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 -
Is it rational to care or even know about propaganda in otherwise good media?
Imagine a person who doesn't know anything about Soviet Union and the concept of communism that decides to watch some movies from there. In the process of watching soviet cinema he will encounter not only direct propaganda of communism and Soviet Union itself but something more subtle, small, background details that show when and where this film was made and that it passed the eye of always hard-working socialist censors.
I think some already guessed where it goes. I was this person in relation to modern American progressive liberal views that are so common in Hollywood and general intelligentsia of United States. Without knowledge of internal us politics your mind just skips over all of the deliberately put messages in movies: specifically chosen race and sex of good characters and of evil ones, non spoken but painfully obvious and politically compliant moral of the story, slogans and signs hidden in plain sight. Many parts of it can be seen without the deep dive(the existence of same-sex relationships is the big one), in Russian, word "повестка"(agenda in English) come to represent all of the most obnoxious signs of progressive propaganda(or again just the existence of gay characters, there are living strawmans and steelmans like in any other social group), but majority of local and subtle things go over the public heads.
Of course there is a big difference here - modern progressive censorship and propaganda is not(at least not directly state-based) it emerges from a self organizing space of intellectuals who are very close to each other ideologically, but this is not very important to me personally if the outcome in the media that we consume is the same. From society-level point of view I am very grateful that there is little to no threat of state censorship in the US and America became the global cultural hegemon, not China or USSR/BigAutoritarianRussia.
And after I started noticing propaganda I saw small signs of it in almost every high-budget product. I am not only talking about the cinema here. To the point that I started to asking myself this question: "Was I wrong in learning this new information about american coming and goings if this information is useless to me and at the same time genuinely negatively affected my ability to enjoy modern media?"(As an example I can bring up Spiderverse films). Is it better to just ignore other cultures' political context to peacefully enjoy their best fruits? Knowledge is valuable by itself but the question is how much?
I don't think this is actually that different from the situation of normie grill pill Americans trying to enjoy franchises they grew up with, but where the messaging has taken over the characters and story.
The main thing is that, recently, it isn't "otherwise good."
But also, I don't think most people are able to set their BS thresholds consciously.
Personally, I'll put up with a fair bit if the actors, costuming, makeup, and lighting are good. Still, I'm about to give up on Neil Gaiman adaptations, because while I enjoy the aesthetics, the LGB relationships have become just about the whole thing. Also, the Strong Females of Marvel (still enjoying Loki though; hope they don't pull anything extra dumb in the last episode...). The nonsensical ethnicities in Wheel of Time would doubtless be obvious to anyone, anywhere, but I'm basically willing to overlook it, because this season the acting, music, and costuming were basically good (and as a non book reader, the plot was intelligible, all things considered, unlike season 1). Which I think is more the median American position -- it's forgivable to mess with races and sexes a bit in the name of The Culture, as long as you're actually making an effort in general.
What did you make of Rings of Power? I only watched the first episode myself, and didn't go back to it because I was told they weren't making the effort in general to faithfully reproduce Tolkien.
I ignored it altogether, and didn’t try to watch it. I also didn’t try to watch the last two hobbit movies, because they seemed bloated. We did just rewatch the 1970s animated Hobbit with the kids this week, which was fun.
That was a mistake. Hobbit 2 was close to greatness, and 3 was tolerable. Both were considerably better than 1. It isn't the book, but it was worth it.
Good to know, maybe I'll give them another chance. I liked the 2001 - 2003 LotR trilogy a lot.
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