The problem with modern movies is empty politics
Mar 22, 2024 18:23:37 GMT 1
])-Kyle "Wild Child" Gibney-([ likes this
Post by AQUA RAPTOR! on Mar 22, 2024 18:23:37 GMT 1
This topic harkens back to one judgejosephdredd made on Knowhere a while back, "Are Politics Ruining Entertainment?"
I think the answer is both a "Yes" and a "No". It's that the politics being presented in most modern movies are empty and preachy, and are always directed exclusively at just one side of the aisle.
It's also always just non-committal queer-baiting and other virtual signaling that really just has nothing meaningful to say and just annoys people on both sides of the political spectrum. Good movies have been politically charged in the past. A recent example would be Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which has a lot to legitimate stuff to say about privacy, civil liberties, governmental paranoia, and totalitarianism.
But let's go back further to much older films. We can discuss, say, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which has a lot to unpack, and I could probably write at least nine books on the issues the book and the film based on it bring up, but it all bores down to one core theme: mental healthcare is in the shitter because of many social and systemic problems.
And all of you reading that statement agree no matter where in the political spectrum you fall. And yes, it is a political theme because a big part of what's holding back mental healthcare is corruption within the establishment. No just system allows someone like Nurse Ratched to wield so much power over the mentally ill, let alone be allowed in the same room as someone like poor Billy.
Or A Clockwork Orange? I'm not fond of that book or the movie loosely based off it, but at the end the day, it shares a lot of theming with Cuckoo's Nest about the sorry state of mental healthcare and governmental corruption. In this film, the establishment takes a violently insane man off the streets and tries to brute force his rehab instead of taking the steps necessary to properly reform him, because the goal isn't his welfare, but control. So, Alex enters his new life, having been mind-raped into feeling ill at the sight of violence, and leaves prison. Then the world outside promptly delivers several kicks to his ribs and inevitably forces Alex back into his violent lifestyle.
The film also features the police recruiting thugs, implementation of debilitating, will-robbing conditioning, and the government's willingness to politicize anything, including a man's mental welfare, for their own gain.
Properly executed political theming in any form of media speaks to the masses from all walks of life on a deep level. What most of American modern cinema (and TV/Streaming) does isn't that. Not at all.
I think the answer is both a "Yes" and a "No". It's that the politics being presented in most modern movies are empty and preachy, and are always directed exclusively at just one side of the aisle.
It's also always just non-committal queer-baiting and other virtual signaling that really just has nothing meaningful to say and just annoys people on both sides of the political spectrum. Good movies have been politically charged in the past. A recent example would be Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which has a lot to legitimate stuff to say about privacy, civil liberties, governmental paranoia, and totalitarianism.
But let's go back further to much older films. We can discuss, say, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which has a lot to unpack, and I could probably write at least nine books on the issues the book and the film based on it bring up, but it all bores down to one core theme: mental healthcare is in the shitter because of many social and systemic problems.
And all of you reading that statement agree no matter where in the political spectrum you fall. And yes, it is a political theme because a big part of what's holding back mental healthcare is corruption within the establishment. No just system allows someone like Nurse Ratched to wield so much power over the mentally ill, let alone be allowed in the same room as someone like poor Billy.
Or A Clockwork Orange? I'm not fond of that book or the movie loosely based off it, but at the end the day, it shares a lot of theming with Cuckoo's Nest about the sorry state of mental healthcare and governmental corruption. In this film, the establishment takes a violently insane man off the streets and tries to brute force his rehab instead of taking the steps necessary to properly reform him, because the goal isn't his welfare, but control. So, Alex enters his new life, having been mind-raped into feeling ill at the sight of violence, and leaves prison. Then the world outside promptly delivers several kicks to his ribs and inevitably forces Alex back into his violent lifestyle.
The film also features the police recruiting thugs, implementation of debilitating, will-robbing conditioning, and the government's willingness to politicize anything, including a man's mental welfare, for their own gain.
Properly executed political theming in any form of media speaks to the masses from all walks of life on a deep level. What most of American modern cinema (and TV/Streaming) does isn't that. Not at all.