Movies & TV

Moscow on the Hudson, where Robin Williams is a Soviet musican who defects to the US because he's so amazed by a NYC department store (he also befriends a friendly gusano lawyer)

The hate you give(2018). The book wasn't radical or anything but the movie pretended everyone's protest against police violence is the same as protest against gangs, therefore getring rid of the one big bad guy gang leader is the same as justice.

Heavy Metal (1989)

All evil in the universe is the result of one green spirit demon fucking around for no reason, and the universe is ultimately saved by a dominatrix with a sword and a pterodactyl. Yeah, right.

I just watched Master and Commander, because dudes somehow love that movie because it shows just us guys hanging out, doing stuff, and occasionally managing emotions in the most stilted fucking manner. I will never get over how the film is basically propaganda for the British navy and British imperial wars. They kept talking up Admiral Nelson so much that I thought it would lead up to something. Nah, his aristocratic and pro-slavery views were never discussed.

The Muppets Take Manhatten

I'll take this moment to shill:

Remove All American Media And Culture From Your Life

!noyank@lemmy.ml

Lol, my first thought was Pursuit Happyness too. I was subjected to it in school. This dude who is fulfilling the “American Dream” just got incredibly lucky despite stupid decisions. “Meritocracy” amiright? He was the top in all his classes and invested a huge amount in stupid machines. He ends up homeless because a bunch of terrible stuff happens but he’s able to pretend to be rich and try hard and solve a Rubik’s cube. Yay this one dude gets to be rich while the masses of poors he was briefly amongst continue to suffer. When I saw them in the streets my first thought was how they should be organizing, not begging for a bed. What an inspirational movie.

You've Got Mail

Ready Player One is another huge Liberal brainworm

All movies are liberal bougie decadence

Sorry to Bother You (2018).

I know people want a good radical comedy, but that's not it. It's been a while so I can't remember everything about the film but there are some major points.

The protagonist gets wealthy by selling arms, then moves to an apartment in the sky where he essentially looks down on the people. At the end, he leaves it all behind because he realizes the fucked up nature of that life and moves back to his uncle's garage, but he kept some of furniture of the apartment and said something to the effect of like 'We're back to where we started but there's no reason we can't have some nice things.' These pieces testify as corpses of his class betrayal. He is, on the exterior, the garage which symbolizes working class politics and struggle, but within his garage, he has the desires and furnishings of one of the worst aspects of capitalism as his interiority awaiting a repetition. He never fully let go of, or totally rejected, the desired niceties—literal furnishings—of that lifestyle. The ideology lives on within him.

And the moment of Revolution, which brings the hope of the new world, is carried through by Capitalism's own dark creation. I think Riley wanted to show this classic idea, since Marx, that Capitalism has sown the seed of its own destruction. But this is not a protletarian revolution. It is a 'Equisapien' revolution. I think this shows Riley's pessimism that revolution is impossible. Humans are ready to betray their class and humanity as a whole for luxury and will never be the same, even if they have a moment of rectification, they will always remain stained and corrupted—the protagonist and the new garage. But these mutant, super-humans have the capacity because—I'm not entirely sure why anymore. The point being, humans are the ones who need to carry through an anti-capitalist Revoltion in real life and we need to do it by organizing with other fellow humans who have the revolutionary potential to see it through. We cannot wait for a literal new species/race to come into existence to save us from capitalism as a deus ex machina. This is almost a Communist's pseudo-superhero movie, with the super/antihero coming in when everything seems lost and saving the day. Just because it is some unattractive, monsterous creation of capitalism doesn't mean it necessarily has a different meaning from a typical superhero movie—don't worry, someone will come save you from yourself because you simply cannot do it yourself. Total lib fantasy where you still get to keep your ill-gotten treats.

I'll also mention this is totally on-brand for Boots Riley, the middle-class son of an attorney who wants to play at revolutionary but still keep his nice things that he's accustomed to having.

Birth of a Nation.

The Patriot.