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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   22799 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026

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I played Link's Awakening with my wife and daughter. My wife was taken back at the ending (surprised, not disliking). I think she basically just assumed the whole time that it wouldn't end with everyone on Koholint basically dying, or vanishing from existence.

This got me thinking about how I played this, or watched my brother play it, when I was the same age as my daughter. None of the media she consumes challenges her with difficult endings. Everything HAS to return to the status quo at the end, because we can't risk anyone being unhappy. In Frozen, Anna is unfrozen. In Moana, even Maui gets his fucking hook back after it breaks. Fake out deaths and fake out status quo changes happen left and right, but it is really rare to see something that actually sticks.

I love downer endings, and I think it made me who I am. It makes me sad and disappointed and a little disgusted to see basically all of the media of my kids' day be bland and not challenging them to really feel something other than a vague blandly happy dance party ending. Dance party endings aren't new, but have been made ubiquitous in the past 20 years. Same with fake out deaths, and I blame Marvel for that. I guess I personally chalk this all up to the general trend towards never making anyone uncomfortable, which is tied in with the corporatization of media and corporate-memphization of media.

There are tons of children's movies that deal with the permanent death of a beloved character as a major part of the story: Bambi (1942), Old Yeller (1957), Charlotte's Web (1973), The Hobbit (1977), The Land Before Time (1988), The Lion King (1994), Antz (1998), The Princess and the Frog (2009), Summer Wars (2009), etc. They still have happy endings, but the fundamental message is that death is a natural part of life and we need to accept it and learn to move forward despite our losses. Why not show her one of those?

Yes, they are a little old, but that doesn't mean they are bad. The great thing about little kids is that YOU control what they watch, not them. If you think the media of your past is what made you who you are today, why not restrict her to that media? What is your daughter going to do, take out a Disney+ subscription on her credit card?

From "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" by AntiDem:

First, as the leftists used to say, “Kill Your Television”. I am not one who generally thinks that machines are inherently evil. Television is an exception. It is no more and no less than a hypnotic mind control device. Don’t believe me? Sit a hyperactive toddler in front of a television and watch what happens. They freeze, turn away from everything they were doing, and stare at the screen. Gavin McInnes once noted that the “on” switch of his television was an “off” switch for his kids, and so it is. Do you think this device does not place ideas in the minds of those who fall into a trance in its presence? And what ideas do you think the Hollywood/New York axis wishes to place there? I recall reading one account of a father who, tired of his two under-10 daughters’ bratty attitudes, limited their television viewing to a DVD box set of Little House on The Prairie. The change in his daughters’ behavior was dramatic – within a couple of weeks, they were referring to him and his wife as “Ma” and “Pa”, and offering to help with chores. The lesson is obvious: people (and especially children) learn their social norms from television, far more even than from the people around them.

Ideally, one would cut oneself off from it totally. Many find this rather difficult (I must admit, myself included at times). Some keep a television set, but make sure it is disconnected from broadcast channels and use it only as a monitor for a carefully-selected library of DVDs. Others (myself included) don’t own a set, but download a few select programs from torrent sites and watch on laptops or tablets. My total viewership of television programs tops out at perhaps 3-4 hours per week during particularly good seasons. Any traditionalist should strive to do the same. In fact, traditionalists should reject – should “drop out” of – all popular culture (especially that produced after, say, 1966) to the greatest degree possible, and make sure their children are exposed to it as little as possible. Music, video games, even the web – either drop out of it completely, or, at very least, carefully limit the time and scope of it in your life and the lives of your children.

And from "Culture Is Not About Esthetics" by Gwern Branwen:

Or consider another medium: movies. Have you seen the IMDB’s Top 250 movies? There are excellent movies in there. Some are profound, others moving, and not a few profoundly moving. Why are you going to watch Transformers 2 or Ice Age 3? For entertainment value? But there are movies in that list which are far more entertaining, I assure you.

Even if you’ve seen the top 50, there’s another 200 to choose from. If you think the IMDB is too faddish and Internet-centric, there’s no shortage of other lists - the New York Times would be happy to tell you all about “The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made” (6 years at 3 movies a week). And what about television? If we ask IMDB about movies by year or all the movies and TV episodes it knows about, it’s happy to tell us: 1,111,244 episodes; 263,524 movies; and 1,920,757 works in total (as of 2011-06-28). We can also look at movie production over time, where we find that as early as 1917 (109 ya) there were 5,490 movies made. (A current estimate for the EU is “1100 features and 1400 shorts per year”.) So even if we got in at the beginning, we never had a chance at watching so much as a small fraction.

Here’s a thought problem: suppose an intensive study revealed, authoritatively, that removing all subsidies and ‘intellectual property rights’ would cause movie production to fall by 95%. Would you regard that as a disaster, something to be decried and abhorred and legislated against? I suspect so. Suppose the study found that, specifically, this 95% fall was composed partially of movies never getting made, but also partially of movies getting made and then lost or never distributed or never shown at all (perhaps because in the absence of copyright, pirates would undercut them and take all profits); would this change your opinion much? Probably not for the better - if anything, it’s even more horrifying, in the same way almost winning the lottery but missing by 1 number is more saddening than missing it by 2 numbers.

But the interesting thing is that this is already happening: less than 5% of movies are available to the public[23], and only around 10% of silent films survive in any sense anywhere[24]. So that 95% fall has already happened; civilization seems to have survived[25]. (A reflection on the ‘movie canon’: if you believe the canon is aesthetically invalid and has not successfully picked out the best movies made, then that implies anywhere up to 90% of the best movies ever made are lost forever to you.)

[23] “…But tragically, some of the world’s strangest movies will never be available on DVD at all. The TCM database estimates that only 4.8% of all films ever made are currently available to the public. Though the Internet has been invaluable in finding strange and forgotten relics, some films, whether through accident, disaster or perceived disinterest, have been lost or temporarily displaced.” –io9, “Weird and Wonderful Movies That You’ll Never Get to See”

[24] “Pandora’s digital box: Pix and pixels”, quoting Jan-Christopher Horak, Director, UCLA Film and Television Archive.

[25] Of course, one could argue that there is something uniquely optimal and special about the current existing level of movie production, such that this invisible 95% fall is acceptable but another 95% fall would be cataclysmic. I hope the reader understands that this is a deeply untrustworthy position to take (and they should read the Bostrom link on the ‘status quo bias’) - I’d parody this argument as “oh, that 95% fall is OK because it still leaves us a number of movies which is bigger than some-number-I-made-up-just-now-based-on-the-information-you’ve-provided-me; but another 95% fall, well, that’d just be madness!”

I don't have time to read all of the cited stuff now, but I should ask, do you have kids? My experience is that they will want what they want, and you can't really fight against it too hard, because that makes them want it more. It all ends up being a negotiation, whether you want it to or not, unless you're willing to run your household like Captain Von Trap (and even he couldn't control his kids despite his efforts). I do show them all the things from my childhood and things I love, but you can't make them just like you, forcibly - it doesn't work. They know of the modern media from school and friends, and want that, hard. And in order to be a part of their life, you need to allow them to partake in it at least sometimes, or else they will be really unhappy.

And note: my daughter watches very little media, and doesn't control what she consumes directly, but rather by petitioning me for it. We basically have family movie night once per week, which is how she has taken in all the movies she has seen. We have no tv, and she has no iPad, and has never used one, and wouldn't know how to navigate kids YouTube.

My experience is that they will want what they want, and you can't really fight against it too hard, because that makes them want it more. It all ends up being a negotiation, whether you want it to or not...

That makes no sense to me. When I was growing up, if my parents disallowed something, that was all there was to it. Sometimes, if I could, I might try to go behind their backs (e.g. trying to catch Power Rangers on TV even though it was banned), but it was never a negotiation and nor did I have any illusions that I had a say in what was and early allowed. As I am not a parent I can't offer any meaningful advice or critique of any kind as to what the difference might be, only to say that your statement here is completely at odds with my experience growing up. And my parents were hardly super strict, either. It was simply well understood by both sides that this stuff wasn't remotely up for debate.

Well, it's possible you were not as strong minded a child as mine. How much were you willing to really push for what you wanted, and make your parents miserable until you got it?

As I said: I knew perfectly well that wouldn't have been acceptable. I don't think being strong minded even comes into it. I'm actually a pretty stubborn person (as many people can attest), but I'm not a fool either. I don't waste my energy on things that have zero chance of success, and as a child I didn't waste my energy on nagging my parents as a result.

Nagging is one thing. What about just becoming really sad?

My parents have way more backbone than to let that get to them.

Well, at some point as a parent you need to decide what's more important. I need my daughter to listen to me when it's important, but you have to pick your battles. I ultimately decided I don't want to send the message to her that I don't care about her feelings, and that I'm never going to listen to her preferences. I have the feeling that my parents may have been more like your parents to some degree, and I'm not certain I'm personally happy with the results, and how it has impacted my long-term mental health.

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