How is kindness a bad thing? I thought that was universally agreed to be a good message to have in a piece of media. I guess the excuse is they don’t want media to have messages at all but like, how would you even have a movie where the hero has no values that they stand for?
Billionaires like Peter Thiel have thought long and hard about why they can’t get everything they want. He has effectively said that his own policies would be so unpopular that nobody would ever vote for them, but that he has found the internet to be an effective tool to sway populations.
So what about us makes the world so good that they can’t fulfil their darkest desires? Social cohesion, knowledge and empathy.
What have himself, Muskrat et all have inundated us with over the last few years is their “antidote” to that: stranger danger, disinformation and “empathy is weakness”. It’s the playbook of the billionaire psychopath and people don’t realise they are dancing to their tune.
Interesting point! I’ve recently started thinking about the core message of Christ. It’s been misused and abused for millennia, but at its core it literally is “treat people like you would want them to treat you”.
But if everyone thought that way, where would the support for war come from? How can we justify monstrous behavior for profit without figuring out ways to make the victims seem like different people than we are? Horrible people who deserve the violence!
People have this ability to take the most constructive, beneficial and altruistic ideas and bend them to create victims and justify violence.
This shit has been happening since the first person used a thunderclap to elicit a sacrifice. The new church is social media, and the new congregation is worldwide.
Their religion / tribal cult only wants to use the United States, forget about “Truth, Justice and the American way”, they want US soldiers to pay with their blood.
Nah kindness is Woke
I have a theory of society that is 30-30-30 based around a narcissistic spectrum. 30% of the population at any given time is narcissistic to some extent. They are conceited in their interactions with society.
We live in a time of decline. This is creating stress throughout the population. How people react to this stress shows their true character. The narcissistic leaning people, during these times of stress, look for scapegoats. If we just eliminate these types of people, we can go back to the good times. They are the fascists throughout history. When fascism and mindless violence rises during times of decline, it is due to this latent population, which is always there but only activated by the stress of decline.
The other groups are the 30% who are altruistic and cooperative. They interact with society by seeing what can be built by all and the value of different types of people. They have won the day too throughout history, but a society the averts disaster by coming together and rebuilding is just a society that continued to be successful. They are little noted as they do not bring the great calamities and destruction that get written down in the history books.
The final group are the 30% who are ambivalent. They don’t engage with politics in a meaningful way and have little willpower. They see life as a fate to be endured. Whichever way the wind blows, they will follow, or at least, endure it.
The balance determines which side wins. It is influenced by the power structures of the day, the zeitgeist and the strength of propaganda and the leaders of each side. It’s fairly clear which side is winning now and I don’t see the altruistic side coming to save the day any time soon.
Often times, when altruism does prevail, it is because someone with great courage that is a member of the existing power structure leads their cause. There are no such people at this time. Our power structure has explicitly embraced greed and sociopathy for 50 years now. Everyone who is successful now has been a part of that system and is thoroughly corrupted by it.
Good theory but the math is off, 30+30+30 only adds up to 90. What about the other 10%?
The balance. It ebbs and flows with the cultural landscape of the times. It determines which side prevails.
And just a hunch, I’d say it leans toward the ambivalent center most of the time. But as things get tough, it would become more activated and polarized.
Cause Americans are obsessed with Rugged Individualism.
If you are in trouble, you don’t accept help, much less ask for it. You pull yourself up by your bootstraps and turn your fortunes around with grit and determination using nothing more than the loose change in your pocket.
Thats how anyone that needs help became nothing more than social parasites leeching off the rugged individualistic success of their betters.
Thats why Americans, on the whole, have all but erased empathy and good will towards others.
Its why 1/3rd of the country actively votes for weak, pathetic fascists who poorly playact as strongmen. Its why 1/3rd of the country didnt bother voting, because they have no problem with fasciatic strongmen punishing the weak and the other.
The New Religion of the American Orthodoxy is basically “Fuck you, Got Mine”.
Hyper-individualism is a much more modern idea that may have its roots in our founding but it was exploited by capitalism during the post-war financial boom last century.
Before we had media showing us “how it should be” families lived together throughout their lives, communities helped each other and American towns pulled together and helped each other in a variety of ways. The whole idea of single-family homes was invented by the housing industry to get people to buy three to four times as many homes. To sell this they started leaning harder into the idea that you’re the protagonist, you specifically, you are special just for being American, you are special for wanting your own things (that are advertised to you) and so on.
And before industrialized America and throughout the last several hundred MILLENNIA we were a communal species, it’s why we have so much contradictory hard-wiring that influences how we feel about our social standing, about other people’s feelings towards us, why there are so many people who latch onto authoritarians and fear strangers. These are ideas that run in direct opposition to “rugged individualism” and they are clear signs we’re not living the way we’ve been designed by literally millions of years of evolution.
Capitalism has pried apart the very fabric of our species and weaponized it.
I only watched a cam-rip and stopped after Louis Lane “interviews” Superman which was painful to watch. The typical reporter tearing and deliberately misrepresenting or framing things in the dominant world order, every question a cut and propaganda criticizing people who disagree. It was kinda gaslighting, like “why did you attack our ally unprovoked?! Also some people are saying you’re an alien spy!”. Instead of asking questions to get the truth, they are loaded questions that can’t be answered without making yourself look bad.
What a total failures as a character introduction and makes her instantly an unlikeable removed. I mean holy shit is that bad storytelling. Or is that just me? If that is what you think a reporter should do, then don’t do it as a friend / girlfriend, and if that is how you see the world that you are not worthy of being the girlfriend of a hero like Superman. Because in my opinion you’re one of the villains in real life.
I do suspect this plays into why some people disliked superman. What people seek in these troubled times is strength. And they hate what tears strength down, seeking to control or subdue it or put it in it’s place in the proper order of things. They want someone to break things because deep down we all know the path we’re on right now leads downward (economic inequality, enshittification of products, appliances and services, climate change and environment, rising tensions, news and social media, post truth world). The people voting aren’t entirely wrong in just wanting to see the world burn.
There is a quote which I don’t know where it came from or remember well: “The samurai valued strength above anything else, because that is where all other values flow from”. Or differently: “The samurai believed that strength was the foundation of all values, as it enabled them to uphold honor, loyalty, and discipline.”
But our liberal world order sees strength as something that has to be separated, atomized, means tested and distributed into channels to control. Controlled by laws, bureaucracy or better yet, the dictates of capitalism, because it’s oh-so-efficient. I suspect right wingers like Homelander not because he’s a corporate product, but because he breaks out of that and goes rogue, and also rejects the “we must not kill anyone and obey the laws or we will be like the villains!” bullshit.
The cult of personality or hero worship represents a desire of people that someone comes and fixes all this shit and cuts through the red tape. Someone who has strength and the courage to use that strength, despite all the clever fucking shitty arguments and conventions to the contrary. Because we’ve heard it all before and it sounds so good but it’s clearly not working. Superhero movies are supposed to fulfill that wish and grand escapism into a world where our problems are magically solved. But recent movies (Marvel) failed to do that, instead pushing the failed real world fantasy of a liberal world order into the movies. Like the common trope of Washington and the government being fundamentally good and working well, except for a few bad apples, and as soon as you get the proof and give it to the good people or the newspapers, everything works out fine. Which is a painful reminder that it doesn’t in real life.
I suspect the “reactionary backlash” is not just about racism, it’s about the rejection of the distraction of identity politics - that if we only lean in more, if we accept different cultures, everything will be fine - because that is just distraction from the continued neoliberalism and disaster capitalism. But breaking things and bringing things to a head is also an opportunity - accelerationism.
These are just by jumbled thoughts on how this reflects on our culture war. Again, I haven’t watched the movie or read any of the right wing critiques, only seen the “liberal backlash to the backlash”. This controversy in itself is rather predictable and pisses me off. Like it’s a distraction in itself, a pair of two anger memes that complement each other perfectly are tossed into the ether to continue to keep us occupied.
Also after I stopped the movie I read some (serious) reviews and it’s also just a shitty movie.
If you’re going to use a movie to deliver populism and morality, it better be a good movie or you’re just handing ammunition to the world’s worst piles of shit.
We need to all collectively admit to ourselves that Superman is tired and over and from a different world. We can write new stories that will connect with and give hope to a far more apathetic and cynical population.
Yeah the value of art is that it can express or show things about the world that are hard to express in words. And we desperately need a new way and clarity about the failure of the old ways, because that is what leads to the cynicism and hopelessness. So either keep politics out of it and produce harmless entertainment, or have a bloody brilliant take on politics that provides actual artistic value.
I quite like superhero movies as escapism, like a fantasy world where clear definitions of good vs evil exist. But I can’t stomach biopics or docudramas that mix this fantasy with real world propaganda, like some nostalgic fantasy about US politics or journalism any more. It feels like they all want to recreate the beautiful fantasy of Sorkin’s “The White House” or the classic thriller take of “a bad apple in a good system” but today that is a dangerous lie.
The best example of how the world has changed and changed us is by rewatching The West Wing. A show that if aired today, would probably end up with the production studio burned down.
Yeah, it’s amazing how many people think admitting to being an asshole is a flex.
It seems like Superman is the hero we deserve to fight this fascist trash sitting in the White House and beyond.
We need more of these positive representations, and god I’m so glad that almost every hateful right-winger cannot be creative with something other than hate.
This movie gives me hope, but I cannot speak for you.
we all think we deserve superman, but we only deserve freiza.
I haven’t seen the new Superman yet. I’m going on Tuesday cause that’s the cheap day where I live. I’m looking forward to it though. I found Captain America 4 cathartic, watching Captain America beat up an angry president. I think Superman will also be cathartic with what’s going on in America
this is what those people want.
Yeah it’s really wild
Why batman is the worst superhero, just another billionaire…
Ironman is another billionaire.
Hollywood whitewashing billionaires…
We won’t see a poor superhero anytime soon
Spiderman was just some orphaned kid from Queens.
and look how they made him a lackey for Ironman in Marvel universe!
IronHeart. I don’t know if Riri is dirt poor but her needing money to build tech is a major plot point.
And Republicans got mad and said it was disrespectful to Tony to acknowledge he needed money to build his tech.
Wasn’t she just an incredibly horrible person though? I haven’t seen it.
Kidness is woke. And you know, woke is bad because reasons.
For all the right wingers who think woke, pro immigrant superman is a new concept, reminder that this is a poster from the 1950s
Interestingly enough zero black people depicted, or any other races but white - just one dude with a dark orange complexion like the Mango Mussolini.
from this article:
Another story from 1953 called “People are People” has a Black youngster holding off an escaped lion until Superman can capture the animal. The owner of the circus the lion has escaped from wants to congratulate a white boy for his (nonexistent) heroism until Superman points out that the heroic young man was Black, and that the circus owner only wanted to congratulate the white boy because he was prejudiced.
Ethnicities. “Race” is a shit expression.
Colour palette.
But it’s three syllables shorter! That’s like 75% of the syllables. Won’t you think of the savings?
Agreed, but ‘ethnicity’ means something else, closer to ‘national origin’ mentioned on the poster. All the white people pictured may well be of different ethnicities, for example. ‘Ancestries’, perhaps? ‘Different skin color’?
Yeah you got the crux of the problem here! Let‘s correct people that are saying the same with a bit of arrogance to have a dopamine kick and then let’s make a fight about this so we are pushing the other person away
God why everything has to be so divisive these days?!
Interesting article about the history of ‘socialist superman’ during the depression and the ideological evolution.
I like the Nathan Fillion comment during some red carpet interview when the interviewer was trying to egg him into saying something that would get rage clicks from one side or the other of the current political trash fire.
“its just a movie guys”
Superman was not a brooding edge lord until Snyder’s take outside of specific story runs, and it is obvious that a lot of people don’t know that.
Captain Hammer best superhero, who’s with me on this
I so want a sequel to the sing along blog.
Dr Horrible has become obsessed with reviving Penny by turning back time. He doesn’t care how many people need to die, because he believes he can “fix” things. But the risk of time travel is the destruction of the universe…
Captain Hammer, now knowing what pain is, has two choices, grow and overcome the pain, or continue to hide away…
And Penny. The multiple zombies, and clones, and computer simulations of Penny that were never “right”. Well, she too has her parts to play.
That plot was already made by marvel, almost to a T
love it, but it won’t happen.
Dr Horrible was released 17 years ago.
The cinematic-repubLkan-universe kindness is weakness… Good doesn’t pretend to be evil. But evil does pretend to be good…ffs, 'the list is on my desk…"
