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Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat

precision posted:

I love some good old death of the author subtextual analysis as much as anyone but I think "Riley is bisexual" is reeeeeeeally reaching and also not even worth discussing because it has no bearing on the themes of the film at all. :shrug:
Dumbledore being gay wasn't important to the plot of Harry Potter either but it's kind of nice as a symbol of a more inclusive world.

If you'll notice I haven't made the argument that Riley having male voices in her head is important to the plot of the movie in any way. But it's a nice easter egg in a similar way that positively represents a subset of kids who might really need some positive representation.

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Hemingway To Go!
Nov 10, 2008

im stupider then dog shit, i dont give a shit, and i dont give a fuck, and i will never shut the fuck up, and i'll always Respect my enemys.
- ernest hemingway

Hakkesshu posted:

Let's talk more about the sexual proclivities of an 11-year old girl

No if you shut down his highly sexual readings of cartoons you are being anti-intellectual you see

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames

Steve Yun posted:

Dumbledore being gay wasn't important to the plot of Harry Potter either but it's kind of nice as a symbol of a more inclusive world.

Dumbledore, contrary to what some people would like to believe, wasn't an 11 year old girl.

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat
Dumbledore is a character in children's books

Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Jun 28, 2015

Malachamavet
Jan 12, 2009

Above the gigantic mouth is an eye as big as a shield that stares at you with pure hate
I don't actually think this is a good reading, but Isn't Riley being genderqueer a better interpretation than her being bisexual?

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat

Malachamavet posted:

I don't actually think this is a good reading, but Isn't Riley being genderqueer a better interpretation than her being bisexual?

You know what? I can totally concede to this point.

Eddie Dingle
Nov 4, 2007

Got a weasel teazel my pleazel got a weasel.
Did anybody else notice the mother's Emotional center seemed to be sadness? The movie makes it clear that sadness is an import part of the human experience, but the way they did the mother just seemed depressing to me.

Drifter
Oct 22, 2000

Belated Bear Witness
Soiled Meat

Eddie Dingle posted:

Did anybody else notice the mother's Emotional center seemed to be sadness? The movie makes it clear that sadness is an import part of the human experience, but the way they did the mother just seemed depressing to me.

I like to think they switched seats every few days.

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat

precision posted:

Exactly. It's kind of creepy.

Acne Rain posted:

No if you shut down his highly sexual readings of cartoons you are being anti-intellectual you see

You guys literally just watched a movie where an 11 year old girl fantasizes about her Ideal Canadian Boyfriend and it doesn't even register a blip on your radar, but when I bring up even the possibility of said 11 year old girl having similar feelings for a girl, you're all up in arms about how it's "creepy" and "highly sexual."

I'm not the one with creepy opinions here.

tirinal
Feb 5, 2007

Eddie Dingle posted:

Did anybody else notice the mother's Emotional center seemed to be sadness? The movie makes it clear that sadness is an import part of the human experience, but the way they did the mother just seemed depressing to me.

I think it was more of a mood thing. Dad is a bit stressed by the startup and gets anger, mum is a bit lost by the move and gets sadness.

Speaking of emotions, I think the movie gets too much credit for the depression theme. Joy is the only emotion that has any sort of personification beyond her stereotype (note she's also the only non color-coded emotion, even down to the tan skin). Even Sadness is really just a foil for Joy. The movie's resolution for the two characters: Sadness becomes a bit more like Joy (that is, happy), and Joy learns that if she lets Sadness have the same turn that the others have then she will get the Riley she wants (that is, happy).

I kind of feel that "being sad is okay when it's a stepping-stone to being happy" is a pretty lovely way to treat the subject. I'm a little surprised by people with depression saying they empathized with the film, since I'm one of them and I just felt alienated.

Really though, this is taking an animation far more seriously than it deserves. I liked the set pieces of the movie and don't regret seeing it.

And as an aside, I'm unsure if it was intentional, but this movie relies far too much on meta knowledge to work as a children's film and all the kids I know that saw it just came out confused.

tirinal fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Jun 28, 2015

Vegetable
Oct 22, 2010

This film could have also used a ton more exploration of the other emotions. Wouldn't it be nice to show how Anger can drive success? Or how Disgust keeps you alive by pushing away unfamiliar things (i.e. not broccoli). It's messed up that this film conveys that Sadness is okay but then suggests Anger, Fear, and Disgust are just garbage emotions that ruin social interaction.

We saw how Fear was briefly useful when Riley was a toddler but that's about it. Entire section where she's a trainwreck, it's all the work of these three emotions.

Bongo Bill
Jan 17, 2012

Vegetable posted:

This film could have also used a ton more exploration of the other emotions. Wouldn't it be nice to show how Anger can drive success? Or how Disgust keeps you alive by pushing away unfamiliar things (i.e. not broccoli). It's messed up that this film conveys that Sadness is okay but then suggests Anger, Fear, and Disgust are just garbage emotions that ruin social interaction.

We saw how Fear was briefly useful when Riley was a toddler but that's about it. Entire section where she's a trainwreck, it's all the work of these three emotions.

The opening monologue was about this. Joy respects Fear and Disgust for protecting Riley, and Anger for having a strong sense of justice, but does not know what Sadness has to contribute. And at the end, they've all been more integrated into the islands.

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames

Steve Yun posted:

You guys literally just watched a movie where an 11 year old girl fantasizes about her Ideal Canadian Boyfriend and it doesn't even register a blip on your radar, but when I bring up even the possibility of said 11 year old girl having similar feelings for a girl, you're all up in arms about how it's "creepy" and "highly sexual."

I don't think you understood that the Ideal Canadian Boyfriend was entirely sexless and, for the purposes of your reading, genderless as well.

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat

precision posted:

I don't think you understood that the Ideal Canadian Boyfriend was entirely sexless and, for the purposes of your reading, genderless as well.

You've posted a bunch of new words that don't fix the problems with your previous words. You're still saying that her attraction for a boy can be sexless and genderless and not icky and gross but that same feelings for a girl would be icky and gross and creepy and can't be genderless or sexless.

Futaba Anzu
May 6, 2011

GROSS BOY

Steve Yun posted:

You guys literally just watched a movie where an 11 year old girl fantasizes about her Ideal Canadian Boyfriend and it doesn't even register a blip on your radar, but when I bring up even the possibility of said 11 year old girl having similar feelings for a girl, you're all up in arms about how it's "creepy" and "highly sexual."

I'm not the one with creepy opinions here.

smoobles
Sep 4, 2014

I'd watch a bunch of sequels that follow Riley's emotions as she dates, has a family, gets old and dies. Imagine Joy turning out the lights, at the very end.

Chicken Butt
Oct 27, 2010

Vegetable posted:

This film could have also used a ton more exploration of the other emotions. Wouldn't it be nice to show how Anger can drive success? Or how Disgust keeps you alive by pushing away unfamiliar things (i.e. not broccoli). It's messed up that this film conveys that Sadness is okay but then suggests Anger, Fear, and Disgust are just garbage emotions that ruin social interaction.

We saw how Fear was briefly useful when Riley was a toddler but that's about it. Entire section where she's a trainwreck, it's all the work of these three emotions.

This came up a little bit both at the beginning and the end of the movie -- specifically at the end, doesn't Anger say something that indicates he's going to help Riley to be aggressive during the hockey game?

Anyway, I think the film was really focused on selling the idea that sadness is a necessary and useful emotion, and should not be suppressed or pushed away.

One clever point that I only realized after watching the movie is how they showed Riley's parents' emotions working together as teams, while Riley's emotions tend to bicker and disagree and shove one another. It's a nice illustration of the concept of emotional maturity.

As for the gender argument going on in this thread, perhaps some of these questions will be answered in the upcoming short film "Riley's First Date" (which I am not making up).

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames

Steve Yun posted:

You've posted a bunch of new words that don't fix the problems with your previous words. You're still saying that her attraction for a boy can be sexless and genderless and not icky and gross but that same feelings for a girl would be icky and gross and creepy and can't be genderless or sexless.

No I'm not. If she had an Ideal Canadian Girlfriend I wouldn't think anything of it. I especially wouldn't think that it meant she was a lesbian. That's how a sexless fantasy works.

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN
The actually-interesting subtext is that Riley's brain is organized like a small corporation with a 'head office', and is falling apart in a way that's directly analogous to how Dad's company is running out of capital and having to lay off employees.

Meanwhile, as noted before, the story is told from the perspective of the mother character as she tries to understand what's going on in her daughter's head. A good chunk of the film is projection (e.g. "remember when our daughter was so joyful all the time? Remember how she had that imaginary friend?") because the whole story is not about how emotions are experienced firsthand, but through empathy. There are cues to this, like how the baby is envisioned as being able to process color at birth.

Drifter
Oct 22, 2000

Belated Bear Witness
Soiled Meat

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

The actually-interesting subtext is that Riley's brain is organized like a small corporation with a 'head office', and is falling apart in a way that's directly analogous to how Dad's company is running out of capital and having to lay off employees.


Except this really isn't true at all. Every jellybean underling still had a place and a reason and a purpose.

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat

precision posted:

No I'm not. If she had an Ideal Canadian Girlfriend I wouldn't think anything of it. I especially wouldn't think that it meant she was a lesbian. That's how a sexless fantasy works.

precision posted:

Exactly. It's kind of creepy.

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames
I guess I've been owned because I'm not sexualizing a children's movie?

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat
It's plain that you have double standards and get grossed out at the idea of a girl liking other girls and that it's somehow inappropriate for a kids movie when you give a free pass to her liking a boy in the movie and now you're just dancing around it

Bongo Bill
Jan 17, 2012

The emotions are gendered not sexed. There's an important difference which you can't afford to overlook if you're going down that path, Steve Yun.

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat
Sure, I'll accept that

Anyways, I'm willing to drop it since the genderqueer interpretation makes more sense anyways...

One of my criticisms of the movie was that everything needed constant explaining. It's a rich world and there are a lot of interesting mechanics to how it works, but it was kinda annoying to constantly hear "Oh, this is the ______, it's important because it _____s the ______!" The story could've used another draft just to smooth over the exposition a little.

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN

Drifter posted:

Except this really isn't true at all. Every jellybean underling still had a place and a reason and a purpose.

Right, because the film has a happy ending. Thanks to a new style of management at Head Office, the corporation expands and flourishes.

The moral is, as the mother puts it: "what kind of pizza place only serves one type of pizza?"

Bongo Bill
Jan 17, 2012

The Dream Boyfriend Machine is a brand new addition to Riley's imagination, and like Bing Bong and all other things she is capable of imagining (that's what Imagination Land is - things she can think, not things she is currently thinking), will be discarded when she has outgrown it. The clones it makes reflect her immature, explicitly prepubescent understanding of intimacy, but there are a fair amount of settings on the machine - and machines of the mind get upgraded, like the control panel, when some new development requires them to be more capable.

Drifter
Oct 22, 2000

Belated Bear Witness
Soiled Meat

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Right, because the film has a happy ending. Thanks to a new style of management at Head Office, the corporation expands and flourishes.

The moral is, as the mother puts it: "what kind of pizza place only serves one type of pizza?"

No, but the jellybeans always had a purpose. I don't think there was ever a time when one was out of work or whatever. None of anyone was ever downsized as a result of what Riley was going through.

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat
Finally, a socialist utopia movie for SMG, where all the workers have a job and there are no resources to squabble over

Bongo Bill
Jan 17, 2012

Drifter posted:

No, but the jellybeans always had a purpose. I don't think there was ever a time when one was out of work or whatever. None of anyone was ever downsized as a result of what Riley was going through.

Not the mind workers, but unneeded thoughts were often thrown into the memory hole.

Uncle Wemus
Mar 4, 2004

peoples strong negative reaction to Lava is really baffling

Drifter
Oct 22, 2000

Belated Bear Witness
Soiled Meat

Bongo Bill posted:

Not the mind workers, but unneeded thoughts were often thrown into the memory hole.

The process of forgetting. It was filtered and processed and dealt with. Not really what SMG was trying to prove.

Maxwell Lord
Dec 12, 2008

I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand.

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.


:smith:

Grimey Drawer
I'm with you on the corporate thing but I don't think reading the story from the mother's POV adds more than it takes away. The mother really doesn't understand what's going on inside- she doesn't see that suppressing her sadness has made her unable to feel much of anything.

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames

Steve Yun posted:

It's plain that you have double standards and get grossed out at the idea of a girl liking other girls

I'm a bisexual dude, my fiance is a bisexual chick, almost literally everyone I know identifies as either gay or bisexual, but yeah, sure, okay. Let's go with that.

I think what you're not getting is that I don't so much disagree with you as that I find the entire discussion you're having to be unnecessary. Riley is 11, she's not gay or bisexual or straight or anything yet.

Sea Lily
Aug 5, 2007

Everything changes, Pit.
Even gods.

Uncle Wemus posted:

peoples strong negative reaction to Lava is really baffling

it's really bad though

usually the shorts before the movies are super enjoyable, tightly crafted little things

Lava was just slow, repetitive, boring garbage

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat

precision posted:

I'm a bisexual dude, my fiance is a bisexual chick, almost literally everyone I know identifies as either gay or bisexual, but yeah, sure, okay. Let's go with that
Please accept my apologies then

precision posted:

I think what you're not getting is that I don't so much disagree with you as that I find the entire discussion you're having to be unnecessary. Riley is 11, she's not gay or bisexual or straight or anything yet.

She knows that she wants a boyfriend, that's already clearly something, and hand-waving it away and pretending it's asexual because it doesn't fit your argument isn't going to work.

At any rate, my argument isn't what her sexual orientation is anymore, I'm willing drop drop it since the gender identity interpretation seems to fit better, and gender identity is an earlier part of our development anyways.

Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Jun 29, 2015

Justin Godscock
Oct 12, 2004

Listen here, funnyman!

Vegetable posted:

This film could have also used a ton more exploration of the other emotions. Wouldn't it be nice to show how Anger can drive success? Or how Disgust keeps you alive by pushing away unfamiliar things (i.e. not broccoli). It's messed up that this film conveys that Sadness is okay but then suggests Anger, Fear, and Disgust are just garbage emotions that ruin social interaction.

We saw how Fear was briefly useful when Riley was a toddler but that's about it. Entire section where she's a trainwreck, it's all the work of these three emotions.

I kind of disagree here; Anger, Fear and Disgust only ruin Riley's life because they don't have Joy or Sadness to balance them out and they have no idea what they are doing as a result and become impulsive emotions which are self-destructive. When Joy was around, they acted like counter-balances to her because the point of life is indeed to be happy but only through the challenges and checks that those emotions can give.

On the note of other emotions: we are looking through the eyes of an 11-year old so obviously the really basic emotions are coming into play. If this ever gets a sequel (and it could, Riley has to grow-up) I can see more emotions being added which works out well since sequels are all about developing and adding to the original film. I'd pay to see it.

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN

Drifter posted:

No, but the jellybeans always had a purpose. I don't think there was ever a time when one was out of work or whatever. None of anyone was ever downsized as a result of what Riley was going through.

Nobody was laid off at Dad's company either. They were just burning through their capital at such a rate that layoffs were seemingly inevitable.

The metaphor in the film is really straightforward. Head Office runs the five factories and uses them to harvest the girl's experiences, packaging them as memories.

The shelves full of memories are reminiscent of store shelves - something underlined by the memories in the film being of stuff like chewing gum and My Little Pony toys. Obsolete products are taken from the shelves and thrown in the junkyard, you see the homeless Bing Bong stealing them, certain products are 'recalled', and so-on. When the girl no longer has use for a service, or outright rejects it, the entire factory crumbles away and falls into the junkyard. "Soon we won't be able to make her feel anything" means they'll be out of business.

Maxwell Lord posted:

I'm with you on the corporate thing but I don't think reading the story from the mother's POV adds more than it takes away. The mother really doesn't understand what's going on inside- she doesn't see that suppressing her sadness has made her unable to feel much of anything.

The film is about the mother looking at what happened, retroactively and realizing that telling her daughter to 'be happy for us' was bad advice.

Joy, the protagonist and narrator, reflects the mother's point of view throughout, although in a sort of distorted way.

SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Jun 29, 2015

icantfindaname
Jul 1, 2008


precision posted:

I'm a bisexual dude, my fiance is a bisexual chick, almost literally everyone I know identifies as either gay or bisexual, but yeah, sure, okay. Let's go with that.

I think what you're not getting is that I don't so much disagree with you as that I find the entire discussion you're having to be unnecessary. Riley is 11, she's not gay or bisexual or straight or anything yet.

you're talking to the dude who wrote multiple essays insisting that an episode of adventure time was a rape allegory

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Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat

icantfindaname posted:

you're talking to the dude who wrote multiple essays insisting that an episode of adventure time was a rape allegory

Kinda unavoidable when you make an 11 minute remake of Alien.

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