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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32429 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” is famously about white supremacists who envy black bodies while denigrating black minds. A true horror delight, and definitely Culture War fodder. His “Us” and “Nope” are less on the nose for your request, both terrific filmmaking in and of themselves, but also worth watching for what they have to say about the black experience/The Struggle.

The rather confusing hextuple film “Cloud Atlas” is what drove home for me the concept of privilege, but also how much social justicers want to be The Ally Who Helps Oppressed Group Get Unoppressed.

I saw Get Out and loved it. I don't think what I got out of it is the same as what everyone else got out of it, judging by other peoples' reactions to it and even what other people have directly told me, but I did love it. I should see the other movies you've mentioned. Thank you.

I saw the symbolism in Get Out, but I got more out of it as a sci-fi horror film dealing with the nature of brains and minds. I’ve always loved body transformation stories, and fantastic tales about what nerve networks can actually do, and this scratched one itch while giving a delightful ick factor to the other. I enjoyed “Nope” even more.

Have you seen Being John Malkovich? The central plot device is the same as that in Get Out, but the themes of the film are different.

That was the film which gave me an appreciation for John Cusack; I think I’ve seen it thrice.

I see no correlation between these two life-extension films, even though apparently there are links such as one actress being in both films. One was a magical realism story where the mechanism is mystical and the multi-person possession target is apparently random; the other is barely squishy hard SF where the mechanism is bloody and the single-person possession targets are kidnapped for their physical attributes.

If anything, I see more in common with both in 2011’s In Time where the rich buy time to live and the poor have to beg or steal it.

It’s worth noting that the truly subversive aspect of Get Out is that the “white supremacists” (as you call them) are old-school liberals who fetishize blacks, almost literally consuming them for their own advantage, reflecting the racial dynamics of the Democrat party.

Can you remind me what part of cloud atlas you’re talking about?

Five of the six stories has a person being dehumanized by their society because of one of their attributes: the slave, the gay guy, the senior citizen, the clone, and the “primitive human” on the Old Earth reservation. Each gains the sympathy of a person with a standard amount of privilege and together they struggle for the dehumanized person’s freedom from their oppressive situation, with varying degrees of success.

Five of the six stories has a person being dehumanized

In the sixth story, nuclear power is dehumanized.

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