|
SuperMechagodzilla posted:What's going on is that you are losing track of the conversation. Why are you lying about statements I've made in a text-based medium? You're the one who assumes from the first that the matrix simply doesn't generate anything of value and therefore that the machines are nonpersons. I actually do take the movies at their word that the pods "work", which is to say they somehow draw on human physiology to moderate a fusion reaction per the "spark plug" imagery the directors themselves have drawn attention to. You keep getting halfway into a discussion of Marx and then, as far as I can tell, getting scared and retreating to this "why didn't the eagles just fly the ring to Mordor" crap instead. quote:Picture a steam engine being shoveled full of coal. The heat of the burning coal boils the water, which produces steam, which spins a turbine, which is attached to a belt. The friction of the belt is then used to heat a tiny kettle. That's what you're describing. The science-fiction premise of the matrix is that human beings can be used to do something that burning fungus cannot, specifically to work a fusion reactor.
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2022 07:29
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 18, 2024 20:38 |
|
|
No Mods No Masters posted:Yeah, I mean if you take away the bot element they're just people working for the bad guy. Maybe they're assholes, maybe they have their reasons, maybe they're the machine equivalent of sheeple, maybe they're slaves in their own right, etc. I can get behind it being a lack of confidence in getting her message across, considering the Red Pill movement and the like that spawned partly from the first trilogy. Wouldn't surprise me if that's one of the big motivators for Lana to go back to it, and then sandblast any kind of ambiguity out of the script to pre-empt any potentially harmful reads of the movie.
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2022 07:31
|
|
|
i still think it's funny that karl marx's big hit was just stolen entirely from christianity
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2022 11:10
|
|
|
I don't think it's "lack of confidence". no one is asking the movie to do any sort of both sidesism with any other thing. Like every other system of control the matrix movies have is just portrayed as a robot monster you can fistfight. It's fine for the ones that control women to also be that and not have the movie lecture the woman that actually it's good actually.
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2022 13:21
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:I don't think it's "lack of confidence". no one is asking the movie to do any sort of both sidesism with any other thing. The Matrix movies have also been known to layer on metaphors and the like for a more deeper experience. Hell, in this very thread we navelgazed about colors that the characters wear and if they could have any deeper meaning. To take a very simple morally ambiguous situation like whether the good guys are justified in mowing down people still plugged into the Matrix, or if Trinity's life may not be that bad or may even be better than the real world.... and then just completely simplify it into "Its all bad npcs, who gives a gently caress?" seems very un-Matrix.
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2022 13:29
|
|
|
Archer666 posted:The Matrix movies have also been known to layer on metaphors and the like for a more deeper experience. Hell, in this very thread we navelgazed about colors that the characters wear and if they could have any deeper meaning. To take a very simple morally ambiguous situation like whether the good guys are justified in mowing down people still plugged into the Matrix, or if Trinity's life may not be that bad or may even be better than the real world.... and then just completely simplify it into "Its all bad npcs, who gives a gently caress?" seems very un-Matrix. I mean, I feel like they had to simplify this one down a lot because this one makes people extra angry compared to the other ones.
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2022 13:48
|
|
|
No Mods No Masters posted:Yeah, I mean if you take away the bot element they're just people working for the bad guy. Maybe they're assholes, maybe they have their reasons, maybe they're the machine equivalent of sheeple, maybe they're slaves in their own right, etc. Revealing that some people are just NPCs seems like a regression from that. (It comes across like a videogamey conceit, where they realized that they need some "low-level" enemies for the heroes to beat up.)
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2022 15:29
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:This is what I don't get. The first film is already saying that a revolutionary has to be prepared to kill not just police, not just loser rent-a-cops, but even poor little old ladies and homeless people, if they're going to snitch you out to the police. Yeah, I agree with this- i think it's something of a sign of the weakness of the film(the other one, is, i think, the structure of the third act overall, built from, IMO, a fear of having an unhappy ending). Matrix 4 eschewing all of its complexity to remind everyone that it's a love story and uh, we need a happy ending did not do it many favors in trying to convey ideas.
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2022 16:03
|
|
|
I don’t think there is any fear to have an unhappy ending. The choice to make a happy one does not mean Lana is afraid of unhappy ones. Wachowski’s just typically made happy ending films with exception of reloaded and maybe revolutions (victory but death): But when watching the film I assumed swarm were just people taken over and as such were getting killed like in original films. Neo notably pushes people away vs shooting (well except helicopter). But it would make sense for new matrix to use expendable programs for their security vs their power source.
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2022 16:59
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:Why are you lying about statements I've made in a text-based medium? "The slurry [is] the underlying truth of the system that commodity fetishization obscures: everything runs off human life-force, also known as labor-power." "Even if the humans of the matrix are a net resource loss in all ways to the machines maintaining the matrix that doesn't change the basic situation." You have tossed out many speculations, like that the machines are harvesting rare chemical compounds from the human bodies (adrenochrome?), or that the human brains are used as servers, etc. These speculations are all founded on a single basic unsupported assumption: the baddies must be profiting from this arrangement somehow. To this end, you have asserted that, even if the machines produce pure waste, they are still somehow profiting. And, if they are profiting, then they are profiting. If evil, then evil. So, I've been trying to narrow down what you are actually claiming is going on in the films, since that determines what the mode of production is in your interpretation. Understanding the mode of production is pretty important, if you're gonna do a marxism. The latest version is this: "The pods ... draw on human physiology to moderate a fusion reaction per the 'spark plug' imagery". Spark plugs just convert electricity to heat. There's no mechanical process involved; they just keep two electrodes insulated and apart from eachother so that a charge builds up in one, and then discharges as a little lightning bolt.* The heat of the spark ignites the gasoline, and so-on, so you end up with rotation. You don't ever need to hire a person to serve as an electrode. Now, you are "taking the film at its word", and Morpheus holds up a Duracell - not a spark plug. Humans in your interpretation are not the spark plugs themselves, but merely the source of the electrical charge for the spark plugs. Humans are of course unlike Duracell batteries in a lot of ways, so you've granted that the machines must have tons of food that they're feeding the humans - presumably fungus. The humans eat the food, the product is electricity (plus waste), and the specific work being done is, merely, digestion. Everything else is done by the machines. So we're getting a clearer picture of your machine economy. The machines build and operate the mushroom farms. The machines build and operate the fusion reactors. The machines harvest the hydrogen that is presumably used to fuel the reactors, etc. They mine the metals, make glass from sand, etc. The humans, meanwhile, just consume tons of resources while lying in bed and pooping. Taking your interpretation to a logical extreme, we can picture a boss at the office, encouraging his employees to poop on company time. "You, over there! Strain harder! I need those feces on my desk by 5 o'clock!" But that's skipping ahead a bit, because we haven't yet established that this is a capitalist society. If the machines are doing shitloads of construction, mining, and agriculture, who are the bosses? What is the relationship between the machines and their bosses? Again, very important! This is where I have to step in, because you have been up to this point dismissing the entire 'matrix' part of The Matrix as unimportant. In your view, it's purely a utilitarian pacification technique to make poop extraction easier. My stance is that the matrix is the product. The machines want a matrix - even if only as an aesthetic object or a display of status, or whatever. They will exchange tons of resources just to have a matrix. That's their motivation. *So, we do have a sort of 'spark plug' imagery in Matrix 4. Neo and Trinity are kept slightly apart, a charge builds up, and then there's a spark when they come close.... However, this is obviously just a curious metaphor for sexual desire, and not an accurate depiction of how an internal combustion engine works. That's further proof that the machines are dream-monsters powered by emotion. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Jan 20, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2022 17:43
|
|
|
precision posted:i still think it's funny that karl marx's big hit was just stolen entirely from christianity Not true at all. A lot of his contemporaries made weepy criticisms about oh nooo, capitalism is immoral, it's not in keeping with Christian values, whatever. Marx was scientific and original in his critique. SuperMechagodzilla posted:"The slurry [is] the underlying truth of the system that commodity fetishization obscures: everything runs off human life-force, also known as labor-power." Alright so for example you have said "if you are now agreeing that the machines actually have access to a ton of offscreen food" which I never disputed and which I'm pretty sure the two of us took as a given since before Resurrections even came out. About three posts ago you dramatically shifted gears, deciding to pretend that I either denied or never considered the idea. It's just not honest. For another example, here's one of my own sentences that you quoted just now, but without its context strategically hacked away: me posted:Exploitation isn't synonymous with confinement. However, mass confinement in an advanced economy is intimately and unavoidably tied to the maintenance of exploitation. Smith himself calls the people inside the matrix "crops", so the fairest bet is that Morpheus is right and the machines are indeed feeding off the humans directly in some way (neural processing power, some sort of chemistry that requires human metabolic processes, whatever), but even if the humans of the matrix are a net resource loss in all ways to the machines maintaining the matrix that doesn't change the basic situation because so are real-life human prisoners. Prisoners cost more money than they make back. But the fact of prisoners allows class exploitation, generally, to continue functioning. Here I am explaining that, as a gigantic prison, the matrix would serve the machines as a tool of ruling class power even if it weren't directly involved in energy production (or the generation of some more esoteric commodity). I don't believe that's actually the case, but even if it was, the matrix would further exploitation rather than as some kind of morality play or automated service because of the importance of incarceration to capitalism. The takeaway here is that playing these games isn't actually a good idea in a text-based medium because going back to check the record is trivial. Stop it. quote:You have tossed out many speculations, like that the machines are harvesting rare chemical compounds from the human bodies (adrenochrome?), or that the human brains are used as servers, etc. These speculations are all founded on a single basic unsupported assumption: the baddies must be profiting from this arrangement somehow. To this end, you have asserted that, even if the machines produce pure waste, they are still somehow profiting. And, if they are profiting, then they are profiting. If evil, then evil. Before Resurrections came out, it was only Morpheus who explicitly compared humans to batteries. The machines conceded that imprisoning humans in a matrix fulfilled a survival need for the machine civilization but didn't elaborate as to what else was going on. That means the reality could have been the "using human brains as CPUs" explanation from the original script, the generation of some sort of esoteric luxury or speculation market for the machines themselves, or something even stranger. Feeding agricultural products to cows and then eating those cows is a net resource loss because you're only getting about 10% of the energy you're delivering back, but it is profitable because people will pay for burgers. In Resurrections, the machines explicitly confirm for us that the matrix generates energy and its efficiency varies with the brain activity of the people plugged into it. As I've said to other posters, this pretty neatly squares the circle of why the machines include humans at all and why the machine bother to make the humans hallucinate rather than keep them comatose; it basically combines the "we're using your brain for CPU cycles" and "you are naught but a battery" things. It's like, imagine these guys:  ...but they've been plugged directly into the control panels to reduce the time lag between their stimuli and their responses, and also their job has been dramatically de-skilled and de-centralized such that instead of one guy who understands nuclear physics we've got six hundred guys who are at the level of making totally unthinking and reflexive responses to a single diode lighting up or not, and also we're using their own bioelectricity to actuate the knobs and buttons because it's cheaper. Easy. Now, the good news is that even if you insist that every character who claims that the matrix generates power is wrong or lying for some reason, "the matrix is the product" is really good enough for our purposes, because even if it itself is the product that means that the machines are indeed imprisoning and exploiting human beings because they simply cannot carry on without human life-force. And they've managed to cut down the "basket of goods" that regenerates your life-force to the absolute minimum, extend the time in which your life-force is being extracted to the maximum, rendered life outside this mediating system illegal if not impossible... Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Jan 20, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2022 22:49
|
|
|
My favorite part is where they shoot the guns. But then in the 2nd movie they do lots of king Fu. And that's pretty cool also. Did you know that there was a new Morpheus because the old Morpheus died in the matrix online?
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2022 03:46
|
|
|
There would've been a new Morpheus even if the old one had not been assassinated in Matrix Online, since an amnesiac Neo programmed the new one as part of a long-game escape attempt.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2022 08:21
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:In Resurrections, the machines explicitly confirm for us that the matrix generates energy and its efficiency varies with the brain activity of the people plugged into it. As I've said to other posters, this pretty neatly squares the circle of why the machines include humans at all and why the machine bother to make the humans hallucinate rather than keep them comatose; it basically combines the "we're using your brain for CPU cycles" and "you are naught but a battery" things. It's like, imagine these guys: Okay, so now you’re claiming that all the people in the pods are nuclear power plant operators. The sights and sounds of the matrix effectively act as a stimulant drug that makes them monitor cooling systems faster. This whole arrangement is somehow ‘cheaper’ than just using the ubiquitous supercomputers capable of simulating the Earth on a molecular level in real-time - which, you allege, are currently only being used to make drugs. I’m sorry, but that is nonsense. Why only this one industry? Why not just directly stimulate neurons? Just the fact that you can switch from claiming that the characters are the fuel to saying they are the operators shows something is up. Like, imagine not being able to distinguish between a train’s engineer and a pile of coal. In the next paragraph, you basically assert that production itself is inherently exploitative and that use-values are based on survival. And, like, no. They not. On one hand, this is why I’m stressing that you need to begin with the basics. What is the product? Is it a commodity? Is there money? On the other hand, you don’t seem cognizant of the full outrageousness of your claims - effectively, that the human ‘collective unconscious’ is literal nuclear reactor. So, like, the scene where Tom drinks a cortado represents his work as a nuclear technician, and his annoyance at the word ‘MILF’ represents a mild boost in the speed of the adjustment of the control rods. This is all, again, based on a single line of dialogue - and ignores the part where we’re shown the literal magic power blasting out from the palms of their hands. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Jan 21, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2022 14:41
|
|
|
The power plant explanation would make sense to me if the prisoners were literally sleepwalking while working alongside the spider robots. I rewatched the movie this past weekend and enjoyed it more the second time. I still felt like depicting Neo's awakening power as just telekinesis and blinding light was very uninspired, as was the zombie imagery.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2022 15:38
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I rewatched the movie this past weekend and enjoyed it more the second time. I still felt like depicting Neo's awakening power as just telekinesis and blinding light was very uninspired, as was the zombie imagery. Movie was filmed at the height of covid lockdown. There is a definite point where you can tell their ability to film on location or get people together was extremely cut suddenly. You can tell there is a few scenes where even just neo and trinity are standing next to each other and they are blue screened in.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2022 16:24
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:The power plant explanation would make sense to me if the prisoners were literally sleepwalking while working alongside the spider robots. This is perhaps the biggest issue with trying to spin Matrix as a leftist franchise: even if we accept the premises, the work Ferrinus is talking about isn't actually shown. It's as conspicuously absent as in a Marvel movie. Zion is kept alive by industrial machinery in its sub-basement. Big fuckin' cogs and gears. So: who scrubs the filters on the water purification system? The Wachowskis are seemingly indifferent, or even lampshade it. "Almost no one comes down here, unless, of course, there’s a problem. That’s how it is with people: nobody cares how it works, as long as it works. ... See that machine? It has something to do with recycling our water supply. I have absolutely no idea how it works." The franchise is haunted by the "almost no-one" - the worker who, in this speech, blurs into the machine. What the old politician is talking about is the production process itself. He doesn't understand the economy of his own society. Who built this stuff? Unavoidably, we need to read against the narrative to make sense of this. And that's where we're in the realm of Star Wars, where we have to acknowledge that droid labour plays a far greater role in the setting than the midichlorian-generated psychic energy matrix referred to some as "the force". This is effectively what Ferrinus is talking about, after all: whenever Tom Anderson does anything, midichlorians in his bloodstream are invisibly working in the background to generate a sort of biomagnetic field that 'powers' the god of the Jedi religion. Under this interpretation, nothing that occurs in the Star Wars movies is 'real'. Slavery, etc. - it's all just epiphenomena. The 'real' struggle is the struggle to secure proper payment from god for the use of our cells. "In a typical ideological short-circuit, the Matrix functions as a double allegory: for the Capital (machines sucking energy out of us) and for the Other, the symbolic order as such." -Zizek SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Jan 21, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2022 16:58
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:Not true at all. A lot of his contemporaries made weepy criticisms about oh nooo, capitalism is immoral, it's not in keeping with Christian values, whatever. Marx was scientific and original in his critique. lmao settle down beavis. all i meant was that "from each according to his ability and to each according to his need" is from the bible.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2022 17:23
|
|
|
I've thought about how Machines must view humans. As prisoners, or perhaps as abusive parents they nonetheless feel bound to care for in our dotage. Prisoners serve are instrumental to capital in various ways, though they're not performing productive labour just by being in a prison. The best analogy, if it's even an analogy, might be to lab animals. I suppose that if a rabbit being used to make antibodies is performing labour, so are the prisoners in the Matrix. I would compare them to chickens laying eggs, too, but humans aren't a domestic species.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2022 17:48
|
|
|
Can we stop quoting Zizek in here when he admittedly doesn’t watch these films.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2022 19:52
|
|
|
In the Analyst's Matrix, everyone you argue with on the internet hasn't actually seen the movie but has strong opinions about it while never engaging with the substance of your comments. The Machines now have such a surplus of energy that they are desperately trying to create new forms of batteries to contain it all.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2022 20:02
|
|
|
Shiroc posted:In the Analyst's Matrix, everyone you argue with on the internet hasn't actually seen the movie but has strong opinions about it while never engaging with the substance of your comments. maybe they should try some machine jo crystals on craigslist. You'd think theyd know this by watching our web traffic jeez
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2022 22:15
|
|
|
checkplease posted:Can we stop quoting Zizek in here when he admittedly doesn’t watch these films. He's watched them all except the latest one, and he may just be saying that to be provocative, the scamp
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 01:21
|
|
|
Zizek cast the doubt on himself by writing reviews without watching the film. He could have remained silent, but made his choice.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 01:30
|
|
|
Blood Boils posted:He's watched them all except the latest one, and he may just be saying that to be provocative, the scamp I guess I’m getting old and tired of internet stuff because being like that makes me very tired and annoyed.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 01:33
|
|
|
SuperMechagodzilla posted:Okay, so now you’re claiming that all the people in the pods are nuclear power plant operators. The sights and sounds of the matrix effectively act as a stimulant drug that makes them monitor cooling systems faster. This whole arrangement is somehow ‘cheaper’ than just using the ubiquitous supercomputers capable of simulating the Earth on a molecular level in real-time - which, you allege, are currently only being used to make drugs. I do not assert that "production is inherently exploitative" or that "use-values are based on survival". You have made that up whole cloth and not even bothered to provide a supporting quote. I'm not sure why. Your questions are weird, too - the product that a fusion reactor delivers is energy. If you don't see how someone might simultaneously fuel and direct an operation then you'd be completely stumped by, like, a hand-loom. I don't think this stuff is really beyond you, I think you just don't like where the conversation goes when you stop pretending to be confused by it. The science fiction premise of the Matrix is that humans can be used to run fusion reactors. They probably do also use computers - Rama Kandra, for instance, is the "power plant systems manager for recycling operations" (and is appropriately later drafted to work in the facility in which Neo and Trinity were recycled in order to moderate the new matrix in the fourth movie). You've actually already changed your story about the scene in which Neo and Trinity manage to make contact and there's a subsequent electric discharge - it used to be fear energy, remember? But there's actually no such thing as fear energy. SuperMechagodzilla posted:This is perhaps the biggest issue with trying to spin Matrix as a leftist franchise: even if we accept the premises, the work Ferrinus is talking about isn't actually shown. It's as conspicuously absent as in a Marvel movie. The reason that droid labor is is important to Star Wars is that droids are people, and therefore capable of political action and class struggle, and therefore variable rather than constant capital. There's a lot of constant capital at work in both Star Wars and The Matrix, but no one is exploiting either the geothermal atmospheric regulators of Zion or the engine of Luke's X-Wing (that we know of, technically, but I think neither setting is so top to bottom animistic that every last machine is conscious). The relationship of C3P0 and R2D2 to the Lars family's moisture collectors is akin to that of pod-dwellers and the fusion reactors they're plugged into. Here you could ask a bunch of strange, meandering questions like, if they have such powerful computers in Star Wars so as to fabricate sapient life, why do they need droids to work on the moisture collectors instead of just having completely automated moisture collectors that effectively function as free gifts of nature? But it would be missing the point. precision posted:lmao settle down beavis. all i meant was that "from each according to his ability and to each according to his need" is from the bible. Ah, but remember, that only happens after an intermediate stage of "to each according to his work". It's important to distinguish Marx from the utopians and the reactionaries. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Jan 22, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 04:37
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:Before Resurrections came out, it was only Morpheus who explicitly compared humans to batteries. The machines conceded that imprisoning humans in a matrix fulfilled a survival need for the machine civilization but didn't elaborate as to what else was going on. That means the reality could have been the "using human brains as CPUs" explanation from the original script, the generation of some sort of esoteric luxury or speculation market for the machines themselves, or something even stranger. Feeding agricultural products to cows and then eating those cows is a net resource loss because you're only getting about 10% of the energy you're delivering back, but it is profitable because people will pay for burgers. I'm not going to get into much detail here but this is an extremely common misconception about animal husbandry. Meat is not a net energy loss vs the food fed to animals to produce the food, because you cannot digest grass or hay or sorghum silage etc productively. Animal husbandry is an adaption to convert lands unfit for the production of subsistence or cash crops into usable calories and resources even if at a comparatively low level to fertile land. Even in our current economy, food animals are mostly raised on foods unfit for human consumption but that are either grown on land that would otherwise be unproductive or produced as a byproduct of agriculture for human consumption (or biodesiel or whatever).
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 05:31
|
|
|
DeimosRising posted:I'm not going to get into much detail here but this is an extremely common misconception about animal husbandry. Meat is not a net energy loss vs the food fed to animals to produce the food, because you cannot digest grass or hay or sorghum silage etc productively. Animal husbandry is an adaption to convert lands unfit for the production of subsistence or cash crops into usable calories and resources even if at a comparatively low level to fertile land. Even in our current economy, food animals are mostly raised on foods unfit for human consumption but that are either grown on land that would otherwise be unproductive or produced as a byproduct of agriculture for human consumption (or biodesiel or whatever). To what extent is it a myth that meat-heavy American food production is wasteful compared to a layout that invests in fewer livestock and more plant products? I've definitely absorbed the idea that decreasing the proportion of our agricultural product that eventually becomes burgers would be more efficient and environmentally sound, but maybe I've been misinformed or am just misremembering something? Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Jan 22, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 05:56
|
|
|
There’s also the thing that with growing meat demand you have cattle raisers clearing rainforests in Brazil to grow more feed.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 06:11
|
|
|
Spent the day watching the entire franchise and can safely say Revolutions is better than Reloaded I loved what I saw of 4 but I got too deep into some rum, need to finish it lol but so far, loved every minute of it. I haven't followed the thread too much, have we discussed how the film posits clear blocking and choreography as impressive for action scenes now?
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 14:57
|
|
|
checkplease posted:There’s also the thing that with growing meat demand you have cattle raisers clearing rainforests in Brazil to grow more feed. Ferrinus posted:To what extent is it a myth that meat-heavy American food production is wasteful compared to a layout that invests in fewer livestock and more plant products? I've definitely absorbed the idea that decreasing the proportion of our agricultural product that eventually becomes burgers would be more efficient and environmentally sound, but maybe I've been misinformed or am just misremembering something? The problem is it would be better just not to raise so much of the crops used to feed them. You can't use west texas semi arid flatlands or burnt down amazonia to raise human food crops (or not very effectively). But you also don't have to put those lands under production, using whatever fertilizers and fuel needed to do so and producing the various by products of actually raising the animals etc. It would definitely be more environmentally sound to raise and eat less meat but it's not because you could be eating their feed or their feed land could be used to produce like...rice or something. In this sense meat production is very "efficient" because it means you can convert otherwise less useful land or unusable calories into foodstuffs, but it's not necessary for us (as it would have been for many past societies that needed those extra calories/food variety) and the knock on consequences are pretty lovely.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 17:49
|
|
|
No, you don't understand. That land is just sitting there, it's irresponsible not to cover it in pigshit lagoons
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 18:31
|
|
|
checkplease posted:Can we stop quoting Zizek in here when he admittedly doesn’t watch these films. Let's be clear here: Zizek watched the Matrix 4 trailer(s) and read a bunch of reviews, then decided not to watch the film because it looked to be a repetition of (or regression from) the dumb liberalism of the previous Matrix sequels. This is very mundane; people decide not to watch movies all the time. As the article is about his decision not to watch the film, Zizek is open about the fact that he is reviewing the plot, which has been very well-documented online. The plot of the film is easily accessible to anyone with an internet connection, and Zizek cites the sources he used. So, we're left with a sort of "Mary's Room" thought experiment: what, if anything, would Zizek 'learn' by going against his better judgement and watching Matrix 4 instead of reading about it? You are alleging that he would discover some crucial detail - like, maybe the plot sucks but the cinematography is really expressive. Or maybe there is some clever editing. And, like, nope. They bad. I have watched the film, and I can confirm that everything he wrote about it is accurate.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 19:05
|
|
|
I don’t know if it’s good a thing to agree with someone who openly admits he has not watched the film. I guess you are just arguing we no longer need to watch or see pieces of art for discussion. Just read the Wikipedia article. Then state your opinion, based off information you cannot even verify yourself. Oh and movies are of course just text summaries. There’s no audio, cameras, actors performing, lighting, music, or any of that. And what’s the difference between a 2 minute trailer vs. 150 minutes. Surely we are not debating the need to watch a film or listen to a song before reviewing it. And let’s also be clear, a lot of us have talked about the good things in the film and why we liked and think it’s worth watching. And until Zizek actually puts in the minimum effort of watching the film instead of taking the lazy way, then there’s no reason to debate his opinions. How can we when we are not even playing on the same field of information. checkplease fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Jan 22, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 19:51
|
|
|
I don't think we need to universalize it that much. Zizek isn't committing a crime by writing about a film he hasn't seen (its not like he's hidden that fact from the reader). Why is it a bad thing to agree he doesn't need to watch this specific movie? You're the only person who's generalized that to a film criticism wise rule.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 20:00
|
|
|
He doesn’t need to watch any film. But i would say yes you need to read a book, listen to a song, watch a film, or see a painting before trying to claim you can make any judgment of its value. I think this a pretty low standard to meet.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 20:08
|
|
|
To smg's actual challenge, there's a progression of people jumping off of buildings that are potentially worth analysis but require seeing the visual progression. Effectively, neo's failure to jump from building to building in the first matrix is reframed as beautiful tragedy, sinister attack, and then finally triumph. It's not much but it's something zizek would need to see the film to appreciate.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 20:11
|
|
|
Zizek isn't a film critic. The movie is just a jumping off point for a discussion of some sort.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 20:11
|
|
|
Watching a movie is the basic bare minimum to being able to critique it. Otherwise you are just blathering incoherent nonsense. Seems familiar somehow, maybe explains why Zizekposting has been a joke with no punchline in CD for many years now.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 20:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 18, 2024 20:38 |
|
|
BiggestBatman posted:Zizek isn't a film critic. The movie is just a jumping off point for a discussion of some sort. Sounds like there’s no place for him in a discussion of the movie then
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 22:00
|
|
