ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
There Is Always Hope
User ID: 812
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
Eight episodes, the first two premiered at once so the release timeline is a tad shorter.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
So, after all these weeks, Amazon's Rings of Power wraps up its first season. A section of mainstream media is still defending the show while others are somewhat calling it, we have a 2nd season coming, several retcons to the lore, and a very predictable Sauron reveal. Now we're supposed to expect a certain special someone from Galadriel's past that I'm shocked even exists in this canon. If there's one bit of character development in this whole debacle, it would be Erik Kain's diminishing confidence in the show.
I'm gonna nitpick a line from this piece:
As of this writing, House of the Dragon has an 86% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (with an 84% Audience Rating) and The Rings of Power has an 84% approval rating on the review aggregator (with a 38% Audience Rating, which should largely be discarded).
I don't know if Amazon Studios will face a crisis as was reported earlier, or if they intend to trot out a slightly less expensive season 2 before axing it altogether, or drag it all the way. But it seems, as several others had stated in last week's thread when I brought it up, this is really just a billion dollar gig for Bezos' ticket to the ultra-woke Hollywood clique to maximise his elite status after all. To that end, he likely has succeeded many times over.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
Much has been written about the underrepresentation of women in STEM and managerial roles. The defence of gender quotas would be that no quota means quota for white men. That the issue isn’t whether women and girls are talented enough, but that they’re simply overlooked. So women don’t get on the short list for promotion because the people who promote someone promote those who are most similar to them, closer to them (usually white and male), that they’re most used to male bosses. With quotas, they have to check their lists more consciously for competence and not what they're used to.
The counterpoint could be that none of these hypotheses explain the underrepresentation of women in STEM, but depending on which are true, they call for dramatically different solutions. If the underrepresentation of women in STEM and managerial roles is entirely attributable to social norms and stereotypes which push young girls away from them at a young age, resulting in the female pool of talent being smaller than the male - then gender quotas and zero-tolerance sexual harassment policies in STEM companies will do absolutely nothing to address the issue (they're not quotas on society after all).
And what of in gender unequal societies? Should nations in West/South/South-East Asia and Africa pursue these quotas until they "achieve equality"? Many women, even engineering graduates, from these countries do not participate for long in the workforce before they marry off. Combined with the severe lack of jobs, female LPR in India is actually decreasing. Would more quotas in education and the workforce reverse this trend, or are we missing the forest for the trees (that is, the lack of formal jobs)?
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
Tolkien Untangled is cool, would definitely recommend newcomers to the monumental lore.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
I think you've posted it in reply to me the last time I talked about the show, I remember this!
There was a very similar article on this months ago.
Bundling is precisely what is happening with woke politics, and why it is so insidious: It is regularly bundled with things that have particular value and are not easily replaced, in order to force it upon unwilling buyers. If you offered people the choice to buy a visit to Disney World with or without the company’s woke politics, most people would choose “without.” The same would be true if you offered them a Harvard education, a pair of Nike sneakers, a job at J. P. Morgan, a can of Coca-Cola, a coffee at Starbucks, or a ticket to the NBA playoffs.
In almost none of these cases did wokeness build the valuable product.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
In a different era, I would've agreed. Now though, anything that throttles attempts to trot out atrocious works drafting off the brand name is a shield I'd rather not part with.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
Oh. TIL
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
A black pilled take, and sadly I cannot disagree.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
Every single major company wants to make money first and foremost, true they do want to earn social capital but at the expense of pissing off their investors? And again, this is a billion dollar project, not your standard show.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
I'm still wondering what got Amazon hooked to a billion dollar disaster. After all initial (imo misplaced) optimism, analysts are finally coming out and saying the quiet part out loud: it is not the ground breaking masterpiece they need it to be. Even HoD is performing better and is better received. Both are prequels to very popular IPs, but Rings of Power should be pulling enormous numbers given how expensive it is, and how extensive its marketing was. Despite worsening performance with every episode, they just renewed it for season 2. This wasn't a small and calculated risk, they literally staked the future of their whole studio on this show. What made them think hiring subpar writers, rewriting lore, rewriting characters of one of the most popular fantasy IPs while simultaneously drafting off of the brand was a good idea? It feels like the motive isn't even to make money but solely to push an agenda, but who would do that? Given the sheer scale of the project, I just cannot believe any studio would be so careless as to commit such a serious misfire.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
This was my experience too, my politics was has never really been a deal breaker in my dating life even when I was a college student dating a college liberal woman. But as you said, you could inhibit your dating ability if your politics is deeply rooted in a low status lifestyle. Although I suspect one might have a different experience on dating apps, which is just a bad experience for a lot of men. Funnily enough, my ex has veered rightward in the years since we broke up, much of culture warrior behaviour is often impulsive than a strong expression of deeply held values. This isn't to say they don't cherish those values or that they don't earnestly believe in them, but they are also susceptible to change with life experience.
On the topic itself though, I think this could just be another case of "male abundance - female scarcity" that seems to be a feature of dating apps in general.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
Well, the Grayzone folk are still very sympathetic to Russia. Right wing culture warriors supporting Putin doesn't surprise me. As you said, they see the cultural establishment in the west as stridently opposed to them and their values, which they see closer to the vogue of Russian society, so they seek any disturbance to the status quo at home even if it may come from abroad. This isn't to say that I agree with them, just that I can at least rationalise their attitudes. As someone else had stated below, its not that I dislike left wing tankies, I'm just trying to understand their worldviews in their own ideological domain. China is hardly communist anymore, and sure we can go by the CCP's rhetoric that only "compassionate reeducation" is happening in Xinjiang for the sake of argument, but things like the crackdown on progressivism and "feminisation" of men are policies that the Chinese government (and western right wingers) openly and unapologetically espouses. What would a left wing tankie that laughs off Jordan Peterson's lectures (that is, the ideas of one pundit) on the crisis of masculinity say about China's own state guided programs to promote masculinity?
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
Yeah, looks like every political tribe has some level of "intersectionality" mentality hoping that the "smart outsiders" would support them.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
What's also noteworthy is that a huge section of the "far right" actually idolises Russia and China for the reasons I'd described above: they see the west as a decadent civilisation spreading wokeism worldwide, while those two are "strong, confident societies" resisting it and that their hegemony would end progressivism altogether.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
I'm curious what folks here think about tankies.
I remember seeing a twitter thread during the onset of the Ukraine war explaining why Russia and China growing powerful even to the point of imperialism is vital to combat western imperialism, "someone has to do it". Whether one agrees that Russia has been constantly provoked by NATO or not, its difficult to spin Russian actions as "anti-imperialist". Similarly, China's land and water disputes with its neighbours. It appears both these countries have become a sort of canvas to project their ideologies. They often call western conservatives "far right" and often attack their criticisms of feminism. But how do they explain China's own censorship of feminist activism, the fact that independent labour unions are illegal, the push for pro-natalism, the push for masculinity training, etc.? I've seen many articles countering the stories about Uyghurs, but not much on the above. What really makes the "tankie ideology" attractive? I can fully understand and even sympathise with their gripes over western imperialism and even Israel to an extent, but I don't get the narratives that its all the neoliberals and the "far right" against China, essentially projecting the whole issue as a new cold war of ideologies between neoliberalism and communism.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
On the flip side, a lot of leftists will claim "Oh, you're just labeling any disagreement with Israel as antisemitism" when a lot of opposition to Israel (especially on the left) is in fact motivated by antisemitism.
I haven't noticed this, though. Maybe its a rather thin line while discussing certain aspects of Israeli lobbying efforts that sometimes do overlap with conventional antisemitic tropes trotted out by the alt right. But motivations are difficult to 'prove' when someone doesn't publicly espouse them. Are there any examples of this in leftist pundits though?
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
while receiving only the poorest and less fit of the people of the third world.
Yup... "model immigrants" are classed as "white adjacent" in this so called oppression hierarchy. We will have to see if the US becomes less attractive as an immigration zone in the future.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
Berkley Law School's Jewish free zones is causing some stir. The student group also wants to ban Zionist speakers. I wonder how this will sit with progressive Jews, who themselves are quite often found heading pro-Palestine activism in the US. Now these bans are trotted out by progressives, not alt-righters. Accusations of anti-semitism likely won't find any purchase in the vogue that's disillusioned with Israel. And I'm not seeing any sign of American Jews tilting rightward anytime soon.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
Yeah, by "red pill" I meant if the European right will become less committed to upholding capitalism. I agree with your 2nd paragraph too, I once spoke to a paleocon from Minnesota years ago and he'd propounded the view that the alt right movement is largely Jacobin in its visioned role of the state. Which may be true, but yes, they probably don't care what political or economic system they need to employ in shaping their socio-cultural agenda. I just don't know what kind of comeback the right would do in the US, nearly all big businesses generate a lot of social capital by espousing liberal values which show no sign of going out of fashion anytime soon. Perhaps they'll just wait until the free markets "correct themselves"?
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
Would this, in your opinion, mainstream the Third Position on the right? I see many (most?) American right wingers still arguing that socialism has infiltrated their institutions to birth much of the social ideologies that dominate the western zeitgeist today. Maybe Europe will take the "red pill" sooner?
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
Besides the partition riots, there was also the 1971 genocide which came back to spotlight among Hindu Nationalists following the Russian invasion. They turned Russophilic all of a sudden.
I also found this about Sikh-Muslim clashes in the 80s. As noted in the thread, this was during the height of the Khalistan movement in Indian Punjab. There's a lot of political baggage in the subcontinent, not always easy to shake away. Nevertheless, since the Indian middle class felt absolutely fucked from above and below back in India (where they're both taxed heavily, deal with Malthusian growth rates and there's pressure from below which doesn't sufficiently distinguish between the rich class and middle class in its grievances concerning exploitation), they were more keen to shed their identities once they immigrate. This is largely true in the US but I think political competition with Brit Pakistanis kept it alive in the UK.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
Ah right, yeah I confused the two.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
The "non-mainstream" explanation is that despite the obvious woke overtones and casting, the writing is pretty solid. They're also making a Jon Snow sequel, have to see how that goes.
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