fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2356 ]

[ SECRET POST #2356 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2356 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

__________________________________________________

09.

__________________________________________________

10.

__________________________________________________

11.

__________________________________________________

12.

__________________________________________________

13.

__________________________________________________

14.

__________________________________________________

15.

__________________________________________________

16.

__________________________________________________

17.

__________________________________________________

18.

__________________________________________________

19.

__________________________________________________

20.

__________________________________________________

21.

__________________________________________________

22.

__________________________________________________

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 134 secrets from Secret Submission Post #336.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I can't deny that I'm pretty much the same. If it's blatant, then yeah, that's one thing-- but when people want to pick apart every little part of a book or show to find all the "problematic" parts I mentally check out and go look for smutfic instead.

Define blatant. The trouble is some "fans" treat some enjoyable shows as if they were Gor novels. Then they claim their nitpicks are blatant.

blatant like... Racist, homophobic, and sexist jokes, women in their underwear all the time but never men, characters who are clearly not intended to be white being played by white actors, etc.

Also I don't like this notion that once you realize that something IS "problematic" that you can't enjoy it anymore. There is a fucklot wrong with the new Star Trek, XMFC, etc... but they're still enjoyable movies. It's possible to like things that have issues.

What is XMFC? IDKTA.

X-men: First Class

D'oh! Thank you, a dim bulb brightens.

Given context of being set in the 1960s XMFC was pretty much fine. If anything its flaw was being too progressive regarding gender and racial roles. Given the context of its setting, which was a pretty disrespectful era. Star Trek STD (or whatever) has no such excuse though.

Sigh, there are thousands of ways to show from a Doyleist/writer's/audience perspective that 60's prejudices aren't actually justified. Like, a shitload of people are actually gay, active or not, even if they have to hide it from most of the public.

It doesn't matter is they are justified or not. A work set in the 1960s should reflect properly the social mores of the 1960s. Which XMFC did pretty well at. It captured the mood, attitudes, prejudices, and psychotic Jews bent on revenge.

Except that it's fiction, so it can take liberties and be accurate enough without limiting itself. Especially since there's a fine line between reflection and emulation.

Personally, I would just rather not deal with a bunch of outdated homophobic/sexist/racist bullshit in my escapism. If it has a point or is a flat-out historical drama, then that's one thing.

But too often it just becomes another factor that works to exclude diversity for the sake of "authenticity" that isn't ultimately going to be desconstructed by society not sucking as much as it actually did.

...it's fiction, but it's set in the 1960s. If they're not going to keep things from the 1960s, then they may as well have set it on Mars. It would be a boring and frankly stupid movie if they only kept the good parts of the time period.

Also, I don't know where you got the idea that a setting resembling the time frame it claims to be a part of isn't important.

Well, that's the key word: resembling.

It can resemble the 60's and feel like the 60's without being a carbon copy of the decade, because that's hardly the point of the movie anyway. Especially when the half-baked social commentary they make is, well, half-baked.

Kind of like how Bioshock Infinite could have still been authentically what it was without amping up the racism in really gross ways. I realize that's pulling from a much more extreme example, but I'm sick of "authenticity" being used as a defense for shitty storytelling choices when all they're actually used for is pressing a button.

Re: da

(Anonymous) - 2013-06-16 11:10 (UTC) - Expand

If they're not going to keep things from the 1960s, then they may as well have set it on Mars. It would be a boring and frankly stupid movie if they only kept the good parts of the time period.

Yes, but... There's a huge difference between historical accuracy and validating a historically racist/sexist/etc. perspective.

Just one example from XMFC that really bugged me is Moira's debriefing at the end when she says she doesn't remember much, just vague impressions, "a kiss," and all of the men at the table share a manly laugh and one of them makes a disparaging comment about how that only showed that women have no business becoming CIA agents. Annoying from a modern perspective to see a strong female character (in the non-pejorative sense of the phrase) torn down like that, but historically accurate, right? Because 1960s America was more sexist, and women weren't accepted in positions of power, and men really talked and acted and thought like that.

Only that scene's actually not at all accurate because the men might be in character, but Moira very much isn't. She's a smart, ambitious woman who became a CIA agent in an era when all of her superiors and coworkers would've been hyper-attuned to the possibility of her failure, for no other reason than her sex. She would've been incredibly vigilant about how she presented herself, especially with regard to behavior that might be considered "feminine weakness." That joke should never have been written into the movie, not because men from the 1960s wouldn't have made it, but because Moira wouldn't have given them the opportunity if she'd been IC.

The end result is that that scene feels more like an homage to 1960s film rather than like a historically accurate representation of the 1960s. You could easily find a movie or TV show produced in the '60s that contained a scene almost exactly that one; while those scenes and images might be what most of us think of when we consider the past, however, that doesn't make them historically accurate, only iconic.

(You could formulate theories as to how Moira might reference the kiss in that debriefing without being OOC--telepathic suggestion by Charles, an incompletely mindwiped Moira who remembers just enough that she knows she needs to misdirect her interviewers' interest, etc.--but none of those theories is even hinted at in the film, so I think they have to be relegated to fanwank rather than being considered a serious defense of that scene.)

Re: da

(Anonymous) - 2013-06-16 21:19 (UTC) - Expand

Re: da

(Anonymous) - 2013-06-17 00:37 (UTC) - Expand

Re: da

(Anonymous) - 2013-06-17 01:06 (UTC) - Expand

no, even for its time period there was absolutely no reason for Darwin to die when his power is ADAPTING TO THE SITUATION SO THAT HE DOESN'T DIE, or for ALL of the non-white characters to end up on the "bad" side.

Regarding the non-whites ending up in the radical camp: You may have missed the point about the radicalizing dangers of alienation. Those were the ones who, in large part because of their ethnic status in 1960s society, were the most alienated from the mainstream, so were most vulnerable to radicalization from someone who offered an alternative path. You have looked only at the surface, a common mistake of SJWs, and missed the deeper message which does more to combat social inequality than SJ ranting.

Regarding Darwin specifically. He was the only character who could justifiably, within the bounds of the various character motivations, attempt to make the challenge. Within the structure of the movie, whoever made the challenge had to die. His ethnicity is irrelevant to the heroic sacrifice at that stage. Lit 101 stuff there.

Also it is no-win scenario for the director there. If you have Darwin step up and be the one to make the challenge, you are anti-black by having him fail (he can't win because the movie would end there). If you have a white character (or white-blue) then you have activists saying stuff along the lines of "how come you made the brother out to be a coward, you tryin' to say black people cower behind whites and don't step up? Someone's gotta die at that point and if you've got a racially diverse cast, whoever you pick you've got SJWs ranting at you.

Darwin may have been the only character able to step up within the confines of that story, but that's pretending that the first part of the story is immutable. The story didn't *have* to be written so that Darwin was the only possible option. Someone (or many someones) chose to write a story that lead to a situation where Darwin was the only option. They could have gone back and changed to story to give themselves more/different options, but they didn't.

Whether or not you think that they should or shouldn't have changed anything doesn't mean that they *couldn't* have.

Please see downthread for "untitled street" which is where your complaints end up. Stories are built on threat and conflict, thus they have threat and conflict within them. They also have a certain structure for that threat and conflict.

It..., you know what. Burn the niggers and the chinks, impale the sodomites on a splintery post like old Vlad used to. See I'm saying that because you don't give a fuck about anything except showing off your so-special SJ credentials and you know fuck all about context or story structure so I might as well fill this post with slurs about the retards and mongoloids and how they all deserve to be castrated so they can't breed. And the jews too, fucking splitters.

You've already made up your mind, so I'm just doing this to play down to your mindset which you would mentally file any real explanation into. Hey, don't forget the those scalping happy, firewater drinking injuns too.

+1000000

"I don't actually have anything constructive to say against your arguments so I'm gonna start spewing random slurs! Take THAT! This totally makes me better than a stupid SJW like you!"

Yeah ... just, next time, just don't bother replying because you're not as clever as you think you are.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-06-16 05:28 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-06-16 17:03 (UTC) - Expand

...doesn't Darwin adapt and become pure energy, so he can show up in a later film? I can't remember if that was from the source creators or whether it was fan-theory, though.

I haven't heard anything about that and afaik he's not part of the cast of DOFP (though honestly there are sooooo many people in that movie that even if he were he'd probably get 2 seconds on screen). It would be great if he DID show up again though!

X-Men: First Class.

Edit: Once again, ignore me. *needs to learn to refresh the page before commenting*

Edited 2013-06-15 21:29 (UTC)

No worries, I do it all the time too.

Everyone has different ideas about what's "blatant" or not. Just because you think it's subtle doesn't mean it other people didn't think it was blatant.

Or that they're wrong to be unhappy about something subtle.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only