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Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Lol that is some cowardly editing by the CCP. Does make it a little more accurate to the book but still, how you gonna cut out that great ending scene? Why? Because it portrays toxic masculinity as powerful and successful? Bullshit.

Cpt_Obvious fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jan 25, 2022

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Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

IIRC the original theme of the book was about a group of castrated losers who sacrifice their identities and even their lives to punch each other in the face because that's the only way they feel alive. In the end, they are too incompetent to even commit suicide. The ending to the film completely undercuts all of that. No longer are they the virgin incels, they are now the chad revolutionaries; scrappy underdogs to be worshiped instead of mocked.

Still, how the gently caress you gonna cut out that dope rear end Pixies song?

Kavros
May 18, 2011

sleep sleep sleep
fly fly post post
sleep sleep sleep
One of the hallmarks of autocracy I generally speak of when I define the predictive patterns of such state conditions is a paranoid and oppressive cultural control arc.

In most cases of growing authoritarianism and autocracy it starts becoming increasingly obvious that they see the need to hyperpolice the depiction of anything anti-authority and anti-establishment, which then quickly (if it wasn't already) the need to hyperpolice anything that challenges heteropatriarchy and traditional masculinism and gender essentialism and always, ALWAYS, a restriction of the ideas that combat establishment hierarchy or challenges injurious states of institutional control of lives. Fight Club has to end with "the police and the system (which you can trust) quickly fixed everything and tyler was fairly dealt with and managed by the police and the system (which, we do not hesitate to add, are trustworthy and good) and was successfully treated for his antisocial illness and reintegrated into society as a Good Boy."

While I hate to be the one to willingly introduce comparisons to other countries again, this was actually a primary means by which you could determine the most autocratic periods in american or british history and the corrosive impact it had on culture and institution alike: how up their own rear end are they about such cultural 'protections?' In a place like the united states, it eventually ended up in a situation in which our autocracy lovers (which remain today as they ever were, christian nationalists and dominionists) butted up against anti-establishment free thinkers fighting to expand what ideas are permissible to even speak. You could catch a fingerprint of the zeitgeist watching Frank Zappa and John Lofton butt heads on Crossfire; Lofton sees the only permissible course as the restriction of any viewpoints blasphemous to Christ so as not to corrode the United States, Zappa sees censorship as paranoid overreach by those who wish to micromanage society under their own draconian terms that offer no legitimate benefit to the social welfare. In the united states, the argument takes place in the limited, problematic, but still acceptable fora of a syndicated 1980's debate show. In China today no such debate is allowed to happen; their Lofton equivalent will simply reiterate the necessity of what steps the party takes to control ideas that incite discord and antisocial behavior (and, only incidentally, of course, ideas that challenge the right of the party to rule as it does). Their Zappa equivalent, despite also being a conservative, is permitted no presentation of their ideas.

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Kavros posted:

In most cases of growing authoritarianism and autocracy it starts becoming increasingly obvious that they see the need to hyperpolice the depiction of anything anti-authority and anti-establishment, which then quickly (if it wasn't already) the need to hyperpolice anything that challenges heteropatriarchy and traditional masculinism and gender essentialism and always, ALWAYS, a restriction of the ideas that combat establishment hierarchy or challenges injurious states of institutional control of lives. Fight Club has to end with "the police and the system (which you can trust) quickly fixed everything and tyler was fairly dealt with and managed by the police and the system (which, we do not hesitate to add, are trustworthy and good) and was successfully treated for his antisocial illness and reintegrated into society as a Good Boy."

I'm not sure what you're defining "authoritarian" as, so I'm gonna assume it's "deference to authority".

The original Fightclub ending could easily be read as pro-fascist. The evil women and ((((bankers)))) have robbed men of their genetic love for violence, transforming them from the strong alpha warriors of the past into the cucked beta office workers of today. The only way forward is to eschew individuality and follow the unquestionable leadership of the chaddiest Chad, Brad Pitt. All the things that the book portrays as self destructive - violence for the sake of violence, alienation from society, toxic masculinity - could instead be seen as necessary sacrifices for the future because the mission is ultimately successful. Tyler Durton is no longer an idiot madman who fails at everything, he's a grand symbol for masculinity that anyone can become. "Bitch tits" may have died, sure, but everyone's debt is gone. Instead of a pointless and tragic death that points to the futility of the endeavor, now he's a martyr.

Basically, the original movie ending could be seen as pulling a reverse Starship troopers - turning antifascist satire into an incel rallying cry. Now, the edit also has obvious "authoritarian" themes, but they kind of flip the script: the authorities shut down a fascist terror cell. It's an interesting example, to be sure.

Otherwise, I do object to the idea that western democracies also don't police their own media. The reality is that for decades movies and television were produced almost exclusively by wealthy investors, meaning that all the opinions and themes essentially require oversight from investors to ensure they align with their own ideology. Essentially, every production is headed by a capitalist commissar. The most obvious example is the dozens of WWII movies that feature the Nazis as the villains, the United States as the heroes, and the Soviets as invisible.

Anyway, the whole thing is an interesting case study as to how different societies control the discourse portrayed in the media.

Cpt_Obvious fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Jan 26, 2022

Plastic_Gargoyle
Aug 3, 2007

Cpt_Obvious posted:

capitalist commissar.

That's not even remotely how that works.

I can't think of a single example that even vaguely resembles what you're trying to suggest with this.

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Plastic_Gargoyle posted:

That's not even remotely how that works.

I can't think of a single example that even vaguely resembles what you're trying to suggest with this.

Investors have final decisions on everything. All productions must pass through their scrutiny and therefore will be heavily influenced by their ideologies.

Edit: Specifically, pro capitalist and anti communist narratives.

Kavros
May 18, 2011

sleep sleep sleep
fly fly post post
sleep sleep sleep
That is unfortunately one of the least tenuous reaches for equivalency you could have made between state censorship in despotic nations and media production in 'western democracies'

You do not have to have a fantasy condition of "investors and production companies make absolutely no conditional requirements in exchange for their investment in the production of a movie" before a generally liberal or social democratic country's media is allowed to be considered substantively different from those of autocracies with wide-ranging and strict state censorship and media containment policies.

This is true even before you account for the thousands of movies, including celebrated high profile ones, that get made and promoted in clear and shocking defiance of the Capitalist Commissar Board

Smeef
Aug 15, 2003

I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!



Pillbug

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Investors have final decisions on everything. All productions must pass through their scrutiny and therefore will be heavily influenced by their ideologies.

Edit: Specifically, pro capitalist and anti communist narratives.

This is not true at all. You can be a major investor and have no voting rights in a company. Splitting economic and voting rights is very common and is how tech founders retain so much control despite minority economic rights. Most investors don't even have board seats and just receive reports. Boards often don't even exercise that much control. Much of the decision-making is delegated to the CEO and management.

Take venture capital, for instance. A fund may have 100 investors. Their investments are effectively locked away for 10 years. The general partners that manage the fund are picking the investments. Maybe they have an investment committee to advise them. The investors have gently caress-all say in those investments. They just get the quarterly or annual updates, and they're happy with it as long as it's generating good returns. In fact, if the returns are good enough, they'll line up for the next fund the VC is raising and make their investment with basically whatever conditions the VC requires.

I'm not as familiar with financing in Hollywood, but my understanding is that it's somewhat similar. Investors are competing with each other to get the deals with the best producers, either because they can deliver the best returns or for ego reasons (awards, starfucking, etc.). The best producers dictate the terms and retain extreme creative control.

There are also plenty of great movies and TV shoes that are highly critical of capitalism and of American society in general. Nomadland won the best picture award in 2021 and had a Chinese director to boot.

China has also had some fantastic movies that are critical of contemporary Chinese society. A Touch of Sin is one of the best movies of the last few decades, but sadly I don't even it would even get made today.

In general this view of capitalism as being driven by some global Masters of Atlantis cabal is... off. Capitalism is not an overt ideology so much as a system in which actors unwittingly contribute to its perpetuation (though admittedly there are now capitalism cultists in a way there weren't before). This was one of the key insights of Marx. Individual capitalists are not necessarily bad people. Some might even be great employers and altruistic. But they are still driven by a system that causes great cumulative suffering, especially to workers. They are not individually responsible for the system and the economic relations of society, and in fact they are controlled by it much like everyone.

ronya
Nov 8, 2010

I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.
I found this exchange amusing on mutual holes in collective memory:

https://twitter.com/donaldcclarke/status/1485811490812833796

the book extract is also apropos to a thread favourite topic (written from a Chinese perspective - Yugoslavia was prominent in Chinese intelligentsia consciousness in the 2000s due to the NATO Belgrade embassy bombing; China backed Milošević during the war even before the event, but sharply escalated its response in 1999 due to an unfortunate coincidence of events - pre-emptive clashes ahead of upcoming student protests on the anniversary of 6/4, the shock appearance of 10,000+ Falun Gong practitioners in an silent protest outside Zhongnanhai that caught security completely by surprise, and two weeks later the Belgrade bombing; the confluence of these events led to unusually open permitted discussion of the Yugoslavian war in early 2000s China)

ronya fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Jan 26, 2022

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Smeef posted:

This is not true at all. You can be a major investor and have no voting rights in a company. Splitting economic and voting rights is very common and is how tech founders retain so much control despite minority economic rights. Most investors don't even have board seats and just receive reports. Boards often don't even exercise that much control. Much of the decision-making is delegated to the CEO and management.

Most CEOs and high level management are paid heavily with stocks. Many times, the ceo is not only an investor but the investor who owns more stock than anyone else. For example, the Ceo of Amazon is Jeff Bezos, the largest holder of Amazon stock in the world. Same for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, bill gates and microsoft (before he retired), etc. More to the point, those positions are appointed either directly or indirectly by investors specifically to act in their interest. So really it's a system where investors elevate a smaller group of investors to make decisions on behalf of the larger group of investors. A representative democracy where voting power is determined by wealth.

And to paint any of this as a "cabal" is very silly. Every part of this complicated system is right out there in the open. They collaborate in public and they make public decisions.

The only thing they do in secret is gently caress children.

Cpt_Obvious fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Jan 26, 2022

Smeef
Aug 15, 2003

I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!



Pillbug

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Most CEOs and high level management are paid heavily with stocks. Many times, the ceo is not only an investor but the investor who owns more stock than anyone else. For example, the Ceo of Amazon is Jeff Bezos, the largest holder of Amazon stock in the world. Same for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, bill gates and microsoft (before he retired), etc. More to the point, those positions are appointed either directly or indirectly by investors specifically to act in their interest. So really it's a system where investors elevate a smaller group of investors to make decisions on behalf of the larger group of investors. A representative democracy where voting power is determined by wealth.

And to paint any of this as a "cabal" is very silly. Every part of this complicated system is right out there in the open. They collaborate in public and they make public decisions.

The only thing they do in secret is gently caress children.

This is not about China and is no longer even about media or movies, so it'll be my last post on this topic.

Having equity does not make you an investor. Bezos and Zuckerberg haven't paid in a penny to their companies since raising their first round of external financing. They may have paid nothing outside of whatever out-of-pocket expenses they had during initial setup. And employees the world over are paid in equity (both as a form of compensation and ostensibly to align management/staff with shareholders and prevent principal-agent problems), but it does not make them investors. It makes them shareholders. (You can also be an investor and have no equity. That is debt.)

Yes, typically good corporate governance means that a Board hires and fires the CEO, may vote on certain decisions depending on the by-laws, may provide some guidance, etc. Being a shareholder does not guarantee a board seat, though, and plenty of board seats go to independent directors with no stake. Plenty of Boards are rubber stamps. Bezos and Zuckerberg in particular are not examples of typical CEO-Board relationships. Ironically, they are examples of having more voting power than economic rights — i.e., voting power is not determined by wealth. Neither was ever appointed. Jeff Bezos is no longer the CEO of Amazon but ran it with dictatorial power and still has the plurality of ownership and voting rights. Andy Jassy is the CEO, and he was handpicked by Bezos. Mark Zuckerberg owns about 14% of Facebook but has about 58% of the voting shares. He can do drat near whatever the hell he wants.

And to provide something that is China-related and interesting:

Rising private city operators in contemporary China: A study of the CFLD model
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0264275119304275

quote:

In the past decade, with the rise of private investment in urban development in China, there has been a profound transformation from government-led to market-led urban growth. These changes have created a boom in private city operators who have become involved in large-scale urban development and established long-term close public-private partnerships with local governments, integrating and optimizing all of the resources in a city or region.

I wonder how this article will age, given the current property market conditions. It surprised me given how much we've recently been talking about retrenchment of state control of the economy and is a reminder that policies in China are often moving in different directions, sometimes in opposing directions, at the same time.

Smeef fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Jan 26, 2022

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Smeef posted:


Having equity does not make you an investor.
I mean, yes it does. That's how investments into publicly traded companies work. You invest money into a share of a company and that share increases in value over time. Jeff Bezos may have started his company 30 years ago but he's seen plenty of returns on his initial investment.

I'm not sure exactly it is we're disagreeing with here except maybe exact word definitions.

Edit: just to be clear, that doesn't mean every schmuck with a 401k portfolio is an "investor", or at least are not the people in talking about.

quote:

Being a shareholder does not guarantee a board seat, though, and plenty of board seats go to independent directors with no stake.

It's no coincidence that CEOS are paid with stock options, this is intentionally done to materially tie ceo decisions to investor profits more than just by contractual obligations. Anything a CEO does to benefit stockholders also benefits himself because he is also a stockholder.

Cpt_Obvious fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Jan 26, 2022

MikeC
Jul 19, 2004
BITCH ASS NARC
https://www.pnas.org/content/119/4/e2102818119

quote:

While the results here do not link the COVID-19 crisis gateway effect to the political fortunes of the Chinese government, they do suggest that a country with a highly censored environment sees distinctive and wide-ranging increases in information access during crisis. While in normal times censorship can be highly effective and widely tolerated, crisis heightens incentives to circumvent censorship, and regimes cannot rely on the same limits on information access during crisis, even for topics long controlled.

A neat little paper that came out in the past couple of days. How does one actually circumvent the Great Firewall of China and what are the consequences of doing so? I imagine you just VPN through but how often does the CCP block VPN routes?

MarcusSA
Sep 23, 2007

MikeC posted:

https://www.pnas.org/content/119/4/e2102818119
I imagine you just VPN through but how often does the CCP block VPN routes?

Quite often from what I’ve read. It’s kinda a cat and mouse game though.

Kavros
May 18, 2011

sleep sleep sleep
fly fly post post
sleep sleep sleep

quote:

these findings demonstrate that during crisis access to information fundamentally changes in autocracies in patterns that differ from democracies. Information spillovers originating from crisis could be especially pronounced when a regime has previously censored a large amount of political information and circumvention tools provide access to a wide variety of current and historical censored content. That information seeking during crisis spills over to unrelated and previously censored content in authoritarian contexts is related to previously studied gateway effects where the Chinese government’s action to suddenly block a primarily entertainment website facilitated access to censored political information (9).

This tracks with direct family sources about how it more or less worked in north korea during exceptional crisis. The majority of information spillover was predicated by situations involving gross economic collapse or major disruptive disaster and often required it. Also, the realities of crisis make people more daring in seeking out new media even if just for basic escapism, and as north korean media remained static, anachronistic, and monodirected to regime praise and overt instructional messaging about proper mindsets and labor of the people, people got daring enough to really go for foreign produced media. dramas. movies. comedies. news broadcasts. anything. But more importantly, the centralized systems given sole control of most vital goods distribution were very poorly designed and prone to sporadic or complete collapse even in 'good' times, but any suggestion that things weren't working perfectly were forbidden unless it could be blamed on a foreign actor ... so it became lifesaving pragmatism for most korean heads of household to try to source real information or news on conditions inside the country or what might be coming up.

And as jangmadangs and private black market commerce replaced critically collapsed centralized systems, that started the first real pipelines. Anyway, it ends up an interesting contrast, since China's incredibly different what with the general competence and the whole 'delivering on the promise of greater prosperity and security' thing for most people.

ronya
Nov 8, 2010

I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.
https://twitter.com/yangxifan/status/1486709893729959944

Worth reading the thread. In particular:

https://twitter.com/yangxifan/status/1486710006430846989

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth
drat, are the Olympics just a week away? I guess we'll see what happens when the rubber meets the road.

Starks
Sep 24, 2006

1.2 million people is 0.08% of chinas population, doesn’t seem that crazy that it’s not a bigger story. It’s hard to even find the place on Google maps.

mawarannahr
May 21, 2019

Android Blues posted:

It's also not at all close to the book ending - what a weird thing to bring up. The book ending is that the bombing fails due to the protagonist being incompetent at bomb-making, but the secret society's infiltration of bougie polity continues with the implication that it's been so successful it's now endemic. It does not glorify or validate the state - it's a joke about a grand anarchist plot that is thwarted by tripping over its own feet. Even then, the implication is that in the future, there'll probably be a successful bombing, because the ideas that propelled the first one are powerful, rooted in some kind of truth, and aren't going away.

This ending is, "the police heroically arrest everyone, save the day, and the disruptive criminal Tyler Durden (who, let's be clear, does not exist in the text of the movie) is arrested and sent to a lunatic asylum until he is cured of his subversive tendencies". It's downright goofy in how much boot it licks.

The author has responded, FWIW, and he believes it to be closer to the book ending. You might want to calibrate your weirdness meter.

https://ew.com/movies/fight-club-censored-ending-china-chuck-palahniuk/ posted:

There's one person who doesn't seem too fussed by the new censored Chinese ending to the 1999 film Fight Club — and that's author Chuck Palahniuk.

Palahniuk wrote the 1996 novel that inspired the David Fincher cult classic, which in turn starred Brad Pitt and Edward Norton and was recently released on Tencent Video, China's largest video streamer. But while the altered ending is drastically different — a title card reveals that authorities foil the anarchic plot to blow up banking and credit card buildings — Palahniuk told TMZ on Wednesday that the less pyrotechnic Chinese ending actually hews closer to his original novel.

"The irony is that the way the Chinese have changed it is they've aligned the ending almost exactly with the ending of the book, as opposed to Fincher's ending, which was the more spectacular visual ending," he said. "So in a way, the Chinese brought the movie back to the book a little bit."

In the original film, Norton's nameless narrator kills off his alter ego, Tyler Durden (Pitt), before watching a skyline explode, seemingly dealing a devastating blow to consumerist culture by erasing banking and debt records.

The Tencent version eliminates that ending and replaces it with a freeze-frame and a title card that reads, "The police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding. After the trial, Tyler was sent to lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012."

EW has reached out to representatives for Fincher, Pitt, and Norton for comment on the film's Chinese ending.

In Palahniuk's novel, the plot also fails — not because of police intervention, but because the bomb malfunctions. The narrator then shoots himself and wakes up in a mental hospital, believing he's in heaven.

Palahniuk has been bemused by the sudden outcry to the changed ending, given that he's dealt with censorship for decades when it comes Fight Club. "What I find really interesting is that my books are heavily banned throughout the U.S.," he said. "The Texas prison system refuses to carry my books in their libraries. A lot of public schools and most private schools refuse to carry my books. But it's only an issue once China changes the end of a movie? I've been putting up with book banning for a long time."

He also said he's had to face revisions of his book. "A lot of my overseas publishers have edited the novel so the novel ends the way the movie ends," he said. "So I've been dealing with this kind of revision for like 25 years.

I only read some of Chuck’s stories and his Portland book, but just based on those and knowing some of what he experienced as an author I thought he’d get a kick out of it and not really give a poo poo.

Herstory Begins Now
Aug 5, 2003
SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>
idk how familiar you are with what palahniuk is generally up to these days, but good luck making much sense of what's going on in his weird fuckin head

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/20/chuck-palahniuk-interview-adjustment-day-black-ethno-state-gay-parenting-incel-movement

on the plus side if you want to read about american splitaway states of Blacktopia, Gaysia (his names, btw), and the white incel country, you should definitely read his recent work

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

mawarannahr posted:

quote:

Palahniuk has been bemused by the sudden outcry to the changed ending, given that he's dealt with censorship for decades when it comes Fight Club. "What I find really interesting is that my books are heavily banned throughout the U.S.," he said. "The Texas prison system refuses to carry my books in their libraries. A lot of public schools and most private schools refuse to carry my books. But it's only an issue once China changes the end of a movie? I've been putting up with book banning for a long time."

He also said he's had to face revisions of his book. "A lot of my overseas publishers have edited the novel so the novel ends the way the movie ends," he said. "So I've been dealing with this kind of revision for like 25 years.


Considering how much sexual "deviance" his books have, it's not surprising.

Cpt_Obvious fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Jan 27, 2022

Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






Cpt_Obvious posted:

The only thing they do in secret is gently caress children.

Well yeah, they’re not Qin Shihuang, they can’t cite health reasons and just do it publicly. Although it’s amusing to imagine the world’s billionaires all following a mercury-based regimen.

ronya
Nov 8, 2010

I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.
小三 mistress and 劝酒 professional KTV culture is still prevalent in contemporary Chinese government business, fwiw

Red and Black
Sep 5, 2011

Herstory Begins Now posted:

idk how familiar you are with what palahniuk is generally up to these days, but good luck making much sense of what's going on in his weird fuckin head

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/20/chuck-palahniuk-interview-adjustment-day-black-ethno-state-gay-parenting-incel-movement

on the plus side if you want to read about american splitaway states of Blacktopia, Gaysia (his names, btw), and the white incel country, you should definitely read his recent work

Palahniuk has always been like that. He is an extremely weird dude. Good author though. Also it's fair to consider him an authority on his own book

GoutPatrol
Oct 17, 2009

*Stupid Babby*

I think even caring that "well it is closer to the original" is missing the problem in the first place. Why would they find the need to change the ending in the first place?

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth

GoutPatrol posted:

I think even caring that "well it is closer to the original" is missing the problem in the first place. Why would they find the need to change the ending in the first place?

Exactly, it's entirely immaterial to the question raised by the censorship: what is there to fear from a simple movie? Does a healthy society and polity need to fear and censor art?

e: I'll add my own whattaboutism, for fun: in the US right now we are seeing a rash of conservative municipalities rushing to censor children's books and literature that they find threatening to their politics. This is not a sign of a healthy society. It's driven by fear and paranoia and hatred.

Franks Happy Place
Mar 15, 2011

It is by weed alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the dank of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, stains become a warning. It is by weed alone I set my mind in motion.

quote:

Also it's fair to consider him an authority on his own book

Mmmm, no.

Centrist Committee
Aug 6, 2019

How are u posted:

Exactly, it's entirely immaterial to the question raised by the censorship: what is there to fear from a simple movie? Does a healthy society and polity need to fear and censor art?

If the purpose of art is to provoke conversation then this has succeeded more than any other piece in recent memory. China wins again!

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

GoutPatrol posted:

I think even caring that "well it is closer to the original" is missing the problem in the first place. Why would they find the need to change the ending in the first place?

Cpt_Obvious posted:

The original Fightclub [movie] ending could easily be read as pro-fascist. The evil women and ((((bankers)))) have robbed men of their genetic love for violence, transforming them from the strong alpha warriors of the past into the cucked beta office workers of today. The only way forward is to eschew individuality and follow the unquestionable leadership of the chaddiest Chad, Brad Pitt. All the things that the book portrays as self destructive - violence for the sake of violence, alienation from society, toxic masculinity - could instead be seen as necessary sacrifices for the future because the mission is ultimately successful. Tyler Durton is no longer an idiot madman who fails at everything, he's a grand symbol for masculinity that anyone can become. "Bitch tits" may have died, sure, but everyone's debt is gone. Instead of a pointless and tragic death that points to the futility of the endeavor, now he's a martyr.

Basically, the original movie ending could be seen as pulling a reverse Starship troopers - turning antifascist satire into an incel rallying cry. Now, the edit also has obvious "authoritarian" themes, but they kind of flip the script: the authorities shut down a fascist terror cell. It's an interesting example, to be sure.

studio mujahideen
May 3, 2005


This is a personal bugbear for me, but for the love of god this is not what barthes' meant when he wrote the essay, and I really wish people would actually learn what it was about before doing this.

The idea behind death of the author was to argue against the idea that a reading OF the text must be informed by your knowledge of the author. Barthes rejects the idea that the sole method of reading themes in a text must come from biographical information. Like, "Ah, this novel's themes are clearly them working out their experiences in the War, or with their own depression". In this specific case, when someone says Palahniuk is an authority in the written events of the novel, well of COURSE he is. He wrote it! He knows the plot.

Red and Black
Sep 5, 2011

GoutPatrol posted:

I think even caring that "well it is closer to the original" is missing the problem in the first place. Why would they find the need to change the ending in the first place?
For my part, I think it sucks that they edited the ending. Even if it does bring it closer to the original.

The more salient part of what Palahniuk is saying is that Fight Club has faced continuous censorship/modification since its publication, and yet people only seem to care when it can be used as a bludgeon against an enemy government

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth

Red and Black posted:

For my part, I think it sucks that they edited the ending.

Why do you think they edited the ending?

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Varinn posted:

This is a personal bugbear for me, but for the love of god this is not what barthes' meant when he wrote the essay, and I really wish people would actually learn what it was about before doing this.

The idea behind death of the author was to argue against the idea that a reading OF the text must be informed by your knowledge of the author. Barthes rejects the idea that the sole method of reading themes in a text must come from biographical information. Like, "Ah, this novel's themes are clearly them working out their experiences in the War, or with their own depression". In this specific case, when someone says Palahniuk is an authority in the written events of the novel, well of COURSE he is. He wrote it! He knows the plot.

Thank you, thank you, for the love of god

Rabelais D
Dec 11, 2012

ts'u nnu k'u k'o t'khye:
A demon doth defecate at thy door
It doesn't matter if the movie is different from the book because that's the point of an adaptation, you are allowed the freedom to change things. The movie is its own thing. So the question is not whether the censored ending is closer to some sacred idea of an "original text", but rather, is it right that the state should decide how media and art should be read?

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Rabelais D posted:

It doesn't matter if the movie is different from the book because that's the point of an adaptation, you are allowed the freedom to change things. The movie is its own thing. So the question is not whether the censored ending is closer to some sacred idea of an "original text", but rather, is it right that the state should decide how media and art should be read?

The state will censor media, that's what states do. The better question is "what are they censoring and why?

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

BrainDance
May 8, 2007

Disco all night long!

This kinda makes me think of The Shining, and how glad I am Kubrick's version was so different from King's book. If it wasn't I think the movie would have sucked but as it is it's one of the best horror movies ever made and a lot of adaptations of King's books that don't change much end up very meh.

But I'm glad both the book and movie exist and that neither are censored.

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

China Jails Almost 50 Steel Executives for Faking Emissions Data

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/china-jails-almost-50-steel-executives-for-faking-emissions-data

quote:

BEIJING (BLOOMBERG) - China will jail forty-seven steel company officials for faking air pollution data, in a sign that Beijing's crackdown on firms that are flouting environmental rules is intensifying.

The officials who worked at four mills in Tangshan city near Beijing, China's top steel-making hub, were given prison sentences from six to eighteen months, the municipal government said in a statement on its WeChat channel that cited court documents.

The sentences underscore Beijing's push to clean up a major source of air pollution. Authorities have ramped up environmental controls on the steel industry over the past decade in a bid to reduce bouts of dirty air.

The goal is to have more than 530 million tons of capacity in the "ultra-low emissions" category by 2025.

The officials - at Tangshan Great Wall Steel Group, Songting Iron & Steel Co, Hebei Xinda Iron & Steel Group Co, Tangshan Medium Thick Plate Co and Tangshan Jinma Steel Group - interfered with monitoring devices to allow the release of large quantities of pollutants in March 2021, according to the statement.

Two of the companies - Tangshan Songting and Hebei Xinda - were also fined 4 million yuan to 7 million yuan (S$851,500 to S$1.49 million).

It's part of a long-running environmental crackdown in the steelmaking hub.

Tangshan Jinma and another three mills were found guilty last March of not complying with production cuts put in place to reduce pollution.

WAR CRIME GIGOLO
Oct 3, 2012

The Hague
tryna get me
for these glutes

China's forcing it's economy to become even more competitive by creating a monopoly on green tech. Because of trumps rollbacks and no BBB, we will end up purchasing all of our green tech from China because we are too gridlocked to do anything about the climate disaster.

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.
The idea that "The state will censor media, that's what states do" is not true but for a ludicrous simplification of the concept.

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A big flaming stink
Apr 26, 2010

Discendo Vox posted:

The idea that "The state will censor media, that's what states do" is not true but for a ludicrous simplification of the concept.

Any institution with sufficient power will shape and influence the media into a form it finds advantageous

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