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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3134 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 24, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I watched ‘Napoleon’. Dissident right Twitter is upset with it because it portrays Napoleon as a cuckold and they’ve decided they like him recently. There is some minor diversity like some of the senior officers and ladies maids improbably being black, but I didn’t think it was really a ‘woke’ picture.

Instead, the surprise seems to be that it’s mostly a comedy, except with some more traditional ‘action movie’ battle sequences (which I found enjoyable except for the Battle of Waterloo, which drags somewhat). It’s got a certain kind of English vaguely-panto vibe, crossed with a classic stage comedy, but not really the laugh out loud type. Napoleon is depicted as an extreme autist and is arguably the butt of the joke, but is also a competent general and a great strategist on a number of occasions. That said, the movie does end by explicitly characterizing him as a villain who was responsible for millions of deaths for (implicitly) no real reason. Some will say it also implies there was a direct causal relationship between his need for military victory and his cuckoldry, but I don’t think it’s that explicit. It is, on balance, an anti-French movie that takes the traditionally dim English view of the revolution and its consequences.

An entertaining movie, and rare to watch something where the big CGI fight scenes are actually very good and keep the viewer awake. Some very cringe dialogue not on purpose, some on purpose. Napoleon’s actor is too old. 3/5.

There is some minor diversity like some of the senior officers and ladies maids improbably being black, but I didn’t think it was really a ‘woke’ picture.

I don't think that was particularly unlikely at all, France had a number of black mixed race people in it, including in the upper class. For example the famous author Alexandre Dumas' father was mixed race and a French general.

Personally I didn't like the movie, it really did feel like it made a buffoon out of Napoleon, who got cuckolded and is very insecure about his success. I would've preferred that it either double down on being a period piece romcom, or to have been properly about Napoleon's battles and conquests, instead of being a weird romance interspersed with battle scenes.

Thomas-Alexandre was briefly shown in the film as I remember, but I think the actor was full blooded African rather than biracial, which would have been more accurate.

Josephine's maid was also afro-Caribbean, which is plausible since she grew up on Martinique.

But yeah, there were a few other Africans that were thrown in awkwardly. My suspicion is that Scott did the absolute bare minimum to keep the diversity-mongers happy, which is all we can expect from him I guess.

Incidentally, Oppenheimer has a similar 'bare minimum' moment where the camera lingers on the face of an African woman inexplicably attending a 1930s physics class in the Netherlands before never showing her again.

I agree, in this case though Napoleon teaches a handful of young British naval officers while a captive after Waterloo, one of whom is a black man, which seems somewhat less likely.

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