Joker

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33anda3rd
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Re: Joker

Post by 33anda3rd »

It's played at Venice and Toronto film fests in the last couple weeks and there has been some concern among critics that it's not a great time for a malevolent and violent individual to be the center of a film aimed for wide release.

Too often people are not very critical of the politics of a movie. Forest Gump's politics are awful. Coyote Ugly is a move about a woman who becomes a talented songwriter the moment she strips and dances on a bar. Virtually every Demi Moore movie of the 90s is exploitative on some level and she became a pop movie star based on them.
[SHOW]
Ghost : Husband murdered in front of her.

A Few Good Men : Mansplained to and patronized throughout. Nicholson, to Cruise, in front of Moore: “If you haven’t gotten a BJ from a superior officer…..”

Indecent Proposal : Sold for sex by pathetic husband who gambled away all their money. Of course she returns to him in the end.

Disclosure : First workplace harassment film. Progress, right? Nope, she’s the predator, the man the innocent.

The Scarlet Letter : I mean, she’s a lady in the 1600s surrounded by Puritans, and gets respite by going to Carolina, so…

Striptease : Woman with a job at the actual FBI has to resort to stripping to get her kid back because apparently you can't be like hey FBI boss can you help out here. Creeped on by Burt Reynolds as a Congressman.

GI Jane : you’re gonna come out on top, but we’re gonna physically abuse you almost like a snuff film for titillation's sake for 90 minutes.

Deconstructing Harry : figment of Woody Allen’s sick imagination.

In at least four of these where superficially they are saying she's in power, she's really not.
People don't think about what a movie is saying, they think about their own personal stuff and often they either love how the movie either reinforces their own personal politics or they hate the movie because it offends them superficially. If some gun nut in Mississippi is thinking about shooting up a black church, he will find something in Joker that convinces him it's a good idea.

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go birds
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Re: Joker

Post by go birds »

or maybe people spend money on a movie to be entertained not to look for some political angle they can exploit. weird concept in this day and age i know.

i'll definitely never watch Coyote Ugly in the same way since you pointed that out though. mainly because i'll never watch it again. Not because i'm offended by the underlying theme, but because it is easily one of the most insignificant movies ever made.

btw, she was always a talented songwriter. she just wasnt recognized as a talented singer until she took her clothes off...let's get not muddy up the waters.

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33anda3rd
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Re: Joker

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Think of the heights Coyote Ugly could have hit though if it just shifted its politics by 90 degrees to be a commentary on the Spears Era of Exploited Teen Girls.

Sure, some people will watch and be entertained and that’s it. But a lot won’t.

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Re: Joker

Post by redbirdjazzz »

go birds wrote:or maybe people spend money on a movie to be entertained not to look for some political angle they can exploit. weird concept in this day and age i know.

i'll definitely never watch Coyote Ugly in the same way since you pointed that out though. mainly because i'll never watch it again. Not because i'm offended by the underlying theme, but because it is easily one of the most insignificant movies ever made.

btw, she was always a talented songwriter. she just wasnt recognized as a talented singer until she took her clothes off...let's get not muddy up the waters.
I think something that often gets lost in discussions like this is that an individual's "politics" is really nothing more or less than how that person views and interacts with the world. What party you vote for and what policies you support are all functions of core aspects of your identity. Most people have lines they won't cross, even when it comes to entertainment, and it isn't a bad thing to discuss. If the particular thing doesn't bother you, it won't hurt you at all to know it's there.

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33anda3rd
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Re: Joker

Post by 33anda3rd »

Another way of looking at it is that literally everything is politics. We could live our lives trying to do everything morally, ethically correct but we would then end up having the following types of trains of thought:
If I drive to the market, it's bad for the environment. I'll bike.
No wait. I got rid of my Trek because it was made in China with slave labor. I'll walk.
No wait. If I walk I have to wear my comfortable shoes. I got rid of those because they're leather and cows died, plus slave labor.
(I know that example is extreme, but in a world where we go for 100% it gets extreme.)

My wife turned vegetarian last November for ethical reasons. She can't see a chicken thigh and not think of the dog, freaks her out. Still wears leather shoes though. She can live with that. Those things, we just gotta live with the fact that not all actions will have a perfect score on environmental/sociological impact or we'd go nuts like the Michael McKean character on The Good Place.

Literally every decision is politics, and decisions made by filmmakers are especially important because not everyone who will see your movie is smart. Dude sees Taxi Driver and tries to off Reagan so he can get with Jodie Foster. Yikes. The alt-right loves The Matrix and the philosophy of being "red pilled" and seeing the world clearly. They love that Alita: Battle Angel movie because of themes they find in it that they think align with their own wants. Even in fantasy, there are decisions made. Filmmakers, like the person above who wants to go to the market, has to live with the fact that the idea of being "red pilled" or some other small thing might be misinterpreted or appropriated by wackos. I'm very interested to see how much of Joker is avoidable, and if the whole thing in this day and age would have been best shelved until we found a new era of social behavior.

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Re: Joker

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I couldn't care less about the politics of a movie so long as it's entertaining. Nor do I really care if Joker was specifically written to support and rile up the alt-right (which I'd say there's a 0% chance it is), again, so long as it's entertaining. If we live in a nation so [expletive] by our social climate that we have to censor movies/restrict free speech/freedom of the press to prevent the crazis from getting more crazed, then we might as well just call it a day.

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Re: Joker

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AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:I couldn't care less about the politics of a movie so long as it's entertaining. Nor do I really care if Joker was specifically written to support and rile up the alt-right (which I'd say there's a 0% chance it is), again, so long as it's entertaining. If we live in a nation so [expletive] by our social climate that we have to censor movies/restrict free speech/freedom of the press to prevent the crazis from getting more crazed, then we might as well just call it a day.
Of course this just happened because a movie appeared to be about Trump voters getting hunted.

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Re: Joker

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ghostrunner wrote:
AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:I couldn't care less about the politics of a movie so long as it's entertaining. Nor do I really care if Joker was specifically written to support and rile up the alt-right (which I'd say there's a 0% chance it is), again, so long as it's entertaining. If we live in a nation so [expletive] by our social climate that we have to censor movies/restrict free speech/freedom of the press to prevent the crazis from getting more crazed, then we might as well just call it a day.
Of course this just happened because a movie appeared to be about Trump voters getting hunted.
?

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Re: Joker

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AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:
ghostrunner wrote:
AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:I couldn't care less about the politics of a movie so long as it's entertaining. Nor do I really care if Joker was specifically written to support and rile up the alt-right (which I'd say there's a 0% chance it is), again, so long as it's entertaining. If we live in a nation so [expletive] by our social climate that we have to censor movies/restrict free speech/freedom of the press to prevent the crazis from getting more crazed, then we might as well just call it a day.
Of course this just happened because a movie appeared to be about Trump voters getting hunted.
?
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/t ... cna1041981

It’s really dumb. Not trump voters literally but it was perceived that those were the type of people being hunted in the movie, so some conservatives got bent out of shape and somehow missed that in the trailer those people appear to be the good guys. The movie is probably more complicated than that but we won’t know until it’s released, if that happens.

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Re: Joker

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

ffs

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