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Post by novastar6 on Mar 11, 2022 17:52:29 GMT
Bear with me because I haven't read all 3 pages, just some of everybody else's opinions.
Lack of 'relatable' characters. Oh we're supposed to be SO diverse that every minority, every non-Christian religion, every gay/trans/whatever feels represented by somebody onscreen, that's so important, WHY is it so important?
Let's just think back for a minute. WHO could EVER relate to the Ghostbusters or Scarlett O'Hara or Frankenstein or Sam Spade or Ferris Bueller or Tony Montana or Frank Bullitt or Logan or Yossarian or Norman Bates or Vito Corleone or Captain Horatio Hornblower or the Blues Brothers, the Lambda Lambda Lambda nerds or Nick and Nora or Dick Tracy or Sherlock Holmes or Boston Blackie or Bulldog Drummond or Perry Mason or Ichabod Crane? And there ARE movies where you can relate to characters, a lot of kids could relate to Matilda, NOT because she was white, or from a 2 parent home, because she was smart and nobody understood her and she was punished for it. Characters who are relatable AREN'T relatable because of their skin color or their sexual preferences or their religion, but because of what they go through during the course of the movie.
Shag (1989), last year when this was shown on TCM, the host/guest host discussed it, not from the point of 4 privileged straight Christian white girls, but from the point of growing up a teenaged girl in restrictive 1960s America where there were rules out the butt proper little ladies were expected to follow. As a 10 year old I laughed at these 18 years olds STILL being told 'don't stay up late, don't wear dark lipstick, don't wear those clothes, stay on your diet' and even among themselves 'why can't girls ask boys to dance? It's not fair, I wasn't ALLOWED to see that movie, etc'., that felt more relatable to when I was a little kid watching it, the idea a legal adult could be held to all those rules was ridiculous, but the guest host mentioned her mom/aunt grew up in 1960s New England, where it was a very different existence than 1960s North Carolina, BUT it was still very similar to the way girls were raised and the massive rules of what they were/not allowed to do.
Most great movies, there's nobody to relate to, just characters we LIKE, and we LIKE to follow them along as the story progresses, we LIKE to see what they get into and how they get out of it.
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Post by timshelboy on Mar 17, 2022 12:45:13 GMT
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spiderwort
Junior Member
@spiderwort
Posts: 2,099
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Post by spiderwort on Mar 17, 2022 13:23:48 GMT
Scripts like this guy was offered.
You can say that again, tim!!
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Post by Doghouse6 on Mar 17, 2022 13:37:29 GMT
Bear with me because I haven't read all 3 pages, just some of everybody else's opinions. Lack of 'relatable' characters. Oh we're supposed to be SO diverse that every minority, every non-Christian religion, every gay/trans/whatever feels represented by somebody onscreen, that's so important, WHY is it so important? Let's just think back for a minute. WHO could EVER relate to the Ghostbusters or Scarlett O'Hara or Frankenstein or Sam Spade or Ferris Bueller or Tony Montana or Frank Bullitt or Logan or Yossarian or Norman Bates or Vito Corleone or Captain Horatio Hornblower or the Blues Brothers, the Lambda Lambda Lambda nerds or Nick and Nora or Dick Tracy or Sherlock Holmes or Boston Blackie or Bulldog Drummond or Perry Mason or Ichabod Crane? And there ARE movies where you can relate to characters, a lot of kids could relate to Matilda, NOT because she was white, or from a 2 parent home, because she was smart and nobody understood her and she was punished for it. Characters who are relatable AREN'T relatable because of their skin color or their sexual preferences or their religion, but because of what they go through during the course of the movie. Shag (1989), last year when this was shown on TCM, the host/guest host discussed it, not from the point of 4 privileged straight Christian white girls, but from the point of growing up a teenaged girl in restrictive 1960s America where there were rules out the butt proper little ladies were expected to follow. As a 10 year old I laughed at these 18 years olds STILL being told 'don't stay up late, don't wear dark lipstick, don't wear those clothes, stay on your diet' and even among themselves 'why can't girls ask boys to dance? It's not fair, I wasn't ALLOWED to see that movie, etc'., that felt more relatable to when I was a little kid watching it, the idea a legal adult could be held to all those rules was ridiculous, but the guest host mentioned her mom/aunt grew up in 1960s New England, where it was a very different existence than 1960s North Carolina, BUT it was still very similar to the way girls were raised and the massive rules of what they were/not allowed to do. Most great movies, there's nobody to relate to, just characters we LIKE, and we LIKE to follow them along as the story progresses, we LIKE to see what they get into and how they get out of it. First off, diversity in characters and players doesn't bother me a bit, and I have to wonder why it would bother anyone else. Second, what you describe is unquestionably an exaggeration. The majority of films don't represent "every minority, every non-Christian religion, every gay/trans/whatever." One reason is that, for most of the first century of commercial films' existence, the people to whom you refer were routinely relegated to characters that were subservient, villainous or figures of ridicule or contempt, if not completely nonexistent. But they watch movies too. So my question is, what's wrong with some of those characters we like being represented as not necessarily white, straight and/or Christian?
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Post by novastar6 on Mar 17, 2022 18:10:51 GMT
One reason is that, for most of the first century of commercial films' existence, the people to whom you refer were routinely relegated to characters that were subservient, villainous or figures of ridicule or contempt, if not completely nonexistent. But they watch movies too. So my question is, what's wrong with some of those characters we like being represented as not necessarily white, straight and/or Christian?
Nothing, if they can just be there AS a character with actual merit and NOT a token 'hey look! We're diverse!' character. There's an ongoing issue of for a group of friends/coworkers to NOT be exclusive and racist, there has to be a white character, a black character, an Asian character, a Hispanic character, somebody has to be gay or bi, another trans, etc., and then people point out in real life this is not a common occurrence, oh but it better happen in movies and TV so nobody feels left out. Are there a lot of Hispanics featured in Korean movies? What about Italians? How about Vietnamese? There's room for one Asian character in a diverse cast, is it going to be Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean? Can't have one of each, so somebody's still left out, or is the rest of the Asian community supposed to feel represented by a character from one specific country?
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Post by stryker on Mar 17, 2022 20:42:08 GMT
Sex and nudity.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Mar 17, 2022 21:12:19 GMT
One reason is that, for most of the first century of commercial films' existence, the people to whom you refer were routinely relegated to characters that were subservient, villainous or figures of ridicule or contempt, if not completely nonexistent. But they watch movies too. So my question is, what's wrong with some of those characters we like being represented as not necessarily white, straight and/or Christian?
Nothing, if they can just be there AS a character with actual merit and NOT a token 'hey look! We're diverse!' character. There's an ongoing issue of for a group of friends/coworkers to NOT be exclusive and racist, there has to be a white character, a black character, an Asian character, a Hispanic character, somebody has to be gay or bi, another trans, etc., and then people point out in real life this is not a common occurrence, oh but it better happen in movies and TV so nobody feels left out. Are there a lot of Hispanics featured in Korean movies? What about Italians? How about Vietnamese? There's room for one Asian character in a diverse cast, is it going to be Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean? Can't have one of each, so somebody's still left out, or is the rest of the Asian community supposed to feel represented by a character from one specific country?
But is that really happening in films? Among the hundreds released in the past twelve months, or even the thousands in the last ten years, how many have featured casts of characters representing every last racial, religious, national, sexual, ethnic and other conceivable group? And does the issue of "merit" mean that, if any one of them is represented, whichever characteristic is involved has to be justified by the story? Can't a character just be Asian, or gay, or Muslim or anything else just because that's what they happen to be? The concern seems overblown and honestly puzzles me.
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Post by mstreepsucks on Mar 17, 2022 22:07:50 GMT
Technically, not enough diversity. I'd like to see more of it.
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Post by novastar6 on Mar 17, 2022 22:34:36 GMT
Nothing, if they can just be there AS a character with actual merit and NOT a token 'hey look! We're diverse!' character. There's an ongoing issue of for a group of friends/coworkers to NOT be exclusive and racist, there has to be a white character, a black character, an Asian character, a Hispanic character, somebody has to be gay or bi, another trans, etc., and then people point out in real life this is not a common occurrence, oh but it better happen in movies and TV so nobody feels left out. Are there a lot of Hispanics featured in Korean movies? What about Italians? How about Vietnamese? There's room for one Asian character in a diverse cast, is it going to be Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean? Can't have one of each, so somebody's still left out, or is the rest of the Asian community supposed to feel represented by a character from one specific country?
But is that really happening in films? Among the hundreds released in the past twelve months, or even the thousands in the last ten years, how many have featured casts of characters representing every last racial, religious, national, sexual, ethnic and other conceivable group? And does the issue of "merit" mean that, if any one of them is represented, whichever characteristic is involved has to be justified by the story? Can't a character just be Asian, or gay, or Muslim or anything else just because that's what they happen to be? The concern seems overblown and honestly puzzles me.
It's very simple. People used to just enjoy movies because they were about characters telling a story. Now, movies have to stop, and be politically correct, and announce they're being politically correct, and then some filmmakers take it upon themselves to demonize the audience if they don't blindly love a politically correct piece of trash by calling them racist/sexist, etc, saying they only hated it because they hate the makeup of the cast. Take the all female Ghostbusters movie, oh they's so woke cuz it's all women and one big manly loudmouthed black one, who's SO important...but she's the only one who ISN'T a scientist. That in itself doesn't mean anything, Winston wasn't either, and truth be told, we all know Peter got Ray and Egon to help him graduate, thing is, Winston was just a man, just there for a job, a big point wasn't made about OH he's BLACK! He's SPECIAL! He never had to announce anywhere that he was black, we already KNEW it, it went without saying. What he brought to the group was insight from a non-scientist point of view, he could see the looming biblical disaster Ray couldn't.
Or let's take The Thing. People don't like it because we don't know anything about these, what was it, 13 men in all to start? 2 are black, the rest are white. Would everybody feel better if one was Muslim and two were gay and one was Latino and one was Chinese and one was trans? Would that make them feel more relatable then, still having no background about who they are, where they're from, their home life, their families, why they're out in the middle of Antarctica? Etc? How would an all female The Thing work, as long as there was one of each race and sexual preference?
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Post by politicidal on Mar 18, 2022 0:47:03 GMT
Sexuality. And I don’t mean just in terms of T&A. I meant just the mood. What’s the last mainstream movie that genuinely *felt* sexy?
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Post by novastar6 on Mar 18, 2022 2:05:48 GMT
Sexuality. And I don’t mean just in terms of T&A. I meant just the mood. What’s the last mainstream movie that genuinely *felt* sexy?
They feel horny, but not sexy.
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Post by timshelboy on Mar 18, 2022 2:48:24 GMT
Sexuality. And I don’t mean just in terms of T&A. I meant just the mood. What’s the last mainstream movie that genuinely *felt* sexy? IT was pretty mainstream in Europe - critical raves - but irrespective of how "Mainstream" Treat yourself! (but don't watch with the kids or Great Aunt Mabel) If you liked this one I'd say Go For It!
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Post by Doghouse6 on Mar 18, 2022 4:26:48 GMT
But is that really happening in films? Among the hundreds released in the past twelve months, or even the thousands in the last ten years, how many have featured casts of characters representing every last racial, religious, national, sexual, ethnic and other conceivable group? And does the issue of "merit" mean that, if any one of them is represented, whichever characteristic is involved has to be justified by the story? Can't a character just be Asian, or gay, or Muslim or anything else just because that's what they happen to be? The concern seems overblown and honestly puzzles me.
It's very simple. People used to just enjoy movies because they were about characters telling a story. Now, movies have to stop, and be politically correct, and announce they're being politically correct, and then some filmmakers take it upon themselves to demonize the audience if they don't blindly love a politically correct piece of trash by calling them racist/sexist, etc, saying they only hated it because they hate the makeup of the cast. Take the all female Ghostbusters movie, oh they's so woke cuz it's all women and one big manly loudmouthed black one, who's SO important...but she's the only one who ISN'T a scientist. That in itself doesn't mean anything, Winston wasn't either, and truth be told, we all know Peter got Ray and Egon to help him graduate, thing is, Winston was just a man, just there for a job, a big point wasn't made about OH he's BLACK! He's SPECIAL! He never had to announce anywhere that he was black, we already KNEW it, it went without saying. What he brought to the group was insight from a non-scientist point of view, he could see the looming biblical disaster Ray couldn't.
Or let's take The Thing. People don't like it because we don't know anything about these, what was it, 13 men in all to start? 2 are black, the rest are white. Would everybody feel better if one was Muslim and two were gay and one was Latino and one was Chinese and one was trans? Would that make them feel more relatable then, still having no background about who they are, where they're from, their home life, their families, why they're out in the middle of Antarctica? Etc? How would an all female The Thing work, as long as there was one of each race and sexual preference?
I never saw the newer Ghostbusters nor had any desire to but, if I understand what you're saying, you found it acceptable for the original to cast three white guys and one black one, but when a remake casts three white women and a black one, you find it objectionable because it's "politically correct" or "woke" (terms that have been mocked and tossed around so wildly as all-purpose indictments that they've pretty much lost any meaning). When I watch a film, I don't start analyzing or reading messaging into one character or another being something other than a white, heterosexual male, and honestly don't much pay attention to who is or isn't, unless it's to do with some aspect of the plot (as in Spielberg's West Side Story, which I saw just a couple days ago). I wonder if your sensitivities are allowing you to read more into what you're seeing than may actually be there.
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Post by ghostintheshell on Mar 18, 2022 5:19:07 GMT
Personally, it's the sense of wonder. It's really rare to be truly blown away by a film anymore. People can say what they like about Dune: Part One, Interstellar, Prometheus, Avatar and Star Wars sequel trilogy but if there is one thing that perfectly describes these films, it's epicness - be it world-building BGM or setting. Scifis like these did a great job in this regard and there aren't enough of them.
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Post by stryker on Mar 18, 2022 12:58:00 GMT
We’re living through a remarkably chaste period of cinema
John Cameron Mitchell: ‘There’s been a certain sex panic in the air’By Guy LodgeThe multi-hyphenate talks about the rerelease of his groundbreaking drama Shortbus and the changes in how we view sex in the past 15 years It’s a little more than 15 years since John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus exploded – interpret that verb as lewdly as you like – into cinemas, and in a sense, it feels a whole lot longer. Which is not to say that Mitchell’s brazenly queer, joyously sex-positive comedy, about a female sex therapist pursuing the orgasm she’s never experienced at New York’s raunchiest underground club, is outdated. Rewatched today, as it enjoys a rerelease in US cinemas, it veritably hums with erotic vigour and philosophical playfulness, a presciently liberated film with its eye on the future of sexual connection, in all its poly, nonbinary possibilities. It’s just that it’s hard to imagine film-making this proudly and playfully carnal coming out of the American indie scene now: we’re living through a remarkably chaste period of cinema, perhaps marked by post-MeToo caution and responsibility, as film-makers reconsider the boundary between exuberance and exploitation. With its copious unsimulated sex scenes, Shortbus certainly raised some eyebrows in 2006 – but it could well be a lightning rod today, throwing a wrench into debates over who is allowed to depict what on screen. “It’s interesting seeing young people see it now,” Mitchell says over the phone from Los Angeles. “Because they’re like, ‘Wow, is that what it was like?’ There’s been a certain sex panic in the air in the last few years amongst young people, and not just because of Covid. I think the digital culture has kind of kept people from interacting, and you get a lot of young people having less and less sex these days. Whereas it was getting to be more and more after the Aids drugs came in – it started coming back to 70s levels – but now it’s gone down. They call it the Great Sex Recession.” Where Mitchell – then bullish after the unlikely success of his jubilant genderqueer musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch – intended for Shortbus to reclaim the language of pornography for mainstream art film, he feels the chasm between those two branches of film-making has only grown wider in the last two decades. “The film is coming out again now at a time when sex has largely been confined to porn: even nudity has been removed from films and television shows these days. There’s no sex, and certainly no real sex. So in a weird way, porn won.” He pauses, then hastily clarifies his stance. “And porn is great if it’s good, of course. But it doesn’t really show a lot of the other dimensions of life that sex is connected to.” Shortbus, meanwhile, still feels radical its depiction of sex on a spectrum from banality to euphoria, sometimes beautiful and often hilarious. You certainly can’t turn to porn for a scene of one gorgeous, hard-bodied gay man singing The Star-Spangled Banner into the arsehole of another: Mitchell’s film took that peculiar gap and ran with it. His film was a riposte not just to porn, moreover, but the sterner aesthetic of sex in the arthouse. “There was a lot of experimentation at that time, at least in independent film, with sex in cinema,” he says, citing the work of such film-makers as Michael Winterbottom, Patrice Chereau, Carlos Reygadas and Catherine Breillat. “All those people were pushing it, but I found a lot of the sex was kind of grim, you know – certainly valid in some cases, but drained of humor. So I wanted to kind of attach it to my punky New York chosen-family aesthetic.” The raucous underground sex club in Shortbus was inspired by a friend’s salon that combined 16mm film screening, vegan food and group sex. “I was fascinated by the equation of art, food, drink and sex as the important things in life. And that’s all gone. Even the place where we shot it, which was a weird collective where parties like that happened and bands like Le Tigre got started, that’s gone. The people are still there, but the scene has been decimated by digital, by the apps, certainly by Covid. I didn’t expect the film to be a time capsule.” With hindsight, Mitchell sees films like Shortbus and Tarnation – the raw, ragged documentary self-portrait by the queer artist Jonathan Caouette, who cameos in Shortbus – as beneficiaries of a last gasp of punk sensibility in American film. “I had thought that Jonathan’s film would launch a million David Lynches on YouTube,” he says, “but narrative film-making has kind of faded out in favour of people even just making a web series. ‘Art for art’s sake’ is no longer a term that’s used by young people; selling out is an incomprehensible term to them. Because they’re just trying to get their clicks and create their brand, even if they’re 10 years old.” He laughs. “Youth used to be the golden moment when you were untouchable and you could try anything and you wanted to change things and you weren’t worried about commercial considerations. But social media has changed that.” All of which isn’t to say that Shortbus was a walk in the park to make, even in the 2000s. Mitchell explains that it took nearly three years to finance the film after it was cast: the independent golden age of the 1990s was already over. “Literally the year after we came out, the financial collapse happened,” he sighs. “I think of our party at Cannes, after we premiered in the Palais at midnight and Francis Ford Coppola there and we had a concert on the beach: it was expensive and it was fun and it was the end of an era. People stopped going to films, especially small films. And then our distributor [ThinkFilm] went bankrupt, which is why Shortbus has been out of print for so long.” Not inclined to wallow in the past, however, Mitchell has adapted to changing times. His next film after Shortbus was the tender, solemn Nicole Kidman grief drama Rabbit Hole, adapted from David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer-winning play: a director-for-hire gig, and one far outside his experimental queer wheelhouse, but one he remains proud of. “Would it be a little more adventurous if it was my own film?” he asks, before answering himself. “Well, yeah. But I was very happy with the result.” He and Kidman got on so well they collaborated again on 2017’s less well-received How to Talk to Girls at Parties – his last film to date, and not one he’s in a hurry to follow up. “In the present environment, I don’t know whether small films are really viable right now. Do I want to chase financing for five years for something that no one will see? I’m not sure,” he says. “As opposed to other forms which I’ve always been interested in: TV series, podcasts, albums, musical theater piece. I’m thinking about a novel now, and I’m doing more acting. I’m happy to diversify my portfolio.” Sure enough, Mitchell has been busy: in recent years, he has released his musical Anthem: Homunculus as an all-star podcast series, released a couple of concept albums for charity, popped up on TV in series such as Shrill and The Good Fight, and will shortly be seen as Joe Exotic in Joe vs Carole, Peacock’s dramatic adaptation of the documentary phenomenon Tiger King. Notwithstanding the challenges faced in film specifically, it is, he says, a good time to be an out queer artist in the mainstream – though even he has found latter-day representation politics thorny to navigate. He cites a recent controversy over a production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch in Australia, where protests were made against the casting of a cisgender queer actor in the title role, as an example of counter-productive conscientiousness.
“First of all, Hedwig is forced into an operation, without agency, so it’s not exactly the trans story that some people think it is,” he says. “But we’re in a supercharged moment where we’re trying to correct the world very quickly, and the world doesn’t always take to that, and the intentions are good but sometimes the execution is ham-handed. And then Trump and Boris laugh from the top, because we’re doing their work for them.”
“I get annoyed when people say you can’t write something that you don’t know, that you must stay in your lane, that it’s not your story to tell,” he continues. “Does that mean I can’t play Hedwig? I haven’t experienced the events of their life, but I certainly have experienced many of their feelings. That’s why I wrote it. So many people who have played that role have discovered a lot about themselves, including their own nonbinary identity. People are all on a journey.” Returning to Shortbus, he wonders if he’d get flak today for centering the story on an Asian woman trying to have an orgasm. “Is that my story to tell? Yeah, I would argue that metaphorically and emotionally, it is, and so would the actress. But other people would prefer that we only have autobiographies out there. It was a collaborative film: each actor brought elements of their life to it, and that was the joy of it. So I don’t like rules that are not contextual. I don’t like replacing one set of authorities with another.”
Shortbus, certainly, is not a film that bows to any authority, though it advocates strength in community more than rebellious individualism. Mitchell stands by that philosophy. “Identity politics is about fixing unfairness,” he says. “But do you do it in a dictatorial way or do you try to do it in a consensus way? That’s the big question.”www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jan/24/john-cameron-mitchell-shortbus-interview
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spiderwort
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Post by spiderwort on Mar 18, 2022 14:32:02 GMT
Sexuality. And I don’t mean just in terms of T&A. I meant just the mood. What’s the last mainstream movie that genuinely *felt* sexy?
Good point, politicidal. And I think one of the reasons films today don't have that mood is because films today reveal too much. I'm a big believer in less is more. I think it's critical to tell a story in a way that doesn't show everything; rather, shows enough so the viewer understands the narrative in the moment, then is allowed (and required) to become a co-creator in the process, creating his/her own images to finish the scene(s). That really draws the audience in, and, in my opinion, is far more interesting than whatever is shown graphically on the screen. I think films these days are far too graphic in terms of sex, violence, and profanity, compelling audiences to become passive observers, not active co-creators. Because of that viewers lose any sense of what they are actually feeling and what the narrative is really trying to tell them. A big loss, in my opinion. And one more thing: using graphic images all the time means that when you really need a graphic image to make an impact, it has no power. It's like shooting everything in close-ups. If you do that, when you need a close-up for impact, it has none. Bad directing (and film storytelling), I believe.
(As for your question: I don't see a lot of new films these days -- in part because they bore me, because of what I've just articulated -- so I can't name a film off the top of my head that felt genuinely sexy, though I'm sure that there are some out there -- hope anyway.)
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spiderwort
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Post by spiderwort on Mar 18, 2022 15:01:51 GMT
When I watch a film, I don't start analyzing or reading messaging into one character or another being something other than a white, heterosexual male, and honestly don't much pay attention to who is or isn't, unless it's to do with some aspect of the plot (as in Spielberg's West Side Story, which I saw just a couple days ago).
Couldn't agree more, Doghouse. If it's plot-driven, that absolutely needs to be addressed, without question. Otherwise, I accept that diversity in a film reflects the increasing diversity in our culture and don't think about it when watching. I actually appreciate the diversity. It makes me feel closer to those in the world that I may not know well, but wish I did. Of course, it goes without saying that those characters must be created with real lives and human needs and not just be "tokens."
Film has a powerful ability to create empathy in audiences for all peoples, which diversity can implement. Thank God for the power of the arts!
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Post by novastar6 on Mar 18, 2022 15:54:50 GMT
It's very simple. People used to just enjoy movies because they were about characters telling a story. Now, movies have to stop, and be politically correct, and announce they're being politically correct, and then some filmmakers take it upon themselves to demonize the audience if they don't blindly love a politically correct piece of trash by calling them racist/sexist, etc, saying they only hated it because they hate the makeup of the cast. Take the all female Ghostbusters movie, oh they's so woke cuz it's all women and one big manly loudmouthed black one, who's SO important...but she's the only one who ISN'T a scientist. That in itself doesn't mean anything, Winston wasn't either, and truth be told, we all know Peter got Ray and Egon to help him graduate, thing is, Winston was just a man, just there for a job, a big point wasn't made about OH he's BLACK! He's SPECIAL! He never had to announce anywhere that he was black, we already KNEW it, it went without saying. What he brought to the group was insight from a non-scientist point of view, he could see the looming biblical disaster Ray couldn't.
Or let's take The Thing. People don't like it because we don't know anything about these, what was it, 13 men in all to start? 2 are black, the rest are white. Would everybody feel better if one was Muslim and two were gay and one was Latino and one was Chinese and one was trans? Would that make them feel more relatable then, still having no background about who they are, where they're from, their home life, their families, why they're out in the middle of Antarctica? Etc? How would an all female The Thing work, as long as there was one of each race and sexual preference?
I never saw the newer Ghostbusters nor had any desire to but, if I understand what you're saying, you found it acceptable for the original to cast three white guys and one black one, but when a remake casts three white women and a black one, you find it objectionable because it's "politically correct" or "woke" (terms that have been mocked and tossed around so wildly as all-purpose indictments that they've pretty much lost any meaning). When I watch a film, I don't start analyzing or reading messaging into one character or another being something other than a white, heterosexual male, and honestly don't much pay attention to who is or isn't, unless it's to do with some aspect of the plot (as in Spielberg's West Side Story, which I saw just a couple days ago). I wonder if your sensitivities are allowing you to read more into what you're seeing than may actually be there.
Well you don't understand what I'm saying.
Here's how the original movie was advertised.
Now, here's the trailer for the all female version, which the creator had Youtube remove the dislike option for once they more than DOUBLED the number of likes the video received.
For a more in-depth comparison, there's this video.
So the men can talk normally, act like semi-regular people and just use subtle witty humor and very small movements to be funny and still be classically funny 40 years later, and the women have to be loud, obnoxious, disgusting, in-your-face, and downright stupid, to try and disprove the common belief that women aren't funny, which by the way, they failed at miserably. This is not a natural difference in the sexes, this is the original, which is not diverse, is genuinely written and executed to be funny, the new one, was not. And then the director blamed the movie's failure on the audience, saying they just hated it because they're anti-women. Wrong.
The original concept for Ghostbusters was it would be a nationwide first responder service like police and fire, but the budget for that idea was waaaaaaaaaaaay out of proportion to what could be afforded, so they went with the idea of 3 guys first opening the business. Now if they'd gone with the original option, sure, there'd be men and women Ghostbusters, black and white and all ethnic backgrounds, just like TV shows of the day like Hill Street Blues. And if they'd gone with that, the women actresses would actually HAVE to be good and carry their roles and help carry the plot.
Some women are funny, some women hold their own with the best, like Lucille Ball, she could hold her own with Harpo Marx, a master of comedy.
Some humor is universal, anybody can do the same thing, black, white, man, woman, etc., in the 1970s when The Jeffersons dressed up as old movie stars for Halloween, George did a dead-on impression of Charlie Chaplin, Helen and Tom made a perfect Laurel and Hardy, women and blacks doing the same humor that was originated 50 years earlier by white men. So it's a little hard to believe it would've been impossible for an all female Ghostbusters to be done without everybody being loud and obnoxious and borderline retarded and completely ignoring how real life physics work.
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Post by mstreepsucks on Mar 18, 2022 17:01:54 GMT
I think there's almost no sex or nudity now.
In films. But in the 80's way more. In the 90's way more, to a lesser extent maybe.
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lune7000
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@lune7000
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Post by lune7000 on Mar 18, 2022 21:06:34 GMT
This was an interesting thread to read and I started at the beginning. To summarize what folks wrote:
Narratives that are too clever and lack straightforward storytelling- lots of flashbacks, scenes that disrupt story, confuse
There are too many visual tricks: intricate camerawork, CGI, etc. that become an "end" instead of a "means to an end"
Too much violence and sex: torture porn, rape, nudity where it wasn't necessary- comedy becoming vulgar and crude
Main characters seem less sympathetic and are often horrible- crudeness and ego is emphasized over humility and sacrifice
In addition, Isapop's video was pretty interesting too about how today's superheroes are like childish gods
As for me, while I like much in today's movies, I do feel that the trends identified by many in this thread are generally true (and have been for the last 50 years). I like it all- every decade has it's joy for me and I cherish the decades for their signatures.
Here is what I have noticed about films today:
1. The extension of scenes. It is not uncommon to see a person do laundry or eat food for two minutes. In the past those would have been edited down to 5-15 seconds.
2. The camera always seems to be slowly moving- so that watching a movie feels now like watching a lava lamp.
3. Everyone seems to be emoting overtly all the time- years ago this would have been considered overacting
4. Fewer characters go through an "inner change" where they realize their flaws- there is less learning
5. Evil almost always wins in horror films (or is never defeated)
Like I said, great thread!
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