|
MisterBibs posted:^ It's not jump scarey. It's freaky. I dunno, for me this worked, because the movie sets you up to look for those things, so it's never totally clear what's going on with certain characters until the third act. I liked the subtle red herring of Jeremy sitting off by himself and looking sullen during the auction, so you think maybe his scene earlier was a red herring and he's not actually comfortable with the whole thing.
|
#
¿
Feb 25, 2017 06:48
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 11:33 |
|
|
How widespread is that weird pendulum metaphor the one guy used at the party? My brother once had an idiot for a teacher who used it in a slightly different context as "now the pendulum is swinging back and white people are being oppressed!", but I haven't run into it myself. It's really interesting to me. For one thing it's obviously bullshit, because when was the last time it supposedly swung in the direction of white oppression? But also, it implies that either civil rights and equality are a zero sum game where one group attaining civil rights necessarily results in those same rights being lost for another group (which is definitely a weird belief people seem to have), or it implies an even weirder scenario where it swings back and forth with diminishing oppression until it reaches equilibrium and you get real equality. I feel like Peele must have run into it himself.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2017 17:05
|
|
|
weekly font posted:Discussion becomes more than "IT GOOD?" Yeah. Why is it that whenever people disagree with SMG's reading of a movie, the immediate claim is that nobody before then bothered to interpret the movie? That's usually not the case, and it's definitely not the case here. I don't think people would have such a strong reaction to his interpretations if he didn't present them as the correct ones and if he didn't present his interpretations of metaphors in a weird way. Like one thing he's saying (I think) is that the conspiracy is an externalization of Chris's internal fears. That's not mutually exclusive from the conspiracy actually happening in the plot, because none of it "actually" happened, but he describes metaphors like plot summaries. Then when people don't get it, they get jumped on for just not bothering to think about the media they consume, when a lot of times it's like no dude, you communicated your point bad.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 17, 2017 05:48
|
|
|
mary had a little clam posted:I wish it was easier to have internet discussion about films where people were less fixated on "right/wrong" and more fixated on "interesting/uninteresting". That was the first time I've seen him acknowledge it, honestly. Usually, he presents it in terms of what things in the film "actually" mean and is generally dismissive of other people's readings.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 17, 2017 15:24
|
|
|
JawnV6 posted:Wish I could've found a shot of Chris fumbling around with it in the well-lit white car, there's a neck flange on it that takes it away from Man in the Iron Mask starkness and has some flourish to it. I was pretty hepped up looking for white supremacist imagery, guess there's a bit of projection there. It looks similar to this one to me:  It's not necessarily the same one, but they both definitely have that cross over the eyes. It's Crusader imagery, and the KKK do love their Crusader imagery.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2017 06:41
|
|
|
SuperMechagodzilla posted:When the dad says "I know what this looks like, but..." it is, of course, exactly what it looks like. Lesser members of the family are being used as black servants! The father's self-aware (expository) dialogue is used to lull people into a false sense of security - "don't worry; that's not a slave. That's my uncle, Tom." And the unfortunate thing is that this is working on audiences. I don't think that's true. People are disagreeing with entirely different parts of your interpretation. This one's not even the story being distinct from the plot, because the plot IS that Walter and Georgina have been enslaved after being tricked by Rose. It's reminiscent of free people of color being kidnapped and sold into slavery in the United States. The distinction between the parents' position and the brother's is important, because the brother seems much more racist and openly holds old-fashioned racist beliefs about genetics (I remember his dialogue at the dinner table having sort of a Candie from Django Unchained vibe to it), while the parents' and their guests' behavior falls into well-meaning ignorance a lot of the time. What's important is that ultimately that distinction doesn't matter, and both attitudes work together to trap Chris in the sunken place. Marginalization is portrayed as a type of slavery, and well-meaning, ignorant liberal racists are complicit. The dad may not think he shares his son's beliefs about black people being mentally inferior (he would've voted for Obama a third time), but his actions suggest that he does.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2017 16:29
|
|
|
HookedOnChthonics posted:It really is bizarre how thoroughly people who get super mad about SMG seem to be involved in a parallel universe version of whatever thread. "Invective and insults?" I really doubt he'd get the reaction he does if he wrote more clearly and didn't try to frame people who disagree with him as ideological opponents who don't think about the movies they watch, at least not with the depth and critical understanding that he feels he brings to the table. It's not always invective and insults, but it's very often dismissiveness and strawmanning.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2017 01:04
|
|
|
I said he's dismissive, uses strawman arguments, and paints people disagreeing with him as ideological opponents, and his response was to ignore most of what I said, focus on his reinterpretation of one thing I said, and start talking about how people who disagree with him retreat into alternate realities and conspiracy theories because of the unpleasant truths of his ideological leanings. That's dope
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2017 03:57
|
|
|
That's fair. edit: What is ganbatte? ThePlague-Daemon fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Mar 22, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2017 04:44
|
|
|
BravestOfTheLamps posted:Which is the silly conspiracy-fantasy of racist white liberals wanting to snatch black bodies. For something hailed as such a masterstroke, it's actually so preposterous that reading it as a paranoid fantasy is more constructive. What I'm not entirely getting is why reading the conspiracy as a delusion adds to this in any way. People actually thinking about the movie aren't imagining conspiracies of body snatching white liberals in real life. It's read as a metaphor. Even the oppositional readings of the movie tend to work regardless. It needs to be elaborated a lot better.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2017 18:23
|
|
|
K. Waste posted:Suddenly, you have stopped writing about the fraught ideological space that the film occupies, to expressing concern that we would be behooved to extend our critical lens to all films. He's asking why the conceit of Chris imagining the conspiracy is even necessary when it just seems to explain something that's not only already intuitive, but also applicable to films in general. Why is the knee-jerk reaction to criticism of these critiques usually accusations that the person is against ideological critiques?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 7, 2017 07:20
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 11:33 |
|
|
K. Waste posted:The claim is that the conspiracy is imagined, an extraordinary/absurd symbolic order standing in for the ironic banality of racism. I'm not actually sure what you thought my post meant if you read it thinking I didn't know this already.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 8, 2017 02:30
|
|