I’ll start with “PCU.”

The one upside is that the main villain is played by the lady who also played how-much-could-it-cost and she’s amazing as she always was even while playing a terrible role in an enlightened centrist pop-nihilist propaganda film.

The rest of it is steaming smug-seasoned “caring about things makes you stupid” ideology. And I mean pretty much anything that might matter to disadvantaged people or the planet they live on.

Wildlife conservation? Stupid. (tear down those flyers, yeah fuck non-human life forms!)

Veganism? Stupid. (better bully them until they cry!)

Black activism? Stupid. (lol look they’re chasing the clueless white boy with vaguely lynch-themed cinematics WHAT IF WE REVERSED THE VICTIM AND PERPETRATOR?!)

Feminism? Stupid. (they just need to get laid lololololololol)

how-much-could-it-cost is politically correct and has two hyphenated last names? Some rich white assholes firing her is seen as the happy ending!

All of those silly people that care too much about things just have a le epic drunk party at the end and that washes away all their concerns about the world like so many lotuses eaten by so many lotus eaters. They touched grass! smuglord

Fuck that movie so much. All the chuds in my immediate biological family loved it, of course.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      6·
      2 months ago

      Disney did a flip where the sheep were the bad ones actually, which in some ways felt even more “the enemy is too weak and too strong” at a glance.

      • Andrzej3K [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        4·
        2 months ago

        Tbf it’s not a bad film, and I do think it was well-intentioned in its way. It’s almost as if the ideological context were irreparably fucked that no matter what you do within that framework, you end up reproducing reactionary politics 🤔

        • Balefirex [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          I wouldn’t call it reactionary. The message of the movie is about overcoming prejudice. Yea there are negative connotations if you try to directly transpose races into the allegory but that’s certainly not the intent. Copaganda aspect is still problematic ig but I like b99 too shrug-outta-hecks

          • Andrzej3K [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            3·
            2 months ago

            Hmm I think it definitely is intended as that sort of allegory though — otherwise how can the message be about overcoming prejudice? Prejudice against what? And yes, it’s well-intentioned as I said, but, come on, in trying to tell a story about tolerance, they end up building this world where ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ are biologically distinct groups, and the message of the movie seems to be “yes, this is true, but we should look beyond these obvious facts”.

            Tbc, I don’t even mean this as a criticism of the film — but these aforementioned aspects do tell us something about the culture at large, I think.