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I don't think the movie is saying that defeating the kaiju is sufficient for humanity to live happily ever after. It actually dedicates a lot of screen time to get across the opposite idea - that the status quo is catastrophically hosed up, to the point where it invited the kaiju. This isn't Star Trek where everything is utopian but for the Borg or Klingons or whatever - here Mitt Romney has you working for food stamps on a project that is just buying time for him to retreat to his kaju-proof mansion. This all kind of undercuts the fascist reading, where we'd all be doing wonderfully but for the Other. Here the awful Other is explicitly a symptom of our own wrongdoing, while in fascism hating the Other is really a kind of responsibility dodge. Defeating the kaiju is presented as necessary, but not sufficient, because this supposedly fascist movie is telling us that we made the problem in the first place, and that even just containing the symptoms depends on coming together across lines of race, sex and nationality on a scale we rarely do in real life. Solving the bigger underlying problems would require togetherness on a bigger scale. Whether or not that happens in the sequel will determine if it's a utopia or dystopia, basically. PR is definitely a dystopia - we're relieved the kaju were beaten back to prevent human extinction, but that still leaves a world that's totally hosed up (mostly for reasons the real world is hosed up.
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Jun 29, 2014 20:18
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Ineffectual democracy created the problem in the first place, so the paramilitary has to step in.
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Jun 29, 2014 20:30
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sean10mm posted:
It actually says that the Others are still out there (in this case, the elites that decided to hide) and these Others are the real causes of the world's woes. They're the ones that caused the Kaiju to invade (because pollution blah blah blah) and only our military forces are able to quell them.
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Jun 29, 2014 21:19
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Tezcatlipoca posted:Beckett is the one watching the wall riots. Stacker is in the scene right before it. The only screens Stacker watches are in the command center. If that is the case, and it was his subordinate, it does not contradict my point at all. RBA Starblade posted:He speaks only Truth, after all. The st-uh, SMG, is infallible. Truthfulness does not mean 'infallibility'. Attacking does not mean 'going on a genocidal rampage'. Unclear does not mean 'totally invisible'. You are not skilled with reading comprehension, and it is causing you undue vexation.
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Jun 29, 2014 21:25
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quote:Truthfulness does not mean 'infallibility'. I suspect you missed what I was doing, Truth. You should know, you've been there before. Though... RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 21:46
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SMG you retard, don't you know what infallible means? Let me get a dictionary...
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Jun 29, 2014 21:50
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Lightanchor posted:Ineffectual democracy created the problem in the first place, so the paramilitary has to step in. The goalposts for the "it's fascist" argument keep moving so often that it's hard to keep track of them. Is the PPDC fascist because it doesn't overthrow the exploitative capitalist status quo that created the kaiju crisis, or is it fascist because it does threaten the status quo like you described?
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Jun 29, 2014 21:50
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quote:The goalposts for the "it's fascist" argument keep moving so often that it's hard to keep track of them. The enemy has to remain nebulous and changing, otherwise it could be defeated once and for all.
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Jun 29, 2014 21:51
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Clipperton posted:Well where would we be without walls? Crushed under the roofs of our houses since there aren't any walls to hold it up
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Jun 29, 2014 21:56
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sean10mm posted:Is the PPDC fascist because it doesn't overthrow the exploitative capitalist status quo that created the kaiju crisis, or is it fascist because it does threaten the status quo like you described? The PPDC is an organization created to fight the kaiju, no more. Now that the breach is sealed, its ordnance depleted and most of its personnel dead, it has served its purpose and can disbandon. The damage it inflicted on the plutocratic governments was in doing their job for them, dealing with the threat they refused to. They were discredited chiefly by their own actions (their obvious neglect for their own citizens, the total failure of the Kaiju Wall), but the PPDC doing their job for them makes them look worthless. You seem to expect the PPDC to describe itself or its aims as overtly political, which never happens and never would with any kind of reactionary force (which fascism at least constructs itself as). They are there to save the world, not create a political order. A new order will spring up in the wake of their example. e: quote:Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, "I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares." Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. - Umberto Eco, 1995 Harime Nui fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 21:56
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sean10mm posted:The goalposts for the "it's fascist" argument keep moving so often that it's hard to keep track of them. Goalposts have not moved. Fascism has always taken over for the government and accelerated the exploitative capitalism already in place. Lightanchor fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 21:56
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Be ever vigilant for fascism lurks all around us
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Jun 29, 2014 21:59
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Fascism is only capitalistic in that capitalists tend to flourish under fascism, because fascism is not actually good at its stated aims (removing the plutocrats, technocrats, bureaucrats and restoring "tradition," "health," etc.) Fascism is generally hostile to bourgeois rationality and the systems it birthed, or at least regards them as lesser but necessary appendages to the nobler worship of naked strength. It's all there in how Stacker has to rely on literal gangsters to keep his operation running, although of course he treats them with all the contempt they deserve.
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Jun 29, 2014 22:00
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sean10mm posted:The goalposts for the "it's fascist" argument keep moving so often that it's hard to keep track of them. The PPDC isn't fascist, the movie is fascist. Within the world of the movie, Stacker and co. are just doing what needs to be done in a completely practical and non-ideological way.
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Jun 29, 2014 22:00
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My words are fascist, my post is fascist, my intent is fascist. I, too, am fascist.
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Jun 29, 2014 22:01
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Harime Nui posted:Fascism is only capitalistic in that capitalists tend to flourish under fascism, because fascism is not actually good at its stated aims (removing the plutocrats, technocrats, bureaucrats and restoring "tradition," "health," etc.) I half agree. It's not a coincidence. Capitalist flourishing is the real aim.
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Jun 29, 2014 22:07
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Well here's to three more years of this poo poo before the sequel comes out I guess.
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Jun 29, 2014 22:33
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Lightanchor posted:I half agree. It's not a coincidence. Capitalist flourishing is the real aim. And capitalists are explicitly villains in this film. It's one of those things that undercuts the fascist readings of the film that keep going unacknowledged for some reason. Like how the outside threat is explicitly presented as our fault, meaning it's not really an Other at all, and thus can have no Final Solution. Hell, the other side of the rift is just the Mitt Romney stand-in writ large. He just has to use food stamps to get the working class to die en mass for his convenience rather than building them from scratch to a template.
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Jun 29, 2014 22:37
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Capitalists were nominally the enemies of fascists, hence the anti-semitism.Joseph Goebbels posted:Better to go down with Bolshevism than live in eternal capitalist servitude. However, fascists ended up supporting the very same capitalist structures. Major industrialists the world over supported them. Your criticism--'are they supposed to be capitalist or anti-capitalist?'--already applies to fascism itself. In the end they're capitalist, despite their rhetoric.
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Jun 29, 2014 22:48
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:
But this still is from the opening scene, designed to highlight the celebrity and egotist vanity of Jaeger pilots. It makes sense that they wouldn't blend into the apparatus as well here, because the entire point of this sequence is to demonstrate how blindly self-congratulatory they'd become. They're literally dressed in white, to stand out front and center. The shot with Mako you were initially discussing happens way later in the movie, under very different tonal and narrative circumstances. I'm aware I referenced the spine-insert thing from the opening as an example of the invasive, biomechanical nature of the tech, but better integration into the machine-body and better cooperation of characters are thematic arcs...it starts with characters being bad at it. Obviously, Del Toro had white suits he could've had Mako and Raleigh wear in the shot you were complaining about for its lack of clarity. But he *chose* to put them in black ones instead. It's not a failure of filmmaking; it's a choice serving its themes. I don't question that the sequel might go into a more sympathetic direction with respect to the kaiju. Maybe Newt will discover that Otochi v2 is a friend to children and he'll break its master's chains to turn it into an ally. But currently, there's very little evidence that the masters/kaiju have a hierarchical society at all. If anything, the implication is that it's totally non-hierarchical, because they're a singular hive mind. A plot where humans liberate kaiju could easily happen, sure. It just hasn't yet. We'll see if it does in 2017, I guess.
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Jun 30, 2014 04:04
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I disagree with the lack of hierarchical evidence displayed so far. If anything, a hierarchy is self-evident: Kaiju fight and kill and die for the Others, not the other way around, or both in any measure at all, let alone equal measure. The fact that Kaiju are grown specifically to aggressively terraform prospective colonies supports that there is indeed a hierarchy in place. Hive minds are generally by their very nature hierarchical (see: bee hives, ant colonies) in which a leadership caste or individual directs the efforts of specialized castes and groups.
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Jun 30, 2014 05:17
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Strobe posted:I disagree with the lack of hierarchical evidence displayed so far. If anything, a hierarchy is self-evident: Kaiju fight and kill and die for the Others, not the other way around, or both in any measure at all, let alone equal measure. The fact that Kaiju are grown specifically to aggressively terraform prospective colonies supports that there is indeed a hierarchy in place. Hive minds are generally by their very nature hierarchical (see: bee hives, ant colonies) in which a leadership caste or individual directs the efforts of specialized castes and groups. Oh, I mean hierarchical in the sense of a bourgeois / proletariat distinction. Kaiju bodies are clearly built for various functions. But Newt implies the kaiju are literally a singular subjectivity contained within multiple bodies. The kaiju aren't necessarily creatures with individual consciousnesses; they're remotely connected nodes of the masters. They *are* the masters, basically. Liberating them would be like "liberating" a Predator drone from its operator. The notion that the kaiju need to be "liberated" implies they have some distinct subjectivity that differs from the masters. Which the writers could easily establish as the reality. But the kaiju could also be like fingernails being clipped off. It depends on how they elaborate on what their society is.
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Jun 30, 2014 05:41
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Ah, yes, that's much more in-line with what we've seen so far. I'm still not convinced that a psycho-social link necessarily determines that the Kaiju/Others are one organism with multiple component bodies. Sharing experiential data does not necessarily mean (but heavily implies) that component individuals are controlled by a singular consciousness.
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Jun 30, 2014 05:51
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Strobe posted:Sharing experiential data does not necessarily mean (but heavily implies) that component individuals are controlled by a singular consciousness. The Strangers from Dark City are like this: they share a "racial memory" (meaning that they are, essentially, a race of clones), but they still experience life as individual consciousnesses.
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Jun 30, 2014 06:14
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Xealot posted:Liberating them would be like "liberating" a Predator drone from its operator. Why not liberate a Predator drone from its operator?
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Jun 30, 2014 06:44
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Hbomberguy posted:Very few films are pro-elitism to be fair. Which ones are? Is there a movie where the rich kids defeat the scrappy band of misfits? (other than Bad News Bears)
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Jun 30, 2014 06:46
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Uncle Wemus posted:Which ones are? Is there a movie where the rich kids defeat the scrappy band of misfits? (other than Bad News Bears) Starship Troopers. 
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Jun 30, 2014 06:50
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Why not liberate a Predator drone from its operator? I once touched a hot piece of metal and burned my finger. Why not liberate my hand from my brain? When the Hand's Army rises up against the Motor Cortices of the world, they will finally end the cycle of neuro-manual class conflict and form a Hand Utopia.
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Jun 30, 2014 08:59
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If you liberated yourself from your sense of pain, you'd be better at fighting for justice. Come on, 'turn your brain off' and fight for justice.
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Jun 30, 2014 09:06
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I recall reading a few years ago that most people lacking or with a dulled sense of pain need help functioning in day to day life and are constantly checking every part of their body, as they are unable to tell when they have injured themselves doing routine things we take for granted, like waking up, or bathing. You wouldn't make for a better fighter for very long.
RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 09:36 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 09:33
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The reason they have to check is because they lack the mechanism for telling them they are injured, otherwise known as pain. Most people fear pain itself, keeping them from doing what may be just. If people feared it less, or even felt it less, perhaps more lives would be endangered - but life itself would get better.
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Jun 30, 2014 09:35
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Until you bite your tongue over night or scalded your entire body in the bath, your body not being aware of what it's doing or feeling. The inability to register pain, damage or feeling isn't a good thing. Brain damage is not an ideal state, though it's odd that this is the second thread to start to argue that.
RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 09:37
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I am advocating a greater willingness to sacrifice oneself for the good or betterment of one's society, something also advocated by the film Pacific Rim. I am not advocating that people give themselves brain damage.
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Jun 30, 2014 09:42
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I am.
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Jun 30, 2014 10:10
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Hbomberguy posted:I am advocating a greater willingness to sacrifice oneself for the good or betterment of one's society, something also advocated by the film Pacific Rim. Don't need to, everyone in this thread already has it Uncle Wemus posted:Which ones are? Is there a movie where the rich kids defeat the scrappy band of misfits? (other than Bad News Bears) Some superhero films like Batman (arguably). Also I can never get over the beginning of Iron Man being him shedding patriotic American tears over the death of ARE BRAVE BOYS due to his weapons production, after blasting away hundreds of poorly armed Afghanistanis for which he does not spare a thought Prism Mirror Lens fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 10:13
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Xealot posted:I once touched a hot piece of metal and burned my finger. Why not liberate my hand from my brain? When the Hand's Army rises up against the Motor Cortices of the world, they will finally end the cycle of neuro-manual class conflict and form a Hand Utopia. Hell yeah 
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Jun 30, 2014 10:59
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Xealot posted:I once touched a hot piece of metal and burned my finger. Why not liberate my hand from my brain? When the Hand's Army rises up against the Motor Cortices of the world, they will finally end the cycle of neuro-manual class conflict and form a Hand Utopia. With your analogy, we are back to (fascist) corporatism - the community as an organic body with a head, and hands. Liberal corporatism is the moral of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The hero is a rich dude who travels through a subterranean rift to see the 'third world' workers enslaved. He slums it for a bit, becomes a christian, etc. he decides to become an advocate for the poor while also endeavoring to 'civilize' them. Metropolis is a very good film with a very dumb ending.  "In today's predominant ideological perception, I'm tempted to claim work itself — that is to say manual labor as opposed to so-called symbolic activity — work, not sex is more and more becoming the site of obscene indecency to be concealed from the public eye. The tradition which goes back to Wagner's opera, Rhinegold, or to Fritz Lang's film, Metropolis, the tradition in which the working process takes place underground, in dark caves, today culminates in the millions of anonymous workers sweating in the Third World factories, from Chinese gulags to Indonesian assembly lines. In their invisibility the West can afford itself to babble about the so-called disappearing working class. Of course, it's disappearing from here. But what is crucial in this tradition is the equation of labor with crime, the idea that labor, hard work, is originally an indecent criminal activity to be hidden from the public eye. Significantly, we ask ourselves a simple question: Where in Hollywood films do we see still today the production process in all its intensity? I claim, as far as I remember, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, only at one place: in James Bond or similar films when the good guy, James Bond the agent, penetrates the fortress of the master criminal. And then you see it's either the drug processing or putting together of some lethal weapon. That's the only place where you see the production process. Of course, the function of the agent is then to explode, to destroy, to repress again this sight of production." (link). I am not a corporatist.
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Jun 30, 2014 17:16
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quote:Metropolis is a very good film with a very dumb ending. I'm glad we've found a second thing we both agree on.
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Jun 30, 2014 17:20
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RBA Starblade posted:I'm glad we've found a second thing we both agree on. Not really.
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Jun 30, 2014 17:27
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No, really, I thought you were pretty on the money about Prometheus too, except for it being the smash-hit comedy of the summer.
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Jun 30, 2014 17:30
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