site banner
SeekingBlood  1yr ago (text post)   2642 thread views

I feel that people often praise movies that call out or subvert expectations of their genre solely because they do that, even if execution of the subversion itself is not good.

Deleted
7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

"Subversion" is what technically accomplished but deeply uncreative people do. As an act of artistic creation, it is by definition reliant on the creative exercise of countless other artists. The trope must be subverted, but a "trope" is nothing more than a whole lot of individual creative decisions that converged in some sense.

It is witless rebellion for its own sake, and as such, we can look forward to hearing a lot more about it for the next millenium.

I'm more inclined to think that subversion can be done well or poorly, like much else. Parody and pastiche seem like natural subcategories of subversion, and those require considerable creativity to execute well. I find less value in the more purely iconoclastic approaches to subversion, though.

Well or poorly for sure, but even at its heights, subversion can never reach greatness. It is only by "subverting" some better work that it exists, after all. Subversion is to story as impressions are to comedy.

I'd argue many of the great enduring works are subversive. The Christian gospels are extremely subversive works in many ways. Everyone thinks Jesus is marching into Jerusalem to take the throne as "king of the Jews," but his real purpose there is to be tortured to death like a common criminal. "The last shall be first, and the first shall be last." The gospels are loaded with stuff subverting the religious and cultural expectations of the time and place.

I think my argument stands. The gospels aren't exactly great literature.

2000 years worth of history would appear to disagree.

Meh, Fifty Shades of Gray outsold The Fall by a factor of seventy. I'll stand by my judgement.

Except we're not talking about Camus, we're talking about the Bible.

Icons are a prerequisite for iconoclasm. Once the great idols of gods are torn down, the statues of great men are next, and then the statues of ordinary men. When only the memory of statues remain, they must rail against and try to tear down memories too, to remain iconoclasts.

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