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Prism Mirror Lens posted:I work full time, have no background at all in philosophy or film crit. I read stuff anyway on my commute until I started understanding it. It's not really elitist or exclusionary, just requires a bit of effort. Zizek (who isn't postmodern, by the way) does connect with pop culture and makes dirty jokes constantly, so as philosophy goes he really is the layman-addressing, humorous philosophy guy that this thread complains doesn't exist. Maybe try reading his easier texts outside of isolated contextless SMG quotes and see if he makes more sense? Yeah, I'm starting to see that, and his entry-level stuff is pretty interesting. Though it's when people get smug towards people who aren't equipped or even inclined to handle the discussion at the same level that the elitism really starts to show. Dropping quotes out of context, or without providing any, is another manifestation of that. Smugness is the all-too common bane of any rational exchange of ideas. Especially here. EDIT: Count Chocula posted:I never expected the Pacific Rim thread to get me excited about seeing A Pervert's Guide To Idealogy next week. I'll try and interpret it in a way that's just about giant robots. Sex sells anything, even ideas. Runa fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Aug 27, 2013 |
# ? Aug 27, 2013 23:35 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 18:37 |
I never expected the Pacific Rim thread to get me excited about seeing A Pervert's Guide To Idealogy next week. I'll try and interpret it in a way that's just about giant robots. The whole phallic/vaginal imagery line seems a bit overdone, though. That mode of interpretation has been mocked in pop culture for the past 50 years. Aren't there any new analytical tools?
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# ? Aug 27, 2013 23:37 |
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A Steampunk Gent posted:Thanks for elaborating on where you were coming from SMG, I still don't quite see how 'touching the source' relates to a somewhat grounded and materialistic non-penatrative 'rocket punch' though. I know your audience is pretty belligerent towards critical analysis and no matter what you post it's going to be an uphill struggle but don't you think, considering the effort you've already taken the effort to write up a post, line up your sources etc, that you could at least actually give a proper arguement and context for them, if not for agressively anti-critical consumerists then for the lurkers on the sidelines who might actually appreciate what you have to say if you presented it in a less elitist and more digestable manner? This might sound strange and is pretty superfluous now, but part of the appeal for me is in trying to understand the subtext(?) behind talking points, reference, the discussion itself etc. Understandably that really isn't for everyone but the appeal of it for me is in making source material more malleable, subjectively. Trying to find if it holds water and trying to be conscious of the fact that impression might be wrong when considering opposition to the ideas posed. For instance the Matrix 2 reference above in relation to the above discussion, what sticks out as more obvious in that context is Agent Smith(darker side). How we see the very physical act of thrusting his fist into other people/programs. Through this there is an unleashing of a complex synchronized assembly in the fight scene with Neo, Smith as the Id of Neo, a penetrative aspect or not possibly being something worth considering itself given the context. Sometimes it may not be directly comparable but taking that reference and reshaping it in a small way helps me better understand a greater(wider? in a small way reconnecting it with the original reference) context or intent. Which itself, I feel, is a part of the intent. In Pacific Rim a lack of 'touching the source' is again somewhat implied through the "grounded and materialistic non-penatrative 'rocket punch'" when thought about in relation to the human characters interactions with the Kaiju and their reaction to touching the source(as pointed out, Newt drifting with the Kaiju). vvv:Sad but far too true(also funny), I am sorry for that failure on my part, just find it an easier way to illustrate possible further or secondary meaning. brawleh fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Aug 28, 2013 |
# ? Aug 27, 2013 23:38 |
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Brawleh I think if there was an allotment on number of parentheses in SA posts per week you would go over the limit in about two days
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# ? Aug 27, 2013 23:46 |
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T.G. Xarbala posted:Yeah, I'm starting to see that, and his entry-level stuff is pretty interesting. Though it's when people get smug towards people who aren't equipped or even inclined to handle the discussion at the same level that the elitism really starts to show. Dropping quotes out of context, or without providing any, is another manifestation of that. But of course SMG MUST appear as a smug, omniscient quotebank, and of course you all must at first resist - he's the subject supposed to know! It all feeds back on itself you see
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# ? Aug 27, 2013 23:53 |
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:But of course SMG MUST appear as a smug, omniscient quotebank, and of course you all must at first resist - he's the subject supposed to know! It all feeds back on itself you see Wait, no! But that means-
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 00:06 |
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:I hate the Marxist straw man of "heh, he says he's a communist, but does he talk to the WORKERS?" If you think Marxism excludes complex texts not addressed to the working class, what must you think of Marx's own work? As a Marxist myself, I don't think this is terribly fair, Marx himself as well as other notable contributors to the field wrote more easily accessable pamphlets and short texts alongside their heavier and denser works, though I do consider the fact that certain writers, including Marx to an extent (Das Kapital!! ), couldn't leave behind their middle-class academic backgrounds to write in a style and with enough explanation that most people could understand them, to be a mark against them. I mean, and I know this is getting terribly earnest, SMG did actually coherently explain what Zizek was talking about whereas before I was baffled, why did it take a third party and a acolyte of the author no less to actually explain his reasoning? Even if Zizek isn't a great writer and can't help but write super dense, shouldn't he at least care enough that he has an editor who tells him how to clear things up and tell him where to elaborate that his writings aren't actually a caricture of an ivory tower academic? brawleh posted:Sometimes it may not be directly comparable but taking that reference and reshaping it in a small way helps me better understand a greater(wider? in a small way reconnecting it with the original reference) context or intent. Which itself, I feel, is apart of the intent. In Pacific Rim a lack of 'touching the source' is again somewhat implied through the "grounded and materialistic non-penatrative 'rocket punch'" when thought about in relation to the human characters interactions with the Kaiju and their reaction to touching the source(as pointed out, Newt drifting with the Kaiju). This would explain why the much glorified rocket punch scene felt really quite flat and pointless to me, didn't the Kaiju take the hit and then go on fighting for a few more minutes after Gypsy Danger did this? It did affect the outcome of the battle and didn't change the relationship between the main characters and the Kaiju, I guess it would be fair to say it was a pretty impotent attack, though given the Kaiju show little character, it's not like they have much to actually attack. No Dignity fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Aug 28, 2013 |
# ? Aug 28, 2013 00:07 |
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A Steampunk Gent posted:Look, you're a grown rear end man now, there's nothing to be proud about being trapped in a state of arrested development and only being able to relate to films in terms of playground arguements, I know nostalgia is great and all but if you're going to go to all the effort of posting on a cinema discussion board, don't you think you could try a little harder? I was joking, A Steampunk Gent. I didn't like this film.
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 00:42 |
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Yeah, the ultimate fisting move is when Gipsy deploys the fist-gun 'right hand of doom' and empties the clip into Leatherback's split-open belly with an obscene repetition. The rocket-punch is the same fist deployed just slightly differently. And is it not the same fist-gun as in Videodrome? 'New flesh,' man-machine fusion, and all that? We know from Hellboy that Del Toro's 'right hand of doom' is specifically used to pull open the fabric of reality to contact the Lovecraftian gods 'on the other side'. Note, then, that the breakdown of Mako's symbolic universe during her trauma-induced flashback is represented by the fist-gun going haywire and threatening to tear open the literal universe. It's basically the inverse of the speech in Patton where he tells of the horror of "putting your hand in a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend's face" - because, in Pacific Rim, 'putting your hand in the goo' is the objective.
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 01:14 |
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I did remember something. When Gipsy Danger is "emptying the clip" into Leatherback Raleigh keeps yelling that phrase, but he's the one controlling that arm if I recall correctly. So who exactly is he talking to? The AI? That would seem to tie the trigger to voice activation which I wouldn't think was correct with their hand control devices and prior scenes involving the plasma cannon deployment. I don't think it was Mako because as I said before she controls the other arm. This brings me to the only logical conclusion. He was talking to the ghost of Benito Mussolini.
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 01:27 |
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This thread's been interesting and informative, but it seems like a lot of Marxist-inspired film criticism uses the film itself as little more than an example accompanying a lecture about how much capitalism sucks. It will take more than a fistful of fascist phalluses to keep me from preferring to interpret this film as being about the power of trust for overcoming trauma, weathering hardship, and finding hope. Some sneer at such a reading for its commonality, but I'm fond of it.
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 01:50 |
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Count Chocula posted:Two hundred pages of grown men jizzing over robot toys is a better critique of capitalism than anything Zizek wrote. You're Count Chocula.
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 02:20 |
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BEHOLD a new topic. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/-pacific-rim--denounced-as-american-propaganda-in-china-181152924.html How did you miss that subtext SMG? Don't bother, you're finished in this town Mr.
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 06:24 |
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Bongo Bill posted:This thread's been interesting and informative, but it seems like a lot of Marxist-inspired film criticism uses the film itself as little more than an example accompanying a lecture about how much capitalism sucks. Write about late-capitalist pre-phallic partial objects and folks still ain't happy. People simply don't know what they want. But anyway, you're not at all wrong. This story about hope and friendship is simply also fascist. These qualities aren't mutually exclusive!
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 09:11 |
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What happened to this thread?
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 15:40 |
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Well it had been over a year since the last "people are enjoying something they shouldn't" slapfight.
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 15:43 |
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A Steampunk Gent posted:Whilst I appreciate your attempt to elaborate on what the Zizek quote was trying to say, the fact you have to give an explanation for how little sense it makes with no additional context is kind of my point. Whilst I (and most others) wouldn't object to a sensibly placed and coherent academic quote, I'm pretty sure practically everyones eyes just glaze when they see SMG is quoting Zizek again, because without any significant attempt to give context and explain what the hell he's saying it's meaningless psycho-babble. I don't think this is a fair characterization of what I was saying, or more likely I didn't say it clearly enough. Plus I think I gave plenty of additional context re: Zizek quoting Deleuze and, you know, actual additional context from the work itself. As others have probably said better, Zizek is speaking clearly enough on his point and he really isn't as dense as many seem to think. In fact, Zizek is a fantastic resource to get a clearer understanding of Lacan, who is famously challenging to read. Maxwell Lord posted:Well it had been over a year since the last "people are enjoying something they shouldn't" slapfight.
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 15:50 |
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Maxwell Lord posted:Well it had been over a year since the last "people are enjoying something they shouldn't" slapfight. I think "all criticism/analysis of a thing is tantamount to condemnation of all who enjoy it" shows up on the nerd social
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 15:51 |
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OldPueblo posted:I did remember something. When Gipsy Danger is "emptying the clip" into Leatherback Raleigh keeps yelling that phrase, but he's the one controlling that arm if I recall correctly. So who exactly is he talking to? The AI? That would seem to tie the trigger to voice activation which I wouldn't think was correct with their hand control devices and prior scenes involving the plasma cannon deployment. I don't think it was Mako because as I said before she controls the other arm. This brings me to the only logical conclusion. He was talking to the ghost of Benito Mussolini. In universe, it's to keep LOCCENT updated, like how fighter pilots will call their attacks. And say what you will about Stacker, he at least kept the jaegars running on time.
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 15:57 |
Bongo Bill posted:This thread's been interesting and informative, but it seems like a lot of Marxist-inspired film criticism uses the film itself as little more than an example accompanying a lecture about how much capitalism sucks. You're just not trying hard enough man. If you really knuckled down and cracked the Zizek, you could be having profound insights like SMG posted:Although the language is florid, he's basically saying that these transgressive concepts are no longer so - rather than being a sort of 'punk' rebellion against an oppressive Power, capitalism has simply absorbed these concepts and turned them into products and marketing tactics. which is certainly not a concept that's occurred to everyone who's ever walked past a Hot Topic, ever
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 16:04 |
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Clipperton posted:You're just not trying hard enough man. If you really knuckled down and cracked the Zizek, you could be having profound insights like Right, but then the trick is to take that and run with it. Apply that concept to media, social relations, politics, gender politics, sex and so on like Zizek does. Like in terms of this film, obviously it applies to the kaiju being turned into toys and marketing. But maybe it helps you come to some interpretation of Newt, who is covered in images of the consumed transgression and goes to the consuming capitalist for help. Or gives you something to discuss in people's assertions that Mako becomes absorbed by the masculine culture to gain acceptance, or that the machine's nationality subsumes her own. Or relates to the film as a whole, in which the transgressive underdogs become absorbed by the status quo (Newt uses his transgression to help the jaegers, the kaiju (which are transgressive on one side of the rift) are turned into capitalist trinkets while the jaeger (who is transgressive on the other side) can only pass through the rift in conjunction with the kaiju). Like you're implying, those kinds of interpretations are not actually difficult to come up with, elitist, or incomprehensibly meaningless! Or you think all those are rubbish ideas and want to come up with something else, fine - I mean that the hard part is not having a singular thought about people selling Che Guevara shirts or whatever, it's taking it all the way, messing around with it, seeing what else it applies to or explains. Like Danger said, go further in your enjoyment!
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 16:24 |
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Clipperton posted:You're just not trying hard enough man. If you really knuckled down and cracked the Zizek, you could be having profound insights like It's possible to discuss ideas without implying that they're profound, or deep or whatever. Enough with using those labels to arbitrarily divide some types of discussion from others.
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 17:57 |
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Looks like you guys aren't the only ones arguing about fascism and other political ideologies. Some officer in the Chinese military is blasting the movie as American propaganda.
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 18:22 |
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Scyantific posted:Looks like you guys aren't the only ones arguing about fascism and other political ideologies. Some officer in the Chinese military is blasting the movie as American propaganda. In an alternate universe Iron Man 3 is being blasted while Pacific Rim got the China-only scenes.
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# ? Aug 28, 2013 22:28 |
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Danger posted:If anything, the discussion should implore you to go further in your enjoyment. No half measures. In theory yes, and most of the time that's the case, but I think we're at the point where we're either A) restating things that we're not going to agree on (I've basically written out the same psuedo-thesis on the film twice) or B) retreating to corners. And I think after a while it all sort of drifts away from whatever the movie itself was- we're not actually discussing its formal qualities so much as the validity of various forms of Marxist writing.
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 04:04 |
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Clipperton posted:You're just not trying hard enough man. If you really knuckled down and cracked the Zizek, you could be having profound insights like It doesn't seem that obvious - given that Pacific Rim is the 'Topic' in question, and you're still down with it. If the apocalypse of the film is liberal-democratic, and the resistance talks big about hope and trust while preserving private property and class structure, then it's fair to call the acts against the kaiju false.
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 04:10 |
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Hey anyone got the gifs of Cherno doing his fist pounding taunt and other such things from their big fight scene?
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 07:20 |
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:It doesn't seem that obvious - given that Pacific Rim is the 'Topic' in question, and you're still down with it. The apocalypse of the film is an environmental collapse, and communism has shown itself to have no more concern for the environment, perhaps even less so, than capitalist societies. Chernobyl is the big one, but there is also the destruction of the Caspian Sea. You can point out that the USSR was not a true commumist country, but then neither is America a true capitalist one. Del Toro's message of warning is to the whole human race and is not reserved for either system. The movie explicitly shows the cooperation of multiple independent states in the face of this danger (and the presence of narrative elements coopted by fascism doesn't mean that the film is fascist). Now for the good stuff: Glorious 8 bit rendition of the main theme complete with NES sprites and start screen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWHlOIKr_oY A Dirty Sock fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Aug 29, 2013 |
# ? Aug 29, 2013 07:41 |
OldPueblo posted:BEHOLD a new topic. Was that even subtext? Because it really bugged me how easily the Chinese and Russian mechs were defeated. Meanwhile Australia, who can barely afford any military tech, somehow has a mech survive the whole movie? (There's some weird stuff around 'stopping the boats' in a local political context but I bet that was unintentional).
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 08:48 |
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Count Chocula posted:Was that even subtext? Because it really bugged me how easily the Chinese and Russian mechs were defeated. Meanwhile Australia, who can barely afford any military tech, somehow has a mech survive the whole movie? (There's some weird stuff around 'stopping the boats' in a local political context but I bet that was unintentional). Maybe Australia wins their lawsuit against Japan for killing all their whales.
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 09:42 |
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A Dirty Sock posted:The apocalypse of the film is an environmental collapse, and communism has shown itself to have no more concern for the environment, perhaps even less so, than capitalist societies. Chernobyl is the big one, but there is also the destruction of the Caspian Sea. You can point out that the USSR was not a true commumist country, but then neither is America a true capitalist one. I am not advocating a return to the soviet union(?). Other issues ("but it's about international friendship!") have been covered in detail already. Why quote my posts if you aren't actually responding to them?
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 12:20 |
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Pay attention, he's already made lots of utterly unconvincing posts about this stuff. Gosh.
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 13:15 |
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The thing is, the international friendship and environmental elements are much more a foregrounded element of the story than any class issues. It's impossible to really say whether the heroes represent the bourgeois or the proletariat given the information- at least one of them is very much blue collar, but he was a celebrity before that so it's a kind of reverse mobility. The main capitalist figure in the film is Chau, who survives but is basically kind of a buffoon. He knows very little about the kaiju despite dealing in them as a commodity. True, it's not especially anti-capitalist but neither are a lot of movies. SuperMechaGodzilla posted:Other issues ("but it's about international friendship!") have been covered in detail already. Why quote my posts if you aren't actually responding to them? You see I don't think completely shrugging off other theories does you any good.
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 13:41 |
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A Dirty Sock posted:The apocalypse of the film is an environmental collapse, and communism has shown itself to have no more concern for the environment, perhaps even less so, than capitalist societies. Chernobyl is the big one, but there is also the destruction of the Caspian Sea. You can point out that the USSR was not a true commumist country, but then neither is America a true capitalist one. If it's an environmental warning, isn't it one about how multiple independent states will spend vast amounts of time, money and effort on spectacularly tackling the symptoms of environmental collapse for a feel-good moment (or take advantage of it for short-term capitalist gain) rather than solving the underlying problem? After the film ends they are left with the same literal pollution and environmental collapse as they started with, no matter how many 'hurricanes' they nuked or punched.
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 13:57 |
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The framing of the story clearly isn't concerned with American capitalism or Soviet(?) era communism (and America isn't a 'true' capitalist country? What does that even mean?); but global neo-liberalism. It's about the de- and re-territorialization of space (as Clipperton astutely followed from the conversation earlier).
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 14:05 |
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Maxwell Lord posted:The thing is, the international friendship and environmental elements are much more a foregrounded element of the story than any class issues. It's impossible to really say whether the heroes represent the bourgeois or the proletariat given the information- at least one of them is very much blue collar, but he was a celebrity before that so it's a kind of reverse mobility. The main capitalist figure in the film is Chau, who survives but is basically kind of a buffoon. He knows very little about the kaiju despite dealing in them as a commodity. 'International friendship' is the kind of thing you put in scary scare quotes as a warning against vagueness. My 'international friendship' is better. What now? And saying environmental issues are foregrounded is just straight-up wrong, when we see exactly that imagery of celebrities, blue-collar welders, black-marketeers, presidents, etc. There are straight-up shots of rioters protesting mismanagement of taxpayer dollars by the ultra-rich. The ecological theme is present, but consists of a single line of expository dialogue and a few crowd shots that resemble Blade Runner. The kaiju terror attacks are metaphorically compared to hurricanes in the diegesis, but they're primarily terror imagery for that reason - it's what gives the Kaiju Richter Scale a weirdo 'colour-coded Terror Alert Level' vibe.
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 14:52 |
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:'International friendship' is the kind of thing you put in scary scare quotes as a warning against vagueness. My 'international friendship' is better. What now? It's not completely meaningless in this day and age, though. Nationalism is still a real and scary thing. quote:And saying environmental issues are foregrounded is just straight-up wrong, when we see exactly that imagery of celebrities, blue-collar welders, black-marketeers, presidents, etc. There are straight-up shots of rioters protesting mismanagement of taxpayer dollars by the ultra-rich. True, but what classes are the characters? What class are the bad guys for that matter? Who are the have nots? Who controls the means of production? There's no real clear economic structure given here, be it affirming a capitalist one or rejecting it for something else- we assume they're protecting capitalism by default but there's no sign that that is what the precursors or kaiju are out to destroy.
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 15:16 |
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Yeah that was my mistake, that should be free market vs command economy. Consider my post tangent thoughts on the history of environmental destruction created by both systems of government. And the convergence of terror and the environment is a very kaiju-movie thing to do. Though given the slight nod to modern politics that is the Wall of Life, maybe the connection is intentional?
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 15:26 |
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Maxwell Lord posted:True, but what classes are the characters? What class are the bad guys for that matter? Who are the have nots? Who controls the means of production? There's no real clear economic structure given here, be it affirming a capitalist one or rejecting it for something else- we assume they're protecting capitalism by default but there's no sign that that is what the precursors or kaiju are out to destroy. The alien society basically illustrates Jurgen Habermas' concern that biogenetic manipulation will lead to an asymmetrical relationship between privileged 'creators' and 'creations'. There is the associated concern from Fukuyama that, since the rich in a free-market economy would obviously have better access to this stuff, they would be able to 'breed themselves better' and create a whole new form of entrenched class warfare. For a clearer examples of the same thing, see the genetically-engineered caste system in Man Of Steel, and the privatization (and thus restricted access to) the nanotech healing pods in Elysium. While the enslavement of the kaiju shows this logic taken to an extreme, they still represent the dark flipside of the jaeger-pilots and their relationship to the unseen ultrarich in the mainland. It's fairly clear that things are not really different from today - see the neon advertisements that choke Hong Kong, the cargo crates full of scooters, etc. Obviously, taxpayers fund the wall and jaeger programs, and these taxpayers themselves work crap jobs for their little pay. (That people will risk death on the wall for food stamps shows that unemployment is rampant.) We see riots against the irresponsible spending on the wall project (though the film uses clever/duplicitous editing to make these appear as pro-jaeger demonstrations), but somebody's paying for these scooters. So, the jaeger-pilots are exactly that: pilots, soldiers whatever. Some have achieved fame, but they're ultimately just the military. (Some folks asserted earlier the PPDC is a civilian operation, but I'm not sure where that comes from.) Everyone knows how poor folks are pushed into military service. So, see the association between the blue glow of kaiju blood, the drift, and the jello the troops are fed. They ultimately are just fighting for a meal - and their hunger is what connects them to those in power, allowing them to be manipulated. There is a revolutionary kernel there, as this blue food/blue blood/blue drift imagery is only a few steps removed from being communion imagery. But, again, the protagonists fail to love their neighbor enough to form a properly Christian community. Shouldn't the heroes partake of the body and blood of Baby Kaijesus, thus finding kinship with their fellow oppressed? Seize control of the jello factory? Instead, Newt betrays them all. As noted before, Leatherback and Cherno Alpha are the same creature, just viewed differently. So when Mako gloriously sword-fucks Otachi to death, it really is "anti-China propaganda." The 'good' Crimson Typhoon morphs into a drone animal that needs to be put down. So you get this false freedom - freedom earned through naked force against the neighbor, even though the kaiju gave us their only son....
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 20:10 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 18:37 |
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Also the Chinese are such weak pussies that they had to have three pilots to everyone else's two. Also three Chinese pilots represented the one child rule where all Chinese families are limited to three. Also the triforce.
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 20:17 |