snowboyrari

2y

white supremacist propaganda film

Elric

2y

Man oh man even if you "aren't interested in touching the politics in this", I can't believe how lame and annoying 4 hours of Scarlett/Ashley/Rhett love triangle was

gf and I just wanted to strangle Scarlett for the entire runtime. Crammed 4 hours of character development into the last 2 minutes for her.

Fella

2y

You’re out of your mind. It’s one of the most beautifully photographed epics ever. I find nothing about it dull.

Fella

2y

If you have an inability to evaluate something in its own context without narrowly applying a theoretical framework for how the world ought to operate—then I have no interest in taking about art with you. Great works like this will long outlive our immediate discomforts with them. We will all be dead and none of these snarky finger waging dismissals will mean much.

Elric

2y

Too bad you won't discuss it cause I would love to understand. Sounds insane to me.

Fella

2y

I’ve already reviewed it. Go read that and leave me alone.

Elric

2y

I did obviously and am still very far from understanding your pov. Another classic case of you acting like you've had this conversation a million times, me having it for the first time, and you explaining yourself in a way that I don't understand at all you don't have to react so aggressively. Explain like I'm five.

You say it's valuable to "see this through the lens of what it was, when it was" and I'm curious what you think that was?

Fella

2y

What it was is a grand operatic ode to nostalgia. A misguided nostalgia for sure, but the warmth of that universal feeling is still communicated beyond the dark period of history it is reflecting on. The most humanized and likable characters are the slaves. They may be perceived as caricatures, but they’re never portrayed negatively as people. Mammy is the voice of reason amidst all the chaos. They’re the only characters who make selfless decisions.

Elric

2y

· edited

Somewhat get your first point but they literally have Mammy calling other freed slaves trash. They portray slaves as happily going to fight for the Confederacy. They portray freed slaves ambushing Scarlett. They portray the north as rapist thieves. I could keep going but "never portrayed negatively" is just not true man.

And they portray white Melanie as the greatest paragon of selflessness on earth.

Fella

2y

I’m not talking about how the white characters react to them, but rather how they come across to the viewer. I never get the feeling the film is communicating that the pre war period was better. More so suggesting that no matter how bleak a time—there will always be ineffable special feelings attached to it for someone who lived through it.

Elric

2y

Ok well we're gonna have to agree to disagree cause i didn't get a single whiff of "maybe this way of life wasn't the best for everybody". The closest it got was a sense of fatalism in Rhett's first scene where he says they were too deluded with pride to see they will be defeated.

Otherwise it's literally Klan propeganda about the Lost Cause myth and to overlook that when appraising the film seems weird. You say "what is was when it was" which I can sorta understand for BOAN but not something made in my grandparents lifetime. I don't think the film should be wiped from existence like some people do but there's nothing wrong with criticizing it. The General hits weird when you think how much it was villifying the north as well.

Fella

2y

Well we fundamentally disagree and I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Your approach to evaluating it is antithetical to everything I care about in art. I explained my feelings as well as I could.

Elric

2y

this isn't just me misunderstanding the fact that DePalma is just portraying a misogynistic and corrupted society or whatever like we usually argue about though, its actually sinister and a very deliberately engineered ploy by a republican meth head to have white supremacist rhetoric peddled to the masses with what was already considered the biggest film off all time before it even came out. but fine nothing worse discussing here I guess.

considering you were the one that said Kanyes antisemitic bullshit came at the perfect time when Israel was committing genocide, im surprised you defend a jewish mogul portraying black folks like this so vehemently. also this was a film made through committee just like your despised MCU. Selznick rifled through actual creatives like they were his rolodex till he found an indifferent workhorse while making it.

Elric

2y

how can you pretend cinema cant be subtly used for nefarious purposes knowing quotes likes these;

"Lenin was the first political leader of the 20th century to recognize both the importance of film as propaganda and its power to communicate quickly and effectively. He understood that audiences did not require literacy to comprehend a film’s meaning and that more people could be reached through mass-distributed motion pictures than through any other medium of the time. Lenin declared: “The cinema is for us the most important of the arts,” and his government gave top priority to the rapid development of the Soviet film industry"

Nazis;

"Without any doubt the film is a formidable means of propaganda. Achieving propagandistic influence has always demanded a ‘language’ which forms a memorable and passionate plot with a simple narrative. … In the vast area of such ’language’ that the recipients are directly confronted by in the course of technical and economical processes, the most effective is the moving picture"

Fella

2y

Now you’re just being antagonistic. Accept that I disagree with you and move the f*** on.

Elric

2y

fine but I wish we could discuss things without you being such a f***ing baby. genuinely sorry I dont grasp things as quick as you.

Fella

2y

No I’m not being a baby. We’ve had this discussion endlessly about art as an effective propaganda tool. It’s been exhausted and we always talk past each other. I’m not interested in it anymore.

Elric

2y

saying "if you dont see my point of view I dont want to talk about art with you" is being a baby, especially after a decade of talking to me about art

I genuinely have no idea what " inability to evaluate something in its own context without narrowly applying a theoretical framework for how the world ought to operate" even means or how it explains away my criticisms but I would like to understand

Fella

2y

I’ve outgrown our discussions.