site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35889 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

24
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I just cannot believe any studio would be so careless as to commit such a serious misfire.

How so? The history of production studios is littered with big bets that turned into disasters. Streaming services especially have had hundreds of hyped failures in their recent pasts. Plus, it is not as though RoP is actually a Waterworld or Heaven's Gate or similar; as you say, the perspective is that it isn't a "ground breaking masterpiece".

And how hard is it to make a ground breaking masterpiece? If we again look into film and TV history, the only thing we see from massive budgets is a tendency for productions to look expensive. There has never really been a way to guarantee high quality just from pumping money into something.

The so-called Golden age of TV appears to largely be creator driven if anything. But that's not really a guarantee either. Assuming that you could even convince a David Milch or Matthew Weiner to come and spend years on your Lotr indulgence instead of something they find interesting, there aren't really safe bets there. Both the above had recent flops, Weiner for Amazon Studios in fact. Even if you made the argument they could just hire Peter Jackson, one only needs to look at the Hobbit films.

I believe there was an article linked here which spoke of one of the big issues in current TV - not enough show runners. Streaming has become so voracious that everyone who has the skills to make TV is already locked into contracts. So maybe the relative no-names that Amazon hired were simply the best available? I'm sure there was a stringent enough interview process for them. Perhaps they hoped that they would grow into the role, and it didn't work out?

one only needs to look at the Hobbit films

By comparison with Rings of Power so far, the Hobbit films are looking better and better. Yeah, the studio killed the golden goose by stretching it over three movies instead of one, and yeah that meant a lot of padding and some bad original characters, but gosh. When Jackson got it right, he got it right.

And he never pissed so copiously on the established lore as this lot are doing. "Hey, let's make Galadriel hideously unpleasant. Let's invent a 'King of the Southlands' and hint hard that he's really Sauron. How many Silmarils are there and does anyone know what happened to them? Yes? Okay, we don't care, we're going to pull a 'legend' out of our asses. While we're at it, let's make Celebrimbor way too old and dress him in my granny's bathrobe!"

The costumes look so cheap and what should be epic isn't - see the mighty Númenorean fleet of three ships, and the training scene where the new recruits are being drilled on a set of stairs in a side-street. God alone knows where the alleged millions per episode went - on CGI and the egos of the showrunners, looks like.

Yeah, the Hobbit movies had moments that were so good--and you point out one of the best--but man, "uneven" profoundly understates the massive...uh...diversity...in quality.

Definitely uneven, there were visible differences in the makeup for the Dwarves, etc. And the 'comic relief' element was still there. But mostly it was scraping out the story to make three movies, because the studio wanted a second trilogy to be a money-spinner. There just isn't the material there in the source book for this.

The Kili-Tauriel romance didn't bother me, it was of course silly, but I took it more as sort of puppy love on his part, and confused 'I thought Dwarves were our deadly enemies but this Dwarf is nice' on her part, not as any serious Epic Love Story.

If they had decided to race-swap Thranduil (the way we're getting white Tar-Palantir and black Tar-Míriel in Rings of Power), make some of Thorin's company female (because movies for a modern world), invented an original legend that the reason for the enmity of the Elves and the Dwarves is that the Dwarves are the Second Children of Iluvatar and the Elves were afraid that they would be replaced because Aule liked the Dwarves better, and flipped it around so that Smaug was the rightful inhabitant of the Lonely Mountain and the Dwarves were going there on a greedy cash-grab raid to pillage his horde, this is what the Rings of Power have done.

Plus, it is not as though RoP is actually a Waterworld or Heaven's Gate or similar; as you say, the perspective is that it isn't a "ground breaking masterpiece".

Quality-wise, it's really bad, and given that they're on the hook for five seasons of this it might yet turn into that level of disaster if they're paying for all five seasons of it.

How to exactly gauge the success of a streaming show is difficult; what does a Waterworld/Heaven's Gate-esque flop even look like in the streaming environment? But this might be the one.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats