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Into the Spider-Verse was my favorite movie of 2018. I only found out this year that one of the film's directors was someone whose values are antithetical to everything I believe and as harmful to me as ideas can be. I knew he wasn't returning to direct the sequel, so I thought that meant I could go see it without feeling shame, but I just found out (again, surprisingly late) that he's an Executive Producer on it. This likely means he gets a share of the box office gross, though I don't know how big that share would be.
This presents an e̶t̶h̶i̶c̶a̶l̶ psychological dilemma that feels as though it's ethical for me. This is one of the few movies where seeing it in the theater is very important to me, and I do feel that I'd be missing out by seeing it on my tiny laptop screen several months after release. However, I would feel emasculated if I gave this person any more money than I already have. Is there a way I can have my cake and eat it too here?
I know it's unlikely that anyone here has a better idea "than stop giving a crap about what filmmakers believe," but I'm asking anyway, just in case. There's nobody else on the internet where I'd expect people to be sympathetic to my problem in a way that's more than superficial. Left-wing spaces (as I've experienced them) would say "you should only care about political violence and life ruination if you're the kind of person we'd be using it against," and right-wing spaces (as I've experienced them) would say "these tactics are actually good and we should use them against left-wingers when we're in power" after making fun of me for liking children's movies. I do not mean to imply all left-dominated or right-dominated spaces are like the ones I describe, but that's my expectation of them based on experience, and it's always demoralizing to get those kinds of reactions, so I don't want to go seek them out.
My answer is not to stop giving a crap about what filmmakers believe, though you may think that it's functionally equivalent to that. My answer is that we should be investing in the idea that people are complex, and that we can compartmentalize the things they do in life. I think that proliferating this idea, the idea of compartmentalization, is the most powerful way that we can take down the woke left, antifa, and everyone else who spreads the horrible, harmful, illiberal idea that you can only get along with people who agree with you on everything, and that not agreeing means that they are a terrible person. I understand and sympathize with your viewpoint, and I certainly have felt it strongly at times in the past. But I personally have learned that the notion that we can compartmentalize, and get along with each other, is one of the most important values to me, and is what is missing the most in our modern woke society which generally wants to act on the idea that we should condemn all but the most right-thinking people.
I love this post and am going to reread it whenever I need to remind myself to not judge people by their worst behaviors. Thank you.
His post is "detach the artist from their art" just with more words. The result won't be to disarm "the left" and "the woke"; the result will be "conservatives" just losing more. If conservatives cannot even forgo a movie about nonwhites fighting against their pale, capitalist oppressors, how are they going to affect significant change in the broader cultural norms to understand people are "complex"? They can't even get movie studios to stop producing content made for mass audiences which attacks their beliefs on their face made by people who are open and vocal about hating you and wanting your civilization to burn.
It's a suicidal position. When your opposition makes everything political, you don't win by compartmentalizing, you simply lose. The entire endeavor turns into what to think in order to soothe discomfort around accepting the morally superior loser part in the play.
Not everything in life comes down to effectiveness. At some point, someone has to be the adult and say "I'm going to treat you well" even if that's tactically unwise. If nobody ever does that, then we just hate each other and try to kill each other forever.
Just a reminder: the best strategy when dealing with an unconditional cooperatebot is «always defect».
Also wrong: eventually someone wins.
No, that's wrong. Nobody ever wins forever. Your "victory" is really just sowing the seeds of future hatred and violence.
Honestly, it seems to me that conservatives and straight white men have been turning the other cheek for 60+ years now and it's only gotten us into this hell. Maybe time for some stronger tactics?
I never said to just "turn the other cheek". But you have to be careful how you fight back. There are plenty of people here whose only motive at this point is to just hurt the people who hurt them. It would be just as bad if they win the culture war as it would be if the woke left won the culture war. I don't want a tyranny of the left, but that doesn't mean I want a tyranny of the right either.
Less practically, I believe that the one thing that really matters in the end is your character. Not victory or defeat in some culture war, but who you are as a person. It's important to hold on to that above all else. Again, that doesn't mean that you have to just meekly accept everything others may throw your way (unlike how @DaseIndustriesLtd incorrectly characterizes me as a "cooperate bot"), but it does mean that you can't just go "well that's a losing tactic" as a form of dismissal. Better to lose while being moral than to win while being immoral. The latter is quite literally barbaric and is beneath us.
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