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 -
If I parse your post as you seem to have meant it, watching original Star Wars movies is just consuming, but watching reedited ones is "consooming". Could you clarify exactly what the distinction is between consuming and consooming?
Oh, clearly I consume the things I like, and you consoom the things you like because you suck.
I'm kidding, that's a really good question. To me, there is almost a level of abuse in the average consoomer relationship. Publishers almost treat them like paypigs. Just actively shit all over them, to see how much they can get away with. Kill off their favorite characters, utterly humiliate their demographic repeatedly, all while preaching that it's important to show everybody (except you) being heroic, moral and capable.
There is an element of disposability to it all. The whole meme, near as I know, spawned from a Red Letter Media line like "Don't ask questions. Just consume product, and then get excited for next product".. The full parody video is also worth a watch. Timeless classic IMHO. Consoom RLM, ahem what?
But it's just this endless spigot of low quality, disposable, formulaic entertainment products. You aren't meant to rewatch, there is barely time, the next thing is already on the way. We went from an MCU with 6 movies in 5 years for phase 1, 6 movies in 3 years for phase 2, 11 movies in 3 years for phase 3, to a quantity of films and tv shows on such a compressed timescale it's taking me actual work to add it all up. 9 movies in 2 years, plus 8 6-9 episode tv series?! Jesus fucking christ. It's almost threatening. Like, you enjoyed this franchise. You want to be in the cool kids club and not miss out on current thing. But instead of abusing 2 hours of your time a year, they are abusing probably closer to 100 hours of your time! And it went from the price of a movie ticket to 4 movie tickets and 12 months of an online subscription service!
Maybe it's all a false distinction. Maybe I'm consooming just as much when I rewatch my hard copy of Lord of Illusions every year around Halloween, or National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation during the holidays. Maybe my sense of cultural continuity, enjoying the same "classic" films my father enjoyed, and exposing them to my children as well, is a thin veneer over generational consooming. Maybe reading the original Dune every few years, and finding new things to appreciate isn't any less consooming than picking up the latest Dune novel and giving it a go.
Oh god I think I threw up in my mouth a little bit.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel in my bones there is a qualitative and quantitative difference between consuming and consooming. Maybe phase 1 of the MCU was consumption. Maybe it was on the line of consooming. We're so far past that now in phase 5?!, there is only consoom.
I'd say the difference is personal, not in the product personally. You don't have to watch all the Marvel content. you can watch all of it if you like, or none of it if you like. You can watch the stuff that has your favourite characters and ignore the rest if you like.
I'd personally say the "consoom" prototypical example is from the 80s. Pretty much every Saturday morning kids cartoon was there to sell toys. Transformers, Action Force (or G.I. Joe), Visionaries, He-Man, Care-Bears, MASK, Rainbow Brite, My Little Pony, Thundercats, Gobots, Centurions and probably more. Compared to the shows I watched in the 70s they were much more product focussed I think. To the extent in Transformers that except the main characters, most of the side characters would be left blank in the story until they knew which toy was being sold that they needed to insert. Watch show, pester parents to buy toy, and repeat with the next new show and toy.
Though of course the Hot Wheels cartoon was in 69, so all of those were just building off that.
Possible, but politically unsound.
Is it? I admit I have not noticed that. No-one seemed to care when my answer of "Have I seen the new Antman movie? was Nah, I might catch it on streaming if I have a couple of hours when I am bored one day. Or when I hadn't watched Ms Marvel as I didn't really care about her as a character.
Lucky for you. I learned some important lessons during GamerGate, and "it can't happen here" was not one of them.
We probably learned very different lessons from GamerGate by the sound of it. Mine was: Many of my gamer friends held deep seated anti-female feelings and would rather focus on that than actual issues with the deeply corrupt gaming journalism field.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There's a phenomenon where a show is created to sell toys but the writers have free reign to do what they want as long as the toys are included in the show. That has resulted in a lot of good children's programming despite the intent being to sell toys.
I'd also point out that it just isn't true that all Marvel movies do well. If some Marvel movies are good, some are bad, and the audience is able to tell the difference and stays away from Eternals, can you really call it consooming?
And I'm skeptical that Han Didn't Shoot First counts as consooming. It wasn't Disney that originally made that change--it was Lucas. Lucas is the creator (or at least a major creator) of Star Wars, and he didn't change the scene to sell more product, he changed the scene because that was his idea, as the creator, for what the scene should be like.
Personally I thought Eternals was a good movie, better than quite a lot of their other offerings, but there we go. I am not sure the product being good insulates it from the claim in any case. Even if I really liked MASK, it seems a pretty good example of consumer culture. It was created specifically to get us to consume more, and not just to see more of the show itself.
Yeah revisions to Star Wars are their own trope, literally - George Lucas Altered Version in this case. He seems to see revising his movies as technology improves to simply be bringing them closer to his vision. He even did it to American Graffiti and THX 1138, which I don't think are great examples of consumerism.
If audiences can recognize whether the product is good or bad, and refuse to consume when it's bad, then the product may have been made to get them to consume for its own sake, but they aren't actually consuming for its own sake.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link