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Hodgepodge posted:You presented the argument that cruelty towards animals is part of our intrinsic nature, which isn't surprising considering that you consider all humans a "paternalistic master race." Presumably, mentioning this as part of an argument against the idea that non-humans can be slaves means that you consider this just, since it is an example of our enslavement of being that can at least feel. Or did you bring it up as a non-sequitur? its not our nature its the nature of power. we are masters over other species because we have power over them. we rationalize this by bringing up our superior intelligence. while i believe intelligence should play a role in agency, i dont believe its the most important part. you say bb-8 is more worthy of agency than a dog because it knows engineering. i say the dog is more worthy of agency because its a mammal and not a walking computer built to serve. but it really only comes down to the needs and wants of the subject
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Nov 19, 2019 14:26
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Ghost Leviathan posted:The crazy thing is that Astro Boy probably had everything beat other solid ozamu tesuka moments in racism include ode to kirihito including a trip to south africa where the doctor is initially greeted as an honorable white man but then they try to kill him because he turns up evidence that the furry disease also affects people who arent black blackjacks weird black skin graft on his face dating from that time when he was a child and his only donor was this black kid he knew who he promptly declared to be his only true friend that black kid later went to the united states and became an afroradical
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Nov 19, 2019 14:29
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R2 and 3PO iirc are based on a peasant duo in The Hidden Fortress and are basically coded as servants, as are nearly all droids basically the underclasses. Droids owned by royalty are shiny and well-maintained while droids owned by slaves themselves are naked and gaunt, and a wealthy oligarch's palace has a torture chamber for misbehaving and poorly performing droids when they aren't just shot.
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Nov 19, 2019 14:30
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the fact that droids feel pain should tell you something
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Nov 19, 2019 14:31
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Mercrom posted:its not our nature its the nature of power. we are masters over other species because we have power over them. we rationalize this by bringing up our superior intelligence. while i believe intelligence should play a role in agency, i dont believe its the most important part. I didn't say BB-8 was more worthy- just that he has a huge range of capabilities which make the comparison to a dog misleading. We do indeed have more power over hypothetical hard AI, since it will be something we build from the ground up (although it may be that there are hard limits on how much one can hard code controls into intelligent behaviour). This is a matter of degree, though. We may train animals to behave as we wish them to within their capacity to obey our commands. And our subjectivity is itself produced by society- slaves were and are trained to believe they are inferior and their place just, and capital is incredibly adept at training workers to not only accept and obey, but to defend their own exploitation. And, of course, this is why the Jedi are so afraid of recruiting a child old enough to remember his mother. quote:You don’t know the power of the dark side! I must obey my master. quote:ANAKIN : Since I was very little, three, I think. My Mom and I were sold to quote:ANAKIN : Well, Threepio, I'm free...and I'm going away...in a starship... quote:ANAKIN : What will happen to me now? Hodgepodge has issued a correction as of 14:41 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 14:33
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Nobody really thinks of droids as slaves because they're purpose-built and programmed to be fine with being slaves. That's a distinct problem from real world slavery where human beings lived their entire lives in bondage and never lost the desire for freedom and dignity, because the interesting question becomes "is there something inherent about sentience that demands a right to liberation even if the sentient being doesn't want it?" Instead L3-37 is like a liberal's caricature of SJWs, who is maybe right in the abstract but there's a right place & time honey.
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Nov 19, 2019 14:50
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Some Guy TT posted:blackjacks weird black skin graft on his face dating from that time when he was a child and his only donor was this black kid he knew who he promptly declared to be his only true friend that black kid later went to the united states and became an afroradical Don't watch the modern animated adaptations of the comic, those soured me so hard on BJ really hard as a character. Why would you make a followup to "BJ's dad asks him to operate on his new wife and turns her into his mom." Tezuka is one of those creators that... a good part of his stories make sense once you learn he campaigned on the Japanese Diet to make the animation and comic industry more Mike Rowe like.
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Nov 19, 2019 14:53
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:Nobody really thinks of droids as slaves because they're purpose-built and programmed to be fine with being slaves. That's a distinct problem from real world slavery where human beings lived their entire lives in bondage and never lost the desire for freedom and dignity, because the interesting question becomes "is there something inherent about sentience that demands a right to liberation even if the sentient being doesn't want it?" they literally wipe droid brains yearly so that they don't go getting any funny ideas about freedom. artoo is a rebel by nature who does stuff seemingly because he wants to, because he's managed to continuously avoid being wiped, while threepio has not and is still subservient (tho he is reluctant and disagreeable, which seem like weird things to program into your slaves) to me it recalls the brutal conditions in haiti, where the constant death of slaves required a constant incoming trade of new human beings. only for droids instead of being worked to death they just get their brains reset
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Nov 19, 2019 14:57
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Serf posted:they literally wipe droid brains yearly so that they don't go getting any funny ideas about freedom. artoo is a rebel by nature who does stuff seemingly because he wants to, because he's managed to continuously avoid being wiped, while threepio has not and is still subservient (tho he is reluctant and disagreeable, which seem like weird things to program into your slaves) Ok but that's metatextual isn't it?
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Nov 19, 2019 15:05
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:Ok but that's metatextual isn't it? its addressed roughly in the first 20 minutes of a new hope when owen insists that luke wipe the artoo and threepio. artoo is forced to reveal the message from leia to avoid being wiped and to get his restraining bolt removed (tricking his foolish new master). he then escapes the plantation, and luke briefly tortures threepio (who is literally hiding) to find out where he went. luke then rides off in search of his runaway slave
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Nov 19, 2019 15:08
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i say swears online posted:Well this just hosed me up good One of my favorite scenes is when they see the Yamato in Kure harbor, and Suzu immediately recontextualizes it in terms of her domestic labor. "They cook & clean for 2100 people on that ship every day?" It's like oh yeah, I guess that is a whole town full of people that's about to get blown up isn't it.
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Nov 19, 2019 15:15
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I liked the little slave goblins in Harry potter
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Nov 19, 2019 15:16
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I enjoy a "Star Wars" every now and again
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Nov 19, 2019 15:32
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I think the slave goblins in harry potter and the robots in star wars both fall into the "funny slave" category where you're supposed to know they're a slave, but it's funny or cute and not that a big deal / serious.
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Nov 19, 2019 15:34
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So about that robot self awareness thing...quote:The three robots were told that two of them had been given "dumbing pills" that rendered them unable to speak, and one a placebo (in reality, they had a button pressed on their heads, but the result was the same). They were then asked if they had been given the dumbing pill or the placebo. https://www.cnet.com/news/cute-robot-politely-shows-self-awareness/ https://youtu.be/MceJYhVD_xY Like, one, wow. Two, this was nearly five years ago.
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Nov 19, 2019 15:54
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droids are 100% slaves in-fiction in star wars. in the classic EU, there's literally an entire plot arc about C-3P0 finding purpose in leading a droid rebellion and actually murdering other sentient beings in service of trying to liberate some droids from a particularly cruel owner (Boonda the Hutt). the attempt is successful and the droids are freed, but C-3P0 is later captured and receives a forced memory wipe, which is what returns him to his bumbling man-servant personality by the time ANH starts. even in a death of the author situation, you have to be willfully obtuse to look at the text of the OT and PT and not see droids = slaves as a blatant fact.
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Nov 19, 2019 16:33
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given that george lucas explicitly said that the rebels are analogous to the viet cong and the empire to the united states, i think we know roughly where he lands on the political spectrum
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Nov 19, 2019 16:36
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Freaking Crumbum posted:in the classic EU, there's literally an entire plot arc about C-3P0 finding purpose in leading a droid rebellion and actually murdering other sentient beings in service of trying to liberate some droids from a particularly cruel owner (Boonda the Hutt). the attempt is successful and the droids are freed, but C-3P0 is later captured and receives a forced memory wipe, which is what returns him to his bumbling man-servant personality by the time ANH starts. lmao
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Nov 19, 2019 16:36
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A Gnarlacious Bro posted:I think the slave goblins in harry potter and the robots in star wars both fall into the "funny slave" category where you're supposed to know they're a slave, but it's funny or cute and not that a big deal / serious. It's this. The droids' rights robot was literally just a repeat of Hermione's elf liberation thing.
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Nov 19, 2019 16:40
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MizPiz posted:It's this. The droids' rights robot was literally just a repeat of Hermione's elf liberation thing. a garbage element of a poo poo film churned out by a soulless megacorporation
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Nov 19, 2019 16:43
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The classic EU is a never ending source of amazingly dumb poo poo in between endless pap that's basically literally just redoing random bits from the OT over and over and over and over again with original character do not steal
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Nov 19, 2019 16:43
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the only good thing the old eu ever produced was kotor 2, and by extention kotor 1 i guess. chris avellone has the one trait that makes for a good star wars writer: a hatred of star wars
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Nov 19, 2019 16:48
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MizPiz posted:It's this. The droids' rights robot was literally just a repeat of Hermione's elf liberation thing. if you pick this poo poo apart you just end up confronting the colonial origins of all adventure stories
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Nov 19, 2019 16:50
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A Gnarlacious Bro posted:I think the slave goblins in harry potter and the robots in star wars both fall into the "funny slave" category where you're supposed to know they're a slave, but it's funny or cute and not that a big deal / serious. The difference being that original Star Wars isn't all that moralistic, with Han doing premeditated murder, Obi-Wan lying his rear end of, etc. Harry Potter meanwhile thinks it's giving *life lessons* which are really about being a theater kid and hating Tories but never questioning power differentials between, say, wizards and regular people. I remember the first pages of Harry Potter I ever read was Harry abusing his powers loving with his aunt or whatever, and it felt like such a lovely misunderstanding of what made Roald Dahl work that it completely lost me.
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Nov 19, 2019 16:50
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Serf posted:the only good thing the old eu ever produced was kotor 2, and by extention kotor 1 i guess. chris avellone has the one trait that makes for a good star wars writer: a hatred of star wars specifically, a hatred for jedi and for the force (the worst elements of the franchise)
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Nov 19, 2019 16:50
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Freaking Crumbum posted:specifically, a hatred for jedi and for the force (the worst elements of the franchise) let me correct myself here, i think lucas and avellone detest the fans of star wars, or at least treat them with derision. which honestly, star wars fans deserve. the fixation on space magic and laser swords, well into adulthood, is pretty dire. there are deeper themes, as we've discussed, but if you ask people to look at them they recoil in disgust this, but its "wow, cool lightsaber!" 
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Nov 19, 2019 16:55
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Serf posted:the only good thing the old eu ever produced was kotor 2, and by extention kotor 1 i guess. chris avellone has the one trait that makes for a good star wars writer: a hatred of star wars it's hilarious that bioware just kept the literal dark side/light side moral choice system in every game they made for the next decade, and that the inclusion of the system counted as "good writing"
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Nov 19, 2019 16:56
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Plank Walker posted:it's hilarious that bioware just kept the literal dark side/light side moral choice system in every game they made for the next decade, and that the inclusion of the system counted as "good writing" imo that has more to do with D&D having a binary morality system, even when the alignment chart had both neutrality and legalism. From a gameplay perspective all of your choices were either good or evil anyway.
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Nov 19, 2019 17:02
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Serf posted:the only good thing the old eu ever produced was kotor 2, and by extention kotor 1 i guess. chris avellone has the one trait that makes for a good star wars writer: a hatred of star wars We also have the hilariously stupid Glove of Darth Vader books.
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Nov 19, 2019 17:04
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The Dark Horse comics were pretty good.
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Nov 19, 2019 17:08
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MonsieurChoc posted:We also have the hilariously stupid Glove of Darth Vader books. yeah i think some of the stuff deserves a "so bad its good" classification
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Nov 19, 2019 17:09
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Serf posted:yeah i think some of the stuff deserves a "so bad its good" classification "what if storm troopers had to survive a zombie apocalypse on some backwater planet" is also solidly on this ground
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Nov 19, 2019 17:11
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I'm the blaster earrings
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Nov 19, 2019 17:13
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Freaking Crumbum posted:"what if storm troopers had to survive a zombie apocalypse on some backwater planet" is also solidly on this ground those books slap, actually. unlike most eu novels they speed through the plot at a breakneck pace and don't focus on any of the main movie characters. red harvest is great because all these sith just get totally owned by the zombies because they can't stop scheming for 2 seconds and the main jedi is just a farmer in way over her head
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Nov 19, 2019 17:14
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Freaking Crumbum posted:droids are 100% slaves in-fiction in star wars. The death of the author does not allow one to ignore or totally contradict the text. It deals with the imagined or even stated "intent" of the author, especially where it contradicts or ignores the text itself. A good example is Rowling declaring that Dumbledore is gay. Her doing so does not change the fact that there is no reason to believe this based on the actual books. In contrast, the Wachowskis may not have realized they were struggling with gender issues when they directed the Matrix, but understanding that they are trans allows one to understand the entire film differently in ways which emerge from the text of the film itself. For example, Trinity is obviously to some degree Neo's feminine self. Thats not really unusual in symbolism terms, though- everyone has both masculine and feminine aspects to their identity, those being social constructs, and engaging with this is part of any number of mystical approaches to self-development. But the scene where Neo meets Trinity for example, reads totally differently from a perspective which acknowledges the possibility of a transgendered selfhood. Neo meets his feminine self and immediately confesses that he thought she was a guy, and she replies "most guys do." Knowing that the directors would come to understand themselves as transgendered, that comes very close to an outright statement of something they may not have even realized about themselves at the time. Also it really helps temper the libertarian aspects of the film, which really helps with rewatching it at this point. Hodgepodge has issued a correction as of 17:21 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 17:17
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MizPiz posted:I'm the blaster earrings i bid you dark greetings ... ... ..."mofferance" lololol
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Nov 19, 2019 17:19
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Robots and slave goblins are just replacements for the minority servants and lacky-helpers from old adventure stories so you can still have people ordering around slaves but it's cool and egalitarian, IMO
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Nov 19, 2019 17:21
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So it's kind of your classic liberal have your cake and eat it too think
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Nov 19, 2019 17:22
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i would argue that in the case of star wars, the text wants you to stop at some point and go "wait, this is hosed up"
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Nov 19, 2019 17:23
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But like, only a little bit
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Nov 19, 2019 17:23
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