TrixRabbi posted:

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.

sitchensis posted:

I will never forgive South Park for what it did to gently caress over advocacy that warned about climate change. gently caress Matt and Trey.

sitchensis posted:

I will never forgive South Park for what it did to gently caress over advocacy that warned about climate change. gently caress Matt and Trey.

General Dog posted:

But is "Remember the Titans" a dishonest movie? Some white people find utility in some young black men and consequently come to tolerate their presence in settings that they would not have before. Obviously the movie is wrong to frame that as redemptive in any fashion, but it still presents a very true and timeless phenomenon.

A Big Fuckin Hornet posted:

Its been fascinating watching 70s sitcoms and seeing just what a number the Reagan years did for gay rights. Completely destroyed the notion in me that these kinds of issues were seeing a slow, steadying march towards the right side of history. Shows like All in the Family, Maude, Alice, Soap, etc, would portray gay men as just being extremely ordinary. Never caricatures, just boring regular dudes with ordinary interests and ordinary professions (in some cases even typically hypermasculine ones like quarterback or boxer), always to make the bigots look like a big steaming morons.

The 80s were a complete wasteland and then when the 90s happened and we saw this huge spike in gay representation (white male only ofc), it was almost always completely insulting garbage. Will & Grace, Sex and the City, the homophobic humor of Friends, all somehow viewed as progressive at the time. Looking at Billy Crystal's performance as Jody then to Sarah Jessica Parker's gay friends was eye-opening to just how much damage was done.

sitchensis posted:

I will never forgive South Park for what it did to gently caress over advocacy that warned about climate change. gently caress Matt and Trey.

Some Guy TT posted:

woke ideology is actively harmful to proper media criticism because it encourages this mindset of just ignoring when past progress happened so that we can be the enlightened generation and just pretend that representation alone solves all problems when nearly every marginalized group has had representation at least once and then capitalism came up with some excuse to get rid of it

Some Guy TT posted:

woke ideology is actively harmful to proper media criticism because it encourages this mindset of just ignoring when past progress happened so that we can be the enlightened generation and just pretend that representation alone solves all problems when nearly every marginalized group has had representation at least once and then capitalism came up with some excuse to get rid of it

sitchensis posted:

I will never forgive South Park for what it did to gently caress over advocacy that warned about climate change. gently caress Matt and Trey.

phasmid posted:

On the note of someone earlier saying that all the Marvel movies counted at this point: a few weeks ago I watched Infinity War on Netflix and holy poo poo. All I could think was how lucky I was it didn't come out when I was a kid.

Tastykake posted:

could you elaborate on this, because this movie is so loving long and meaningless that it just melts into a stream of flashing lights before my eyes

phasmid posted:

It's worth pointing out to people who just "want to turn their brain off" or "watch their dumb, fun movie" or whatever that it doesn't mean excoriating yourself when you get tricked by propaganda. It happens. To all of us. Every day.

The public relations industry is one hundred years old. It was envisioned by smart salesmen with a kind of cunning that'd make Machiavelli look naïve. Since then, it's been buttressed by ingenuity, manned and operated by clever, hardworking people who have keen insight into the human mind. It is a sophisticated space-age machine and should be seen as such.

It's no shame to be tricked by it, but to be alerted and then opting to stay tricked? That's not smart.

On the note of someone earlier saying that all the Marvel movies counted at this point: a few weeks ago I watched Infinity War on Netflix and holy poo poo. All I could think was how lucky I was it didn't come out when I was a kid.


I can still remember South Park being so loving funny when it first came out. Their turnaround to selling stale jokes to idiots was so sudden and the show became the bane of every kind of political discussion because people just lapped it up. It got so bad you could tell when someone was about to spout word-for-word some poo poo Stan Marsh said like it was the Sermon on the Mount.


This is my problem too. It's would be a good thing if more people were being encouraged to be more aware of political and cultural goings-on, but really they're just being given a doctrine of jargon. It's a fashion statement. Thinking that you're part of an elite generation that suddenly accepts all people and cultures and no one had the wits to do it before is some grade-A bullshit and it's kind of sad to see young people accept it so readily. Then again, thinking for oneself was never easy to do at any point in history and being bombarded with messaging day in and day out like never before, it's probably drat hard to resist.

I feel sorry for kids in school now more than ever, because school never ends.

Victory Position posted:

I thought this was the POPE-AGANDA thread, where we discuss papist plots and the Jesuit conspiracy

an actual dog posted:

if anyone tries to tell you that we're living through the bad times just say at least it isn't the 80s

get that OUT of my face posted:

here's a guide to the Academy's rationales behind the Best Picture nominees

• Black Klansman: "we like movies with wokeness and representation (but not really)"
  
• Green Book: see above
  
• Black Panther: see Black Klansman + "hey see we put a comic book movie here too, now shut up about Oscar bait"
  
• Roma: see Black Klansman + "we're starting to warm up to movies released on streaming services (but not really)"
  
• Vice: "we like movies with a timely, agreeable political message (but not really)"
  
• The Favourite: "we like biopics and period pieces (only a little bit, but more than wokeness and good politics)"
  
• A Star Is Born: "what we really, truly, actually like are movies that are a big reacharound to Hollywood itself"
  
• Bohemian Rhapsody: "ok ok Bryan Singer, we'll give you a Best Picture nomination so you won't squeal like the big perverted pig you are"

R. Guyovich posted:

the people who loudly proclaim "advertising doesn't work on me" are often the biggest marks for capitalist propaganda and totally absorbed in liberal ideology

Al! posted:

huh that's weird sorry to bother you isn't on this list i wonder why

A CRUNK BIRD posted:

I saw an episode of this at my friends’ house recently where they backpedaled on the entire man bear pig thing and tried to apologize for it. Absolutely pathetic

mysterious frankie posted:

The real bad guy ends up being the EPA. Darn environmentalist government types, interfering with our lovable for profit small businessmen & making everything worse. That outlook sure worked out for us.

Easy Diff posted:

Walter Peck was 100% right. There's a weird libertarian vibe running through that whole movie, and nowhere is it clearer than when the EPA guy says "Yo don't run an unlicensed nuclear reactor in the most densely populated city in the world, random fired college professors!" to which the Ghostbusters reply "This man has no dick"

get that OUT of my face posted:

maybe Sorry to Bother You is legitimately subversive, but you can be drat sure that the studios will make sure that movies like that barely ever get made and released to wide audiences. the belief that it's a gun that capitalism is pointing at itself is nonsense

quote:

These structural factors that dominate media operations are not alI- controlling and do not always produce simple and homogeneous results. It is well recognized, and may even be said to constitute a part of an insti- tutional critique such as we present in this volume, that the various parts of media organizations have some limited autonomy, that individual and professional values influence media work, that policy is imperfectly en- forced, and that media policy itself may allow some measure of dissent and reporting that calls into question the accepted viewpoint. These con- siderations all work to assure some dissent and coverage of inconvenient facts. The beauty of the system, however, is that such dissent and inconvenient information are kept within bounds and at the margins, so that while their presence shows that the system is not monolithic, they are not large enough to interfere unduly with the domination of the official agenda.

get that OUT of my face posted:

i still think Trading Places is funny as a whole, but there was honest-to-god blackface in it

quote:

Vincent "Vinnie" Viola (born 1956) is an American billionaire businessman, philanthropist[citation needed], and U.S. Army veteran. He was for several weeks President Donald Trump's nominee for United States Secretary of the Army, before withdrawing from consideration.[2]

quote:

The logo is inspired by the patch for the Army's 101st Airborne Division. Vinnie Viola, who became owner of the Panthers prior to the 2013-14 season, served in the division.

"I think the logo harkens to the vanguard of courage, the idea that you put a shield on the hockey uniform," Viola said. "It's something to protect, but you also protect it. We wanted something that began a new tradition of winning and demonstrated courage and selfless dedication to a team pursuit of victory."

...

Vinnie Viola announced Thursday that the Panthers will play a preseason game Oct. 8 against the New Jersey Devils at the U.S. Military Academy's Tate Rink in West Point, N.Y., the home of Army hockey. John Viola said proceeds will go to Wounded Warriors.

...

"It's important for this organization because I think it's safe to say, for our family, the United States military has given us not only a big part of our value system but also the opportunity for us to even be here," John Viola said. "The idea that you belong to something greater than yourself is often lost in a world where it's really easy to just be by yourself.

"And we wanted to make sure that those values that are so important to who we are as a people, as a family, were part of this franchise. And the best way to do that is visually because people follow your brand and they follow what you look like. It's essential to who we are as a family, as shepherds of all of our organizations, and it'll be essential to who we are as the Florida Panthers."

sitchensis posted:

I will never forgive South Park for what it did to gently caress over advocacy that warned about climate change. gently caress Matt and Trey.

get that OUT of my face posted:

"is an American billionaire businessman, philanthropist^{[citation needed]}, and"

Dead Beef posted:

Frog Act posted:

society is fine, its their parents that failed them

Frog Act posted:

still reading Transmetropolitan and it really seems to be degenerating (I'm on #41/60) into this weird medium for warren ellis to deliver like, increasingly insane monologues. #41 is this incredibly explicit series of interviews with fictional child prostitutes about the fictional sex things that happened to them in great detail, followed by a five page lecture from a social worker about how society is fine, its their parents that failed them. a whole page is talking about how it doesn't matter whether the state does something, or if they're poor, but that bad parenting is the cause of child prostitution

its weird and atonal even for transmetropolitan

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

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

get that OUT of my face posted:

Low Desert Punk posted:

It says a lot that it's touted by comic book fans and critics as one of the best Batman stories ever made

"Limitless posted:

An average twenty-eight-year-old man who gains the ability to use the full extent of his brain's capabilities is hired by the F.B.I. as a consultant.