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welcome to POPAGANDA a portmanteau of pop culture and propaganda this thread is for discussing the not so secret messages from tv movies music books video games and yes even anime designed to pacify us and make us submissive possible subjects include but are not limited to- COPS: probably the single most obvious one ever wonder how it is that we can get videos of cops straight up murdering people and huge parts of the population will just shrug it off well you can thank the undying worship most american media offers of cops to thank for this from law and order to csi to blue bloods to nearly anything else about police officers we consistently see that law enforcement officials are kind good hearted people who would never hurt a soul and will instantly stand up to any corrupt cops they run into while being oddly suspicious of internal affairs bureacrats who just want to make their jobs harder CRIMINALS: most of the american prison population today is locked up for non violent crimes but youd never know it from the sample you get on tv where they range from psychos to sadists to master criminals who force our noble hero cops who have their hands tied behind their backs to bend the rules to get the job done but at least criminals are allowed to be badasses sometimes the real monsters are actually LAWYERS: while explicitly corrupt prosecutors are almost nonexistent in american media defense lawyers are almost universally total sleazebags even sympathetic portrayals constantly feature hand wringing about such and such defense lawyer defending a guy who she knows is totally guilty and will kill again but she has to help him skirt the law on a technicality anyway because legal ethics the natural assumption being that legal ethics are of course a load of poo poo SPEAKING OF WHICH did you know that getting convictions on a technicality almost never happens in the real world (back me up on this lawyer goons) thats one of the best ways you can tell youre dealing with propaganda is when a trope completely defies how something works in reality you might be thinking well thats just a coincidence of what makes for good storytelling let me ask you something when you try to look at most tropes like this from a political lens ask yourself what way the assumption skewed because theres a really good chance that it coincidentally always works in the way of right wing talking points THIS IS TRUE OF EVEN RELATIVELY MINOR BULLSHIT LIKE RENT CONTROL like how everyone in a big city has a disproportionately large apartment or house when they make like a bakers income or something oh yeah and homeless people are always crazy hobos clearly unfit for daily life unless theyre a vietnam vet or something and back to the exampples MILITARY WORSHIP our troops are always blameless innocent souls who only kill because they love america so much and its tragic how some of them come back hosed in the head and we should solve this problem by donating to charity not by like wondering what the gently caress is wrong with the va or even a more radical idea not sending them out to dumbfuck pointless wars about nothing in the first place oh yeah WAR francois truffaut once said there was no such thing as an antiwar film because the spectacle inherently promotes war well i respectfully disagree the reason theres no such thing as an antiwar film is because most alleged antiwar films never explain what the gently caress the war is about let alone suggest that maybe it was a moronic idea and the leaders who ordered it should be shot the closest they get is suggest that man is inherently inhuman to man and wow what a coincidence another popular thematic assumption that puts all the blames for nazis and poo poo on normal people like us not the assholes who actively sped along hitlers career because they thought it would make them money and no one was actually paying attention to what he was saying anyway INCIDENTALLY GOOD MOVIES CAN ALSO HAVE PROPAGANDA this is probably the single biggest stumbling block most people have over the issue when i say the pop culture you like is loaded with propaganda im not saying its poo poo and youre a bad person for liking it because its designed to be technically appealing and even artful but these qualities have to coexist with whatever message the media in question is trying to push time was proper film study involved separating these factors out and analyzing them but that concept is out of fashion these days HEY IS THIS THE THREAD WHERE I CAN POST MY MARXIST ANALYSIS OF WHATEVER FILM IS CONSIDERED HIP RIGHT NOW short answer no longer answer no because proper propaganda study is about analyzing trends over time any individual tv episode or movie can be interpreted to mean drat near anything cinema discuso used to have an entire forum game where people would just bullshit interpretations like this from a prompt its easy enough with one movie but way harder when youre looking at say a broader picture of musclehead action movies in the eighties where the villains are almost always arab terrorists and never white supremacist african mercenaries gee what an odd coincidence that yet another supposedly organic genre trend is reactionary as gently caress and has resulted in people assuming arabs are always crazy evil religious nutcases while the white african soldier of fortune is somehow a neutral stock figure in more recent movies of that genre OK I THINK EVERYONE GETS THE IDEA so go nuts on discussing whatever weird thing that's been bugging the hell out of you since you got laid off and started watching too much cable propaganda is about quantity over quality most of the time (ill spare you a rant about prestige television for the moment) so if somebody nitpicks your interpretation the best way to prove your point isnt to sperg about it but to provide more examples this being cspam jokes and derails are welcome but please refrain from talking too much about superheroes i went to a lot of work to avoid mentioning them in this op wait gently caress edit: a couple more i couldnt work into that as well as i liked TO SELL TOYS this is the message of most media in our society because its capitalist especially the stuff aimed at children so keep this in mind before you get to deep into discussing cartoons MOST PROPAGANDA ISNT INTENTIONAL media production in the united states today is very much a manufactured consent kind of situation where getting ahead requires you share certain values with big name producers like how sometimes rape is ok because im a movie producer it shouldnt surprise anyone that these kinds of powerful assholes are mainly interested in narratuives that benefit other powerful assholes Some Guy TT has issued a correction as of 15:22 on Jan 31, 2019 |
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Jan 31, 2019 15:15
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oh boy I got some takes on how media works to create an anti-radical state in terms of racial justice and I will probably spout on that when I got time
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Jan 31, 2019 15:21
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i wanna xpost my post from woke brands about how people dont like to analyze their media, just consume itFrog Act posted:i'm inclined to agree with this, particularly regarding basic critical analysis and examining what ideas a show perpetuates or what the ideological content of a piece of media is. people broadly assume entertainment is an apolitical entity (until it suddenly isn't, but that's a different topic) that merely produces and sells escapist fantasies while being discrete and separate from the rest of society. even though they comprehend these things are commercial ventures and vectors for profit and marketing, the ubiquity of those things ensures everyone in a liberal society accepts them as a feature of life and treats intrusive commercialization like natural law. why do you guys think people are so hostile to the notion that media they enjoy might inherently have political implications?
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Jan 31, 2019 15:33
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Frog Act posted:why do you guys think people are so hostile to the notion that media they enjoy might inherently have political implications? Because everything has a political connotation and we are trained to ignore it. We are told that the political is a separate force and not an inherent part of all interactions. I recommend to everyone in this thread to read Mythologies by Roland Barthes. It has many short essays that show how there is significance and messaging in even the most mundane aspects of human life. He writes about the significance of the terminology we use for soap flakes, for example.
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Jan 31, 2019 15:36
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if you acknowledge the political content of one piece of pop art or whatever you sort of have to acknowledge it everywhere else, which is probably just a pain in the rear end if you arent extremely online or going to university
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Jan 31, 2019 15:54
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We live in a society
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Jan 31, 2019 15:55
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Farm Frenzy posted:if you acknowledge the political content of one piece of pop art or whatever you sort of have to acknowledge it everywhere else, which is probably just a pain in the rear end if you arent extremely online or going to university A democracy requires a thoughtful population. Thinking its a "pain in the rear end" to consider how your perspectives are influenced by what you consume for entertainment is the definition of a non-functional democracy.
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Jan 31, 2019 15:56
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always a good idea to question the hegemonic narrative created by Those People, the ones who run Hollywood and The Mainstream Media (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jan 31, 2019 16:01
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Mel Mudkiper posted:A democracy requires a thoughtful population. Thinking its a "pain in the rear end" to consider how your perspectives are influenced by what you consume for entertainment is the definition of a non-functional democracy. interestingly enough after the horrific jingoism of world war i most people in allegedly democratic countries agreed and wanted it to never happen again which led to the creation of propaganda studies programs in academia they were dead within twenty years because no one with the money to fund them wanted a population that knew how to resist propaganda Fallen Hamprince posted:always a good idea to question the hegemonic narrative created by Those People, the ones who run Hollywood and The Mainstream Media we are also homophobes you must not be following bryan singers twitter
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Jan 31, 2019 16:04
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Fallen Hamprince posted:always a good idea to question the hegemonic narrative created by Those People, the ones who run Hollywood and The Mainstream Media the bourgeoisie? indeed
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Jan 31, 2019 16:06
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Some Guy TT posted:we are also homophobes you must not be following bryan singers twitter A cool Bryan Singer movie is the one where an elderly nazi and the mighty ducks kid engage in a relationship that's insinuated to be sexual in nature and also there's a scene where there are a bunch of naked teen boys and for some reason Bryan Singer didn't get arrested for filming a bunch of naked children showering.
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Jan 31, 2019 16:09
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I always get weirded out when people celebrate 80s action movies because they were the most nakedly and dangerous propaganda I think you could imagine not coming directly from a government
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Jan 31, 2019 16:12
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I always get weirded out when people celebrate 80s action movies because they were the most nakedly and dangerous propaganda I think you could imagine not coming directly from a government paul verhoeven was entirely aware of this and made the best action movies of the decade, though. Frog Act posted:i wanna xpost my post from woke brands about how people dont like to analyze their media, just consume it people are so drained by the rigors of everyday existence the last thing they want is any deep or structural criticism of the stuff they watch or read to forget all the bullshit they hate. also the academy is loving dead, it's a center for the reproduction of liberal ideology and there's no stepping outside orthodoxy in any curriculum. also the people who used to write about this stuff in a thoughtful way are dead or out of a job.
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Jan 31, 2019 16:18
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R. Guyovich posted:paul verhoeven was entirely aware of this and made the best action movies of the decade, though. Yeah sorry I should have included the Verhoeven exception Dude is legit one of the all time greats I was thinking more of the traditional Willis, Stallone, Schwarzenegger affairs
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Jan 31, 2019 16:20
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the heightened escapism phenomenon i mentioned, i.e. the "i just like the stuff i like! gently caress you!" defense of bad art has been made worse by the endless franchise model and the death of the mid-budget movie outside of "reliable" genres like horror. people aren't stupid, they respond to interesting ideas. it's why the get out trailer got a huge response and then the movie made a boatload of money. but if you only get that kind of ingenuity once or twice a year because the boutique production houses do like three wide releases then the death spiral will continue ad infinitum. which is why we need to nationalize film studios.
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Jan 31, 2019 16:22
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R. Guyovich posted:the heightened escapism phenomenon i mentioned, i.e. the "i just like the stuff i like! gently caress you!" defense of bad art has been made worse by the endless franchise model and the death of the mid-budget movie outside of "reliable" genres like horror. people aren't stupid, they respond to interesting ideas. it's why the get out trailer got a huge response and then the movie made a boatload of money. but if you only get that kind of ingenuity once or twice a year because the boutique production houses do like three wide releases then the death spiral will continue ad infinitum. To be fair, Blumhouse has made some good films with pretty provocative ideas under the security blanket of horror and they should be celebrated for that Speaking of Verhoeven, one of the more brilliant bits of criticism he put into his films was in Robocop. What I liked about that first film is that the company is never shown as being "evil" like in the later movies. They were not an "evil" company, they were just a company. It was an interesting way of showing the system itself was unethical, not those who participated in it.
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Jan 31, 2019 16:25
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Yeah sorry I should have included the Verhoeven exception stallone made demolition man, arnie did last action hero and commando (which i see as verhoeven-esque satire), willis, uhhhhhhh well i like die hard but you're right about that era having some incredibly brazen poo poo, though i'd argue the '90s were worse. american studios were doing loving victory laps after the ussr fell and it came through big time in movies like true lies and air force one.
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Jan 31, 2019 16:25
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R. Guyovich posted:commando (which i see as verhoeven-esque satire), The hero of Commando is CIA guy who routinely engaged in South American regime change I don't see the satire other than the absurdity of the violence itself I think the movie that best summarizes that dangerous epoch of hollywood filmmaking is Cobra, which I would argue is an objectively evil movie
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Jan 31, 2019 16:29
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is poptimism a product of fascism, or a product of the irrational exuberance of the obama era? is there any difference? was 2008-2016 a Weimar-era age of excess, and the music and media of the era reflected the contradictions of our society???? hm.. anyways lmfao should release a new album
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Jan 31, 2019 16:31
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Does the US Army paying the NFL to broadcast those insipid "aryan war hero comes home to aryan cheerleader wife" bits before games count as propaganda or just a waste of taxpayer dollars
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Jan 31, 2019 17:52
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Peanut President posted:Does the US Army paying the NFL to broadcast those insipid "aryan war hero comes home to aryan cheerleader wife" bits before games count as propaganda or just a waste of taxpayer dollars oh absolutely yes
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Jan 31, 2019 17:53
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvjJOovwX8Y these for non americans/non football people
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Jan 31, 2019 17:54
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rambo should've killed the cops in First Blood
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Jan 31, 2019 17:55
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just imagine i posted the entirety of the West Wing in here
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Jan 31, 2019 17:56
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The interrelation between American sporting and military fetishism is profound https://www.nflshop.com/salute-to-service/c-39087453+z-9625009-3234416133 Baseball teams regularly redesign their uniforms to resemble military camo in "troop tributes" 
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Jan 31, 2019 17:58
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https://www.spyculture.com/updated-complete-list-of-dod-films/
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Jan 31, 2019 17:59
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Some Guy TT posted:HEY IS THIS THE THREAD WHERE I CAN POST MY MARXIST ANALYSIS OF WHATEVER FILM IS CONSIDERED HIP RIGHT NOW short answer no longer answer no because proper propaganda study is about analyzing trends over time any individual tv episode or movie can be interpreted to mean drat near anything cinema discuso used to have an entire forum game where people would just bullshit interpretations like this from a prompt as the winner of the final one of these I must mention that film analysis is cool as hell and I encourage everyone to read my treatise on how Under the Skin with Scarlett Johansson is actually an examination of how the US government was responsible for the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s (this is a real post)
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Jan 31, 2019 18:06
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One of the failings of people when it comes to criticism and analysis is that it doesnt matter if you can say anything if what you say doesnt strike an audience as authentic. Just because you can claim under the skin is about the cocaine trade in the 80s doesnt mean you are proving anything if it fails to have significance to your audience.
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Jan 31, 2019 18:20
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VROOM VROOM posted:as the winner of the final one of these I must mention that film analysis is cool as hell and I encourage everyone to read my treatise on how Under the Skin with Scarlett Johansson is actually an examination of how the US government was responsible for the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s you get to see her boobs in that movie
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Jan 31, 2019 18:22
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I'm pretty sure that Brooklyn 99 exists entirely to act as a PR campaign for the NYPD
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Jan 31, 2019 18:44
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Frog Act posted:why do you guys think people are so hostile to the notion that media they enjoy might inherently have political implications? I remember several years ago getting into an argument with a guy I went to high school with about hidden propaganda, and the response that taught me you sometimes just can't win was something like "It's stupid to let yourself be influenced by media." I don't know the exact answer, and I'm sure there's hundreds of moving parts as to why people are so resistant, but I imagine a big part is people don't like to admit they've been duped. Particularly Americans, but certainly most places around the world, we like to believe that we're all independent free thinkers and that we arrive at our conclusions about the world rationally or through experience. We don't recognize the silent ways mass media guides our way of thinking -- including making us think of ourselves as independent free thinkers. South Park is such a great example of this, because one of the show's overarching themes is that other people are idiots, but we are intelligent and recognize the idiocy. By being so overt in its political arguments, its more subtle message is to instill self-righteousness in the viewer and to falsely believe you haven't been guided but instead have arrived at conclusions yourself. When you break that down for people, it's upsetting. It's a worldview being shattered. Zizek famously uses this example, but take John Carpenter's They Live and the alley fight scene. To put on the glasses is to admit not that the world is being controlled by higher forces, but that you yourself have bought into it.
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Jan 31, 2019 18:54
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i would like to submit to the consideration of this thread: all the marvel movies, all of them
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Jan 31, 2019 19:01
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R. Guyovich posted:stallone made demolition man, arnie did last action hero and commando (which i see as verhoeven-esque satire), willis, uhhhhhhh well i like die hard once the USSR fell the focus became on shoring up white supremacy at home as the villians of action movies more and more became swarthy drug dealers
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Jan 31, 2019 19:01
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Al ! posted:once the USSR fell the focus became on shoring up white supremacy at home as the villians of action movies more and more became swarthy drug dealers counterpoint: 
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Jan 31, 2019 19:19
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animist posted:i would like to submit to the consideration of this thread: all the marvel movies, all of them those things barely qualify as movies anymore
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Jan 31, 2019 19:25
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Mel Mudkiper posted:The hero of Commando is CIA guy who routinely engaged in South American regime change I don't know if Commando is intentional satire, but it (and something like Cobra, or Tango & Cash) plays so cartoony now that I don't think it's coloring anybody's notion of IRL police or defense contractors. They're funny now because they ostensibly were not supposed to be campy when they came out.
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Jan 31, 2019 21:46
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animist posted:i would like to submit to the consideration of this thread: all the marvel movies, all of them The only thing that can stop the military industrial complex is a good guy in the military industrial complex.
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Jan 31, 2019 21:48
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my problem with this sort of thing is that a whole lot of people who yell about reading pop culure marxistly are careerist academics & such with no real interest in changing the system. scratch a zizek and you'll find a shitlib
Clipperton has issued a correction as of 22:28 on Jan 31, 2019 |
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Jan 31, 2019 22:24
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More like Pope-aganda
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Jan 31, 2019 22:38
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mods plz embed
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Jan 31, 2019 22:50
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