, its a common trope is 'revenge rampage' movies for the protagonist to kill dozens of mooks on their way to taking out their rage on the person they hold responsible for killing their loved one.
This is usually cheered. If killing a bunch of henchmen to get at the person who murdered your kin is sympathetic/justified, how is burning up a painting not just a little sympathetic/justified too? What are the actual bounds of 'acceptable' behavior to enact righteous vengeance?
vs. the Just Stop Oil folks who are doing it deliberately as a cry for attention.
No. People have endured far, far worse with more dignity. By the sounds of it this is entirely gratuitous and achieves nothing.
There is also the fact that, when you get right down to it, there are billions and billions of people and very few precious works of art. Yes, most of them are special to someone but if we acted like every person was as precious as their mother/father/brother etc. thinks they are then society would be unable to survive.
(This is an assertion, of course. I can't make an argument for my moral intuitions, I can only describe them.)
On a lighter note, are you aware of the story about Edward James Olmos and the model ship from Battlestar Galactica?
More options
Context Copy link
The henchmen, in most such stories at least, are pieces of human garbage and the world is made a better place with each one the protagonist kills. The priceless work of art being destroyed is a permanent loss for humanity and its culture. The problem with your steelman here is that it presupposes that all human life is equally valuable, or at least that no humans are net negatives on humanity.
I love the scene in Citizen Kane when Kane destroys the shit out of his room. It's very visceral and conveys the emotions he is feeling exceptionally well. So I appreciate it as a story-telling device. But morally, in real life, it is purely destructive behavior and a sign that someone is unable to control their emotions. It doesn't make me think more highly of Kane's character when he goes on a destructive rampage.
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
More options
Context Copy link