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In the movie Newt says something about how humans essentially terraformed the Earth for the Precursors since the dinosaur eras, which weren't their typical paradise for some reason. It was framed as a very obvious play on climate change and it's disastrous consequences. Does anyone remember the exact quote? From my recollection it didn't make any sense as a cause-and-effect statement since I think Newt said something about rising CO2 levels...which are the lowest(on a time scale that long)they've been in about 300 million years.
Jaramin fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 22:49
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ImpAtom posted:Hm, yes, some "toss" about climate change which is completely backed up by the film and is completely on the surface of the film, up to and including the Kaiju being classified like weather. The post you quoted was asserting that there is ambiguity in the film. I don't think the critics of the film in this thread are trying to deny the more popular interpretation of the movie as an innocuous entertainment so much as insist that that interpretation be nuanced by a consideration for why it is that the same characteristics that make the movie fun can be made to resemble something somewhat darker, politically.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:49
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Steve Yun posted:Okay, here's an alternate reading... That's not an alternate reading - we've established that dozens of pages ago. The question is how colonialism is defeated. How are the barriers broken? What is the form of the cooperation? It's insufficient to simply be against this abstract concept because, well, so was Darth Vader.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:50
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:A reading like one about climate change should be able to 'explain' the entire film, every scene, through the lens of that reading. O I strongly disagree with this. It is an important metaphor, and an important part of the film, but it is not everything. Texts are not puzzles where you find a magic key that solves everything -- they are not simple a to b metaphors all the way down. The weather imagery provides premise, provides a real-world referent and inspiration, but as I said before, this is not an essay titled "On Global Warming and How to Solve It," it's an action movie about monsters and concessions must be made for the existence of plot; and equally important it is a film that emphasizes the importance of personal connection and understanding on an individual level and which celebrates childhood play and imagination, neither of which have to do with the global warming metaphor which also exists in the film.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:50
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Steve Yun posted:Okay, here's an alternate reading... They are fighting against the 'sins of their own history' insofar as the liberal communist might fight the 'sins' of economic exploitation by selling canvas shoes to hipsters and installing suicide nets on factories. As another poster said, the climate change/weather phenomena metaphor is not mutually exclusive with reading the kaiju as abject in the sense that the very instruments created to fight the sins of the past are merely a more nuanced or specific reflection of that same colonizing structure. In the same way that (as posited earlier) the Democrat might vote for carbon taxes to fight climate change so his multinational toy company can continue to be the cause of extreme weather events that disproportionately affects the global south. So you have the first part exactly backwards in that the humans are the dark mirror (the life after life) of the abject kaiju. The kaiju can be representative of the war machine in the Deleuzian sense, but war is never the goal of the war machine until appropriate by the state apparatus. It goes back to the original sin.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:51
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Steve Yun posted:Okay, here's an alternate reading... That's the foundation of a solid reading, but because the protagonists don't express any guilt, it means you're still a bad person for wanting them to win.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:55
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Danger posted:They are fighting against the 'sins of their own history' insofar as the liberal communist might fight the 'sins' of economic exploitation by selling canvas shoes to hipsters and installing suicide nets on factories. As another poster said, the climate change/weather phenomena metaphor is not mutually exclusive with reading the kaiju as abject in the sense that the very instruments created to fight the sins of the past are merely a more nuanced or specific reflection of that same colonizing structure. In the same way that (as posited earlier) the Democrat might vote for carbon taxes to fight climate change so his multinational toy company can continue to be the cause of extreme weather events that disproportionately affects the global south. Uh, if there were effective legislation that severely taxed/capped carbon emissions such that we weren't outputting them at the insane rate we are now, we WOULDN'T be getting as many extreme weather events. That's the entire point. I disagree with the insistence that the only way to prevent global catastrophe is to reject industry altogether. That's Minimum Security territory.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:56
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:I didn't find climate change discussion satisfying because I don't think it properly incorporates a lot of very important elements of the film: the colonialist controllers of the kaiju, Newt's fetishistic appreciation of the kaiju (would this make any sense if the kaiju are equivalent to man-made weather patterns?), the fact that the film explicitly offers up environmental change as the only reason for the kaiju's survival and this is then never deal with (so the 'climate change' kaiju are eliminated without dealing with ACTUAL climate change... again, what does this mean) or any of the elements I put in my last post which I interpret as being steps towards making the kaiju more sympathetic and undermining the hurricane/machine analogies that the explicit text of the film offers. What could it mean to be able to mentally connect with a piece of weather? A reading like one about climate change should be able to 'explain' the entire film, every scene, through the lens of that reading. OK, you can disagree with my or SMG's or whoever's interpretation of the film - I'm not actually trying to claim some 'true meaning' - but at least they manage to encompass all the elements of the film, even if you don't agree with how those elements are interpreted. I don't even believe the climate change reading and it still is incredibly easy to argue. Every argument you make is incredibly literal. The "colonialist" controllers of the Kaiju are easily read as simply the force of nature itself. Newt even goes on a long rang about how we, humanity, have set the conditions for them to come in. They're colonialist in a literal sense but the metaphorical sense is that we terraformed the planet for them and now we're reaping the disastrous consequences. The Kaiju are not portrayed as sympathetic unless you reach pretty far. They are portrayed as massively destructive and, repeatedly, compared to forces of nature. There is exactly one scene where they are portrayed as "maybe possibly sympathetic" and as pointed out above, it's just as easy to read that as them doing something aggressive and dangerous. In fact, most of the focus on Kaiju-as-sympathetic intentionally ignores human suffering Every single scene, from start to finish, can be read that way. Name a scene and I'll come up with a reading for it that fits the climate change narrative and I don't even agree with that loving narrative. You're just utterly and intensely unwilling to view other viewpoints because you have absolutely no interest whatsoever in discussing the film, you just want to push a singleminded insulting agenda.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:59
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Bonaventure posted:I strongly disagree with this. It is an important metaphor, and an important part of the film, but it is not everything. Texts are not puzzles where you find a magic key that solves everything -- they are not simple a to b metaphors all the way down. The weather imagery provides premise, provides a real-world referent and inspiration, but as I said before, this is not an essay titled "On Global Warming and How to Solve It," it's an action movie about monsters and concessions must be made for the existence of plot; and equally important it is a film that emphasizes the importance of personal connection and understanding on an individual level and which celebrates childhood play and imagination, neither of which have to do with the global warming metaphor which also exists in the film. While I agree that texts are not puzzles, a metaphor is not just a similarity for the sake of itself. I think it is correct to ask what, beyond the fact that the kaiju are described and categorized like storms, contributes to reading them as metaphors for weather. What would be the point of likening them to weather, specifically in the context of global climate change, without meaning to say something about it? "Kaiju are big and scary and destructive and so are big scary destructive storms." That's fine for an opener, but the connection, in order to be worth making, should predicate something on that. This is different than suggesting that all one needs is an interpretive key to decipher the true meaning of the film, but rather to say that symbols rely on their context for meaning. To argue that the kaiju are storms will only have meaning worth discussing if something else in the movie comments on it. For example, maybe you could argue that in the face of climate change we should band together across national boundaries and recycle used automobiles and emphasize nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuel.
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Jul 29, 2013 23:03
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Lucasar posted:For example, maybe you could argue that in the face of climate change we should band together across national boundaries and recycle used automobiles and emphasize nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuel. Yes, this is what it says. It advocates a high level of multinational cooperation, which I suppose is the macro-version of the personal connection, but it doesn't go deeper than that, because the metaphor is monsters and to get rid of monsters you punch them to death. If you really stretch it then maybe you can make it about nuclear power considering Gipsy's reactor, but I feel very uncomfortable going there. SuperMechagodzilla posted:This is from a while back, but it's extremely telling that you define an 'absolutely fraudulent' reading as one concerning issues that fall outside the purview of the 'actual reality' experienced by 'culture at large'. So correct me if I'm wrong here, but what you seem to be saying is that when conducting criticism, you don't care about what is actually communicated to the audience of a film? Because you're only concerned with endorsing your politcal agenda? Bonaventure fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 23:04
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Gatts posted:The 30 Jaeger housing in just Hong Kong kind of got to me as well. I could understand they'd have many Jaegers for interception and to cover large ground but one Shatterdome housing that many does imply mass production and not all of them being unique. I would take it there wouldn't be that many Shatterdomes either, like maybe HK and the next one up in Tokyo and then up in Russia's Avacha Bay all the way across then to Alaska, B.C. and somewhere like Mexico? That's a ton of Jaegers. There are 23 Jaegers named in the script, but that's just the ones people mention; no reason for there not to be more that just never came up in conversation. In one of the clips in the history montage at the beginning of the movie, there's a shot of two Jaegers (Horizon Brave and another that looks the same) being built on what looks like an assembly line, which implies serial production, if not mass production; my guess would be somewhere around the rate of battleship production in the late '30s through WWII. Since most projects of that nature end up going overbudget and having the order scaled back, they probably didn't build enough to fill all the Shatterdomes to capacity, but they probably built a hell of a lot more than 23. Comedy option: only naming 23 out of the at least 240 they have housing for leaves room for your original character. The Jaeger Designer app results are canon. Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 23:06
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Bonaventure posted:Yes, this is what it says. It advocates a high level of multinational cooperation, which I suppose is the macro-version of the personal connection, but it doesn't go deeper than that, because the metaphor is monsters and to get rid of monsters you punch them to death. If you really stretch it then maybe you can make it about nuclear power considering Gipsy's reactor, but I feel very uncomfortable going there. It also advocates the idea that the rich and those in power have little interest in supporting these cooperative measures and will in fact actively work to cut back on measures that do work without care for who it hurts because they are convinced of their own safety due to wealth and distance. Which, y'know, is basically as blunt a metaphor as you can get when you literally have a country whose president has fistpumped and called themselves "the world's biggest polluter." Now, the film is unarguably pro-nuclear power at the same time. Gypsy Danger's 'heart' is spoken of in adoring and affectionate ways and it ends up being the solution to the problem. There's plenty of arguments to be made about how that is dangerous. (Especially after the recent incidents in Japan), but at the same time nuclear power isn't quite as easily written off as "welp gonna irradiate everything forever." ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 23:10
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Peruser posted:I think someone posted that the novelization says it's kaiju drift equipment. But if that is the case the movie really didn't get that across well. I believe I was the one who mentioned it. However I never said or meant to imply that the Kaiju was attempting to 'drift' with Newt. The Precursors don't drift with their Kaiju to control them, its part of their hive-mind connection. Drifting is solely something the humans do. It's a bit like saying Professor Xavier using telepathy is 'drifting', its a connection of the minds yes... but actual drifting is combining brain power to control functions of a robot with a side benefit of sharing thoughts. The sensory organ Otachi uses on Newt in the novelization is telepathic in nature, used by the Precursors to probe his mind. What the last few posts are griping about, Newt not appearing horrified by the Kaiju's tongue is also better covered in the book Newt had actually resigned himself to death in the shelter believing that if he sacrificed himself the Kaiju would then leave the others alone and was somewhat at peace with himself in that action. Then with the Precursors probing his mind he was forced past his initial fear and awe and his mind focused on resistance. What I've been sort of holding back and surprised hasn't come up is how Raleigh and Mako drifting made a more 'complete' Jaeger pilot. Raleigh and Yancy were brothers and very very similar minded. As a result they were insubordinate as a team, ignoring Pentecost's orders about the boat and so on. They worked well together but all the bad things in their characters was doubled. Same with Herc and Chuck, a father and son team with no balance. Chuck was strong willed and cocky and Herc had become passive (Chuck says in the galley that Herc had become more HIS co-pilot) but they too were all too willing to decide together to deviate from orders. Again these aren't things that made them ineffective in battle, as both teams held fairly good win records during the war. The Team of Raleigh and Mako however was a marriage of strengths that made up for the others weaknesses. Mako laid it out before the sparring match what was wrong with Raleigh's piloting. What was significant and proves the strength of their partnership isn't that they merely defeated the Kaiju and blew up the Anteverse Precursors, but they did all that in a Jaeger that was obsolete by TWO generations. In fact prior to the program being shut down they were going to release a new Jaeger variant of the Mark 5 that had even faster response times than the Striker Eureka. The Gyspy Danger had received some upgrades when it was rebuilt but it was nowhere close to the Striker's neural response times that made it so quick in battle. They had to be in tune and plot out their fighting moves much more in advance. But, you are saying to yourself, Raleigh and Yancy used Gypsy Danger to take down Kaiju with those same sort of limitations! Yes and no. The Kaiju were also evolving and over the course of 5 years, that meant they were becoming even faster and better able to destroy other Mark 3 Jaegers which is why Gypsy was the last. The Kaiju had completely outclassed the Mark 3s and everyone knew it. Pentecost only brought it back to use as interference for Striker Eureka's bomb run and he did not disguise that it was almost certainly a suicide run for Raleigh when he recruited him to pilot her again. Blackchamber fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 23:10
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Bonaventure posted:So correct me if I'm wrong here, but what you seem to be saying is that when conducting criticism, you don't care about what is actually communicated to the audience of a film? I'm actually in the audience. What is the actual audience?
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Jul 29, 2013 23:16
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ImpAtom posted:Hm, yes, some "toss" about climate change which is completely backed up by the film and is completely on the surface of the film, up to and including the Kaiju being classified like weather. The climate change/weather comparisons are interesting too, because if the monsters are the result of climate change like hurricanes/tornadoes/natural disasters, why isn't there more of an environmental message? I'm pretty sure you can't just nuke global warming and have it be over with. Even if you don't want to call the film fascist, it's definitely a reactionary kind of fantasy. They combat the symptoms but don't search for the cure. They build robots to fight hurricane/monsters, but do they talk about cutting carbon emissions? I disagree that the monsters are represented as "forces of nature," though. I mean, unless you count animals like lizards and gorillas as "forces of nature." Hurricanes don't bleed. Tornadoes don't show curiosity. Wildfires don't feel pain. Both Otachi and Leatherback displayed all of these things. Otachi tried to lick Charlie with its tongue and Leatherback played with Striker Eureka like a gorilla messing with a foreign object. There's something really weird about the way Leatherback plays with Eureka too. Why would a hyper-intelligent hive-mind species that can apparently open rifts between universes "examine" a Jaeger like, well, a gorilla? Even weirder is I actually got the impression that Leatherback was going to leave Eureka alone once its curiosity was satisfied, but the Australians had to do something really stupid. On that note, compare how Gipsy Danger treats the disabled Leatherback to how Leatherback treats the immobilized Striker Eureka. Leatherback "checked the pulse," and moved on. Gipsy Danger blows loving holes in Leatherback like it's Optimus Prime executing a Decepticon in the Michael Bay films.
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Jul 29, 2013 23:18
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Bonaventure posted:but it doesn't go deeper than that, because the metaphor is monsters and to get rid of monsters you punch them to death. If you really stretch it then maybe you can make it about nuclear power considering Gipsy's reactor, but I feel very uncomfortable going there. I think where the disagreement starts is with the assertion that "it doesn't go deeper." Why not? If you want to make a movie about climate change, why use a metaphor that has to be punched and killed? Climate change and storms cannot be punched or killed. I'd guess that the counterargument here is that the movie is not "about" climate change and that it is "about" monsters. I guess I would like to argue that it is impossible to talk about monsters without meaning something else by it. How we talk about monsters says a lot about how we see the world. Terry Eagleton (I believe it was him) said something to the effect of "conservatives believe that the other guys are monsters, liberals believe that there are no monsters, and the radicals believe that we are all monsters." I think it says a lot that SMG, to take a popular example, has a hard time with accepting that kaiju are simply monsters and insists on nuancing how we read them. Even if the monsters are weather patterns, shouldn't we respond to weather patterns with a little more nuance than punching them to death? Because the weather metaphor "doesn't go deeper" than that, as you pointed out, some curious viewers here seek a way of understanding the kaiju and the film that does go deeper. Because for whatever reason, they feel that punching problems to death doesn't go deep enough.
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Jul 29, 2013 23:20
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ImpAtom posted:I don't even believe the climate change reading and it still is incredibly easy to argue. Every argument you make is incredibly literal. Ok, excluding the intro bit: First paragraph: yes, I remember all that. The question is, what does having the controller aliens add to the film's meaning that simply "things are coming through the rift, they can survive here because of our folly of global warming" doesn't? It doesn't seem to contribute towards a climate change perspective at all. The kaiju may be read as forces of nature, simply wreaking destruction without thought or motive, but the controllers are clearly sentient planners. Is there some meaning to the results of climate change actually not occurring naturally, but having been instigated by outside forces? Second paragraph: already been over this in several posts, mentioning more than 'one scene'. Again, what meaning could it have for a human to be able to mentally connect with a 'hurricane'? What coherent message could this convey about climate change? You didn't give any reading as far as I can see; the first paragraph pretty much goes AGAINST a climate change narrative by portraying some alien outside force as really causing weather effects, while pollution/climate change merely enables them, then the second just says "no, you are wrong about them being sympathetic, mostly." Where is the climate change reading in that paragraph?
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Jul 29, 2013 23:23
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ImpAtom posted:You're just utterly and intensely unwilling to view other viewpoints because you have absolutely no interest whatsoever in discussing the film, you just want to push a singleminded insulting agenda. The guy you quoted hasn't said one insulting thing, or shut down anybody's point of view.
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Jul 29, 2013 23:23
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Maarak posted:Newton drifted with the Kaiju back-brain and got a ton of useful info, so why wouldn't the precursors try the same thing with him? He's seen the ins and outs of the Hong Kong Shatterdome for years and probably has all sorts of juicy info on the Jaeger program. Presumably a living Kaiju with two fully functional brains gives a better signal back to their dimension? I assumed they wanted Newt for strategic reasons, as well. What I find interesting to consider is how little the Precursor aliens actually know about humanity. Newt specifically uses the term, "vermin," to describe how they see us. But then, they also clearly see some incentive to capture or drift with Newt again - that is, specifically Newt, and not just any other person. We assume they want Newt because they suspect he's onto something strategically, but just as Newt's drift is the first glimpse humans are given of kaiju cognition, it's also the first view the Precursors have into what humanity is actually like. A lot of the ethical concerns people are bringing up here assume a humanlike or recognizable cognitive experience for kaiju - they're embodied subjectivities, who feel pain and possibly are enslaved. SMG's assertion is that they're subjugated under an unequal power dynamic, that operates under very humanlike rules. But that becomes complicated if they're a hive-mind. A hive-mind could be without any individual embodied subjectivities; the experience of the kaiju might be as part of a singular consciousness, where distinctions between subjective individuals doesn't even exist. In short, the kaiju could either be beasts of burden whipped into obedience, or they could be the Precursors themselves - bodies controlled remotely as part of a pan-species singular Ego. The death of a kaiju could be the death of a living being, or the existential equivalent of a paper cut. This doesn't invalidate an ethical argument about PPDC's response to kaiju, but complicates it in that the Marxist language in this thread becomes slightly inappropriate. If they were this variety of hive-mind, there would be no shackles to throw off of the kaiju because they are their own oppressor. Or rather, there is no oppressor or oppressed within Precursor society, just the collective. I brought this up earlier in the thread, but part of me wants to see this go into an Ender's Game territory, where ironically, the Formics don't understand how human sentience works, and don't get that an individual body's death actually entails the destruction of a conscious mind. The Formics are the ones who undergo an ethical revelation, when they're horrified by what they've done upon realizing it. It'd be kind of cool if the Precursors want Newt because they think he's the only conscious human mind that exists. Maybe they literally don't understand that human cognition is something more advanced and more nuanced than the "vermin" they expected.
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Jul 29, 2013 23:24
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Lucasar posted:The guy you quoted hasn't said one insulting thing, or shut down anybody's point of view. "Climate change toss" and talking about how it doesn't interest him isn't shutting down someone's point of view? Prism Mirror Lens posted:You didn't give any reading as far as I can see; the first paragraph pretty much goes AGAINST a climate change narrative by portraying some alien outside force as really causing weather effects, while pollution/climate change merely enables them, then the second just says "no, you are wrong about them being sympathetic, mostly." Where is the climate change reading in that paragraph? No, because you're forgetting one of the most important parts. They didn't do anything. They are the effect. This isn't "the evil alien overlords are MAKING THE PLANET WARMER." It is "Humanity has caused this." Again, this is why I pointed to SMG's obvious lack of knowledge of the genre. This is a fairly common thing for these sorts of films to do, taking an abstract and converting it into a physical being. To analyze this you have to go to something besides "I saw Gamera" and understand the context. SMG is focusing on The Wiz and things like that instead of actually tokusatsu, robot, and kaiju works except for the most blunt and surface ones. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 23:26
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Mecha Gojira posted:I'm pretty sure you can't just nuke global warming and have it be over with. You sort of can, insofar as nuclear power entails far less atmospheric emissions than many other energy sources. More to the point, by this reading, the film is technocratic in that it says that international cooperation and concentrated effort can overcome the problem, while politicians would rather treat it as an inevitability, and focus on protecting their own while saving face with ineffective stopgaps.
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Jul 29, 2013 23:32
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Just saw the film in 3D on an IMAX screen, and it was awesome. Okay, so the subtext game. In a way, the concept of "monsters" is inevitably tied to the concept of the Other. For me, PR is a very logical continuation of Del Toro's previous films: in his first, monsters are strange, incomprehensible dangers. In Blade II, but the vampires and their murderous offshoots are still a threat but they can be comprehended: they are humanised up till the point where the ending is not Blade vs. monster of the week (like in the first one) but something much more like a Shakespearian tragedy. Then comes Hellboy, in which the 'monsters' are the protagonists and we see the world from their perspective. They are completely, utterly humanised. Pacific Rim is the logical next step: humans become the monsters themselves. This is reflected in every bit of the movie. Hell, it's tagline is: "To fight monsters, we created monsters." The danger in this is best formulated by a (rather cliche) quote from Nietzsche: "He who fights monsters must take care not to become a monster himself." Every step of the fight against the Kaiju is a step towards monsterizing ourselves: we mimic their physique, we fight them on their own ground, and eventually we even mend our minds with them. This is not symbolical of recognising the monster in ourselves: it is a warning to what our path of excessive violence will eventually lead to. This is why, in the second half of the film, the road to victory can only be won by being aware of the implications of our transformation. The Kaiju have become us, and we have become the Kaiju: both are 'monsters' sent to fight from a distant commandcenter which, in its turn, is controlled by shadowy masters. In fact, the Kaiju represent some of the darkest sides of military might: the horrors of imperialism. Remember, their ultimate goal is not to destroy us, but to colonise the earth. Their destruction becomes a necessity not because they are the Other, but because we have learned to comprehend them and they are Other no more. What is so special about this is that, in this manner, Pacific Rim specifically functions because it separates the concept of 'monster' from the concept of 'Other.' This leads to the films finale, in which the ultimate goal is the destruction of all monsters. Not the misunderstood Other (the role monsters fulfilled in Del Toro's other films), but the Monster, the evil one. Not just the Kaiju, but the Jaegers as well. On the moment that the final Jaeger enters the Kaiju dimension, it perfectly mirrors the latter's arrival in our own. Mankind has created its own perfect image of a monster...and then destroys it. Thus, through a recognition of the monster in ourselves, we are capable of seeing it for what it is and dispose of it. (in this, it is interesting to note the look of understanding on the alien face before the other dimension is destroyed: they, too, recognise the monster). PR does not celebrate a victory of the military-industrial complex: it calls for an honest recognition of both its nature. Only by doing away with it can we achieve the goals which we hope it would accomplish: peace and protection. That is why I absolutely disagree with the posters who call this film pro-military or even facistic (because, remember, in the end it is understanding and diversity that saves us from a animalistic, 'might makes right' monster). In fact, I would go so far as to compare it with Pan's Labyrinth, in which the evil fairies are directly connected to the fascist stepfather. A Worrying Warlock fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 23:34
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ImpAtom posted:No, because you're forgetting one of the most important parts. They didn't do anything. They are the effect. This isn't "the evil alien overlords are MAKING THE PLANET WARMER." It is "Humanity has caused this." Again, this is why I pointed to SMG's obvious lack of knowledge of the genre. This is a fairly common thing for these sorts of films to do, taking an abstract and converting it into a physical being. To analyze this you have to go to something besides "I saw Gamera" and understand the context. SMG is focusing on The Wiz and things like that instead of actually tokusatsu, robot, and kaiju works except for the most blunt and surface ones. What on earth gives you the impression that I read the monsters as non-metaphorical?
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Jul 29, 2013 23:35
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:What on earth gives you the impression that I read the monsters as non-metaphorical? Because you clearly don't. You have no grasp whatsoever on the monsters and in fact you break some of your own rules when discussing them. When you bring up Gamera, you bring up Gamera as a massive whole, taking each film from different eras and mishmashing them together without care, thought, or context. You do the same with Godzilla as well. You treat them like a Wookiepedia writer, showing no respect for the individual films. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 23:37
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Bongo Bill posted:You sort of can, insofar as nuclear power entails far less atmospheric emissions than many other energy sources. But isn't the nuke itself at the end of the film just a stopgap too? Not like they cured Global Warming on the other side of The Rift. Even when Ultraman/Kamen Rider/Super Sentai defeats the pollution monster, they still make sure that the children know how to properly recycle or whatever.
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Jul 29, 2013 23:37
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I think we've finally reached the point in CineD where nobody can tell if the analysis of a film is meant to be intentionally ironic and melodramatic or not. 
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Jul 29, 2013 23:37
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Maxwell Lord posted:Uh, if there were effective legislation that severely taxed/capped carbon emissions such that we weren't outputting them at the insane rate we are now, we WOULDN'T be getting as many extreme weather events. That's the entire point. I disagree with the insistence that the only way to prevent global catastrophe is to reject industry altogether. That's Minimum Security territory. Even if the Democrat did actually want to pass some sort of carbon tax legislation (which in reality they have continually paid voice to in primaries and flatly shot down any attempt) it still amounts to nothing more than a sort of buying of indulgences, making the actual machinery of exploitation run a bit smoother but mostly unaffected. The very notion is actually pretty insightful of how the liberal imagines his ideological space in which it is easier to imagine the end of the world before the end of capitalism. ImpAtom posted:I don't even believe the climate change reading and it still is incredibly easy to argue. Every argument you make is incredibly literal. Humanity setting the stage for the earth to become a blighted colonial periphery is a pretty stirring message as well.
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Jul 29, 2013 23:40
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ImpAtom posted:"Climate change toss" and talking about how it doesn't interest him isn't shutting down someone's point of view? My dissatisfaction with the climate change idea does not stop you talking about it, nor does the rather mild word "toss". In fact I am discussing it with you right now! Humanity did not open the rift. The controllers opened the rift before humans even existed, as explained in the pretty funny bit about dinosaurs, and literally created the kaiju as soldiers. Humanity provided the context in which the kaiju could CONTINUE to exist, they did not bring them into existence. While context is important, and I think we are all agreed that the kaiju can represent an abstract concept made flesh, I think what this particular film does is more important, since we are analysing this particular film. The question is, yet again, what does the presence of controller aliens bring to the film, why don't the kaiju just arrive out of the rift on their own because of this climate change? Why is this a discovery made during the film, rather than something revealed from the beginning? A class-based reading says that it places the kaiju into the position of oppressed rather than oppressor, turning the initially irreconcilable, 'force of nature' enemy into something which we can begin to identify with, even support. What does the climate change reading say? Also bear in mind that the ending of the film is incredibly dissonant if the setup is "humans caused this with pollution" and the ending is "humans nuke aliens which did not cause pollution in order to solve problem" Does anyone want to tackle the meaning of neural interfacing with global warming yet by the way Prism Mirror Lens fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 23:40
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ImpAtom posted:Because you clearly don't. You have no grasp whatsoever on the monsters and in fact you break some of your own rules when discussing them. When you bring up Gamera, you bring up Gamera as a massive whole, taking each film from different eras and mishmashing them together without care, thought, or context. You do the same with Godzilla as well. I cite specific films when not dealing in generalities that apply to most or all films. I can talk about both Man Of Steel and Superman, the character, without people being confused. So, what's the context? At what point do I not treat the monsters as metaphorical characters? Use words to explain your thoughts. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 23:45
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:Also bear in mind that the ending of the film is incredibly dissonant if the setup is "humans caused this with pollution" and the ending is "humans nuke aliens which did not cause pollution in order to solve problem" Well the humans didn't know pollution was the reason they were coming over up until the beginning of the second act. Kinda hard to solve pollution in a month. The aliens are a different problem the humans solve first.
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Jul 29, 2013 23:47
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:The question is, yet again, what does the presence of controller aliens bring to the film? Why is this a discovery made during the film, rather than something revealed from the beginning? A class-based reading says that it places the kaiju into the position of oppressed rather than oppressor, turning the initially irreconcilable, 'force of nature' enemy into something which we can begin to identify with, even support. What does the climate change reading say? Because you're still ignoring what happens in that scene. Newt drifts and his revelation is that the Kaiju are being sent because of what we've done to the planet. It frames exactly what is going on and why it is going on. It focuses on the idea that we have to look to the source, not merely the effect, in order to solve the problem, and the film's argument is largely one of cooperation and international unity. Prism Mirror Lens posted:Also bear in mind that the ending of the film is incredibly dissonant if the setup is "humans caused this with pollution" and the ending is "humans nuke aliens which did not cause pollution in order to solve problem" This would be true if the problem was solved with them just nuking it, but it wasn't. In fact if they'd just tried to go nuke it, they would have failed miserably, if they'd done it alone they would have failed miserably, and so-on. Even the act actual of detonating the self-destruct is "easy as falling", it was the group effort of getting there which was the challenging part. The argument the film makes is that international cooperation towards a united goal is the only way to solve the problem. SuperMechagodzilla posted:I cite specific films when not dealing in generalities that apply to most or all films. I can talk about both Man Of Steel and Superman, the character, without people being confused. You referred to "Gamera, friend to children" and "Gamera, the biologically-created warrior" as the same character as if they were in the same film, which is both not metaphorical and straight-out wrong when analyzing them. You're literal when you want to be and when it benefits your purpose.
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Jul 29, 2013 23:51
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Danger posted:Even if the Democrat did actually want to pass some sort of carbon tax legislation (which in reality they have continually paid voice to in primaries and flatly shot down any attempt) it still amounts to nothing more than a sort of buying of indulgences, making the actual machinery of exploitation run a bit smoother but mostly unaffected. The very notion is actually pretty insightful of how the liberal imagines his ideological space in which it is easier to imagine the end of the world before the end of capitalism. So you're not actually concerned if we do anything about climate change unless it serves the larger purpose of overthrowing the system. Which would be fine if anyone actually had an actionable plan for A) overthrowing capitalism and B) replacing it with something that's as benevolent as we imagine, without the problems that communism 1.0 had. I mean, I'm not opposed to revolution in theory. I'm just concerned about who precisely we'll be lining up and shooting and whether that will actually do any good.
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Jul 29, 2013 23:52
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Xealot posted:I assumed they wanted Newt for strategic reasons, as well. I don't really put too much weight on the 'strategic reasons' idea. Newt mentions that the Kaiju has different classes, the dinosaurs were scouts for the Precursors to determine what stage our planet was in, and the Kaiju they had fought thus far had all been ones sent to skirmish and harass us. We hadn't even seen their extermination Kaiju yet. In Newt's second drift with the Kaiju and the Precursor spoke to his mind the alien wasn't at all concerned, they were so sure they were going to win, and he merely impressed upon him that they were coming to wipe them all out and there wasn't anything they could do about it. There was no malice or hostility behind the thoughts at all, just a statement of fact. This doesn't sound to me like someone who's concerned with his enemies strategies and plans. The Precursors knew we were an intelligent race. They had conquered worlds for millions of years and had studied the course that intelligent life took. They knew what we would do to our planet eventually, so after the dinosaurs had scouted the earth they knew exactly how long to wait until we would make the planet suitable for them. This isn't them thinking they are kicking over an ant hill, their plan was always genocide. Why do I think they took an interest in Newt? I think they were merely curious about how he had been able to merge with their hive-mind. Not curious enough to abduct him or spare him, but enough to want to take another look. The book isn't even specific about what the Precursors tried to pull from his mind, just that he had resisted and he refused to give them anything. I would further guess that because the drift doesn't give them access to ALL his memories the same as Raleigh only saw one of Mako's memories and not her life story, that they didn't know Newt had anything strategic to give.
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Jul 30, 2013 00:00
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Peruser posted:Well the humans didn't know pollution was the reason they were coming over up until the beginning of the second act. Kinda hard to solve pollution in a month. Well, exactly! Ironically this post gets way closer to the conclusion of an environmentalist reading than ones which are trying to attempt it - what would the actual MESSAGE about attitudes towards climate change be ("big monsters are destructive like global warming, global warming is bad" is not a message) if the 'real cause' is pollution, but the film's proposed solution specifically is not to tackle climate change because it appears impossible even with international cooperation? Like, ok then, if this is a fantasy film about tackling climate change - even in the fantasy we can't really do it, instead the fantasy involves eviscerating stand-ins for, or the most obvious symptoms of, climate change while ignoring the cause because it is too difficult to deal with.
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Jul 30, 2013 00:00
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ImpAtom posted:You referred to "Gamera, friend to children" and "Gamera, the biologically-created warrior" as the same character as if they were in the same film, which is both not metaphorical and straight-out wrong when analyzing them. You're literal when you want to be and when it benefits your purpose. Gamera in Guardian of the Universe is implicitly a friend to all children. It doesn't need to be explained through exposition that Gamera is fuckin rad. He saves all children (literally every children) from being devoured by giant bird creatures. Why am I explaining this. How did you think that was a checkmate. It seems folks are hung up on the monsters meaning one thing or another, when I made the (apparently radical) observation that they represent two or more things - much like how Hurricane Katrina was a disaster caused by both climate change and George Bush's indifference towards black people. Two things. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Jul 30, 2013 |
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Jul 30, 2013 00:02
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Maxwell Lord posted:So you're not actually concerned if we do anything about climate change unless it serves the larger purpose of overthrowing the system. This is an odd line of reasoning to me, Danger is asserting(at least to me) that the only way to solve the problem is tackling the cause in earnest, put simply. Not pander to the contributor of that cause in treating symptoms with ineffectual methods because the side effects aren't geographically or chronology inconvenient. If you can't make that true rejection of the ideal that exacerbates the problem how can we ever hope to find a solution? The idea isn't in the end to line up and start shooting, though that isn't to say violence wouldn't be a factor but it's silly to think that in that power dynamic the significant militarized resistance lies with the oppressed. When talking about the implications in regards to Pacific Rim, SMG/Danger/Prism et al are saying the only way make a meaningful and empathic connection with the other is for those protecting the interest of the oppressors to realise they are a reflection of this other. e:In case anyone jumps on this detail as wrong, the Jaeger program was funded("owned") by the Romey like caricature(plus other governments) that they were cut when no longer needed(or effective for that matter), once the rich moved further inland, illustrates why we think the Jaeger program course of action was a flawed one, for the characters, to identify as the best way to solve the conflict. brawleh fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Jul 30, 2013 |
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Jul 30, 2013 00:08
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Mecha Gojira posted:But isn't the nuke itself at the end of the film just a stopgap too? Not like they cured Global Warming on the other side of The Rift. Even when Ultraman/Kamen Rider/Super Sentai defeats the pollution monster, they still make sure that the children know how to properly recycle or whatever. Explicitly saying DON'T POLLUTE would risk turning it from an action film to a sermon. It's just a metaphor, not a full-scale allegory, but if you want to carry on along these lines.... The kaiju maybe are not climate change itself, but the consequences thereof. It's saying that, in the face of catastrophes that we unwittingly invited, moving forward is an option; we punch the catastrophes in the face (so to speak) until we know enough to come up with a practical plan for using the power of the atom to stop them from happening. More generally, maybe it also says that the ability of humans to work together and rise to a challenge is something which should be glorified unreservedly, even when the challenge in question is something that humans foolishly caused in the first place. "Humanistic" is the word for this film.
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Jul 30, 2013 00:14
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brawleh posted:This is an odd line of reasoning to me, Danger is asserting(at least to me) that the only way to solve the problem is tackling the cause in earnest, put simply. Not pander to the contributor of that cause in treating symptoms with ineffectual methods because the side effects aren't geographically or chronology inconvenient. If you can't make that true rejection of the ideal that exacerbates the problem how can we ever hope to find a solution? But in the case of global warming the cause is not "we have industry", the cause is that industry is currently best served by burning hydrocarbons. Regulating emissions and developing alternative energy sources would in fact prevent global warming if such things were carried out in earnest and en masse as opposed to the compromises we have to make now. If we make the cause "we have industry", then what's the solution? Get rid of electricity and manufactured products? Head back to an agrarian lifestyle? I'd rather NOT give ammo to the "Agenda 21" conspiracy theorists who think that building bike lanes is the first step in hurling us into a new dark age.
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Jul 30, 2013 00:22
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:Well, exactly! Ironically this post gets way closer to the conclusion of an environmentalist reading than ones which are trying to attempt it - what would the actual MESSAGE about attitudes towards climate change be ("big monsters are destructive like global warming, global warming is bad" is not a message) if the 'real cause' is pollution, but the film's proposed solution specifically is not to tackle climate change because it appears impossible even with international cooperation? The message of Godzilla is "big monsters are destructive like nuclear warfare, nuclear warfare is bad" a message is a message even if it's not an intelligent or insightful one. Our protagonists don't need to solve global warming, we do.
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Jul 30, 2013 00:24
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Maxwell Lord posted:If we make the cause "we have industry", then what's the solution? The issue isn't that we have industry, but that this industry demands constant, unsustainable growth. Even if we were to, for example, replace absolutely everything with renewables/nuclear/whatever, there would still be a drive (perhaps even more immense than before now that the moral element of global warming is removed from the picture) to produce as much as possible for as cheaply as possible, something that the world cannot sustain indefinitely. Global warming and its effects are simply, like the kaiju, the most obvious manifestation of this problem in the public mind.
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Jul 30, 2013 00:26
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