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 -
Last night I watched Adum from Your Movie Sucks's review of Michael, the recent biopic of Michael Jackson starring his nephew Jaafar. I was not surprised to find that he abhorred the film, taking it to task for its hagiographic approach (not only to its principal, but also to certain members of his inner circle, some of whom acted as producers); the way it seems to encourage an unhealthy parasocial relationship between the late Jackson and his most devoted fans, and how it completely avoids mentioning the child abuse allegations which dogged Jackson in his later years. Adum, for his part, remains agnostic on whether Jackson was guilty of sexually interfering with children: he concedes that it's certainly possible that certain of the complainants' parents coerced them into accusing Jackson of misconduct in hopes of securing a generous settlement agreement, but also points out that even some of the behaviour Jackson admitted to (e.g. sharing a bed with underage boys) was certainly questionable at the minimum.
Near the end of the review (timestamped link), Adum argues that, whatever the truth of the abuse allegations launched against Jackson, it's impossible to talk about these and his other strange behaviour (the cosmetic surgery, the Neverland ranch, the time he dangled his child out of a fourth-floor window) without acknowledging that he suffered a uniquely awful upbringing which can only be described as abusive and exploitative. If indeed he was guilty of child abuse, his own difficult childhood would not excuse his conduct, but the former is inseparable from the latter. Adum muses on how odd it is that essentially every Western nation outlawed child labour decades ago – except for child labour in the entertainment industry, where child actors and singers pass without comment. Adum argues that the existence of this loophole actively incentivises abusive, exploitative child-rearing of the kind Jackson suffered, and that this behaviour will continue as long as the loophole is permitted to remain open. He ends the video with a call for it to be closed. No more child stars. No more prepubescent musicians. Cut it off at the root.
I'm old enough to remember when "former child star" was a stock punchline, with tabloid magazines and edgy sitcoms making hay of the incongruity between adorable child actors later becoming burnt-out husks checking themselves into rehab for heroin addiction. After learning what a large proportion of these former child stars went through upbringings comparable to Jackson's in abusiveness and/or claimed to have been sexually exploited at the hands of adult producers, directors or co-stars, it's been many years since I found jokes at their expense funny. (Examples include Coreys Haim and Feldman, Drake Bell, Amanda Bynes, Jennette McCurdy and Joanna Levesque, among many others.) And that's not even getting into the rare instances of child actors being severely injured or even killed on film sets (e.g. the infamous Twilight Zone movie helicopter accident, which in fairness was in direct contravention of multiple child labour laws even at the time). Even leaving aside the most horrific cases of abuse and exploitation, many child actors and musicians cite their abnormal childhoods as underlying causes in their later mental health difficulties and problems with substance abuse. It's a bit unreasonable for, say, Chappell Roan to complain about the downsides of fame, given that she was an adult when she decided to pursue her career in music, and hence old enough to know that being famous is a package deal. I have a lot more sympathy when a child complains about never really having had a private life, often because of decisions made on their behalf by a domineering stage mom. I'm inclined to agree with Adum that I don't really understand why this loophole exists, and think closing it is a good idea.
What would a world without child actors look like? While child labour laws vary by jurisdiction, most allow sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds to work part-time with the consent of their parents. If this law applied to film and TV sets, sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds who look young enough to pass for thirteen or fourteen would be highly prized, but films with major characters who have not yet hit puberty would be the exclusive preserve of animation. We might allow under-16 actors to make brief appearances in films, but place strict limitations on how large their role can be to prevent the emergence of newly minted child stars e.g. specifying that they can only work a maximum of eight hours every calendar month, or only have X minutes of screentime, or X lines of dialogue. This means that, for example, a short scene in which the adult protagonist of the film says goodbye to his wife and kids before leaving to blow the lid off the Brodsky case is fine; a live-action film in which the protagonist is a prepubescent child (e.g. Home Alone, the Harry Potter films) is not. This is an obvious application of photorealistic generative AI: have the adult characters played by adult actors, and the children played by mo-capped adult stand-ins (perhaps standing on their knees, like Gary Oldman in Tiptoes) who will be replaced by CGI children in post-production.
Directors and producers might complain about their creative freedom being unduly curtailed by regulations of this type. But this objection reeks of status quo bias to me. The famous "no animals were harmed in the making of this film" disclaimer is barely fifty years old. I'm sure if the American Humane Society had existed at the time Ben-Hur was being made, the directors would have complained that their creative freedom was being compromised by the insistence that they not intentionally kill upwards of a hundred horses in order to produce suitably exciting cinema. Eventually, we collectively decided that no artistic statement justifies pointless animal cruelty on this scale: it's only a movie. Sufficiently talented directors managed to find creative solutions for how to film movies without being gratuitously cruel to our four-legged friends. In the future, the "no animals were harmed..." disclaimer might well be followed by another reading "no child labour was exploited...".
If outright banning child actors and musicians isn't yet a practical possibility, an interim solution might be to have all compensation they earn from their performances paid into a trust that they (and only they) can access, and only when they come of age. The only compensation their parents could receive directly would come in the form of reimbursements for e.g. travel expenses, acting classes, music classes, accommodation etc. Many film studios are understandably reluctant about paying children their acting fees directly, fearing that they might squander their earnings; on the other hand, there have been enough cases of parents financially exploiting their children (and the child consequently ending up empty-handed when they come of age) that I'm not convinced paying a child's fees into a bank account to which their parents have access is a viable solution. If parents were unable to directly financially profit from their children's labour, that would also work to disincentivise the most egregious forms of abuse and exploitation. (A Google informs me that similar legislation has been on the books in California since 1939.)
This leaves out the major complication- the kids want to act.
Yes, you can terrorize a child into obedience, you can train them to want different things. But the desire to participate in acting just keeps resurfacing in kids whose parents would much rather have something other than plays to go to- sort of like music. I have no difficulty believing that 100% of child stars originally had a strong desire to act, to dance, to do music. Obviously, stronger limits are needed, but there seems to me no obvious reason that kids can’t be paid for doing something that they want to do.
There are many things that children want to do which we deny them because it's not in their best interests. I don't claim that acting is a categorical example of that, but it seems heavily correlated/associated with lots of things which unambiguously are (e.g. sexual exploitation by adults working in the industry).
You could also apply this argument to other kinds of child labour. I have it on good authority that the children yearn for the mines, but we don't make an exemption for child labour laws just because a given child claims that he really does want to work in a coalmine.
what about kids making content on social media, ie youtube?
I'm against it. God knows people like Rebecca Black were bullied horrifically by people she'd never met on the other side of the globe because of a silly music video that should never have been shared publicly. See also parents who've faced legal repercussions for playing "pranks" on their children in order to create YouTube content, and these "pranks" functionally amounted to physical and emotional abuse.
Whenever I walk past a pair of preteen girls filming themselves doing a TikTok dance to post on the social network in question (happens about once a week), I have the same thought: do they know that pederasts are watching these videos and masturbating to them? And then they notice that some videos are performing better than others, so they try to optimise their videos by showing more skin. A generation of prepubescent girls is falling victim to audience capture, in which the audience is made up of nonces and the content they're creating amounts to unwitting softcore CP. I don't even know if we have a term for this – algorithmic grooming? I can't fathom why any sensible parent would want their preteen child to own a smartphone.
Nobody on the other side of the globe that Rebecca Black did not know bullied her "horrifically". They may have said bad things about her, but that's not the same thing.
What do you call complete strangers sending death threats to a thirteen-year-old?
A slow Tuesday on Xbox Live?
I put trash-talking in a different mental category.
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