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Snowman_McK
Jan 31, 2010
For a very bland film, it's provoked a lot of vigorous debate.

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Jukebox Hero
Dec 27, 2007
stars in his eyes

Sir Kodiak posted:

Yeah, was just curious if there was some reasoning behind what seems like a pretty nonsensical rule, that if fantasy racism is depicted, it must be deconstructed or the movie has somehow failed.

He's not saying that and Bright is a dumb movie for trying to have fantasy stuff exist but not think about what it means. It's boring because orcs are just black people with tusks and a stupid Christ allegory myth sewn on.

Aces High
Mar 26, 2010

Nah! A little chocolate will do




Blood Boils posted:

Finally got around to seeing this, so loving dope. Best fantasy movie since Snow White + Huntsman

As someone who actually enjoyed parts of Snow White, this feels like damning Bright with faint praise. Both films have lovely "chosen one" elements that don't do either plot any favours, but at least in Bright you can say that there is good chemistry with all of the main cast, whereas Kristen Stewart sucks the air out of most of the scenes that she's in. Not great when she's the titular Snow White

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

Jukebox Hero posted:

He's not saying that and Bright is a dumb movie for trying to have fantasy stuff exist but not think about what it means. It's boring because orcs are just black people with tusks and a stupid Christ allegory myth sewn on.

A film does not have any capacity for thought, meaning is something that we as viewers extrapolate through our identification with the symbolic order of the film.

Again, the orcs do not represent black people. Poor black folks already exist in the film. The orcs represent orcs, they are a non-exclusive social and cultural group whose experience reflects racism, religious bigotry, anti-immigrant nationalism, etc.

The film is not a Christ allegory. There is no Christ figure, no mission of universal emancipation and redemption. Just like RoboCop, the film uses messianic imagery subversively. The protagonists discover the power to transcend death and radically re-shape the world, and then choose to maintain the status quo.

The problem, as Sir Kodiak alludes, is that critics who dismiss the film are looking for a convoluted 'subtext' that justifies reading, while treating the straightforward text of the film as inherently insubstantial or irredeemable. It's simply arguing in bad faith, conflating not liking Bright with understanding its 'bad' or 'unthoughtful' or 'lazy' subtext. The subtext is an ideological fantasy, there is only a very textured surface. The film shows you exactly what's going on.

Sir Kodiak
May 14, 2007


Yeah, I didn't think Bright was amazing or anything, but one of the things I liked about it was that it placed orcs and elves and that as parallel groups to traditional racial/ethnic lines. The orcs are only "just black people with tusks" if you don't look at any of the details.

Samuel Clemens
Oct 4, 2013

I think we should call the Avengers.

Aces High posted:

As someone who actually enjoyed parts of Snow White, this feels like damning Bright with faint praise. Both films have lovely "chosen one" elements that don't do either plot any favours, but at least in Bright you can say that there is good chemistry with all of the main cast, whereas Kristen Stewart sucks the air out of most of the scenes that she's in. Not great when she's the titular Snow White

The sequel definitely benefitted from trading Stewart for Rob Brydon.

bushisms.txt
May 26, 2004

Scroll, then. There are other posts than these.


Sir Kodiak posted:

Yeah, I didn't think Bright was amazing or anything, but one of the things I liked about it was that it placed orcs and elves and that as parallel groups to traditional racial/ethnic lines. The orcs are only "just black people with tusks" if you don't look at any of the details.

The details are that they are visually coded to be a poc amalgam. They wear sports attire, kangol hats and chains, standing outside in unemployed groups blasting rap while drinking 40s. The lynching of Jacoby. Even "blooded" dips it's toes into gang culture. Its disengenous to try to some how elevate the word vomit exposition of neutered dnd rules, when the visuals do more than enough to get the point across.

bushisms.txt fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Mar 19, 2018

Sir Kodiak
May 14, 2007


bushisms.txt posted:

The details are that they are visually coded to be a poc amalgam. They wear sports attire, kangol hats and chains, standing outside in unemployed groups blasting rap while drinking 40s. The lynching of Jacoby. Even "blooded" dips it's toes into gang culture. Its disengenous to try to some how elevate the word vomit exposition of neutered dnd rules, when the visuals do more than enough to get the point across.

Even if they were purely an amalgam of references to people of color, they're still not "just black people with tusks," which is the comment I was responding to. But it's not just POC. For instance, the dominant music associated with them is heavy metal, not rap, which when it dips into racial politics tends to be on the side of white nationalism.

Old Kentucky Shark
May 25, 2012

If you think you're gonna get sympathy from the shark, well then, you won't.


The movie got a lot better once I realized that Joel Edgerton was playing Carlton.

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

bushisms.txt posted:

The details are that they are visually coded to be a poc amalgam. They wear sports attire, kangol hats and chains, standing outside in unemployed groups blasting rap while drinking 40s. The lynching of Jacoby. Even "blooded" dips it's toes into gang culture. Its disengenous to try to some how elevate the word vomit exposition of neutered dnd rules, when the visuals do more than enough to get the point across.

Wrench in the gears: the greatest orc love song is Cannibal Corpse's "Hammer Smashed Face."

Coding is not the same as direct characterization. The orcs reflecting the influence of the simultaneously existent poor black and poor Latino communities does not mean they are 'black folks with tusks.' It means that the multiple distinct groups have been in contact long enough through intergenerational poverty to create that cultural overlap.

But the orcs are clearly a distinct group in some deadpan humorous ways as with their apparently creating death metal, but also in the manner that, you know, they invoke Satan.

bushisms.txt
May 26, 2004

Scroll, then. There are other posts than these.


https://youtu.be/_-7tryyJ0Ro

Just gonna say we can get into the etemology of music and all that, but the movie is clearly playing fast and loose with it's tropes. Black folks got voodoo and are equated with the devil in all forms of culture. Of course they're a different group, doesn't mean they can't also signify something else.

Remember this movie didn't originally have a black protagonist, so potentially, just that one police Captain, if that, would've been the sole black representative in the film, as that intro scene definitely wouldn't take place in an all black neighborhood. As such, the "they don't replace them" logic barely holds, because once they appear, the others don't reappear.

Sir Kodiak
May 14, 2007


I feel like an argument that depends on recasting the main character and cutting scenes from the movie is not a strong one.

bushisms.txt
May 26, 2004

Scroll, then. There are other posts than these.


Can you point in the movie where it fixes this issue?

quote:

the "they don't replace them" logic barely holds, because once they appear, the others don't reappear.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
Orcs aren’t stand-ins for black people. They’re a hypothetical ethnic group even lower on the American racial totem pole than black people are.

Sir Kodiak
May 14, 2007


bushisms.txt posted:

Can you point in the movie where it fixes this issue?

There is a prominent black character that appears throughout the movie. But you obviously know that, so I won't pretend that's responsive. But can you clarify who "the others" are that aren't "black people"? Because, obviously, there's other black people in the movie than the neighbors at the start: the main character, for one.

bushisms.txt
May 26, 2004

Scroll, then. There are other posts than these.


Sir Kodiak posted:

There is a prominent black character that appears throughout the movie. But you obviously know that, so I won't pretend that's responsive. But can you clarify who "the others" are that aren't "black people"? Because, obviously, there's other black people in the movie than the neighbors at the start: the main character, for one.

That character spouts anti blm rhetoric, is he really the stand in for them? Or, like Jacoby, does the movie not state they're both unique in their stations?

Sir Kodiak
May 14, 2007


bushisms.txt posted:

That character spouts anti blm rhetoric, is he really the stand in for them? Or, like Jacoby, does the movie not state they're both unique in their stations?

No, that's fair, I don't think he's a stand-in for them. But I don't think that necessarily makes the orcs stand-ins for them, which I take as the implication.

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

bushisms.txt posted:

That character spouts anti blm rhetoric, is he really the stand in for them? Or, like Jacoby, does the movie not state they're both unique in their stations?

Daryl does not represent black people, he is a black man. Nick does not represent orcs, he is an orc. Neither representing 'their people,' they are both nonetheless members of distinct groups; just as Poison is Latino without 'representing' Latinos, and just as Latinos exist as a distinct group within the film that overlaps culturally with other poor and oppressed groups without standing in for or replacing them.

The argument has never been that the orcs, narratively, do not signify something apart from a made-up race and social group. The argument is that they are non-exclusively identifiable as subjects of systemic oppression and socioeconomic inequality. The reading that they represent-replace black folks is predicated upon the conspicuous dismissal of any point in the narrative in which black people are portrayed, which includes even the protagonist of the film. But the organization of the film's narrative around Daryl and Nick is a tacit example of the experiences of orcs and black folks in the film occurring parallel to and influenced by one another, without either being conflated with or replacing the other.

'Black folks with tusks' is a derisive minimization of what's actually occurring in the film, which is precisely the repudiation of reading the superficial signification of a distinct race as being the same as representation. There are plenty of black folks both in the destitute suburbs of LA as well as in the ranks of police, but the latter do not 'represent' the former. The antagonism of the film stems from a member of a non-exclusively identifiable, made-up race who joins the police and is treated with hostility because, to a certain extent, he is read as necessarily 'representing his people.' The conclusion of the film is that this culture is both oppressive, but also totally misguided in a black comic sense. Of course Nick doesn't represent his people, anymore than Daryl does. They've joined a new race, the only legitimate gang in the city.

bushisms.txt
May 26, 2004

Scroll, then. There are other posts than these.


I don't think anyone calling them black people with tusks is being literal, as noted will Smith is black. What they could be alluding to is how the movie replaces historically black roles with a fantasy character but still draped in their imagery. Black people don't pop up again in the movie accept for the female police captain. What you're left with is visual cliches standing in for the usual black character roles, while the Latinos never changed their script. This is friday 4: tolkien edition, if you wanna talk black comedies.

I bring up will Smith's original character choice because he still talks like his original character choice, and the movie barely plays to him being black other than the intro taking place in that neighborhood. A better writer might do more than roll out the tried and true us vs them but this time the skin is green not brown. Smith doesn't even try to play up that they're both looked down, it just plays as tone deaf. Which throws back to, are blacks oppressed in this world, or is it just a fictional world where we chose that lot/don't exist out side of an edit? The FLM comment would make more sense.

bushisms.txt fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Mar 20, 2018

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours
Will Smith doesn't believe in all that because he's an LAPD cop.

bushisms.txt
May 26, 2004

Scroll, then. There are other posts than these.


A white one yeah. Look at Chris dorner if you want to talk about black cops dealing with racism, let alone the lapd. That is to say, they're not ignorant of it or their place.

bushisms.txt fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Mar 20, 2018

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours
Chris Dorner is hardly my model for an effective advocate.

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bushisms.txt
May 26, 2004

Scroll, then. There are other posts than these.


Nothing to advocate. Dorner is just an extreme example that tosses the idea that the cops are a monolith regardless of color. It's well known in the community, a black cop has to be twice as vicious to prove their loyalty to the blue wall. Especially when the kkk is still actively recruiting in us police departments.

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