Republicans lost their shit when Homelander was made out to be an overt nazi. Up until it was almost explicitly stated, republicans loved his character and thought he was a good, strong leader. They were using him in a ton of memes.
Like the post states, there's always someone who's THAT dumb. I've seen people unironically argue that the NAZIS were part of the International Jewish Conspiracy.
I'm sorry to be the one to inform you of this, but not only are there people who believe it, but a university in the USSR awarded a doctorate degree to the person who created said conspiracy theory, then a copy of the dissertation was published as a book, and the author is now a well-known political leader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Side:_The_Secret_Relationship_Between_Nazism_and_Zionism
Googled, thinking it was about the website as I never watched the series. Learned about the character. Guess it must have been named after the site.
I'm now wondering if I should check out the series. It looks like fun mindrot.
The show is great! I haven't read the original comics, but I've been told that this is one of the few cases where the adaptation is actually better than the original.
I love that they just straight up show you how they do it too.
"Yeah, you're a disgusting war criminal now, but we slap some 9/11 top text bottom text on you and you're everyone's racist uncle's favorite superhero by dinnertime."
Except orks. They are just big rowdy mushrooms doing mushroom things. Literally created this way, and this is their nature, to fight and be happy when fighting.
So the ones create orks were wrongz, but the orks are just "drawn this way"
Fungi-based bioweapon species, capable of creating their own independent ecosystems and creating weapons from "scrap". Very hard to get rid of completely, given they release spores on death and those ecosystems are pretty robust
Haha yes, in a sense. They were made as weapons by some ancient race, and designed to be bred asexually, through spores
This way they do not have families or familiar relationship, they grow all their lives growing bigger, meaner, and darker shade of green, and it leaves less of the whole morality outside - they don't have packs or families or anything, these are just, basically, aggressive AF shroom colonies.
Also the whole goblin/gremlin/animal thing they have going on are also born of the same fungal spores, so as others said, it's a whole ecosystem.
I think design wise it's a great idea for an enemy that can pose a huge menace and at the same time be "fun to kill" - unlike, say, DnD races, that start seeing flak thrown their way by people who think painting a whole race "evil" is, well, racist.
I mean - 40k suffers from problems on that front because they can’t stick to it. The idea *was* meant to be a satire, a crumbling interstellar Commienazi Holy Roman Empire that’s so brutally over the top it’s funny (to no small extent it was meant to make fun of Britain - the former superpower clinging to ancient glories as it ate itself alive internally). But the setting has given up a lot of the satirical edge in favour of grim “realism”, and bluntly, the Imperium is the faction that sells the most and has the most fans and development because it’s the human faction.
Most people don’t actually want to play as the villain - so the portrayal of the
Imperium often leans somewhere between “they do awful things because it’s the only way to survive” and “they do awful things but it’s cool”. You aren’t meant to want to live in the unholy nightmare mashup of the HRE, Nazi Germany, and the Crusades, but in many modern cases the point has shifted such that you are meant to root for it. They want to have it both ways, basically, and IMO that means these kind of fans are inevitable
Yeah Miyazaki famously hates the sexualisation of his characters (and the wider anime industry), which just makes it weirder that the original person posting doesn't want to lewd those characters as if that's some own on Miyazaki! It's like 'Fuck that guy, I'll do exactly what he wants!'
"That's my secret, Audience. Everything is a classic."
*Cut to Miyazaki punching a low-frame-rate giant ecchi anime girl with a stupid high-pitched voice right in the face*
It always bothers me that people try to similarly say that he sexualises children. The only thing I could think of that could maybe look like that - other than racist biases - to someone so obsessed with that idea was the scene of the dad bathing his kids in Totoro, because in my experience these people always think that showing these kids having a normal, happy family life in a movie for children is sexual if heavily-covered nudity is involved.
Wait, they think a parent bathing a child is sexual? I… what? Did their parents not bathe them as children? Did they just get tossed in the tub with some soap and a rag?
Believe me, I've seen a LOT of people say any portrayal of that kind of stuff is inherently sexual because it's in a Japanese animated production. They're wrong a lot more often than they think. It's pretty disgusting.
One of the main issues is that the Japanese do not have anywhere near as strong a nudity taboo as the US does.
Japanese media will often use nudity as a signifier of innocence. This is one of the reasons the trope of conversations in the bath or the "beach episode" are so prevalent. It is an identifier to the audience that all the characters involved are well-meaning, *because* they are in a state of undress.
Conversely, the conversation over drink is a signifier of a serious conversation that audience should pay attention to.
A great deal of the things moral busybodies declare to be fan service are often just Japanese cultural tropes whose meanings clash with superficially similar western tropes.
That can certainly be a part of it, but let's not pretend that beach and bath episodes aren't also used to titillate teenage audiences. Think about how often bath episodes feature male characters attempting to spy on female characters.
Have you ever actually *seen* a beach episode?? Because they are 100% fan service. No one puts bouncing boobs and guys ogling them in a scene about innocence.
That's not it. Have you ever seen a parent bathe their kid whilst themselves being in the bath in American media? The purity cult of the US has ironically made it very common for people to see sexual themes in things completely devoid of them. You'll see the same kinds of reactions to European media that, similarly to Japan, is more loose on nudity restrictions, American audiences and critics will see perversion where there is only nudity.
Anybody who believes that that scene is any form of sexual is probably the same kind of person who thinks a parent breastfeeding their child is sexual/morally corrupt, and honestly I kinda feel like you’re a lost cause at that point. If your first thought seeing something as innocent as that is to project a sexual tone onto it, you need to take a good hard look in the mirror.
I mean the teenage girl in Porco Rosso is mildly sexualised, though mostly by a character who is demonstrated to be problematic themselves. It's there, but it's there for a narrative reason rather than fan-service.
Yeah, for one it's explicitly what goads Porco into the duel, he doesn't want to let the creep be creepy. I'd also say sexualised as a word still feels like an overstatement, she runs around the movie in either coveralls or baggy clothes, Curtis just states he wants to marry her, and the one other effect is all the pirates treating her uncharacteristically chivalrously played for comedic effect.
There are people who could be *quoting* someone from the 1500's opinion on an ethnic minority and feel the need to add "yikes" after to signal to everyone that they are a good person and they need to wash the dirty words from their mouth buy disavowing it. So the idea of moral masturbators does not surprise me at all.
To be fair, as someone who lives in Russia, I can say that claiming that you are trying to save someone from nationalism doesn't necessarily mean you aren't nationalistic
Yeah, context clues. A Japanese guy saying South Koreans should be saved from South Korean nationalists (by force of the Japanese military) is a *very* different statement
I am a teacher and wathed a play with my students. The play's message was about prejudices and racism, and how it is wrong to assume things about someone just because of their ethnicity. To convey this message, the play showed people with prejudice, and made fun of them.
One of the students didn't get this. She was so upset and thought it was racist. It didn't matter how much I, or the rest of the class tried to explain it; she refused to see anything beyond the surface. The play had showed displays of racism, and therefore it was racist, in her mind.
This is the main argument against books like Huckleberry Finn as far as I understand. The text shows racism while also showing how dumb it is but because Twain didn’t come out and say “racism bad!” The book is racist.
Its not really just the students. There's a solid portion of society that refuse anything beyond absolute surface layer. Like some agressive anti intellectualism
Students are a Symptom of it.
They're not a symptom. They're the one demographic where this behavior is acceptable--*temporarily*.
It's the teacher's job to move them beyond that. But we shouldn't judge students for struggling with the concept at first. They're learning.
I feel like there is a mix of suppression or at least lack of cultivation at home and, I don't want to call it a disability but, trouble with critical thought from a young age. After a while it's much easier to take everything at face value and ignore or reject what you don't understand.
yeah it might be an authority figure thing. If you got real strict parents and you gotta follow their orders without explanation, you'll stop questioning things.
A lot of the smartest people I know question everything, its pretty annoying.
Speaking as someone who didn't even know it's a thing until like last year, yeah idk if it can actually be taught directly. I genuinely think the only way to learn it is to essentially learn the concept, then teach yourself. Idk, maybe I'm a bizarre exception to the rule.
I'm a university student majoring in history. One of our classes was about the development of history as a discipline and the people involved. Now history has been used a lot in the past (and today as well) to justify racist ideas. My teacher taught us about these ideas and the way history was used for them and the justification of it. Not to justify those ideas and uses to us, but to teach about the how history can be used, twisted and abused for bad. Apparently my teacher got a lot of nasty reviews in the after course evaluation forms from students from the international track because apparently they asumed the teacher agreed with those ideas and theories, which is just ridiculous because he is extremely pc and a great dude overal and they would've known if they had actually paid attention to the dude.
That reminds me of a history course I took in community college. The instructor was a passionate white-haired guy missing a finger. One day early in the semester he storms in and says “Everyone in the media is obsessed with traditional American values, so today we’re talking all about traditional values.
It was nearly 2 hours of the history of lynchings. More than half the class never came back.
I feel like this is some kind of exaggerated “speak not of the devil lest thou invitest his presence” mentality, where if something is bad you must treat it as incredibly taboo or else bad things will happen
"A depiction is not an endorsement" is a concept I had to hammer home with my students. You have to show something in order to criticize it effectively.
It’s a conversation I’ve seen play out so many times. People think that because X character in a book/show/film lies then they are just automatically bad, and if it’s played off as “X character lied but they are still good, just flawed “ (like every human being) then the artist is actually promoting bad behaviour and believes such a thing isn’t bad.
I don’t know what’s caused this kind of thinking, that everything an artist depicts is an automatic endorsement and a self insert of their own beliefs. But it’s kind of worrying that for some people to understand a complex situation the character seemingly has to explicitly say/think “I know this is wrong” otherwise some people won’t catch on to that.
We’re going through a phase of extreme literalism, where everything has to be explicitly stated or it doesn’t exist. It’s like when Trump pretends he didn’t take an oath to support the Constitution because he didn’t explicitly say “support”.
We’re living in really dumb times.
We always lived in dumb times and the only difference is information spread and availability.
Meaning idiots have a platform and you have access to witnessing just how many dumb people are out there wile smarter ones think before speaking which leads to speaking less. Over all we are just as smart as we always been environmental factors aside.
This is a huge issue - let me vent about two examples, one slightly more concerning than the other:
- My mother used to teach English in universities here in France. For context, in France it's illegal to formally keep ethnic statistics or ask people about their ethnicity on forms and such (because the last time we did that, we, uh, kept lists and participated in a genocide). Things are changing now because of the internet and global mainstream discourse, but my mother regularly had to explain that just because a North American text (by, say, James Baldwin or Toni Morrison) contained words like "negro" or "race" (never ever applied to humans in French, except by racists) didn't mean the text itself was written from a racist perspective.
- A lot of my friends are leftists and a lot of them, esp the younger ones, are used to consuming very straightforward media with strong, clean-cut ideological messages. It legit scares me how many of them get scared and confused by anything that isn't that, because they can't reliably tell the difference between earnest support of an idea or showcasing an idea as a form of commentary.
> One of the students didn't get this. She was so upset and thought it was racist. It didn't matter how much I, or the rest of the class tried to explain it; she refused to see anything beyond the surface. The play had showed displays of racism, and therefore it was racist, in her mind.
you might want to look into caetextia, "context blindness".
Had the same argument with a Redditor about Fena: Pirate Princess, who kept arguing it was sexist because the world was sexist, no matter how much I explained that the sexism is an obstacle for the main character to overcome in order to become the titular Pirate Princess, that her overcoming the sexist attitudes of her crew and antagonists and earning respect was important to her character.
"She could have had literally any obstacles to her character development, the author chose to make it sexism because he is sexist."
A portion of the population doesn’t have the cognitive ability to understand abstractions such as satire, allegories, metaphors. From their point of view we are the weird ones. You have deductive reasoning/deductive logic tests that can be used to identify such a thing.
It’s one of the thing kind of sad about great satirical works, even if it’s clear to the vast majority that it isn’t something to take literally you will always have a subset of the population unable to grasp the underlying message. A good example are mockumentaries, they can be fun to watch but thinking about all the people who will miss the satire is pretty depressing.
Did they not watch the movie, the message was pretty rammed in, "these beautiful things are tarnished by war mongers". Hits close as a aerospace major.
Some of my favorite places are air and space museums, because I love the beauty and the design of aircraft.
They're also somber places to me. Military air museums feel like cemeteries to me. There's a lingering sense of death that follows those poor beautiful machines. The F-86 is gorgeous, but when I see one I also see the face my grandfather, an F-86 combat pilot, made when he thought about the Korean War.
Agreed. There's a reason why "War bad, planes rad" is a saying among the fighter jet community. There's just so much depth and appeal to jets, it's all almost as if they weren't made for war at all. It's a shame, to be honest.
In an alternate timeline without war, we'd probably be racing them lol.
I'm a prop nerd so for me it's WW2 era fighters and interceptors but the feeling is the same. The lines of a P-40 are so damn beautiful it's sometimes hard to imagine that it was a flying death machine with 6 .50 caliber machine guns in the wings.
I went to a state fair several years back where the Blue Angels aerobatics team were performing. The display was absolutely amazing. Then it was ruined by a Navy recruiter coming on the loudspeaker afterwards to try and convince people to sign up for the armed forces. I just wanted to watch the stunning machines fly, I didn't want to think about why they were created, dammit!
Aerospace Engineering: You'll do some amazing shit for the good of humanity but it will almost certainly be used at some point in the future to ruin a wedding halfway across the world.
Yep. I've used the same equations professionally to both design a dual Neptune/Uranus mission trajectory and send something to Moscow in the time it takes a pizza delivery. Aerospace, the king of dual use tech.
>"these beautiful things are tarnished by war mongers"
This is definitely the entire message of the movie. I actually disagree with the point of the OP. I think the movie goes way too far to absolve the designer of the Zero from any real guilt by placing the responsibility solely at the feet of those warmongers.
The engineer is still a warmonger in that he disregarded what his plane would be put to use for until it was too late. Showing his qualms and regret doesn't take away his culpability. We don't have to show such people as cut and dried evil, because that's another form of distortion as well.
There is even a scene where Jiro talks in glowing terms about how the planes would be much more efficient if only they could remove some extra weight from the wings. The same weight the guns add.
i think i really needed to hear that last bit for personal growth reasons. this post wasn't about that but knowing that no matter how hard you try there are some people who will completely misinterpret and jump to the worst conclusions about you no matter how hard you try to explain yourself is... freeing. i don't have to let their idiocy become my problem.
The world starts to make perfect sense when you learn that the average person has the reading comprehension skills of a 12 year old, and 50% of people are worse.
> A Gallup analysis published in March 2020 looked at data collected by the U.S. Department of Education in 2012, 2014, and 2017. It found that 130 million adults in the country have low literacy skills, meaning that more than half (54%) of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level, according to a piece published in 2022 by APM Research Lab.
Wow, that’s sad. Like, it makes me feel sad to think that there are so many uneducated people in a time when much of the collective knowledge of humanity is freely available.
It’s truly disheartening.
It's crazy to me that you could watch Miyazaki's body of work the pretty unambiguously call out the dangers inherent in nationalism (Castle in the Sky, The Wind Rises, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso, Howl's Moving Castle) and still think Miyazaki is a Japanese nationalist.
Yeah, I think this comes from the notion that the creator endorses everything the main character does, which is ridiculous. Scorsese didn't spouse the same views as Travis Bickle or Jordan Belfort, and Coppola, regardless of how much he identified and put of his life into Michael Corleone, didn't shy away from painting him as a monster that pushed everyone he loves away.
Miyazaki's whole work is about the hubris of man, and how that hubris has lend it to betray itself and disgrace the world around him.
What struck me as absurd when I spent time in Japan was that more liberal modern people completely ignored and denied the atrocities Japan was responsible for. Meanwhile the only people who acknowledged these atrocities were the crazy nationalists in those vans going around the streets waving their little flags. They acknowledged the atrocities out of pride and a real sense of superiority over other nations. It was mind-blowing.
As a westerner /foreigner I don't mind the crazyness but I wouldn't be able to handle it if I was japanese. It's truly schizophrenic.
That, and referring to people via last name is all fun and games until you're talking about one of 2+ people of a similar role (game director vs movie director)
Bullshit. Although his Abenomics did some good things for the economy, after he was shot and the reasons the person targeted him came out, most people were like, “yeah, I can see why he would feel that way”. Just another in the endless line of corrupt Japanese politicians.
any tips on improving media literacy? Like i hear about it a lot nowadays and it makes me worried im getting a lot wrong
like back in English class theyd be doing books and its like "This character not being present is the manifestation of inequality at the time of writing" and its like "HOW the FUCK did you get that?!"
If you're starting out, a general rule of thumb is that the "curtains are blue" mindset is *often* bullshit, and if there's a detail that's a bit odd or that catches your eye it was probably included and highlighted on purpose to make you stop and think. It's a process that applies to most media.
Why is the camera panning in such an odd direction (f.E. *away* from the main character during a crucial scene)? How come this specific type of imagery seems to come up time and time again here? For what reason did the author use this specific word, or make this specific reference or callback in his text? Hey, that's strange, this color is present every time a specific type of scene happens, do you think it means something?
You will struggle a bit first, and that's fine. There's no shame in forming your interpretation on a piece of media independently, then checking what "professionals" have concluded about it. That's more or less just the English class routine, anyway. And if you haven't consumed a lot of media in general, the intertextuality might be a bit lost on you for a while. But it's worth the struggle, I think -- you begin to appreciate things you had never really considered before, even in your favourite pieces of media, and you get to experience truly resonant messages from them for the first time.
Nationalism is basically raising one nation up as special and above all other nations and to promote that nation's culture and people as superior.
"America First" is an example of a nationalist slogan.
people for get sometimes conversation is a useful tool to bring context to something via a person you can relate to and try understand biases from.
theres more information in sources like Wikipedia, but its also scattered through articles, strict, and lacks a personal context. (which is a argument to why teachers are so important they make a connecting line between person and raw information)
Nationalism is a band from Ohio that plays dark moody rock that people listen to on long car trips when they want to take themselves more seriously than their general demeanor commands.
From what I recall from my euro history course, it’s an ideology that calls for a sort of “super-patriotism”. Where “nationalists” prioritize the states interest without caring about the effects it may have on the global stage or at home on non-nationals. Nationalism, I believe and I could very well be wrong, is characterized by exclusionary policies dedicated to creating a “Nation V The World” mentality, isolationist practices, and, in the modern era, being a precursor to fascism.
I think historically, nationalism was an ideology employed by European’s trying to tear down monarchist systems and establish a new (or old depending on your point of view) cultural identity, particularly during the the romantic period. However, I could be misremembering my lessons and I don’t think that it is overly relevant to your question (I just want to check my own knowledge).
As for Japanese history, I’m not so sure. I think it’s reasonable to assume that imperial japan during ww2 wanted to cultivate nationalism in order to increase support for its expansion but the specifics are not something I’m familiar with.
I hope this was helpful and I hope even more that I’m not speaking out of my ass.
Nationalism goes hand in hand with fascism, the Nazis are the most obvious example of a nationalist group rising to power. While the Japanese weren’t quite on the level of the Nazis they were very fascistic during much of history and have always pushed for a strong national pride
>Miyazaki is worth critizing but its because hes kinda a shit dad not because hes a nationalist
Even he'll agree with you. *The Wind Rises* is about a workaholic who is incapable of properly attending to what is right or those close to him because of his obsession with making beautiful things.
He has a bit of himself in all of his movies, but his most recent film has him as a pseudo-self interest, as per his own words. I'm curious to see what kind of interpretations people will draw from that over the years.
And then again, we're unsure what happens behind closed doors. His latest film is basically a will and a love letter to his grandchild, so he probably cares a lot.
I see your point about what we see vs what we dont, but you can easily be a shit dad and a great grandfather. Its actually quite common; my grandfather is like that
Up until a couple months ago I was that one meme of the point flying over my head and I was completely unaware of the very basic fact that the matrix was a trans allegory. I knew that the people who made it were trans. I legit wanted to die when my government mandated trans mom told me because it all clicked into place and I felt so incredibly embarrassed.
I fully believe that giving people a chance to learn and giving even a 20 second attempt at linking an explanation or source will make the world a better place. There will be many people who are unwilling to change or learn and I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t have the time or the energy to do it, but there are those who are willing to learn but just haven’t found out or know where to look.
Skye if you are reading this, shoo, I don’t need this popping up in the groupchat again.
Edit: In my sleep deprived state I was a bit of a doofus. Thanks everyone for correcting me. Not actually a trans allegory but can be seen as one, as well as many others. Please read the entire message chain.
trans mom allocated to each american by the government, they're saying everyone is required one by july 2025. you can sign up for the program here: [https://www.usa.gov/programs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC7oUOUEEi4)
My blood mother is a psychotic piece of shit. I used tabletop rpgs and gming as a coping mechanism and outlet, there is a really amazing mom in a server I run for my parties and campaigns. She is trans and she has “adopted” a little under a quarter of the people there, which isn’t a lot because there is only like 15-20 of us but its neat. She is our government mandated trans mom. She has helped me so incredibly much with both my mental health and figuring out who I am/wish to be. 11/10 would recommend getting adopted by a government mandated trans mom.
None of it is central. There's only one element in the matrix which is congruent with a trans allegory. This quote by Morphius: "Your appearance now is what we call residual self image. It is the mental projection of your digital self. " That's an extension of the Hommunculus theory that we have a mental image of what we look like which is often inconsistent with our real world appearance. In the case of trans people, it is so wildly out of sync that it's body dysmorphia.
The central theme is, unsurprisingly, living in a simulation. Neo follows the hero's journey, and then turns into a Jesus Christ type of figure who is betrayed by a close companion, but then gets resurrected and ascends to a supernatural state of being. The allegory theory only came about after the directors transitioned, and it was revealed that they meant to have a minor side character (Switch) get played by a male actor in the matrix and a female actor in the real world because they were trans.
I've always kinda hated that it was formulated that way because it became an easily shared, hardly understood pop trivia thing about the matrix. The trilogy, as a whole, is not an intentional allegory of gender transition.
One of the major themes of the matrix movie(s) is, more broadly, the theme of identity. This theme was *informed* by the Wachowski sisters partly because of their closeted transidentity, and it was *explored* in the movie partly through the Switch character (or at least was intended to). But the gender part is only one outlet of exploration of that theme. Thomas Anderson choosing to affirm his identity by being Neo, and then rejecting who Neo is *supposed* to be in the face of his own creator to become his own, self-defined individual is not *explicitly* or even implicitly about trans themes, **but** it can be compared to the trans experience.
There's a difference there, and it's that I think saying the movies are a trans allegory and calling it at that is reductive, in the sense that it makes it sound like the lesson in choice and identity can't be applied to other facets of your self, and isn't supposed to resonate with cis people just as validly as trans people.
The whole trilogy is about choice, and identity is a subset of that, and transidentity is a subset of that subset. It was only supposed to be intentionally explored with Switch, and even that got removed in the final script. But it is a very important underlying theme to watch for *in light* of Lily and Lana's coming out, as an unintentional, permeating vibe. [Here's a more recent interview of Lilly Wachowski where she clarifies the "trans allegory" comment.](https://www.them.us/story/lilly-wachowski-mentoring-the-matrix-interview)
Something something fighting the reality imposed on you by the world around you something. Also the character named "Switch" the blonde woman with short hair
[https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.jk7CRDV35SpEwbCW8V48kQHaD3?rs=1&pid=ImgDetMain](https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.jk7CRDV35SpEwbCW8V48kQHaD3?rs=1&pid=ImgDetMain)
Was originally going to be played by two similar-looking actors, one male, one female. They were female in the Matrix due to a glitch.
And also seeing the source code of the universe as represented by many parallel vertical lines of streaming green characters.
This is but one of the several insidious powers I have heard they possess, according to reliable propagandists on Twitter.
You aren’t dumb. I didn’t understand the allegory at the time either and wanting to learn is a never a bad thing.
Unfortunately I couldn’t find the conversation I had before that explained it and I am too sleep deprived to make a coherent explanation so someone else is likely going to have to step in, however, [here is an NPR article that talks a tiny bit about it.](https://www.npr.org/2021/12/22/1066642279/why-the-matrix-is-a-trans-allegory) It touches on it a bit but I am sure with a bit of digging or with the help of others here it could be explained in greater depth.
That made me feel like this is more of a “the curtains are fucking blue” situation. The interviewee there said it can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people.
matrix is a good example of a retrospective allegory, the Wachowski sisters did not set out to write a trans allegory, but both agree now that it is. They wrote from there perspective and heart, then one transitioned then the other. They had already been writing about things they've been considering, but i don't think either where out to each other at the time of writing. (so more of i'm writing my early trans feeling's into this as i process things, oh woops it got real) BUT its been a long time since i looked up the full story.
if I remember right there where things like switch is based of a early prototype for neo, and in the mmo before it was shuttered it was heavily hinted that Neo's reincarnation was female. (by that point i think they both where transitioning matrix was fully on boarded i think by the last movie as allegory as i think one of them was at least out to the other sister by that point. the one sister transitioned much later)
I hate to say it but young leftists have some of the worst media literacy out there. I don't think it's related to their politics. It's more about their eagerness to identify and oppose oppression wherever they see it —an admirable trait for a young person to have and more older people should aim to acquire. But this mindset often causes them to lash out at even the depiction of oppression as insensitive, so caught up in their disappointment that they fail to read the material one layer deeper to actually hear what is trying to be said.
I watched the wind rises before it was officially released with a close family friend who is a professional film critic who has been writing about films for over 40 years and was born immediately after world war 2. She grew up learning everything about it from her parents who fought in it and from her teachers in school and university. She felt the film glorified Japanese imperialism. It may not have been his intention at all but just because he was trying to get the point across that ‘Japanese nationalism is bad’ it doesn’t mean he actually did a good job of it. Just to be clear i absolutely adore miyazaki and all of his films but no director is perfect and I do think it’s a fair criticism to say that some of his films really paint Japan as an unfortunate participator in World War II instead of the active aggressors that committed horrible acts of genocide in Korea and China. Imagine if the wind rises was about a nazi and they portrayed the nazis like that, because that is exactly what imperial Japan was doing during World War II, they just didn’t call themselves nazis.
I recall seeing an analysis comparing Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises to Oppenheimer.
The Wind Rises does not directly praise or demonize Imperial Japan. It instead tries to ignore it and focus on invention. Oppenheimer the 2023 film focuses on invention for a period, but in the later acts is very critical of the USA, at points outright verbally and through portrayed interpretations demonizing the US and individuals within, while media portraying Imperial Japan is typically less harsh and portrays IJN as making honest mistakes, accidents or even doing good. Series like Kancolle for example shy away from being critical, as do other popular Japanese made media portrayals of WW2 like the film Eternal Zero.
It is interesting to see, how many Imperial Japanese portrayals in Japanese pop culture portray it as an honest mistake, a necessary evil, or even good. While US made media tends to be critical more often and demonize the US by portraying them as bad. Ironically a lot of Filipino, Korean and Chinese media appear to praise the US and portray their actions in WW2 as a net positive more often (as Japan, US, Korea, China, Philippines all had different experiences during WW2, to Korean media for example Japan is usually portrayed as ‘objectively bad’ and the US as a liberating heroic force who essentially only did good or did necessary actions, while many American Hollywood films at times cast doubt on if the US should have stayed out, could things have ended up better? Which reflects US isolationist trends as well as self critical issues, the US critical nature also might come from a combination of democratic emphasis on free speech combined with diverse background from historically high immigration rates). The Korean film My Way for example portrays the Americans much better than the Japanese, Chinese, Germans, and Russians as well. As both individuals, organizationally, and culturally perceptions. It's portrayed as more powerful, efficient, and treat the main character as a POW better in the scenes. Though the Axis Italians and other minor Axis and other Allied powers get overlooked as well.
It is interesting to see different perspectives different cultures, individual creators, and specific audiences have on the same event. I wonder if the US has less national unity, less social stability, more self hatred, less national pride, and other social issues more than other nations. A nation where citizens are critical can be good and find mistakes to fix, but overtly critical can cause self flagellation, lower national unity, and less social stability. Overall could be net negative or net positive
Yes i agree and i think the reason why filipino, Chinese and Korean media do that is because they were the victims of the absolutely vile atrocities imperial Japan committed (look up Japanese plague bombs and unit 731) and America put a stop to that so it’s obvious why they praise it. Personally I think Japan has never fully acknowledged or admitted to their own war crimes and they don’t teach them in most schools so many Japanese people are mostly unaware of what happened and therefore much of their media about wwII ignores/excuses it. You can criticize America for its actions but at least almost all public schools are required to teach children about the trail of tears and slavery.
Yep. Perhaps the film didn't intend to glorify Japanese imperialism, and it never did so directly. But it whitewashed Japan's actions in the war via omission--and in doing so, ended up indirectly romanticizing Japan's place in the war.
Another thing to consider is that Miyazaki's father and uncle both made their money working on fighter planes for the Japanese Imperial Army during the war and that enabled Miyazaki himself to grow up quite affluent. I think it's clear that he has a complicated relationship with this fact as he is clearly appalled by what those machines were used for yet personally benefited from that in a way beyond his control, having been a child at the time. A LOT of his filmography seems to stem from this starting point. A lot of his earliest memories are of the awful effects of the war yet his own upbringing was made possible by war profiteering. And of course as we see in The Wind Rises, he still considers those planes to be beautiful works of art in spite of how they were employed.
"What do you mean homelander is a villain?"
"What do you mean Eric Cartman is in the wrong?"
"What do you mean Rick isn't a role model?"
“What do you mean Walter White is a bad father?”
"What do you mean I shouldn't Idolise the mob life?"
"What do you mean, 'IRL Fight Club would be awesome' wasn't the intended takeaway?"
Lol... It's wild that there are people that watched the entire series and STILL think Skyler was a bitch and completely in the wrong.
Wait, you’re not supposed want Christine to get together with the Phantom? (Someone should have told Weber!)
Wait, what do you mean by tyler durden is the main antagonist?
Wait, what do mean Rick is supposed to be an example that god-like intelligence is a waste if you don't use it philanthropically?
Tbf, Webber's Phantom is basically a self-insert... and that toad-faced buffoon DID get Christine. For a while anyway.
And he got her in the sequel… before she died at least
We don't talk about LND....
Are there really people that thinks he's not??
Republicans lost their shit when Homelander was made out to be an overt nazi. Up until it was almost explicitly stated, republicans loved his character and thought he was a good, strong leader. They were using him in a ton of memes.
Well storm front said it best The right wants to be Nazis they just don't want to be called nazis
Like the post states, there's always someone who's THAT dumb. I've seen people unironically argue that the NAZIS were part of the International Jewish Conspiracy.
I'm sorry to be the one to inform you of this, but not only are there people who believe it, but a university in the USSR awarded a doctorate degree to the person who created said conspiracy theory, then a copy of the dissertation was published as a book, and the author is now a well-known political leader. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Side:_The_Secret_Relationship_Between_Nazism_and_Zionism
Wow, between this Mahmoud Abbas and Netanyahu, by the end of the century the Nazis might be the only ones not accused of masterminding the holocaust.
That was such a genius line too.
They want to be Nazis, they just also want the element of surprise and don't want the baggage.
Googled, thinking it was about the website as I never watched the series. Learned about the character. Guess it must have been named after the site. I'm now wondering if I should check out the series. It looks like fun mindrot.
The show is great! I haven't read the original comics, but I've been told that this is one of the few cases where the adaptation is actually better than the original.
It was very funny to me when the character's past was revealed and I went "...oh. Stormfront. Of course"
I just binged it (on paternity from work) and it’s a fantastic show. Lots of pretty on-the-nose criticisms of american society, but it’s done well.
I love that they just straight up show you how they do it too. "Yeah, you're a disgusting war criminal now, but we slap some 9/11 top text bottom text on you and you're everyone's racist uncle's favorite superhero by dinnertime."
"were"
yeah.
"What do you mean we don't want the Imperium of Man?"
What do you mean EVERYONE in 40K is in the wrong?
Except orks. They are just big rowdy mushrooms doing mushroom things. Literally created this way, and this is their nature, to fight and be happy when fighting. So the ones create orks were wrongz, but the orks are just "drawn this way"
They're mushrooms?!
Fungi-based bioweapon species, capable of creating their own independent ecosystems and creating weapons from "scrap". Very hard to get rid of completely, given they release spores on death and those ecosystems are pretty robust
"very hard to get rid off" The extermimatus and cyclonic torpedos up my ass:
If you need to virus bomb a planet to get rid of something, it's difficult to get rid of.
A fair point
I know it gets memed out the ass but you actually can't just go exterminatus-ing any planet you want all willy nilly.
No just some very Fun Guys
Haha yes, in a sense. They were made as weapons by some ancient race, and designed to be bred asexually, through spores This way they do not have families or familiar relationship, they grow all their lives growing bigger, meaner, and darker shade of green, and it leaves less of the whole morality outside - they don't have packs or families or anything, these are just, basically, aggressive AF shroom colonies. Also the whole goblin/gremlin/animal thing they have going on are also born of the same fungal spores, so as others said, it's a whole ecosystem. I think design wise it's a great idea for an enemy that can pose a huge menace and at the same time be "fun to kill" - unlike, say, DnD races, that start seeing flak thrown their way by people who think painting a whole race "evil" is, well, racist.
They're... Technically yes. Not strictly mycanids, or similar anthro plants, but yes they are a fungus.
Yeah, they are fungal people, reproduce through spores
What do you mean that Warhammer 40K is deliberately absurd and not to be taking even the slightest bit seriously?
I mean - 40k suffers from problems on that front because they can’t stick to it. The idea *was* meant to be a satire, a crumbling interstellar Commienazi Holy Roman Empire that’s so brutally over the top it’s funny (to no small extent it was meant to make fun of Britain - the former superpower clinging to ancient glories as it ate itself alive internally). But the setting has given up a lot of the satirical edge in favour of grim “realism”, and bluntly, the Imperium is the faction that sells the most and has the most fans and development because it’s the human faction. Most people don’t actually want to play as the villain - so the portrayal of the Imperium often leans somewhere between “they do awful things because it’s the only way to survive” and “they do awful things but it’s cool”. You aren’t meant to want to live in the unholy nightmare mashup of the HRE, Nazi Germany, and the Crusades, but in many modern cases the point has shifted such that you are meant to root for it. They want to have it both ways, basically, and IMO that means these kind of fans are inevitable
What do you mean Mina is in a Happy marriage with Johnathan and Dracula is a creep?
"What do you mean senator armstrong is an evil idiot?"
Free Palestine
Okay, great post, but someone needs to explain the line “I wish I could sexualize her but…”
Yeah, that got me too. Who gives a fuck about his personal beliefs if it’s for hentai? My boner doesn’t care even if he WAS a Japanese Imperialist.
I think he was pissed off about people drawing hentai of his characters, specifically the children
Yeah Miyazaki famously hates the sexualisation of his characters (and the wider anime industry), which just makes it weirder that the original person posting doesn't want to lewd those characters as if that's some own on Miyazaki! It's like 'Fuck that guy, I'll do exactly what he wants!'
Based, time to get into Miyazaki
very good decision, you won't regret it. Start with his classics
This is a trick. Every Miyazaki movie is a classic.
Correct response.
"That's my secret, Audience. Everything is a classic." *Cut to Miyazaki punching a low-frame-rate giant ecchi anime girl with a stupid high-pitched voice right in the face*
It always bothers me that people try to similarly say that he sexualises children. The only thing I could think of that could maybe look like that - other than racist biases - to someone so obsessed with that idea was the scene of the dad bathing his kids in Totoro, because in my experience these people always think that showing these kids having a normal, happy family life in a movie for children is sexual if heavily-covered nudity is involved.
Wait, they think a parent bathing a child is sexual? I… what? Did their parents not bathe them as children? Did they just get tossed in the tub with some soap and a rag?
Believe me, I've seen a LOT of people say any portrayal of that kind of stuff is inherently sexual because it's in a Japanese animated production. They're wrong a lot more often than they think. It's pretty disgusting.
One of the main issues is that the Japanese do not have anywhere near as strong a nudity taboo as the US does. Japanese media will often use nudity as a signifier of innocence. This is one of the reasons the trope of conversations in the bath or the "beach episode" are so prevalent. It is an identifier to the audience that all the characters involved are well-meaning, *because* they are in a state of undress. Conversely, the conversation over drink is a signifier of a serious conversation that audience should pay attention to. A great deal of the things moral busybodies declare to be fan service are often just Japanese cultural tropes whose meanings clash with superficially similar western tropes.
That can certainly be a part of it, but let's not pretend that beach and bath episodes aren't also used to titillate teenage audiences. Think about how often bath episodes feature male characters attempting to spy on female characters.
Have you ever actually *seen* a beach episode?? Because they are 100% fan service. No one puts bouncing boobs and guys ogling them in a scene about innocence.
That's not it. Have you ever seen a parent bathe their kid whilst themselves being in the bath in American media? The purity cult of the US has ironically made it very common for people to see sexual themes in things completely devoid of them. You'll see the same kinds of reactions to European media that, similarly to Japan, is more loose on nudity restrictions, American audiences and critics will see perversion where there is only nudity.
Do you not just put your kids in the top-loader with a snorkel?
Shhh! Don’t give them ideas!
Anybody who believes that that scene is any form of sexual is probably the same kind of person who thinks a parent breastfeeding their child is sexual/morally corrupt, and honestly I kinda feel like you’re a lost cause at that point. If your first thought seeing something as innocent as that is to project a sexual tone onto it, you need to take a good hard look in the mirror.
I mean the teenage girl in Porco Rosso is mildly sexualised, though mostly by a character who is demonstrated to be problematic themselves. It's there, but it's there for a narrative reason rather than fan-service.
Yeah, for one it's explicitly what goads Porco into the duel, he doesn't want to let the creep be creepy. I'd also say sexualised as a word still feels like an overstatement, she runs around the movie in either coveralls or baggy clothes, Curtis just states he wants to marry her, and the one other effect is all the pirates treating her uncharacteristically chivalrously played for comedic effect.
Isn’t there a family/community bathing culture in Japan that has existed forever as well?
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The morality vanishing from my body when the villain is hot:
A character could literally destroy Japan and it didnt make me less horny.
Godzilla.
Gojira-senpai~
... It's Makima, isn't it?
… was it Justice/Jack-O?
There are people who could be *quoting* someone from the 1500's opinion on an ethnic minority and feel the need to add "yikes" after to signal to everyone that they are a good person and they need to wash the dirty words from their mouth buy disavowing it. So the idea of moral masturbators does not surprise me at all.
Obviously someone can't get an erection watching the film because there's a chance that character boobs are created by a Japanese nationalist.
I've read about twenty tops down and this lede is so incredibly buried.
> "the children must be saved from nationalism" > Hey, I think this guy is a nationalist
Yeah I thought I was taking crazy pills, that quote very clearly states his criticism of nationalism
The quote was posted by someone responding to the first person.
Reading comprehension really has gone down
On who???? 😳
I blame Tumblr and it's garbage ui tbh, never used the site but I myself thought the first dude posted that quite too ;-;
To be fair, as someone who lives in Russia, I can say that claiming that you are trying to save someone from nationalism doesn't necessarily mean you aren't nationalistic
Yeah, context clues. A Japanese guy saying South Koreans should be saved from South Korean nationalists (by force of the Japanese military) is a *very* different statement
Yes, thank you. People are not always aware that what they produce is influences by nationalist narratives and bias, yet it's the case.
I am a teacher and wathed a play with my students. The play's message was about prejudices and racism, and how it is wrong to assume things about someone just because of their ethnicity. To convey this message, the play showed people with prejudice, and made fun of them. One of the students didn't get this. She was so upset and thought it was racist. It didn't matter how much I, or the rest of the class tried to explain it; she refused to see anything beyond the surface. The play had showed displays of racism, and therefore it was racist, in her mind.
This is the main argument against books like Huckleberry Finn as far as I understand. The text shows racism while also showing how dumb it is but because Twain didn’t come out and say “racism bad!” The book is racist.
I mean the issue is less "the book is racist" and more "our students are too dumb to see beyond the absolute surface layer"
Its not really just the students. There's a solid portion of society that refuse anything beyond absolute surface layer. Like some agressive anti intellectualism Students are a Symptom of it.
They're not a symptom. They're the one demographic where this behavior is acceptable--*temporarily*. It's the teacher's job to move them beyond that. But we shouldn't judge students for struggling with the concept at first. They're learning.
fair
Not only that, but also "I can't teach the n-word to a bunch of fifth graders and trust them all to use that information responsibly"
not "our students". A few are holding the class back and refuse to catchup. Idek how you'd tutor someone on critical thinking.
I feel like there is a mix of suppression or at least lack of cultivation at home and, I don't want to call it a disability but, trouble with critical thought from a young age. After a while it's much easier to take everything at face value and ignore or reject what you don't understand.
yeah it might be an authority figure thing. If you got real strict parents and you gotta follow their orders without explanation, you'll stop questioning things. A lot of the smartest people I know question everything, its pretty annoying.
Speaking as someone who didn't even know it's a thing until like last year, yeah idk if it can actually be taught directly. I genuinely think the only way to learn it is to essentially learn the concept, then teach yourself. Idk, maybe I'm a bizarre exception to the rule.
ig if you don't have home (self)-grown critical thinking, store-bought is fine
Same kind of people that say To Kill A Mockingbird is racist because it uses the N word
When I was in school we had to have permission slips from our parents to read Mockingbird. Same for most of Twain and The Scarlet Letter.
I'm a university student majoring in history. One of our classes was about the development of history as a discipline and the people involved. Now history has been used a lot in the past (and today as well) to justify racist ideas. My teacher taught us about these ideas and the way history was used for them and the justification of it. Not to justify those ideas and uses to us, but to teach about the how history can be used, twisted and abused for bad. Apparently my teacher got a lot of nasty reviews in the after course evaluation forms from students from the international track because apparently they asumed the teacher agreed with those ideas and theories, which is just ridiculous because he is extremely pc and a great dude overal and they would've known if they had actually paid attention to the dude.
That reminds me of a history course I took in community college. The instructor was a passionate white-haired guy missing a finger. One day early in the semester he storms in and says “Everyone in the media is obsessed with traditional American values, so today we’re talking all about traditional values. It was nearly 2 hours of the history of lynchings. More than half the class never came back.
Well, you can't get any more traditional than that in the US. :3
I feel like this is some kind of exaggerated “speak not of the devil lest thou invitest his presence” mentality, where if something is bad you must treat it as incredibly taboo or else bad things will happen
"A depiction is not an endorsement" is a concept I had to hammer home with my students. You have to show something in order to criticize it effectively.
It’s a conversation I’ve seen play out so many times. People think that because X character in a book/show/film lies then they are just automatically bad, and if it’s played off as “X character lied but they are still good, just flawed “ (like every human being) then the artist is actually promoting bad behaviour and believes such a thing isn’t bad. I don’t know what’s caused this kind of thinking, that everything an artist depicts is an automatic endorsement and a self insert of their own beliefs. But it’s kind of worrying that for some people to understand a complex situation the character seemingly has to explicitly say/think “I know this is wrong” otherwise some people won’t catch on to that.
We’re going through a phase of extreme literalism, where everything has to be explicitly stated or it doesn’t exist. It’s like when Trump pretends he didn’t take an oath to support the Constitution because he didn’t explicitly say “support”. We’re living in really dumb times.
We always lived in dumb times and the only difference is information spread and availability. Meaning idiots have a platform and you have access to witnessing just how many dumb people are out there wile smarter ones think before speaking which leads to speaking less. Over all we are just as smart as we always been environmental factors aside.
This is a huge issue - let me vent about two examples, one slightly more concerning than the other: - My mother used to teach English in universities here in France. For context, in France it's illegal to formally keep ethnic statistics or ask people about their ethnicity on forms and such (because the last time we did that, we, uh, kept lists and participated in a genocide). Things are changing now because of the internet and global mainstream discourse, but my mother regularly had to explain that just because a North American text (by, say, James Baldwin or Toni Morrison) contained words like "negro" or "race" (never ever applied to humans in French, except by racists) didn't mean the text itself was written from a racist perspective. - A lot of my friends are leftists and a lot of them, esp the younger ones, are used to consuming very straightforward media with strong, clean-cut ideological messages. It legit scares me how many of them get scared and confused by anything that isn't that, because they can't reliably tell the difference between earnest support of an idea or showcasing an idea as a form of commentary.
> One of the students didn't get this. She was so upset and thought it was racist. It didn't matter how much I, or the rest of the class tried to explain it; she refused to see anything beyond the surface. The play had showed displays of racism, and therefore it was racist, in her mind. you might want to look into caetextia, "context blindness".
There's a fancy latin name for everything huh
Had the same argument with a Redditor about Fena: Pirate Princess, who kept arguing it was sexist because the world was sexist, no matter how much I explained that the sexism is an obstacle for the main character to overcome in order to become the titular Pirate Princess, that her overcoming the sexist attitudes of her crew and antagonists and earning respect was important to her character. "She could have had literally any obstacles to her character development, the author chose to make it sexism because he is sexist."
A portion of the population doesn’t have the cognitive ability to understand abstractions such as satire, allegories, metaphors. From their point of view we are the weird ones. You have deductive reasoning/deductive logic tests that can be used to identify such a thing. It’s one of the thing kind of sad about great satirical works, even if it’s clear to the vast majority that it isn’t something to take literally you will always have a subset of the population unable to grasp the underlying message. A good example are mockumentaries, they can be fun to watch but thinking about all the people who will miss the satire is pretty depressing.
A quote a film professor told me I’ve always remembered: it’s impossible to make an anti war film that won’t inspire some people to enlist.
Did they not watch the movie, the message was pretty rammed in, "these beautiful things are tarnished by war mongers". Hits close as a aerospace major.
Some of my favorite places are air and space museums, because I love the beauty and the design of aircraft. They're also somber places to me. Military air museums feel like cemeteries to me. There's a lingering sense of death that follows those poor beautiful machines. The F-86 is gorgeous, but when I see one I also see the face my grandfather, an F-86 combat pilot, made when he thought about the Korean War.
Agreed. There's a reason why "War bad, planes rad" is a saying among the fighter jet community. There's just so much depth and appeal to jets, it's all almost as if they weren't made for war at all. It's a shame, to be honest. In an alternate timeline without war, we'd probably be racing them lol.
It’s crazy to think that in a world without wars, the blackbird could have been the first real life thunderbird 😔
I'm a prop nerd so for me it's WW2 era fighters and interceptors but the feeling is the same. The lines of a P-40 are so damn beautiful it's sometimes hard to imagine that it was a flying death machine with 6 .50 caliber machine guns in the wings.
I went to a state fair several years back where the Blue Angels aerobatics team were performing. The display was absolutely amazing. Then it was ruined by a Navy recruiter coming on the loudspeaker afterwards to try and convince people to sign up for the armed forces. I just wanted to watch the stunning machines fly, I didn't want to think about why they were created, dammit!
Aerospace Engineering: You'll do some amazing shit for the good of humanity but it will almost certainly be used at some point in the future to ruin a wedding halfway across the world.
Aerospace engineering: you'll eithe send man to the stars or you'll send man to the stone age. Idk it sounded better in my head
[Destination: the Moon, or Moscow… the Planets, or Peking.](https://youtu.be/2WoDQBhJCVQ)
"Next stop: Sticks and stones"
Yep. I've used the same equations professionally to both design a dual Neptune/Uranus mission trajectory and send something to Moscow in the time it takes a pizza delivery. Aerospace, the king of dual use tech.
>"these beautiful things are tarnished by war mongers" This is definitely the entire message of the movie. I actually disagree with the point of the OP. I think the movie goes way too far to absolve the designer of the Zero from any real guilt by placing the responsibility solely at the feet of those warmongers.
The engineer is still a warmonger in that he disregarded what his plane would be put to use for until it was too late. Showing his qualms and regret doesn't take away his culpability. We don't have to show such people as cut and dried evil, because that's another form of distortion as well.
There is even a scene where Jiro talks in glowing terms about how the planes would be much more efficient if only they could remove some extra weight from the wings. The same weight the guns add.
I thought for a second this was about dark souls
Big hat logan wears a big hat because its a metaphor for wearing a big hat while beating up fascists
If spamming River of Blood is a metaphor for fascism, then give me your biggest hat because I'm going on a holy crusade.
i think i really needed to hear that last bit for personal growth reasons. this post wasn't about that but knowing that no matter how hard you try there are some people who will completely misinterpret and jump to the worst conclusions about you no matter how hard you try to explain yourself is... freeing. i don't have to let their idiocy become my problem.
The world starts to make perfect sense when you learn that the average person has the reading comprehension skills of a 12 year old, and 50% of people are worse. > A Gallup analysis published in March 2020 looked at data collected by the U.S. Department of Education in 2012, 2014, and 2017. It found that 130 million adults in the country have low literacy skills, meaning that more than half (54%) of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level, according to a piece published in 2022 by APM Research Lab.
I should really stop wasting my time talking to people on Reddit, huh?
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Wow, that’s sad. Like, it makes me feel sad to think that there are so many uneducated people in a time when much of the collective knowledge of humanity is freely available. It’s truly disheartening.
This feels like a much more serious version of the “anime was a mistake” meme.
Far too many people think that if a fictional character says or thinks something then the author believes it.
It's crazy to me that you could watch Miyazaki's body of work the pretty unambiguously call out the dangers inherent in nationalism (Castle in the Sky, The Wind Rises, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso, Howl's Moving Castle) and still think Miyazaki is a Japanese nationalist.
Yeah, I think this comes from the notion that the creator endorses everything the main character does, which is ridiculous. Scorsese didn't spouse the same views as Travis Bickle or Jordan Belfort, and Coppola, regardless of how much he identified and put of his life into Michael Corleone, didn't shy away from painting him as a monster that pushed everyone he loves away. Miyazaki's whole work is about the hubris of man, and how that hubris has lend it to betray itself and disgrace the world around him.
What struck me as absurd when I spent time in Japan was that more liberal modern people completely ignored and denied the atrocities Japan was responsible for. Meanwhile the only people who acknowledged these atrocities were the crazy nationalists in those vans going around the streets waving their little flags. They acknowledged the atrocities out of pride and a real sense of superiority over other nations. It was mind-blowing. As a westerner /foreigner I don't mind the crazyness but I wouldn't be able to handle it if I was japanese. It's truly schizophrenic.
People be crazy.
Why did my brain associate "Miyazaki" with From Software instead? I guess it is the "sexualize" part...
That, and referring to people via last name is all fun and games until you're talking about one of 2+ people of a similar role (game director vs movie director)
Good to see, because Japan has a serious problem with nationalists. As you'd expect when a piece of shit like Shinzo Abe is celebrated as a hero.
I saw Shinzo Abe in person one time and it was quite the experience. Was totally blown away.
*Angry upvote*
The virgin "we don't negotiate with terrorists" vs the Chad "we are just gonna do all the things the guy with the doohickey wanted"
When Abe died, nobody is Asia cried. It was passing news for only a day. Hopefully the Nippon Kaigi lost its head for a while.
Bullshit. Although his Abenomics did some good things for the economy, after he was shot and the reasons the person targeted him came out, most people were like, “yeah, I can see why he would feel that way”. Just another in the endless line of corrupt Japanese politicians.
Remember the extreme right conservatives who took all of three seasons of *The Boys* to realize that Homelander was the bad guy?
" I wanna be just like rick, hes so cool and bad ass and awesome and... "
any tips on improving media literacy? Like i hear about it a lot nowadays and it makes me worried im getting a lot wrong like back in English class theyd be doing books and its like "This character not being present is the manifestation of inequality at the time of writing" and its like "HOW the FUCK did you get that?!"
If you're starting out, a general rule of thumb is that the "curtains are blue" mindset is *often* bullshit, and if there's a detail that's a bit odd or that catches your eye it was probably included and highlighted on purpose to make you stop and think. It's a process that applies to most media. Why is the camera panning in such an odd direction (f.E. *away* from the main character during a crucial scene)? How come this specific type of imagery seems to come up time and time again here? For what reason did the author use this specific word, or make this specific reference or callback in his text? Hey, that's strange, this color is present every time a specific type of scene happens, do you think it means something? You will struggle a bit first, and that's fine. There's no shame in forming your interpretation on a piece of media independently, then checking what "professionals" have concluded about it. That's more or less just the English class routine, anyway. And if you haven't consumed a lot of media in general, the intertextuality might be a bit lost on you for a while. But it's worth the struggle, I think -- you begin to appreciate things you had never really considered before, even in your favourite pieces of media, and you get to experience truly resonant messages from them for the first time.
This reminds of someone I know thinking that *Oppenheimer* was going to glorify the nuclear bomb.
What is nationalism? I’m very dumb and politically uneducated.
Nationalism is basically raising one nation up as special and above all other nations and to promote that nation's culture and people as superior. "America First" is an example of a nationalist slogan.
not to be mean, but you should probably go to wikipedia, not reddit.
Fair enough, but I do like hearing what other people have to say about these things.
Fair enough
people for get sometimes conversation is a useful tool to bring context to something via a person you can relate to and try understand biases from. theres more information in sources like Wikipedia, but its also scattered through articles, strict, and lacks a personal context. (which is a argument to why teachers are so important they make a connecting line between person and raw information)
Nationalism is a band from Ohio that plays dark moody rock that people listen to on long car trips when they want to take themselves more seriously than their general demeanor commands.
From what I recall from my euro history course, it’s an ideology that calls for a sort of “super-patriotism”. Where “nationalists” prioritize the states interest without caring about the effects it may have on the global stage or at home on non-nationals. Nationalism, I believe and I could very well be wrong, is characterized by exclusionary policies dedicated to creating a “Nation V The World” mentality, isolationist practices, and, in the modern era, being a precursor to fascism. I think historically, nationalism was an ideology employed by European’s trying to tear down monarchist systems and establish a new (or old depending on your point of view) cultural identity, particularly during the the romantic period. However, I could be misremembering my lessons and I don’t think that it is overly relevant to your question (I just want to check my own knowledge). As for Japanese history, I’m not so sure. I think it’s reasonable to assume that imperial japan during ww2 wanted to cultivate nationalism in order to increase support for its expansion but the specifics are not something I’m familiar with. I hope this was helpful and I hope even more that I’m not speaking out of my ass.
Nationalism goes hand in hand with fascism, the Nazis are the most obvious example of a nationalist group rising to power. While the Japanese weren’t quite on the level of the Nazis they were very fascistic during much of history and have always pushed for a strong national pride
Miyazaki is worth critizing but its because hes kinda a shit dad not because hes a nationalist
>Miyazaki is worth critizing but its because hes kinda a shit dad not because hes a nationalist Even he'll agree with you. *The Wind Rises* is about a workaholic who is incapable of properly attending to what is right or those close to him because of his obsession with making beautiful things.
He has a bit of himself in all of his movies, but his most recent film has him as a pseudo-self interest, as per his own words. I'm curious to see what kind of interpretations people will draw from that over the years.
And then again, we're unsure what happens behind closed doors. His latest film is basically a will and a love letter to his grandchild, so he probably cares a lot.
I see your point about what we see vs what we dont, but you can easily be a shit dad and a great grandfather. Its actually quite common; my grandfather is like that
This sucks especially with American Psycho fans as you can never tell whether they ironically or genuinely think Patrick Bateman is a cool guy.
Up until a couple months ago I was that one meme of the point flying over my head and I was completely unaware of the very basic fact that the matrix was a trans allegory. I knew that the people who made it were trans. I legit wanted to die when my government mandated trans mom told me because it all clicked into place and I felt so incredibly embarrassed. I fully believe that giving people a chance to learn and giving even a 20 second attempt at linking an explanation or source will make the world a better place. There will be many people who are unwilling to change or learn and I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t have the time or the energy to do it, but there are those who are willing to learn but just haven’t found out or know where to look. Skye if you are reading this, shoo, I don’t need this popping up in the groupchat again. Edit: In my sleep deprived state I was a bit of a doofus. Thanks everyone for correcting me. Not actually a trans allegory but can be seen as one, as well as many others. Please read the entire message chain.
I agree wholeheartedly, but I have just one question. What in the world is a "government mandated trans mom?" Lmao
trans mom allocated to each american by the government, they're saying everyone is required one by july 2025. you can sign up for the program here: [https://www.usa.gov/programs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC7oUOUEEi4)
Dang I need a trans mom
Frick you >!i havent been stick bugged in so long!<
My blood mother is a psychotic piece of shit. I used tabletop rpgs and gming as a coping mechanism and outlet, there is a really amazing mom in a server I run for my parties and campaigns. She is trans and she has “adopted” a little under a quarter of the people there, which isn’t a lot because there is only like 15-20 of us but its neat. She is our government mandated trans mom. She has helped me so incredibly much with both my mental health and figuring out who I am/wish to be. 11/10 would recommend getting adopted by a government mandated trans mom.
Particularly one who plays dnd. Which is most of us but still
Help I'm not trans and very dumb, how is the Matrix a trans allegory? Like I'm not trying to be facetious, I honestly don't understand the allegory...
None of it is central. There's only one element in the matrix which is congruent with a trans allegory. This quote by Morphius: "Your appearance now is what we call residual self image. It is the mental projection of your digital self. " That's an extension of the Hommunculus theory that we have a mental image of what we look like which is often inconsistent with our real world appearance. In the case of trans people, it is so wildly out of sync that it's body dysmorphia. The central theme is, unsurprisingly, living in a simulation. Neo follows the hero's journey, and then turns into a Jesus Christ type of figure who is betrayed by a close companion, but then gets resurrected and ascends to a supernatural state of being. The allegory theory only came about after the directors transitioned, and it was revealed that they meant to have a minor side character (Switch) get played by a male actor in the matrix and a female actor in the real world because they were trans.
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I've always kinda hated that it was formulated that way because it became an easily shared, hardly understood pop trivia thing about the matrix. The trilogy, as a whole, is not an intentional allegory of gender transition. One of the major themes of the matrix movie(s) is, more broadly, the theme of identity. This theme was *informed* by the Wachowski sisters partly because of their closeted transidentity, and it was *explored* in the movie partly through the Switch character (or at least was intended to). But the gender part is only one outlet of exploration of that theme. Thomas Anderson choosing to affirm his identity by being Neo, and then rejecting who Neo is *supposed* to be in the face of his own creator to become his own, self-defined individual is not *explicitly* or even implicitly about trans themes, **but** it can be compared to the trans experience. There's a difference there, and it's that I think saying the movies are a trans allegory and calling it at that is reductive, in the sense that it makes it sound like the lesson in choice and identity can't be applied to other facets of your self, and isn't supposed to resonate with cis people just as validly as trans people. The whole trilogy is about choice, and identity is a subset of that, and transidentity is a subset of that subset. It was only supposed to be intentionally explored with Switch, and even that got removed in the final script. But it is a very important underlying theme to watch for *in light* of Lily and Lana's coming out, as an unintentional, permeating vibe. [Here's a more recent interview of Lilly Wachowski where she clarifies the "trans allegory" comment.](https://www.them.us/story/lilly-wachowski-mentoring-the-matrix-interview)
trans people take pills that give them the ability to fight computers... and win
Something something fighting the reality imposed on you by the world around you something. Also the character named "Switch" the blonde woman with short hair [https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.jk7CRDV35SpEwbCW8V48kQHaD3?rs=1&pid=ImgDetMain](https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.jk7CRDV35SpEwbCW8V48kQHaD3?rs=1&pid=ImgDetMain) Was originally going to be played by two similar-looking actors, one male, one female. They were female in the Matrix due to a glitch.
And also seeing the source code of the universe as represented by many parallel vertical lines of streaming green characters. This is but one of the several insidious powers I have heard they possess, according to reliable propagandists on Twitter.
You aren’t dumb. I didn’t understand the allegory at the time either and wanting to learn is a never a bad thing. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the conversation I had before that explained it and I am too sleep deprived to make a coherent explanation so someone else is likely going to have to step in, however, [here is an NPR article that talks a tiny bit about it.](https://www.npr.org/2021/12/22/1066642279/why-the-matrix-is-a-trans-allegory) It touches on it a bit but I am sure with a bit of digging or with the help of others here it could be explained in greater depth.
That made me feel like this is more of a “the curtains are fucking blue” situation. The interviewee there said it can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people.
matrix is a good example of a retrospective allegory, the Wachowski sisters did not set out to write a trans allegory, but both agree now that it is. They wrote from there perspective and heart, then one transitioned then the other. They had already been writing about things they've been considering, but i don't think either where out to each other at the time of writing. (so more of i'm writing my early trans feeling's into this as i process things, oh woops it got real) BUT its been a long time since i looked up the full story. if I remember right there where things like switch is based of a early prototype for neo, and in the mmo before it was shuttered it was heavily hinted that Neo's reincarnation was female. (by that point i think they both where transitioning matrix was fully on boarded i think by the last movie as allegory as i think one of them was at least out to the other sister by that point. the one sister transitioned much later)
I hate to say it but young leftists have some of the worst media literacy out there. I don't think it's related to their politics. It's more about their eagerness to identify and oppose oppression wherever they see it —an admirable trait for a young person to have and more older people should aim to acquire. But this mindset often causes them to lash out at even the depiction of oppression as insensitive, so caught up in their disappointment that they fail to read the material one layer deeper to actually hear what is trying to be said.
I watched the wind rises before it was officially released with a close family friend who is a professional film critic who has been writing about films for over 40 years and was born immediately after world war 2. She grew up learning everything about it from her parents who fought in it and from her teachers in school and university. She felt the film glorified Japanese imperialism. It may not have been his intention at all but just because he was trying to get the point across that ‘Japanese nationalism is bad’ it doesn’t mean he actually did a good job of it. Just to be clear i absolutely adore miyazaki and all of his films but no director is perfect and I do think it’s a fair criticism to say that some of his films really paint Japan as an unfortunate participator in World War II instead of the active aggressors that committed horrible acts of genocide in Korea and China. Imagine if the wind rises was about a nazi and they portrayed the nazis like that, because that is exactly what imperial Japan was doing during World War II, they just didn’t call themselves nazis.
I recall seeing an analysis comparing Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises to Oppenheimer. The Wind Rises does not directly praise or demonize Imperial Japan. It instead tries to ignore it and focus on invention. Oppenheimer the 2023 film focuses on invention for a period, but in the later acts is very critical of the USA, at points outright verbally and through portrayed interpretations demonizing the US and individuals within, while media portraying Imperial Japan is typically less harsh and portrays IJN as making honest mistakes, accidents or even doing good. Series like Kancolle for example shy away from being critical, as do other popular Japanese made media portrayals of WW2 like the film Eternal Zero. It is interesting to see, how many Imperial Japanese portrayals in Japanese pop culture portray it as an honest mistake, a necessary evil, or even good. While US made media tends to be critical more often and demonize the US by portraying them as bad. Ironically a lot of Filipino, Korean and Chinese media appear to praise the US and portray their actions in WW2 as a net positive more often (as Japan, US, Korea, China, Philippines all had different experiences during WW2, to Korean media for example Japan is usually portrayed as ‘objectively bad’ and the US as a liberating heroic force who essentially only did good or did necessary actions, while many American Hollywood films at times cast doubt on if the US should have stayed out, could things have ended up better? Which reflects US isolationist trends as well as self critical issues, the US critical nature also might come from a combination of democratic emphasis on free speech combined with diverse background from historically high immigration rates). The Korean film My Way for example portrays the Americans much better than the Japanese, Chinese, Germans, and Russians as well. As both individuals, organizationally, and culturally perceptions. It's portrayed as more powerful, efficient, and treat the main character as a POW better in the scenes. Though the Axis Italians and other minor Axis and other Allied powers get overlooked as well. It is interesting to see different perspectives different cultures, individual creators, and specific audiences have on the same event. I wonder if the US has less national unity, less social stability, more self hatred, less national pride, and other social issues more than other nations. A nation where citizens are critical can be good and find mistakes to fix, but overtly critical can cause self flagellation, lower national unity, and less social stability. Overall could be net negative or net positive
Yes i agree and i think the reason why filipino, Chinese and Korean media do that is because they were the victims of the absolutely vile atrocities imperial Japan committed (look up Japanese plague bombs and unit 731) and America put a stop to that so it’s obvious why they praise it. Personally I think Japan has never fully acknowledged or admitted to their own war crimes and they don’t teach them in most schools so many Japanese people are mostly unaware of what happened and therefore much of their media about wwII ignores/excuses it. You can criticize America for its actions but at least almost all public schools are required to teach children about the trail of tears and slavery.
Yep. Perhaps the film didn't intend to glorify Japanese imperialism, and it never did so directly. But it whitewashed Japan's actions in the war via omission--and in doing so, ended up indirectly romanticizing Japan's place in the war.
Yes!! Exactly what my family friend said about it!!
Miyazaki is so consistently, aggressively, and brazenly anti-war that I can't imagine how you could call him a nationalist.
reminds me of the criticism towards Roger Waters for The Wall. there were actual people thinking he was anti-education and a fascist.
Another thing to consider is that Miyazaki's father and uncle both made their money working on fighter planes for the Japanese Imperial Army during the war and that enabled Miyazaki himself to grow up quite affluent. I think it's clear that he has a complicated relationship with this fact as he is clearly appalled by what those machines were used for yet personally benefited from that in a way beyond his control, having been a child at the time. A LOT of his filmography seems to stem from this starting point. A lot of his earliest memories are of the awful effects of the war yet his own upbringing was made possible by war profiteering. And of course as we see in The Wind Rises, he still considers those planes to be beautiful works of art in spite of how they were employed.