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OldPueblo
May 2, 2007

Likes to argue. Wins arguments with ignorant people. Not usually against educated people, just ignorant posters. Bing it.

Lord Krangdar posted:

Incredulity alone is not an argument, a point, or anything really. This is the equivalent of you going "nuh uh". Why don't you explain and argue for your views on how far we can go in interpreting films before we're off the deep end? Again, why isn't it "off the deep end" to see anything in a film but a series of meaningless sounds and images in an arbitrary sequence, depicting nothing and signifying nothing? Doesn't that satisfy Occam's razor even more?


We don't need the director to tell us what's in the film, watching the film tells us what's in the film.

You're thinking it's either incredibly deep or incredibly shallow when visual/audio clues as well as clear context are given right in the movie. For example take Hannibal Chau's shoes. They're covered in what looks to be gold and he loves them very much. We can project some kind of deep story about his mother likely dying in order to scrounge up a living for him and argue that it's inferred or we can just decide he likes fancy/expensive clothes. One is reasonable, the other is not. Back to the kaiju baby, one view is very reasonable, the other is way out there.

BrianWilly posted:

Man, you were doing hella good until this part. On top of being very clear sexual predation metaphors -- there's a reason that facehugger-rape jokes have been made by every single webcomic in existence -- the shapes of the xenomorphs exude a lot of phallic imagery, with or without Geiger's influence. Something phallus-shaped might not actually represent a phallus, sure, but what if it glistens and drips liquid and impregnates and primarily goes head-to-head...so to speak...against a woman for four films counting?

Okay I'll concede that Aliens is full of sexuality that I somehow missed when watching every movie. I guess all along the movie was an alien porno and I just completely missed the true plot.

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OldPueblo
May 2, 2007

Likes to argue. Wins arguments with ignorant people. Not usually against educated people, just ignorant posters. Bing it.

Bongo Bill posted:

The presence of metaphorical imagery in a film does not always mean that the film is an allegory, merely that it contains similes. If you don't interpret a movie as being about sex, then you can simply do that without denying that it looks like one. Believing that something looks like a dick is not the same thing as believing it represents a dick; you can do either independently of the other. (And you can be wrong about both of them independently of each other as well.)

Bingo buddy. Sometimes robots just punch monsters. I can watch Sister Act starring Whoopie Goldberg and come out thinking the movie was all about racism or I can just say hey it's a nun comedy.

Lord Krangdar posted:

Irrelevant since you asked me how a penis can in any way be associated with the xenomorphs. You also keep bringing up authorial intent and context, and those images fall under both categories.

Why don't you explain and argue for your views on how far we can go in interpreting films before we're off the deep end? Again, why isn't it "off the deep end" to see anything in a film but a series of meaningless sounds and images in an arbitrary sequence, depicting nothing and signifying nothing? Doesn't that satisfy Occam's razor even more?

You're taking what I said out of context, I clearly stated regarding the movies several times. And no I'm not going to try to help you understand the phrase "reasonable within context". You're being ridiculous and I've already given you examples above.

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

OldPueblo posted:

Okay I'll concede that Aliens is full of sexuality that I somehow missed when watching every movie. I guess all along the movie was an alien porno and I just completely missed the true plot.

Alien (the first movie, at least) is entirely about sex, pregnancy, and rape, to the point where it would take a heroic effort to read any other subtext into the film. These themes are so ingrained in the series that in the fourth film they had to stop the director from putting an enormous hermaphroditic vulva/penis on the hybrid alien.

You shouldn't be looking for literal 'robots just punch monsters' in a Guillermo del Toro movie. This guy loving loves subtext. Have you seen Pan's Labyrinth?

Lord Krangdar
Oct 24, 2007

These are the secrets of death we teach.

OldPueblo posted:

You're thinking it's either incredibly deep or incredibly shallow when visual/audio clues as well as clear context are given right in the movie. For example take Hannibal Chau's shoes. They're covered in what looks to be gold and he loves them very much. We can project some kind of deep story about his mother likely dying in order to scrounge up a living for him and argue that it's inferred or we can just decide he likes fancy/expensive clothes. One is reasonable, the other is not. Back to the kaiju baby, one view is very reasonable, the other is way out there.

This is not a oomplete explanation. Why is one reasonable and one not? The only reason I can surmise, since you didn't give one, is because you're biased towards focusing on plot and against focusing on imagery. Can you defend that bias?

What do "deep" or "shallow" have to do with anything? It's not "deep" to see that the xenomorph's head resembles a penis, or to connect that with other sexual and reproductive imagery in that film. It's just paying attention and noticing patterns, which is something you have to do for a film to be anything more than meaningless lights and sounds.

quote:

Okay I'll concede that Aliens is full of sexuality that I somehow missed when watching every movie. I guess all along the movie was an alien porno and I just completely missed the true plot.

It's imagery, not plot. Although the literal plot also has to do with sexuality and reproduction; the face-hugger hatches from an egg and literally impregnates a man with its spawn.

OldPueblo posted:

You're taking what I said out of context, I clearly stated regarding the movies several times. And no I'm not going to try to help you understand the phrase "reasonable within context". You're being ridiculous and I've already given you examples above.

I reject your personal standard of "reasonable". You've yet to explain it, and you've given me no reason to accept it except repeated assertions and half-assed incredulity.

Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Aug 21, 2013

OldPueblo
May 2, 2007

Likes to argue. Wins arguments with ignorant people. Not usually against educated people, just ignorant posters. Bing it.

General Battuta posted:

Alien (the first movie, at least) is entirely about sex, pregnancy, and rape, to the point where it would take a heroic effort to read any other subtext into the film. These themes are so ingrained in the series that in the fourth film they had to stop the director from putting an enormous hermaphroditic vulva/penis on the hybrid alien.

Even alien's have genitals, but I'm pretty sure the entire series was not specifically ABOUT alien genitals.

quote:

You shouldn't be looking for literal 'robots just punch monsters' in a Guillermo del Toro movie. This guy loving loves subtext. Have you seen Pan's Labyrinth?

I have, it was a completely different movie.

OldPueblo
May 2, 2007

Likes to argue. Wins arguments with ignorant people. Not usually against educated people, just ignorant posters. Bing it.

Lord Krangdar posted:

This is not a oomplete explanation. Why is one reasonable and one not? The only reason I can surmise, since you didn't give one, is because you're biased towards focusing on plot and against focusing on imagery. Can you defend that bias?

What do "deep" or "shallow" have to do with anything? It's not "deep" to see that the xenomorph's head resembles a penis, or to connect that with other sexual and reproductive imagery in that film. It's just paying attention and noticing patterns, which is something you have to do for a film to be anything more than meaningless lights and sounds.


It's imagery, not plot. Although the literal plot also has to do with sexuality and reproduction; the face-hugger hatches from an egg and literally impregnates a man with its spawn.

I'm looking at your avatar and the imagery I'm getting is that you like to dress up like batman and gently caress bats. That's the imagery I'm getting, am I right? Imagery can be intentional or random, and both can be interpreted completely different from their original intent. That's why if GDT doesn't specifically state his intent and completely leaves out contextual clues then it's a crap shoot.

^^ Yeah well I reject you too buddy! :v:

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.
You can't pin your whole argument on the importance of creative intention and then claim that it's not important that the movies have the same creator.

e: literally the entire Alien series is about aliens who are genitals; every stage of the alien life form is a genital image

OldPueblo
May 2, 2007

Likes to argue. Wins arguments with ignorant people. Not usually against educated people, just ignorant posters. Bing it.

General Battuta posted:

You can't pin your whole argument on the importance of creative intention and then claim that it's not important that the movies have the same creator.

M. Night Shyamalan

Shanty
Nov 7, 2005

I Love Dogs

OldPueblo posted:

Even alien's have genitals, but I'm pretty sure the entire series was not specifically ABOUT alien genitals.

The titular alien is defined by nothing as much as its violent reproductive capabilities. I'd say that makes it about alien genitals.

OldPueblo
May 2, 2007

Likes to argue. Wins arguments with ignorant people. Not usually against educated people, just ignorant posters. Bing it.

General Battuta posted:

You can't pin your whole argument on the importance of creative intention and then claim that it's not important that the movies have the same creator.

e: literally the entire Alien series is about aliens who are genitals; every stage of the alien life form is a genital image

Funny I thought they were considered the ultimate weapons, you know like the massive plot point where they were trying to bring them back to Earth. I guess they were sex toys all along.

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

OldPueblo posted:

M. Night Shyamalan

I have no idea what point you're trying to make here. That M. Night Shyamalan has a set of consistent themes and interests in his films? Uh, yes, precisely - so does GDT.

Open this thread and read 'the language of cinema' or something. I feel like this is territory that gets covered in every single CD thread: 'you're overthinking it, you've invented all these dicks'

BrianWilly
Apr 24, 2007

There is no homosexual terrorist Johnny Silverhand

General Battuta posted:

You shouldn't be looking for literal 'robots just punch monsters' in a Guillermo del Toro movie. This guy loving loves subtext. Have you seen Pan's Labyrinth?
This I will say is a bit of a false equivalence (or possibly there's a better term for it that I'm incapable of thinking of right now). These are two very different movies, and Del Toro in general makes movies that are very different from one another, and bringing in expectations of allegory from one to the next gives viewers a bit of confirmation bias. If there is strong allegorical theme in Pacific Rim -- and I ain't saying there ain't -- then it has to be there whether it's also in Pan's Labyrinth or Hellboy or Blade II or The Devil's Backbone.

Lord Krangdar
Oct 24, 2007

These are the secrets of death we teach.

OldPueblo posted:

I have, it was a completely different movie.

Remember that context thing you brought up on the last page?

OldPueblo posted:

I'm looking at your avatar and the imagery I'm getting is that you like to dress up like batman and gently caress bats. That's the imagery I'm getting, am I right? Imagery can be intentional or random, and both can be interpreted completely different from their original intent. That's why if GDT doesn't specifically state his intent and completely leaves out contextual clues then it's a crap shoot.

What you're telling me here is that you've failed to understand the difference between willful bullshit and actually interpreting aspects of a film other than the literal plot. That's something for you to work on.

Watching films doesn't have to be an attempt to reverse engineer the filmmakers' intentions, as if they can even be said to exist in such a simplistic way. I'm not going to go into more detail because every drat thread, including this one, turns into a derail about "death of the author" at some point.

OldPueblo
May 2, 2007

Likes to argue. Wins arguments with ignorant people. Not usually against educated people, just ignorant posters. Bing it.

Shanty posted:

The titular alien is defined by nothing as much as its violent reproductive capabilities. I'd say that makes it about alien genitals.

Or was the movie about humans surviving these aliens? Okay enough Alien chat, I am bad for the derail.

Shanty
Nov 7, 2005

I Love Dogs

OldPueblo posted:

Or was the movie about humans surviving these aliens? Okay enough Alien chat, I am bad for the derail.

It was actually the thrilling story of a number of photons being filtered through a coloured lens before hitting a large canvas, you rube.

OldPueblo
May 2, 2007

Likes to argue. Wins arguments with ignorant people. Not usually against educated people, just ignorant posters. Bing it.

Lord Krangdar posted:

Remember that context thing you brought up on the last page?


What you're telling me here is that you've failed to understand the difference between willful bullshit and actually interpreting aspects of a film other than the literal plot. That's something for you to work on.

Watching films doesn't have to be an attempt to reverse engineer the filmmakers' intentions, as if they can even be said to exist in such a simplistic way. I'm not going to go into more detail because every drat thread, including this one, turns into a derail about "death of the author" at some point.

Let's bring it back home to Pacific Rim and what started this branch of discussion. Kaiju baby. Lay out the facts, what actual facts support something deeper than Newt needed a whole brain? GDT could have just provided Newt with the killed kaiju's brain, why invent the pregnancy? If it were for the insane reasons stated earlier, then there would have been far more support in context within the movie. That's like saying Chuck's mom was a total bitch because he ended up being a dick. There is zero support for that logic. Sure it can be assumed, but there is literally no proof. That might be a bad example in case I missed something in the movie, but I think my point is clear.

Necrothatcher
Mar 26, 2005




This is much worse than fascism chat. This is like staring into a vast abyss of stupidity. Nothing means anything anymore!

That discussion on Alien not containing sexual imagery... :allears:

Bongo Bill
Jan 17, 2012

I don't even know what you're trying to say any more.

Otachi being pregnant absolutely doesn't mean nothing. I don't know what you think we think it means, but I'm sure we can agree on that much.

Lord Krangdar
Oct 24, 2007

These are the secrets of death we teach.
Where I came into this discussion was a dispute over SMG saying a Kaiju giving birth was obviously child birth imagery, which started this whole derail about imagery in general (which ended up illustrating his other points from that same comment). I don't know exactly what "insane reasons" you mean, all I recall is the child-birth imagery being used to support the femininity of the Kaiju. Anyway, SMG can argue the details of his own reading, or you can view his previous posts for more detail.

Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 09:25 on Aug 21, 2013

Bongo Bill
Jan 17, 2012

It's not even childbirth imagery, it's just straight-up actual literal childbirth.

E: Otachi being weakly coded female is one implication of that scene. Another is that Kaiju are literally born to kill. Guillermo Del Toro made a comparison between Otachi Junior and himself for the condition of their respective births, and upthread we had some Christological interpretation of it (which is maybe a bit of a stretch, though as the most famous virgin birth followed by a resurrection it's valid).

This film is not an allegory, but kaiju have been compared (intentionally or not) to all those things and others. Ideally, those comparisons - if you notice them and care about them - will make either the film more meaningful to you or give you some new thoughts about its referents.

Bongo Bill fucked around with this message at 09:39 on Aug 21, 2013

BrianWilly
Apr 24, 2007

There is no homosexual terrorist Johnny Silverhand
Let's be fair and admit that the Breach is basically a vagina.

I mean, I kid, but in seriousness, what I will entertain about the whole female kaiju concept is that science, technology, and military might is often presented as masculine/linear/yang concepts while nature, organics, and the ocean is often coded as feminine/abstruse/yin. They make a point of telling us that these aliens didn't come from space -- within the purview of "science" -- but are in fact consummately chthonic in nature.

To be sure, this theory works better if the kaiju are seen as abominable but natural product of the world, like the hurricanes that earthquakes and other natural disasters that Raleigh mentions being able to fight with their technological marvels. It runs into a bit of a snag when we consider that they are also products of engineering and "man-made" control. But pffft, context, amirite?

Prism Mirror Lens
Oct 9, 2012

~*"The most intelligent and meaning-rich film he could think of was Shaun of the Dead, I don't think either brain is going to absorb anything you post."*~




:chord:
I'm pretty sure the guy started trolling at the point where he denied any subtext in Alien and hasn't stopped. (Although I do know someone who never realised that about the Alien films, despite having an expensive boxset and talking about how good the films are :shepface: Which ties into the points brawleh and SMG were making about people liking movies in a fetishistic or commodity-like way - some people are literally going ok, this film has aliens/robots, it has action, it made money... I like those things, therefore I liked this film. By fetishistic I mean the process of taking individual parts of the film and 'liking' those rather than the film as a whole, hence the easy separation of the film-as-a-whole into favourite jaegers, jaeger toys, the wish to take the xenomorph aliens who have a meaning within the context of the film and take them out of that context, put them in crossovers etc where that meaning is potentially lost or changed, giving the impression that the aliens are individual objective biological 'things' in themselves rather than the embodiment of a sexual meaning within a specific film. I guess people will just say this is a film crit Zizekian garbage post but oh well)

brawleh posted:

Even when thinking about the multiculturalism/drifting there's still elements that need unpacking, the movie is a hell of a lot better than most when it comes to a more diverse racial representation on screen however I can't help but think "Give them nothing, take from them everything".

It's almost a case of neutering complaints by giving the bare minimum - of course the film is feminist and progressive, there's a female racial minority as a main character and she fights, what more do you want? How can you say that isn't good enough? Shouldn't you just admit it's a good step forwards? etc... whereas it's even a long step backwards in some places, like I haven't seen a film where someone unironically fights for a woman's honour in a long time without some "turns out she didn't like being fought for, Nice Guy" twist. OK, there are women saying "I liked this character, it's nice to see someone who looks like me in a blockbuster film," but it's like they're latching onto her because there is nothing else, not because she is a particularly good character. The specifics of the character are ignored for the focus on her race and gender simply being present. It should be an indictment of the film industry that simply having a female non-white character is considered progressive.

To try and explain why I did not think this film was feminist in any way: if this was a film about multitudes of women, with a single small timid guy who, yes, gets to go in the big robot just like the women do, he's a good fighter and hugs his female counterpart at the end, but he does what his mum tells him, women insult him and the 'solution' to this is that two women have a punchup over him while he stands by looking frightened, he passes out/zones out in his robot twice so the woman has to save him - nevermind whether this is a progressive/sexist/racist/feminist version of the film or whether it's a 'good' depiction of men or women, would you be able to identify with this passive character just because they look like you? Would you want to be this character? Or would you rather be one of the many competent women shown in the film (or even a kaiju!)?

Sarkozymandias
May 25, 2010

THAT'S SYOUS D'RAVEN

OldPueblo posted:

I'm pretty sure you could've said all that nothing in two sentences.



I'm wondering if you're kind of like a T-Rex except your vision is only attracted to the literal.

You may not have noticed but there is a .gif in this post. If you can't see it, try crossing your eyes or legs.

Prism Mirror Lens
Oct 9, 2012

~*"The most intelligent and meaning-rich film he could think of was Shaun of the Dead, I don't think either brain is going to absorb anything you post."*~




:chord:

Sarkozymandias posted:



I'm wondering if you're kind of like a T-Rex except your vision is only attracted to the literal.

You may not have noticed but there is a .gif in this post. If you can't see it, try crossing your eyes or legs.

"My relationship towards tulips is inherently Lynchian. I think they are disgusting. Just imagine. Aren't these some kind of, how do you call it, vagina dentata, dental vaginas threatening to swallow you? I think that flowers are something inherently disgusting. I mean, are people aware what a horrible thing these flowers are? I mean, basically it's an open invitation to all insects and bees, "Come and screw me," you know? I think that flowers should be forbidden to children."

meristem
Oct 2, 2010
I HAVE THE ETIQUETTE OF STIFF AND THE PERSONALITY OF A GIANT CUNT.

BrianWilly posted:

Let's be fair and admit that the Breach is basically a vagina.

I mean, I kid, but in seriousness, what I will entertain about the whole female kaiju concept is that science, technology, and military might is often presented as masculine/linear/yang concepts while nature, organics, and the ocean is often coded as feminine/abstruse/yin. They make a point of telling us that these aliens didn't come from space -- within the purview of "science" -- but are in fact consummately chthonic in nature.

To be sure, this theory works better if the kaiju are seen as abominable but natural product of the world, like the hurricanes that earthquakes and other natural disasters that Raleigh mentions being able to fight with their technological marvels. It runs into a bit of a snag when we consider that they are also products of engineering and "man-made" control. But pffft, context, amirite?

Except that "science&tech=male, nature=female" is an outdated, regressive association. It was made in a different period of history - when it was true. It doesn't really suit our current life, and I feel that imputing it in movies made currently - in the dearth of stronger evidence, both textual and meta, that this association is intentional - is actually actively pernicious, to the movie and to the audience. I really hate injecting personal info into a general discussion, but as a human, a woman, a tech nerd and a Ph.D. in bioinformatics, I definitely feel much more in common with the Jaeger pilots than with the big, dumb, destructive beasts. The association you are purporting feels completely absurd to me. And, as I've said several times in this thread already, more than a little offensive. The film doesn't feel excluding to me; the interpretation does.


Since it was I who unwittingly restarted the "female Kaiju" discussion, I'd like to add to it, though. Basically, all that we agree on is that Otachi Jr. existed. One side claims that what follows from it is that the Kaiju are coded female. The other side, however, has consistently pointed out the ways the Kaiju are coded male:
- huge horns on their heads, similar to the horns of male animals;
- wide, muscular chests;
- lack of feminine characteristics in their characters (nurturing, agreeableness, stability, orientation towards keeping society intact); they are solitary (even when we see more than one of them, they fight alone) and extremely aggressive. Both of which are typically male traits.

Personally, what the Kaiju's behaviour brings to mind to me are bulls, male aurochs, male gorillas, male pitbulls... male animals. Male mammals, specifically, especially those bred for aggression. That's another reason why the "Kaiju=female" theory feels to me extremely absurd. And I don't think I have ever seen anyone give a good answer to these points.

So, any 'Kaiju are female' theory has to condend with:
- all the ways the Kaiju are not coded female and are coded male;
- the robots being explicitly coded female (and not just as 'craft' - we have discussed the 'Mako uniting with Gypsy Danger' theory upthread, most notably represented explicitly in the film when Pentecost says 'Let's make way for the lady');
- the PPDC not being a 'boys' club' and women actively fighting them (Mako, Sasha, female extras in crowd scenes, heck, even Chau's female gangster and the woman in the shelter scene);
- the absolute lack of any metatextual evidence that they were intended to.

So, do you see how, if you look at all this, and knowing that, textually, the Kaiju are constructed (meaning that they can be whatever their creators want them to be, including offspring carriers), it's reasonable to treat the 'Otachi Jr.' scene as merely a quirk of the director's character - him wanting to put his own birth as a scare scene into the movie?

meristem fucked around with this message at 11:14 on Aug 21, 2013

BrianWilly
Apr 24, 2007

There is no homosexual terrorist Johnny Silverhand

Prism Mirror Lens posted:

OK, there are women saying "I liked this character, it's nice to see someone who looks like me in a blockbuster film," but it's like they're latching onto her because there is nothing else, not because she is a particularly good character. The specifics of the character are ignored for the focus on her race and gender simply being present. It should be an indictment of the film industry that simply having a female non-white character is considered progressive.
There's certainly a lot to be said against Mako's depiction, but I feel like attributing people's enjoyment of Mako solely to the rarity of her gender or race is really undermining the situation. There have been women of color on film long before Mako Mori ever existed, yet I don't see some kind of dedicated fanbase for each and every one of them. Certainly those things are drawing points, but her fans also mention liking her personality, her arc, backstory, her respectful relationship with Raleigh, her filial relationship with Stacker, so on and so forth. Do fans looking for someone like Mako to relate to have less to choose from than others? Absolutely, sure, their playing field is far more limited. But in a lot of ways that encourages these people to be more critical of their fandoms, not less, and I really don't believe so many people would be drawn to this character if she genuinely had nothing to offer them.

And to be honest this sort of thinking smacks a little of, like, "Oh hey you think you enjoy this thing? It's because you just don't know any better and are therefore doing it wrong; Let me tell you how you should actually enjoy this thing!"

(I should also point out that the only person who insults her in the film is the guy who everyone knows is an rear end in a top hat. Everyone else treats her respectfully)

BrianWilly fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Aug 21, 2013

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN
Oldpueblo is almost endearingly idiotic to be sure, but his example should be instructive; held to the same standard, half the defense of Pacific Rim fails to cut the mustard either.

The 'ammo belt' full of biomechanical weaponized creatures ready to be shot out a birth-hole is an obviously Gigeresque image, if not a direct reference to one of his more famous works. The rest of the psychosexual imagery, and its relation to the psychological trauma of the main characters, is likewise obvious.

If anything, Pacific Rim is substantially 'dumbed down'. When the Alien astronauts crawl into the yonic ports on the UFO, there's no expository dialogue about how the holes are dilating. And the titular creature is only metaphorically launched out a birth-hatch with a cord attached to its abdomen. In Pacific Rim, the dilation and the umbilical cord are literal.

Explorers literally crawl into a massive womb and literally encounter a massive alien god's-eye inside. The same imagery appears when Gipsy Danger plunges into the (dilated) breach: a colossal 'eye' in the background. Having this exact image occur twice, including at the very end of the film, is obviously important.

Also obvious is the depiction of the PPDC resistance as an organicist community. Even those who whinge about fascism-chat cannot deny that the film advocates some form of vague socialism. And so:

"You say socialism? Socialism is harmless. Everybody today is a socialist, you know? It just needs some vague solidarity. It doesn’t have this more radical egalitarianism. Every fascist can be said to be socialist, you know."

Though the film is most specifically about a type of fascist corporatism, those who insist that the film is 'merely' about a generic 'friendship' are obviously promoting a socialism of some sort or another, and are thus not safely 'beneath' political criticism.

But instead of just building on this obvious stuff - defending socialism, finding the nuances in all the yonic imagery, incorporating everything into a coherent reading - it's all denial and how-dare-yous. Worse, there's the deliberate ignorance of people conspicuously consuming Cherno Alpha merch without any concern for what it means - like so many Che shirts.

C'mon folks.

Prism Mirror Lens
Oct 9, 2012

~*"The most intelligent and meaning-rich film he could think of was Shaun of the Dead, I don't think either brain is going to absorb anything you post."*~




:chord:

meristem posted:

lack of feminine characteristics in their characters (nurturing, agreeableness, stability, orientation towards keeping society intact); they are solitary (even when we see more than one of them, they fight alone) and extremely aggressive. Both of which are typically male traits.

Ah, I'm sorry... your idea of the kaiju being 'coded female' is a sort of shallow biotruths idea of them being nurturing, agreeable, and having a feminine physical form (as opposed to men who are aggressive, destructive loners)? How can you begin your post talking about regressive outdated stereotypes and follow up with this, which is probably more offensive than saying that the kaiju are (or represent some aspect of) femininity?

Which is not to say that I agree that all the kaiju are female, but even one which we know to be female (in that it gives birth) is not 'coded female' by those methods. Should it not be meaningful in itself that that's the case, especially if you think the jaegers are explicitly female but also share most of what you think is masculine coding?

Paolomania
Apr 26, 2006

Lord Krangdar posted:

It's imagery, not plot. Although the literal plot also has to do with sexuality and reproduction; the face-hugger hatches from an egg and literally impregnates a man with its spawn.

You are fighting old battles in this thread and in effect straw-manning a resistance to reading certain specific symbolism in Pacific Rim as an anti-intellectual denial that anything can be symbolic at all. It is telling that your defense of symbolic readings uses no examples from the movie Pacific Rim. If you remember my contribution at all the to Prometheus thread, I was totally on-board with reading sexual subtext into that movie and early on I went beyond SMG's initial "pandora's box" reading to interpret even more sexual themes. Pacific Rim is not Prometheus.

Case in point: show us clear-as-a-duck support for the idea that the Kaiju symbolically "represent the feminine" that does not rely on cherry picked observations about the names of a minority of Kaiju, or the tenuous argument that "Otachi was pregnant" + "Mutavore was a clone of some other Kaiju" + "presumptions about Kaiju biology and development" = "all Kaiju are sexual females and represent human femininity". Hopefullly your support will be clear-as-a-dick so that is it even more salient than symbolic interpretations of the Kaiju representing natural disasters - a symbolic reading that is supported by their threatening of coastal populations centers (just like Hurricanes and Tsunamis) their escalating in strength and frequency over time towards an existential human thread (just like climate-change driven storm patter) and their direct thematic linkage by Raleigh's metaphor about "fighting the storm".

It is my opinion that, unlike Prometheus, in this case we have people bypassing the clear-as-a-duck subtext in order to project sexual themes onto Pacific Rim that are not really salient themes at all.

Prism Mirror Lens
Oct 9, 2012

~*"The most intelligent and meaning-rich film he could think of was Shaun of the Dead, I don't think either brain is going to absorb anything you post."*~




:chord:

Paolomania posted:

Hopefullly your support will be clear-as-a-dick

I think you looked at those Giger pictures a little too long.

BrianWilly
Apr 24, 2007

There is no homosexual terrorist Johnny Silverhand

meristem posted:

Except that "science&tech=male, nature=female" is an outdated, regressive association. It was made in a different period of history - when it was true. It doesn't really suit our current life, and I feel that imputing it in movies made currently - in the dearth of stronger evidence, both textual and meta, that this association is intentional - is actually actively pernicious, to the movie and to the audience. I really hate injecting personal info into a general discussion, but as a human, a woman, a tech nerd and a Ph.D. in bioinformatics, I definitely feel much more in common with the Jaeger pilots than with the big, dumb, destructive beasts. The association you are purporting feels completely absurd to me. And, as I've said several times in this thread already, more than a little offensive. The film doesn't feel excluding to me; the interpretation does.
I'm...not sure what to say to this other than that symbolical analysis isn't meant to be a sociology seminar? Yeah, I agree, it would be really offensive in real life if someone said women are rampaging monsters from the sea while men are aligned with technology and progress, but that doesn't mean writers, artists, musicians, and filmmakers haven't constantly employed those kinds of fartsy metaphors or that we shouldn't discuss their usage. Masculine vs. feminine imagery exists, throughout history and also in contemporary works. Saying sun=male/moon=female or sky=male/earth=female or science=male/magic=female is...well it's literary language. Literary language based on outdated sexual absolutism that has no applicability to real life? You bet! But examining them lets us see how the human race has defined the world in the past and continues to portray such imagery in works such as Pacific Rim, intentionally or not.

Particularly since monsters, mythological beasts, and even horror film villains have been coded in sexual metaphor since the dawn of time, from Medusas to dragons to vampires; the idea of sea monsters being female-coded goes back to the Greeks (who were flagrantly sexist). We can examine these usages for the sheer pleasure of artistic analysis, as cautionary tales against sexual stereotypes, or even as tools to construct an interesting story. Hell, we were just now talking about the xenomorphs as penis metaphors. It doesn't mean we think penises are literally vicious otherworldly monsters with acid dripping from its teeth!

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN

meristem posted:

it's reasonable to treat the 'Otachi Jr.' scene as merely a quirk of the director's character - him wanting to put his own birth as a scare scene into the movie
Nope.

A soldier robot designed to look like a football player crossed with a gunslinger is 'masculine' symbolism even though the robot obviously does not have a biological sex. Even though Mako Mori is a biological woman character, she deploys the phallic sword as a symbolic weapon.

In other words, we are basically talking about the difference between sex and gender. The biological sex of the monsters is irrelevant. They are gendered. (As their reproduction is exclusively through cloning, they are technically asexual anyway.)

If you prefer, we can substitute 'masculine' and 'feminine' with 'agency' and 'communion'. When Mako stiffens her rage-sword, this is an expression of her hard, rigid, individual agency over the soft, squishy, drone-like kaiju.

The film just happens to directly associate communion with an unending cascade of yonic slits. Slits within slits, recursively. It's the same concept as in Jurassic Park, where the idea was to make the dinosaurs asexual by eliminating males. Except life finds a way and sisters start doing it for themselves. Same thing happens here.

Sarkozymandias
May 25, 2010

THAT'S SYOUS D'RAVEN

Point your dick at the moon and they shall focus upon it, concluding you bite your fingernails.

RBX
Jan 2, 2011

What the gently caress is this thread.

PaganGoatPants
Jan 18, 2012

TODAY WAS THE SPECIAL SALE DAY!
Grimey Drawer

RBX posted:

What the gently caress is this thread.

70 new posts. Thought it was something important but nope :smithicide:

Bonaventure
Jun 23, 2005

by sebmojo
Congrats to OldPueblo for being even stupider than Jefferoo.

Maxwell Lord
Dec 12, 2008

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

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.


:smith:

Grimey Drawer

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

But instead of just building on this obvious stuff - defending socialism, finding the nuances in all the yonic imagery, incorporating everything into a coherent reading - it's all denial and how-dare-yous. Worse, there's the deliberate ignorance of people conspicuously consuming Cherno Alpha merch without any concern for what it means - like so many Che shirts.

C'mon folks.

So does everyone have to have a fully-formed thematic and political reading of every movie they see before they can argue if it was any good or not, or even buy a piece of merchandise?

This isn't a Masters course. You're not deciding what grades our essays get. We are sharing thoughts about a movie, from subtext to text to "I really liked the soundtrack" to "I hope there's a sequel". None of this should be off-limits just because you haven't been satisfied.

You want to keep talking about the themes, that's fine. But don't snark at the people who are talking about other things. That just makes you an rear end in a top hat.

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

Buying this ten inch action figure just reinforces my belief in the ideals and glory of the USSR.

A Dirty Sock
Nov 4, 2005

Death to Legoland!
The Prometheus chat is literally raping this thread and spawning an alien penis vagina baby.

Edit: The remix is one of the main ways that humans interact with cultural products, so not sure where that argument is going.

A Dirty Sock fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Aug 21, 2013

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MariusLecter
Sep 5, 2009

NI MUERTE NI MIEDO
This movie really did break people's brains, amazing.

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