Immortan posted:90% of the 29k posts you have on this site (16x a day) are shitposts no longer than two sentences on average. Holy fuckballs. I read this post and it punched me in the jaw and I flew back a hundred feet.
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Sep 13, 2015 22:23
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Ivan the Terrible is actually kind of a mistranslation in modern english. It's meant along the lines of "Oz the Great and Terrible" as someone who inspires terror with their power. So more like "Ivan the Awesome", using the classical definition of the word. ...That sounds like the handle of some egocentric internet moron. Oh how definitions have changed.
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Sep 13, 2015 22:28
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Are you telling me people think it's Terrible as in really incompetent? 
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Sep 13, 2015 23:16
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starkebn posted:Are you telling me people think it's Terrible as in really incompetent? More like "really evil" I think.
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Sep 13, 2015 23:23
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It's Terrible as in really terrifying
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Sep 13, 2015 23:38
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e: f;b
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Sep 13, 2015 23:48
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"Awesome" is really good as a comparison, for a word that's also lost its more nuanced meaning.
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Sep 13, 2015 23:50
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IDK at least in normal contexts 'terrible' might be a fair translation
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Sep 14, 2015 00:45
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revdrkevind posted:Holy poo poo I think he's on to m- oh, wait. Congrats on bragging about using the most cowardly feature on this site.
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Sep 14, 2015 02:09
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I've decided to move on, into the thread. I mean, we're all shitposting, but I'd entertain a serious discussion about whether the specificity of a book/film's ideas influences its "greatness," given that a big part of reading any media is projecting your own ideas onto it.
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Sep 14, 2015 02:26
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Vegetable posted:Maybe in the same way 2001: A Space Odyssey is a poo poo film because everybody and their dog has a take on it? i believe you have been trolled by the marxist readings of childrens' movies man
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Sep 14, 2015 02:28
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computer parts posted:Thanks for bumping a thread to shitpost? My apologies, I just got back from a vacation and I was clearing out my queue of saved threads. Also, apparently you're supposed to say fart when this happens? Shrug. Hat Thoughts posted:Congrats on bragging about using the most cowardly feature on this site. In this case, I'm fine with that. revdrkevind fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Sep 14, 2015 |
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Sep 14, 2015 03:46
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ME
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Should Thomas More's Utopia ever get made into a film adaptation? I'd say no, because it'd be loving boring.
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Sep 14, 2015 11:30
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Vegetable posted:Maybe in the same way 2001: A Space Odyssey is a poo poo film because everybody and their dog has a take on it? No. In those cases, the people are wrong.
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Sep 14, 2015 16:06
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Immortan posted:It wasn't on mine either & I wasn't surprised. Schools & colleges I imagine are scared of 1984's themes of indoctrination, newspeak, & memory holes because it hits a little to close to home. Immortan posted:With the polarizing clusterfuck known as American politics in the 21st century dominated by micro-aggressions & trigger warnings where everyone is alleging that every political/ideological opponent is the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in the 24/7 information age... You're a moron. You should probably gently caress off with this dumb poo poo back to  SuperMechagodzilla posted:I've decided to move on, into the thread. This whole post is why SMG is a treasure.
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Sep 14, 2015 19:16
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Why is this thread still going
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Sep 16, 2015 19:29
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Immortan posted:Why is this thread still going Do you not know how to lock threads?????
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Sep 16, 2015 23:45
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There's a button you can click
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Sep 16, 2015 23:45
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Hat Thoughts posted:Do you not know how to lock threads????? Ehhh... gently caress that. Continue with the thread or move on with your lives by voting "gently caress off OP." accordingly. Carry on.
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Sep 17, 2015 08:07
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Take responsibility for this thing you have extruded.
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Sep 17, 2015 08:27
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Immortan posted:Ehhh... gently caress that. Continue with the thread or move on with your lives by voting "gently caress off OP." accordingly. Why did you ask that question then? Wtf
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Sep 17, 2015 08:34
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Immortan posted:Ehhh... gently caress that. Continue with the thread or move on with your lives by voting "gently caress off OP." accordingly. Give this man 10cc Pregnancy Substitute STAT.
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Sep 17, 2015 16:10
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Orwell was writing in a context where there was a lot of debate among the left about Russia and Stalin, and some people didn't quite see how bad it had gotten (because of the instinctive defend-your-own-against-THEM impulse), so he wanted to write about totalitarianism in Russia (Animal Farm alludes to the general failure of the Soviet revolution but not so much what it meant for the average person). But of course he was still a socialist so it naturally wouldn't go as far as the active Anti-Communist rhetoric and literature of the time. So yeah, a lot of what he writes has a general applicability to governments both nominally "communist" and "capitalist." I don't see that as a flaw, however, because that's true. The techniques of social control he writes about in 1984 are used by governments and societies regardless of what they label themselves as, and it makes sense for Orwell to say to those in the West, "Don't be complacent about this just because you're not in a socialist government. It can happen here just as easily." That is a useful thing to say, it's one of the purposes of dystopian writing. It's less "which system of government is best" and "here is how language, media, and technology are manipulated." Which is as good a theme as any to explore. Similarly, Brave New World features hedonistic sex and drug use, but it's not like Huxley was a Puritan (and one of the challenges of adaptation would be getting across that it's not just "Sex!" and "Soma!" that are the problems, any more than in-vitro fertilization.) He had an open marriage and experimented with drugs himself- but he realized (and he started writing the book specifically to critique H. G. Wells' technological utopianism) that these things which are freeing now could easily become just another method of control. There's also the element of how the vast majority of people in it are happy with their lot, but for the few who do not fit in due to some accident of fate it's unbearable- it cannot be utopia if it leaves people out. (Even Lenina is something of a minor misfit- she has a tendency to get attached to men, a hidden maternal instinct possibly rooted in a brief moment of awareness during indoctrination- there's also something with her wearing out-of-caste colors that is never explored.) The broad applicability of 1984 and BNW are points in their favor because they remind the attentive reader that no matter where they stand, they are not without sin. You don't get to say, "Well, I already disagree with all that so I'm one of the good guys." (The inattentive reader will of course miss all this entirely, but this is no reason to shun literary nuance.) As for film versions, I know Ridley Scott's been wanting to do BNW but he also wants to do 100 other things so who knows (plus it's gotta be a hard movie to get investors for. "We'll need extensive CGI and detailed sets and costumes, there's no action, it's a hard R, and it's basically a drama/black comedy that ends with the main character's suicide.") I also think Baz Luhrmann might work at capturing the sheer hedonistic intensity of it all.
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Sep 17, 2015 16:53
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Maxwell Lord posted:Orwell was writing in a context where there was a lot of debate among the left about Russia and Stalin, and some people didn't quite see how bad it had gotten (because of the instinctive defend-your-own-against-THEM impulse), so he wanted to write about totalitarianism in Russia (Animal Farm alludes to the general failure of the Soviet revolution but not so much what it meant for the average person). But of course he was still a socialist so it naturally wouldn't go as far as the active Anti-Communist rhetoric and literature of the time. It's always surprising to me how many people miss this theme for Animal Farm in particular. It explicitly shows the period after the Revolution but before Napoleon takes over as being the best time for the animals on the farm, and it's explicitly stated by the end that their conditions get worse the more their revolution devolves to resemble the human (capitalist) farms around them. The 1990s movie in particular just completely inverts this as it's a happy ending when the humans come back to take over the farm and the animals all live happily ever after under human rule again, the way things ought to be.
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Sep 17, 2015 17:31
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The 1999 ending is especially amazing to me. It's not that it's humans, it's specifically Americans. Had to throw a little post-Berlin Wall Fukuyama in there.
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Sep 17, 2015 17:58
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The 1999 movie with its triumph of American Capitalism actually pairs well with the Snowball's Chance novel that came out a few years later, where Snowball returns to take over the farm after Napoleon dies, and basically creates neoliberalism before then launching a War on Terror after displaced animals from the woods destroy the Twin Windmills on the farm. Although actually I do like the fact that (however inadvertent I'm sure it was) it highlights how a lot of the neoconservatives of the Bush era began as Trotskyites. And of course it got Christopher Hitchens into a tizzy.
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Sep 17, 2015 19:20
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