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Uncle Boogeyman
Jul 22, 2007

wyoming posted:

How do you get STDs out of a raped girl looking at her body in the mirror? And you know, not fear of sexuality.
The movie was about the trauma of rape, no one even mentioned a slight worry of STDs.

as good a job as you're doing at being SMG's echobox, i don't believe you're actually so obtuse as to not get how someone could interpret a movie about teenagers passing on a lethal virus sexually as having STIs on its mind.

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SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN

Uncle Boogeyman posted:

you're right, there's nothing textually, subtextually, or otherwise about the scene where Maika Monroe stands in front of the bathroom mirror and looks down the front of her underwear in horror after being date raped that could be construed as being about STIs. i mean, where do they get this stuff? clearly these film critics are overthinking things. it's not like the movie is literally about something that is transmitted sexually and then kills you or anything.

The point of that scene is that there's nothing physically wrong with her. The hospital gave her a clean bill of health, and all that. There's little or nothing that contradicts her claim that no rape occurred, that she was simply kidnapped afterward.

Also, there's no disease that only affects one person at a time, that you can cure yourself of by passing on. (And if that were the case, we'd have a film where the protagonists go around deliberately infecting everyone with AIDS or whatever).

Uncle Boogeyman
Jul 22, 2007

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

The point of that scene is that there's nothing physically wrong with her. The hospital gave her a clean bill of health, and all that. There's little or nothing that contradicts her claim that no rape occurred, that she was simply kidnapped afterward.

Also, there's no disease that only affects one person at a time, that you can cure yourself of by passing on. (And if that were the case, we'd have a film where the protagonists go around deliberately infecting everyone with AIDS or whatever).

there's also no disease that causes a shape changing apparition to follow you down the street you jackass

Uncle Boogeyman
Jul 22, 2007

"man i dunno what's with all these people saying Alien is about rape. i mean, when you rape someone in real life, an eyeless bug monster doesn't claw its way out of their chest. these film critics are really reaching."

wyoming
Jun 7, 2010

Like a television
tuned to a dead channel.

Uncle Boogeyman posted:

as good a job as you're doing at being SMG's echobox, i don't believe you're actually so obtuse as to not get how someone could interpret a movie about teenagers passing on a lethal virus sexually as having STIs on its mind.

I've been posting that's about rape long before SMG ever posted in here, but you know, feel free to poo poo post because you have nothing to say.
Or just go gently caress yourself.

The rapist tells Jay about the rules, he "passes" it to her because "it's easier for girls" How is that about STDs?
The only person we actually see die is Greg, and as SMG pointed out, at the point he was just dead to Jay for being a mother fucker.
There's also the fact, that for a teenager being found mutilated in his bedroom, it's kinda odd there's only a lone cop car there later. Or perhaps that was about the broken window?

The whole loving movie is about men being rapists, the one guy drugs and ties up a girl, the other two take advantage or coerce their friend. Hell, a boat full of three dudes gently caress a girl that's obviously in distress.
I mean, you could argue it's about STDs, because no one seems worry in the film, but that's pretty weak.
It's just about a rapist trying to make his victim feel guilty.

wyoming fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Aug 30, 2015

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN
Alien employs rape and birth imagery as part of the broader critique of corporate capitalism. John Hurt is forcibly 'turned into' (reborn as) the alien, by the Company.

It Follows does nothing to either literally or metaphorically convey the experience of having some disease.

The most you get are shots of garbage and whatever, to present sex as vaguely 'dirty'.

SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Aug 30, 2015

Uncle Boogeyman
Jul 22, 2007

wyoming posted:

I've been posting that's about rape long before SMG ever posted in here, but you know, feel free to poo poo post because you have nothing to say.
Or just go gently caress yourself.

The rapist tells Jay about the rules, he "passes" it to her because "it's easier for girls" How is that about STDs?
The only person we actually see die is Greg, and as SMG pointed out, at the point he was just dead to Jay for being a mother fucker.
There's also the fact, that for a teenager being found mutilated in his bedroom, it's kinda odd there's only a lone cop car there later. Or perhaps that was about the broken window?

The whole loving movie is about men being rapists, the one guy drugs and ties up a girl, the other two take advantage or coerce their friend. Hell, a boat full of three dudes gently caress a girl that's obviously in distress.
I mean, you could argue it's about STDs, because no one seems worry in the film, but that's pretty weak.
It's just about a rapist trying to make his victim feel guilty.

the question is, why can it not be about STIs just cause it's also about rape?

the movie's about sexual horror of all stripes. it's dripping with it. date rape, chloroform soaked rags, mother-on-son incest, father-on-daughter incest, too-nice "nice guy" friends, oceanfaring gangbangs, and yes, STIs.

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN

Uncle Boogeyman posted:

the question is, why can it not be about STIs just cause it's also about rape?

Because there's no textual evidence to support that interpretation.

It's a bad analogy for what happens onscreen.

Uncle Boogeyman
Jul 22, 2007

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Because there's no textual evidence to support that interpretation.

i'll concede we just have very different views of the film, but this seems entirely arbitrary to me.

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN

Uncle Boogeyman posted:

i'll concede we just have very different views of the film, but this seems entirely arbitrary to me.

Think of it this way: a much better - but no less spurious - analogy would be to say It Follows is about trying to sell a car.

Someone gave you the car, and it's a lemon. So you put it up on for sale, but everyone keeps returning it. You can't even give it away, etc. It is a car analogy.

That hypothetical analogy is pretty garbage, but nonetheless fits the narrative better than the STI interpretation.

It's demonstrably closer to the truth, because we actually can say that the film is primarily about 'unloading your baggage onto other people' - the way Paul maintains the relationship by letting off steam with prostitutes at regular intervals, etc.

King Vidiot
Feb 17, 2007

You think you can take me at Satan's Hollow? Go 'head on!
You can't sexually transmit a car.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

It's demonstrably closer to the truth, because we actually can say that the film is primarily about 'unloading your baggage onto other people' - the way Paul maintains the relationship by letting off steam with prostitutes at regular intervals, etc.

That aspect of transferring a death curse onto others, to hold power over their life and well-being and to tether them to some intangible "It" which can take the visual form of past shames or traumas, through the act of sex does tie in with the theme of rape. I'll give you that. Each person whom the death curse is passed to becomes a rapist. They are knowingly or unknowingly passing on a burden which will ultimately destroy their victim, after mentally tormenting them for a time. The length of time of the torment depends on if the victim was aware that they were being victimized. The frat boys on the boat (presumably) died quickly as they believed they were the ones victimizing a girl in distress. "It" probably came in the form of someone comfortable and familiar and at no point did they realize they had been raped until they were already dead.

So I agree with the rape thing, I don't agree with the adamant assertion that a car analogy is a more valid reading than STIs.

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN
You have to look at what we're shown. The scene with the boat is edited identically to the scene of Paul and the prostitutes; we don't see anything, and it's actually left completely ambiguous if they 'did it' or not.

The point of such ambiguity is that the sex act itself doesn't ultimately matter at all. It's enough that they simply contemplate it.

What matters to the characters is the idea of a space where dirty thoughts are supposed to go. To Paul, the prostitutes function like a toilet, where he can safely dispose of his poo poo. They are a void to him, and the Detroit ghetto is a 'third-world' place where he can export the byproducts of sexuality. Note how Hugh also lives in a comfy suburban home, while operating a rape shack out in the slums.

So you can see that the financial metaphor is actually quite apt. Buying and selling. Trying to get rid of your garbage.

Jay approaches the boat because, in a basic Freudian way, she experiences a compulsion to repeat her traumatic experiences. The men on the boat are like the prostitutes: 'dirty people' who Jay doesn't care about, and who don't care about her. Of course they don't actually die, but what matters is that Jay doesn't care if they live or die. She's just behaving self-destructively.

SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Aug 30, 2015

SlimGoodbody
Oct 20, 2003

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Of course they don't actually die, but what matters is that Jay doesn't care if they live or die. She's just behaving self-destructively.

The class/economic imbalance thing was interesting and definitely there, but in the part I've quoted, you again imply that no one dies because there is no invisible monster. If there is no invisible monster, then what was throwing a half dozen kitchen appliances at Jay in the pool? Why did a towel hang in the air in a person shape before being shot in the head? Why did Jay have a vicious, hand shaped burn around her ankle?

edit: spelling

SlimGoodbody fucked around with this message at 10:15 on Aug 30, 2015

Magic Hate Ball
May 6, 2007

ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this
It's about ethics in gaming journalism.

lizardman
Jun 30, 2007

by R. Guyovich

Hat Thoughts posted:

Why do you feel the need to "defend against" what he's saying

It's what SMG wants, for one thing. He'd already given his take pages ago and the thread found it interesting and moved on. Disappointed that he had not caused a petty argument, he decided to "correct" someone (even though his post was a non sequitur in the context of the conversation and he drat well knows it) in order to try to make the thread all about him.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Think of it this way: a much better - but no less spurious - analogy would be to say It Follows is about trying to sell a car.

Someone gave you the car, and it's a lemon. So you put it up on for sale, but everyone keeps returning it. You can't even give it away, etc. It is a car analogy.


Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock.

lizardman fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Aug 30, 2015

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN

lizardman posted:

It's what SMG wants, for one thing. He'd already given his take pages ago and the thread found it interesting and moved on. Disappointed that he had not caused a petty argument, he decided to "correct" someone (even though his post was a non sequitur in the context of the conversation and he drat well knows it) in order to try to make the thread all about him.

You have strange fantasies about me. Rest assured that I do not actually exist.

SlimGoodbody posted:

The class/economic imbalance thing was interesting and definitely there, but in the part I've quoted, you again imply that no one dies because there is no invisible monster. If there is no invisible monster, then what was throwing a half dozen kitchen appliances at Jay in the pool? Why did a towel hang in the air in a person shape before being shot in the head? Why did Jay have a vicious, hand shaped burn around her angle?

You're beginning with the presumption that, when we see such things as the shed's door spontaneously exploding, or Jay's hair suddenly going upward at a 90-degree angle, or Paul being launched several metres, that those things 'actually happened' exactly as shown onscreen. They did not. As I wrote before, the film is presented as a sort of sarcastic post-facto recap of what the kids believe happened.

The pool scene is obviously a variation of the scene in Nightmare On Elm Street where Freddy is 'pulled into the real world'. (And of course, we should remember that Nancy's 'real world' has sheets coming to life, and people flying through the air.) So let's start with that.

You have (first and foremost) the everyday objects being repurposed, destroyed, unconventionally weaponized as in Home Alone. The basic point in Nightmare is that Nancy 'hacks' the symbolic reality of her home and thereby changes her entire attitude towards it. What she initially perceived as her prison is now perceived as a weapon. Through this very basic logic, she turns her reality into Freddy's nightmare through sheer force of will. Nancy's reality becomes a dream-world where she subjects him to surreal tortures and eventually kills him. So instead of seeing the blunt reality, as some might expect, 'pulling Freddy into the real world' is the point where the film get the most fantastical - the point where Nancy really completely loses it.

The main clue in It Follows' pool sequence is the fact that, when Paul raises his gun, we immediately cut to a hair dryer suspended in the air, pointed at Jay - exactly like a gun. What's going on there? There's an obvious juxtaposition between the real gun and the 'pretend gun'. The other objects are, prominently, CRT televisions and typewriters - obsolete objects from an earlier time. And people haven't really examined what that means.

"The pleasure of looking at the people looking at [Claus Oldenburg's scupture of a] Typewriter Eraser, amused by its monumentality, is inseparable from the pleasure of listening to the child who, befuddled by an anachronistic object she never knew, pleads: "What is that thing supposed to be?" What is this disk with the brush sticking out of it? What was a typewriter? How did that form ever function? The plea expresses the power of this particular work to dramatize a generational divide and to stage (to melodramatize, even) the question of obsolescence. [...] This abandoned object attains a new stature precisely because it has no life outside the boundary of art - no life, that is, within our everyday lives. Released from the bond of being equipment, sustained outside the irreversibility of technological history, the object becomes something else.

If, to the student of Oldenburg, the eraser ironically comments on the artist's own obsession with typewriters, it more simply transforms a dead commodity into a living work and thus shows how inanimate objects organize the temporality of the animate world."
-Bill Brown, "Thing Theory"

The typewriter and such are first abstracted into their base ability to channel electricity, then further into their sheer weighty materiality. They go from objects to being nothing more than inert things. So what we're seeing with the kids is initially a sort of weird art ritual of playing with electricity and harness power (note the 'random' cutaway to gathering stormclouds), which quickly turns into total powerlessness at the point where the first object falls into the pool. The message here is that the Nightmare On Elm Street plan doesn't work. they fail to reshape their reality and, instead, we get the dissolution of the universe into a scrap-pile of obsolete things. Garbage.

But, after this, what we get is power restored: the hairdryer is nothing more than an inert thing, but Paul's gun does the job.

So, to get back to the question of what literally happened: If "It" isn't real, how did the TV get in the pool? The thing to note is that the first object 'flies into the pool' right as Paul is running around near it. Then the hairdryer flies into the pool at the same point that Paul raises his gun. The one friends gets shot right the exact same point that a radio splashes into the pool, and so-on. What this means is that, after Paul accidentally knocks the TV into the pool, we are seeing multiple different interpretations of reality happening simultaneously. The raising of the gun and the throwing of the hairdryer are the same event, seen from different perspectives.

But how can someone mistake a gun for a hairdryer?

The answer is actually pretty straightforward: multiple shots show Paul's shadow prominently projected onto the wall, by the lights:



When Paul shoots 'It' in the hand, the shadow's head appears to explode:



So Jay is straightforwardly imagining that Paul's shadow is her abusive father throwing things at her.

What makes the pool sequence bizarre is that every single shot operates according to a slightly different logic. The girl who got shot is the one who believes the blanket looks like a ghost, for example. Then we cut to Jay seeing her bloodied father falling into the water. When Paul shoots the ghost underwater it's not anybody's perspective. That straight-up just didn't happen. It's pandemonium.

But one thing is clear: whenever we get a good look at the bottom of the pool, few or none of the tossed objects are there anymore. Because they weren't tossed in the first place.

As for the scars and whatever, 'spontaneous' injuries are a big part of these alien abduction and demonic possession stories. You have a scar you didn't notice before. How did it get there? It's missing time! The subtext in these types of film was that the scar was always there. You only just noticed it now.

SlimGoodbody
Oct 20, 2003

I think the exploding head was actually the Follower's hand getting shot to pieces, if I recall, but I will grant that this was an interesting and enjoyable dissection of the pool scene. Something about the whole premise you propose doesn't seem quite right to me, but maybe I'm just an artless plebe. At the very least, I will keep your theory in mind the next time I watch the movie, if only to figure out why I find it so difficult to buy into your version.

CelticPredator
Oct 11, 2013
🍀👽🆚🪖🏋

I love the pool scene because it's the dumbest plan and doesn't work at all.

SlimGoodbody
Oct 20, 2003

CelticPredator posted:

I love the pool scene because it's the dumbest plan and doesn't work at all.

It very much felt like an echo of the kind of dumb, old Sci Fi movie solution that would fit right in to the black and white films they watch so often. I even recall hearing audio from one of the films about using electricity to attack something, I think.

Anyway, yeah. It was a total Scooby Doo friends plan and didn't even remotely work. It's great.

Hat Thoughts
Jul 27, 2012

lizardman posted:

It's what SMG wants, for one thing. He'd already given his take pages ago and the thread found it interesting and moved on. Disappointed that he had not caused a petty argument, he decided to "correct" someone (even though his post was a non sequitur in the context of the conversation and he drat well knows it) in order to try to make the thread all about him.

Hell, if I want to ignore someone I can ignore them. I'm insanely powerful that way.

Magic Hate Ball
May 6, 2007

ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this
The curving diagonals in the following sequence of shots illustrate this director's fascination with hands,

Kawalimus
Jan 17, 2008

Better Living Through Birding And Pessimism
All I can think is I hope no one slipped on the invisible urine that Follower left in the kitchen that night.

bog savant
Mar 15, 2008

unending immaturity
I love this movie, my fav horror of the past 5 years or so for sure. To me, the meaning is made clear near the beginning in the theatre, when the Bad BF talks about wanting to be a child again. The anxiety of growing up, the feeling that we don't know what we're doing, the realization that welp, this is it, this is life I guess...that starts to follow us everywhere after a certain age, and having sex is one surefire way to stave it off for a little bit. drat this movie rules, I wish every horror was like this in tone and atmosphere. Lake Mungo is similar, any fan of It Follows should watch.

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Also, there's no disease that only affects one person at a time, that you can cure yourself of by passing on. (And if that were the case, we'd have a film where the protagonists go around deliberately infecting everyone with AIDS or whatever).

You get it by having sex with someone. Its invisible to everyone else. You never get rid of it, at best you can postpone it but it will eventually kill you. I really don't see why there's no textual evidence for claiming that a STD reading of the movie isn't valid. And by the way, there is people going around having sex with other people in hope of getting rid of AIDS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_cleansing_myth#Prevalence

Tenzarin
Jul 24, 2007
.
Taco Defender
Watched the movie, it was ok and the best part was the 80's synth music.

Vegetable
Oct 22, 2010

This movie is suburban as gently caress. It's all about the illusory freedom of open spaces, large houses, and personal automobiles.

Timeless Appeal
May 28, 2006
I watched the film last week, and I adored it. As for what the movie is actually about though, I think things clicked when I started overthinking the quasi-80s aesthetic. The whole look of the film is one in which time itself is collapsing. I then starting thinking of the choice to have the characters be this weird college age, but not have a very defined college life. Often in media, college is coded with dorms quads and frats, something that a lot of us don't experience. The characters are adults, but their lives still feel like high school. Parents are not on screen, but they are still very much present. Time for the main characters has become nebulous and unreal.

More than that, the meaning of time is taking its toll. One on end, they are being faced with regret. They are no longer children anymore, and they cannot undo the things they didn't like about their childhood. They are realizing the things that they must carry with them (Unrequited love, sexual abuse, sexual encounters gone wrong, STIs are big things in the film). On the other end of the extreme is the inevitability of death. They will die, and worse, it might be their past that undoes them. The Monster is time itself, and it comes from all directions. They are being chased by both their past and future, and the fixation of these things is literally destroying their present, collapsing it and eroding any meaning that can exist in it.

Stuff like rape and STIs are present in the text, but they exist to serve a larger theme.

King Vidiot
Feb 17, 2007

You think you can take me at Satan's Hollow? Go 'head on!

Tenzarin posted:

Watched the movie, it was ok and the best part was the 80's synth music.

It reminded me a lot of Adam Wingard's movies, and now that I think of it I kind of just want to see You're Next rescored with the soundtrack to The Guest. I think it'd be a better movie than It Follows.

And It Follows was pretty good, agreed.


Timeless Appeal posted:

I watched the film last week, and I adored it. As for what the movie is actually about though, I think things clicked when I started overthinking the quasi-80s aesthetic. The whole look of the film is one in which time itself is collapsing. I then starting thinking of the choice to have the characters be this weird college age, but not have a very defined college life. Often in media, college is coded with dorms quads and frats, something that a lot of us don't experience. The characters are adults, but their lives still feel like high school. Parents are not on screen, but they are still very much present. Time for the main characters has become nebulous and unreal.

They're specifically meant to be teenagers, but played by 20-somethings the way 80's horror movies always did. But I think you're right in that the age discrepancy is a part of the film's use of "Fuzzy Time". We're never sure how old the characters are or even what decade it is since there aren't many concrete signifiers of the characters' ages or the time period the film takes place in. The clothes are generic and timeless, the cars are old, there are no modern appliances apart from some weird eBook thing that doesn't even exist in our reality.

vv Yeah that was definitely up there with my top favorite uses of a pop song in a film score.

King Vidiot fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Sep 28, 2015

Parachute
May 18, 2003

King Vidiot posted:

It reminded me a lot of Adam Wingard's movies, and now that I think of it I kind of just want to see You're Next rescored with the soundtrack to The Guest. I think it'd be a better movie than It Follows.

You're Next would have been so weird with score like The Guest, imo. Maybe it could have had a Halloween-esque minimal synthy theme, but I'm fine with the song they used.

NarkyBark
Dec 7, 2003

one funky chicken

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Because there's no textual evidence to support that interpretation.
It's a bad analogy for what happens onscreen.

It's as if my computer just became self-aware.

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hemale in pain
Jun 5, 2010




Movie was cool and the first 30 mins or so were terrifying and I really do mean I was properly scared. I took the monster as a metaphor, or whatever, for the creeping feeling of death which you can't escape from... kinda too obvious I guess? the movie pretty much tells you directly with the poetry. My main complaint is that once the boogieman alien sex virus starts doing anything other than quitely walking towards you it became very unscary and a bit silly. It really breaks down with the beach scene but once I accepted it was going into cheesy camp mode I was okay with it sorta like The Guest.

One thing which I didn't get was why did she swim to the boat with the guys on it? I can only assume she was testing if it could go in water or was going to try and gently caress one of them to slow down the monster but it never got brought up. I also swear there's an advert where the rapey alien ghost climbs into the outdoor pool in her garden but it didn't happen in the film :tinfoil:

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