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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I recall hearing that the production of Aliens was a complete shitshow, with James Cameron allowing issues with his personal life to interfere with production in negative ways. Also, some of the best Mission Impossible films, including 4, 5, and 6, apparently had 3-page long scripts at beginning of filming, with just an overarching narrative and various ideas of scenes in Tom Cruise's head, requiring the scripts to be written the night before the actual filming of the individual scenes, along with a ton of work by the editors to actually piece together a coherent narrative (Chris McQuarrie, the current director of the movies, got that role in a large part due to being an uncredited script doctor for 4 who was apparently brought in to fix it up during shooting).
So certainly having the productions be trainwrecks from the inside doesn't guarantee that the film won't be one of the greatest films ever made, rather than a historical megaflop like Waterworld.
But I think with something like Borderlands or Joker 2 or any number of other recent flops like Madame Web, The Marvels, or on TV The Acolyte or Rings of Power is that the trainwrecks aren't on the production, but rather on the fundamental artwork that's being expressed, mainly the script and also perhaps the cast. E.g. for Borderlands, it should be obvious to any layman, and certainly to any studio exec, that it's not a winning move to cast 50+ year old dramatic actor Cate Blanchett as an action lead and famously short comedian Kevin Hart as a no-nonsense serious big tough-guy soldier in a movie based on a video game aimed at teenage boys and young men. Even if the production had gone completely smoothly, it was just fundamentally doomed from the start, unless they relied on some other gimmick, such as having outrageously good action scenes (this is sorta what the Mission Impossible films rely on, which has worked for films 4-6, but not so much for 7, IMHO). Likewise, any layman could've read the outline for the story of most of these films and immediately pointed out major problems that would lose the audience.
It seems to me that, to be blind to these glaring issues and obvious red flags - so blind that you're willing to place hundreds of millions of your company's dollars on a losing bet - requires a lot of motivated reasoning which results from elevating one's own ideological biases over one's love of profit.
More options
Context Copy link