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Oligopsony posted:On a completely different note - and my apologies if this has already been mentioned in the last 200+ pages - but it occurs to me that the huge chunk of twins and triplets trained from a young age at bodily coordination are probably ballet dancers. This really makes PR's Bechdel Test failure more egregious. What the Christ.
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Aug 14, 2013 19:03
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xxEightxx posted:What the Christ. You see, Bechdel test is law! If a movie or a show doesnt comply to the Bechdel test, it has PROBLEMS!
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Aug 14, 2013 19:15
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The kaiju clearly talk to each other.
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Aug 14, 2013 19:17
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euphronius posted:The kaiju clearly talk to each other. Only about jaegers.
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Aug 14, 2013 19:17
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Clipperton posted:Only about jaegers. I'm pretty sure Otachi and Leatherback were discussing their dreams and hopes for the future.  Their dreams were about eating more humans, and they hoped they could eat humans in the future.
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Aug 14, 2013 19:24
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WickedHate posted:I'm pretty sure Otachi and Leatherback were discussing their dreams and hopes for the future. They also discussed what to name Otachi Jr. They settled on Jesus.
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Aug 14, 2013 19:50
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Oligopsony posted:On a completely different note - and my apologies if this has already been mentioned in the last 200+ pages - but it occurs to me that the huge chunk of twins and triplets trained from a young age at bodily coordination are probably ballet dancers. This really makes PR's Bechdel Test failure more egregious. How good are ballet dancers going to be in a fight, though?
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Aug 14, 2013 20:13
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Annan posted:How good are ballet dancers going to be in a fight, though? uhhhh obviously awesome???
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Aug 14, 2013 20:33
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Oligopsony posted:On a completely different note - and my apologies if this has already been mentioned in the last 200+ pages - but it occurs to me that the huge chunk of twins and triplets trained from a young age at bodily coordination are probably ballet dancers. This really makes PR's Bechdel Test failure more egregious. A simplistic "test" to determine if something features complex and/or realistic women instead of doing some critical analysis yourself is something I really hate. Every single thing has to be boiled down to some crap buzzwords instead of thinking about it. The "Bechdel test" and the complete over-reliance on it everywhere simply annoys the hell out of me.
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Aug 14, 2013 20:34
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Annan posted:How good are ballet dancers going to be in a fight, though? Being a ballerina actually takes a ridiculous amount of skill, strength and coordination.
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Aug 14, 2013 20:35
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The result of any given piece of media on the Bechdel Test is less interesting and useful than the knowledge that it exists.
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Aug 14, 2013 20:37
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Dred Cosmonaut posted:Being a ballerina actually takes a ridiculous amount of skill, strength and coordination. Presumably they'd have to enlist in the military though. I assumed from the background story that the various militaries just chose people in their ranks who were fairly compatible.
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Aug 14, 2013 20:54
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Dred Cosmonaut posted:Being a ballerina actually takes a ridiculous amount of skill, strength and coordination. Jaegers can't kick, except for typhoon. You can also say the same about just about anything athletic.
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Aug 14, 2013 21:19
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Bongo Bill posted:The result of any given piece of media on the Bechdel Test is less interesting and useful than the knowledge that it exists. Exactly. It's interesting how rarely it happens but it's not as useful as an actual test. Plus in the comic strip it's from, I believe the character who actually does apply it is written as often being kind of insufferable because "How can we enjoy this picnic when the Supreme Court stole the election for Bush?!" It's an interesting idea but it's not being advocated as an actual rule to follow.
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Aug 14, 2013 21:24
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Clipperton posted:Only about jaegers. Jaegers are female.
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Aug 14, 2013 21:31
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teagone posted:Jaegers are female. Hang on, I thought they were blokes because they have cocks on their arms, what'd I miss? Also I have a fat racist uncle who's a dead ringer for Cherno Alpha.
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Aug 14, 2013 21:54
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Bongo Bill posted:The result of any given piece of media on the Bechdel Test is less interesting and useful than the knowledge that it exists. I was talking to my friend about this the other day, and we both basically agreed that the results of the test don't matter that much on a individual basis. For example, Pacific Rim fails the test because it's second most important [human] female character doesn't have any real lines and minimal screen time. But I would hesitate to call it sexist because Mako is probably one of the better female leads out of hollywood in recent years. She has actual agency as a character, where the female gaze scene was less of a "isn't Protagonist McWhitebread so cool and perfect"; but instead a scene that shows that she's human and likes boys just like a majority of the women watching the movie. Albeit there are still problems, like the fact that Protagonist McWhitebread has to save her right before the heroic sacrifice, which isn't entirely regressive (albeit, not progressive either) but considering how for the rest of the movie it treats her respectfully and competent makes it seem a little suspect. Overall, Pacific Rim a movie that doesn't pass the Bechdel test, but it's portrayal of a lead makes it at least less sexist than most movies that fail if not an exception. An example of a film that doesn't pass, but could be called sexist would be Drive. Despite being one of my favorite films of all time, it doesn't even pass the second rule of two women talking to each other. The first woman you see is the love interest who is portrayed as mostly a trophy for the nameless protagonist; while the second most important character has barely any lines, is threatened by the protagonist, and killed immediately afterwards by former allies. The other women seen are strippers who watch a scene of torture, then return to work a few moments later. The love interest and her child are mostly shown as a gate-way to a more normal life, and due to events in the film are taken away when they are threatened by the double-life the protagonist hides from them. Admittedly Refin's style and themes that are common to all of his films seem to make this kind of sexist portrayal a mostly deliberate technique to emulate classic crime fiction and to provoke questions about the nature of masculinity. That said, reading what is only on the page, Drive is a movie with sexist subtext despite (or perhaps because) of it's quality. That said, the context of the film medium as a whole and the low bar that the test has speaks volumes about the the shocking number of films that do not pass. I'd say it's an effective tool to make those aware of it's existence to think about female portrayal in film. I'd say it's actually the best thing to make more  consumers of film to be able to quantify sexism, and to think about a more abstract concept like feminism in more concrete way. Though it's a double-edged sword since it can make the process of gender equality seem more simple just by having all films feature two women talk about something other than a man.So all-in-all I just said what you just said, only with far too many words.
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Aug 14, 2013 22:34
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It's good though, personally I think the Strong Female Protagonist line of critique is way more interesting in relation to the idea of strength in characters(regardless of gender). In Pacific Rim we have Mako learning to communicate through very masculine language(sparring for drift compatibility) to be accepted as a Jaeger pilot, it's similar to glib criticisms of women in the work place/corporate environment. It's a man's environment so you best not disrupt that harmony with your womanly wiles and learn to behave like a man(sexism is just joke, like on TopGear). Some simplistic metric(Bechdel test) will simply be subverted in the ways you talked about, like ticking a box, so we can literally proclaim sexism is over! This train of thought ties into Mako's relationship with the Kaiju along side the visual phallic and yonic symbolism. It isn't to say Mako's not a strong character, far from it, more about just trying to be aware of the movie and it's portrayal of characters in a wider context.
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Aug 14, 2013 23:14
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Annan posted:How good are ballet dancers going to be in a fight, though? Kimberly from the Power Rangers was a trained ballet dancer 
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Aug 14, 2013 23:21
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computer parts posted:Presumably they'd have to enlist in the military though. I assumed from the background story that the various militaries just chose people in their ranks who were fairly compatible. Nope actually. The PPDC recruited who it could find to pilot the Jaegers, whether they were former military (like Pentecost) or just two brothers who thought they had a shot (the Becketts). If anyone wasn't already trained though, then they got trained by athletes, martial artists, etc.
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Aug 14, 2013 23:37
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I keep seeing people say Mako is a feminist character, she had agency, etc. What, precisely, was her agency? It seemed clear enough to me that without the interrupting force of the male lead, she would have been prepared to continually give up her goal under the command of the other male main character. She is shown to be able to fight, but then has to be fought for later on (and in that moment that I suddenly understood 500 Days of Summer). When I think of her, the images I get are mainly her being rendered speechless or inanimate; when she sees a man undressed, when she is fought over, when she drifts, when she passes out at the end. I felt absolutely nothing that I could identify with, as a woman, and even resented the film's attempt to show her as feminist in the most simplistic, male-oriented way - she punches things in a giant robot, just like the boys do, therefore...! It's a Sarkeesian-level understanding of feminism, imagining that elements or 'tropes' themselves (the presence of prostitutes in a film, whether or not a woman fights, whether the guy gets the girl in the end) adjusts some feminism metre. (And I'm about to go to bed so now I'm not going to type anything on it, but I could and did identify with the main female character in Drive; in the elevator scene for example you are even seeing things from her perspective to feel her rejection of his violence, whereas even when we literally explore Mako's memories, it is from the man's perspective) Half the reason I went to see this film was because people were saying, you know, she's just like Ripley! How great to see a minority character in a powerful, assertive role! Yeah, my arse.
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Aug 14, 2013 23:37
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I am pretty much with you on that. I thought Mako was a badly handled character.
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Aug 14, 2013 23:51
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Mako is decidedly not a strong feminist character, since even moments where she would reasonably have agency were robbed from her by a dependence on either a man to stand up for her or a father figure to give her permission. She was even rescued in the end, mostly to give Raleigh room to trigger his Chekhov's Gun ability to handle Jaegers alone. Not that this showed much of that, either, as he was mostly just setting off a self-destruct sequence. In spite of this, it's sort of sad that she can be rightly said to be better than a lot of female characters in various media in spite of it. In the face of a lack of agency and a dependence on male characters, she feels competent and largely without being undermined. She actually got some moments to shine, and the story is her story. It's just a shame it let her down.
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Aug 15, 2013 00:07
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Decius posted:A simplistic "test" to determine if something features complex and/or realistic women instead of doing some critical analysis yourself is something I really hate. Every single thing has to be boiled down to some crap buzzwords instead of thinking about it. The "Bechdel test" and the complete over-reliance on it everywhere simply annoys the hell out of me. The entire point of the Bechdel test is to take an incredibly simple request and demonstrate how few things can pass it. It's illustrative of a complete lack of reliance on the most basic levels of quality control. It's not a replacement for criticism, it's a tool. It's not a buzzword because it actually means a thing. But here in Cinema Discusso, Discusso Annoys The Hell Out Of Me. The more substantive criticisms of film are box office grosses and the burger-brain ratio. I suppose another way to look at it is: are you annoyed because you like nothing that passes the Bechdel test? Do you think that makes you a bad person?
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Aug 15, 2013 01:27
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SuperMechaGodzilla: Please provide textual evidence/support that the kaiju, the exterminator-death-cult, are not in fact the facists. All we know about them the text is that they're following orders, operate as a hivemind, rove from planet to planet consuming all resources, and were initially the aggressors against the humans. The fact that they are a hivemind seems to contradict your suggestion that the humans could unite with some Kaiju-proletariat. "Why not conclude that they are hyperintelligent and empathetic - millions of giant interconnected brains, when one is hurt the whole group feels it, etc.?" We cannot conclude that because every action that the kaiju take in the film contradicts characterizing them as empathetic, and by admitting that they're working off of a merely interconnected brain you've admitted that they're far more authoritarian than the humans are. Reading the Kaiju as fascists is also supported by del Toro's record of making films where the 'good guys' fight the fascists. You posited that the humans have a third-way positionism without accounting for the fact that the Jaeger project lost funding. Watching President Romney talk about budgeting and going for a cheaper (also, totally ineffective) solution reeks of neoliberal quibbling rather than a strong state-controlled economy. I think you're also falsely equivocating anthropocentrism with ethno-centrism. There's more textual evidence to support the human resistance as a multiculturalal, globalized neoliberal coalition than as fascists. The fact that the White Male Savior can neurolink with the Mysterious Asian Girl, despite their widely divergent backgrounds, hardly supports your fascist interpretation. Hell, the fact that there's a strong female character alone is reason enough to make your theory look silly. You claimed that the japanese character was merely assimilated, but assimilation across racial/cultural boundaries is in no way a feature of fascism. The two characters that are presented as heroes, the main jaeger guy and the scientist guy, fall into a sort of 'maverick' archetype rather than being lockstep authoritarians. Just because they represent youth, strength, and technocapitalism doesn't inherently make them fascists. Please provide better textual evidence of your claims concerning the nature of the Kaiju because as I see it they come off as the fascists and your 'communist solution' comes off as liberal hand-wringing, like "Why don't we just see what the extermination crew has to say guys? Don't use violence, let's be reasonable here?" I'd also like to see an explanation of why the human resistance is fascist that doesn't involve confusing anthropocentrism with ethno-centrism, making wildly unsupported claims about the nature of the human's mode of production, or attributing violence against the other as a feature unique to fascism.
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Aug 15, 2013 01:28
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Debunk posted:SuperMechaGodzilla: Why prove a negative when there's no support for the assertion that they are fascist besides that people died? You've also missed a few points. Stacker is clearly opposed to President Romney, representing an entirely different group. I've been very obviously talking about Stacker's resistance. I'm also obviously not a pacifist. But anyways, I've already gone over how the precursor society matches the neoliberal 'end of history' and the related 'four horsemen' - of worldwide ecological crisis, economic imbalance, biogenetic revolution, and social rupture - in a way that matches Man Of Steel and countless other films. As gone over before, the precursors are a reflection of life under president Romney, and there's the imagery of the rise of authoritarian capitalism in Russia and China with the pairing of Cherno/Leatherback and Crimson/Otachi. It honestly doesn't seem as though you're read what I've written, as I've already addressed pretty much everything already. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Aug 15, 2013 |
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Aug 15, 2013 03:11
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As gone over before, uh, uh, as I already said, uh, pay attention, uh, [turns around, bends over, and looses an extraordinarily long fart that, after a few dozen seconds, erupts into a Wayans brothers level comedy spray of stinky dookie flecks right in your dumb fat face, which happens to look exactly like the face owned by the dad in Matilda]
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Aug 15, 2013 03:36
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The little question mark under his avatar is a convenient way to review prior posts on the subject if you are really interested in engaging his points.
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Aug 15, 2013 03:56
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Literally every point had already been covered in an earlier post. It's like if I challenged you to tweet a brief inanity.
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Aug 15, 2013 03:59
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Annan posted:How good are ballet dancers going to be in a fight, though? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=1Q3stFYLVa4&t=113
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Aug 15, 2013 05:27
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WickedHate posted:Kimberly from the Power Rangers was a trained ballet dancer Speaking of, the sequel should go full Sentai. Like, on top of category 5s, the Masters learn to build much smaller, human-sized, Kaiju in larger numbers. In response, the Pan-Pacific Defense Coalition, after some leadership changes following the first movie, modifies the Yeager suit so that it also doubles as an exoskeleton that amplifies the ranger's physical prowess so that they can fight these smaller Kaiju without the unnecessary property damage that a straight up Yeager response would cause. Yes, I know "human-sized Kaiju" is an oxymoron because Kaiju literally means big monster. I just don't know what else to call them. Of course, there's still going to be cat 5 Kaiju pouring out of the rift, and they're only going to get larger. To level the playing field, a gigantic fuckoff Yeager is constructed. Think Slattern-sized. The increased scale means it has to be piloted by five rangers engaged in a massive clusterfuck of a drift. Rangers may or may not be teenagers and they may or may not have attitude. why yes i did put too much thought into this
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Aug 15, 2013 05:35
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Binary Badger posted:I was crazed enough to watch PR at three different IMAX theaters and one in regular 3D and ATMOS surround sound, all in the NY area. I ran into a similar problem at one IMAX I went to in Ontario, CA. It was very odd, the surround was great as was the 3D, however the center channel, or whatever they'd call the channel where the dialect comes out of, was very muffled. It was the most peculiar thing. I went and complained twice about it but nothing ever got done. At another IMAX I saw PR at in Riverside, CA. Everything went flawlessly. Odd how quality varies but for the price of a IMAX ticket it should be perfect every time. Oh well, I think i'm done at seeing it 5 times at the theater...maybe. Great flick but i'm afraid nothing will do it justice at home. This movie was meant to be seen on the big screen.
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Aug 15, 2013 05:49
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Level Slide posted:
Actually, kaiju just means "weird monster". Daikaiju is what means "big weird monster".
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Aug 15, 2013 05:50
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Level Slide posted:Speaking of, the sequel should go full Sentai. Like, on top of category 5s, the Masters learn to build much smaller, human-sized, Kaiju in larger numbers. In response, the Pan-Pacific Defense Coalition, after some leadership changes following the first movie, modifies the Yeager suit so that it also doubles as an exoskeleton that amplifies the ranger's physical prowess so that they can fight these smaller Kaiju without the unnecessary property damage that a straight up Yeager response would cause. Of course the smaller Jaegers have to be able to join up and form the giant fuckoff Jaeger.
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Aug 15, 2013 06:55
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Maxwell Lord posted:Of course the smaller Jaegers have to be able to join up and form the giant fuckoff Jaeger. They could call it the Zone-Oriented Reactionary Defense Protocol. ZORD for short.
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Aug 15, 2013 07:42
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:I keep seeing people say Mako is a feminist character, she had agency, etc. What, precisely, was her agency? It seemed clear enough to me that without the interrupting force of the male lead, she would have been prepared to continually give up her goal under the command of the other male main character. She is shown to be able to fight, but then has to be fought for later on (and in that moment that I suddenly understood 500 Days of Summer). When I think of her, the images I get are mainly her being rendered speechless or inanimate; when she sees a man undressed, when she is fought over, when she drifts, when she passes out at the end. I felt absolutely nothing that I could identify with, as a woman, and even resented the film's attempt to show her as feminist in the most simplistic, male-oriented way - she punches things in a giant robot, just like the boys do, therefore...! It's a Sarkeesian-level understanding of feminism, imagining that elements or 'tropes' themselves (the presence of prostitutes in a film, whether or not a woman fights, whether the guy gets the girl in the end) adjusts some feminism metre. Ripley was awesome because she acted like a strong man! (I'm so sorry)But seriously for the sake of argument, some of those things could have not necessarily meant "repressed or minimized female character". Her agency could have been her fighting for what she wanted, and earning it with skill and persistence, especially since I don't think she went through standard training like the others. It could've been sheer luck that her side of the control thingie had its oxygen broken, if it had been his side would she have known where Gipsy Dangers nuclear manual switch thingie was to trip it thereby making hundreds of nerds cry out "how did she know that she barely piloted it!"? Perhaps the reason she was meek before was because it was a cultural thing, not a female thing. When she drifted and "screwed up" it was her first time, what about her being way better at it barely no time later? I think it depends on how you want to see it. OldPueblo fucked around with this message at 07:57 on Aug 15, 2013 |
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Aug 15, 2013 07:51
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:and there's the imagery of the rise of authoritarian capitalism in Russia and China with the pairing of Cherno/Leatherback and Crimson/Otachi It baffles me how people can look at a film where personifications (robotifications?) of Russia, America and China use stereotypical workers to build a giant wall in order to keep the undesirables out, and say "No, there is nothing political here. There is no meaning. Please stop talking about it."
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Aug 15, 2013 09:53
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:It baffles me how people can look at a film where personifications (robotifications?) of Russia, America and China use stereotypical workers to build a giant wall in order to keep the undesirables out, and say "No, there is nothing political here. There is no meaning. Please stop talking about it." You can always find people around here who'll deny that symbolism exists, but that I think is an unfair characterization of the discussion. Also, the jaegers weren't the ones building the wall, did you even watch the movie?
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Aug 15, 2013 10:07
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:It baffles me how people can look at a film where personifications (robotifications?) of Russia, America and China use stereotypical workers to build a giant wall in order to keep the undesirables out, and say "No, there is nothing political here. There is no meaning. Please stop talking about it." The robot personifications of various countries are certainly the parties managing the construction of the wall, yes. EDIT: Bongo Bill posted:You can always find people around here who'll deny that symbolism exists, but that I think is an unfair characterization of the discussion. He wasn't here for most of the discussion, so I'm willing to cut him some slack. He only caught the tail end, when fatigue and resentment had replaced most of the good faith. Who would really want to read a hundred pages of, well, fascismwackyraceschat anyway? Runa fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Aug 15, 2013 |
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Aug 15, 2013 10:07
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OldPueblo posted:Ripley was awesome because she acted like a strong man! Pretty much agree with you there. But it does make me now wish that the ending was about Mako rather than Protagonist McWhitebread. Prism Mirror Lens posted:I keep seeing people say Mako is a feminist character, she had agency, etc. What, precisely, was her agency? It seemed clear enough to me that without the interrupting force of the male lead, she would have been prepared to continually give up her goal under the command of the other male main character. She is shown to be able to fight, but then has to be fought for later on (and in that moment that I suddenly understood 500 Days of Summer). When I think of her, the images I get are mainly her being rendered speechless or inanimate; when she sees a man undressed, when she is fought over, when she drifts, when she passes out at the end. I felt absolutely nothing that I could identify with, as a woman, and even resented the film's attempt to show her as feminist in the most simplistic, male-oriented way - she punches things in a giant robot, just like the boys do, therefore...! It's a Sarkeesian-level understanding of feminism, imagining that elements or 'tropes' themselves (the presence of prostitutes in a film, whether or not a woman fights, whether the guy gets the girl in the end) adjusts some feminism metre. Before I say anything else, I kinda want to clarify that I do not think Mako is a particularly feminist character, but for a straight-up blockbuster she's miles ahead of what PR;s competition will present. But for a character that can truly be called Feminist, I think you'd have an easier time looking outside of the bubble known as Hollywood. Though I will say that it is still kinda shameful that all it takes for a blockbuster to be 'progressive' is to not question a character's ability to do anything based on their gender. I still do not think that Pacific Rim is sexist though. And on the point of her only becoming a 'strong' character when she joins the boy's club, I would be honestly interested in what you'd think would be valid alternatives to the usual Ripley archetype for strong female characters. Also to kinda touch on Drive a little more, I did not intend to imply that Irene, the love interest, was unidentifiable as a character. Instead I was intending that contextually, each element contributes to the subtextual message that women are to serve men as muses, visual titillation, or obstacles in obtaining their reward. I would also guess that Refin's intent of the elevator scene to be opposing of the average movie-goer. I honestly believe Refin intended for the scene to be an exciting and intriguing refrain written from the Driver's point-of-view where we understand his sacrifice and how far he'll go to protect the one he loves. Whereas the audience sees the driver from the outside, just like Irene, and we identify with her horror of the violence that we can not help but see as senseless despite our knowledge of why it happenes. We wake up from the dream created by action movies, and realize the effect of real honest violence on real people, and we don't want anyone innocent to see the torment of another seemingly innocent human being. To use the film's text alone, I agree with you saying that the scene's intent was to show Irene's POV; but to add authorial intent to the mix, we've got a whole different bag of worms. I agree with you that the fact that Mako's flashback is kinda sexist in the fact that we see it both from a male POV, but it also features idolarity of a male character*, but also the fact that Mako must be rescued from her self. I was going to bring up this fact in my previous post, but I felt like it would create a derail far too easily so that is why I am keeping both posts light on this point. *I'll also go on the record in saying that I also hate this point; as it feels like a tumblr arguement in that the problem is not that she's idolizes someone, but that the problem lies in her idol's gender. And to get rid of this character would rid the scene of emotional weight, or to them female would feel forced and artificial when the plot's WWII aesthetic and tropes are added to the mix.
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Aug 15, 2013 10:19
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