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thinking about a string of popular stories from the US I considered underwhelming in the end, I've now found a formula for such media: The Transformers-movie problem: The plot is conveyed through a violence appropriate for adult viewers but it has a depth and moral discussion on the level of a pre-schooler show.
Disney is monopolizing and we’re enabling them.
Disney has literally taken over my entire local AMC theater. There are at least 20+ showings of their movies and the rest of the films are mainstream releases with lukewarm critical reception. The only other AMC in the area that actually got independent films was just closed with no explanation to the public aside from that they “didn’t feel like renovating it so they closed it.”
There are films that are getting great reception that no one gets to see, or even has the opportunity to see because there is a clear monopoly in the industry that the Fox merger only made worse.
This Friday alone, there will be 19 showings of The Lion King, a Disney property, not counting the showings of Spiderman, Toy Story 4, Avengers: Endgame and Aladdin that are both still playing here. Tomorrow alone there are 28 Disney showtimes at my local AMC and The Lion King is not even out yet. 28 out of 61 showings altogether tomorrow are Disney films alone.
These independent films need the exposure of being in the theater. They are often made by diverse artists who want to tell a personal story and they deserve to be able to share what they create with everyone. People should not have to take a day trip to the nearest major city just to see an independent film. They have enough difficulty getting funding and distribution and oftentimes their distribution doesn't do enough to get them theater showtimes.
It’s fine to like Disney. I like a lot of stuff Disney has made in the past. But please be aware of this growing issue. I now have to travel at least an hour to maybe be able to see an independent film. Think a little bit before you say you want to see the new Disney movie “ironically.” You’re still giving them money, and by doing so you’re telling Disney and movie theater chains that it’s fine to monopolize.
Please, I’m begging you, give new artists a chance. Movies with small budgets get less showtimes to begin with (if shown at all) which makes it even harder for them to make back their budget and even pay for the screens they’re playing on. Go see independent films if you can. Watch The Farewell, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, or The Souvenir if they’re available in your area or support indie filmmakers by staying home and streaming Burning or Happy as Lazzaro on Netflix.
"People debated both sides of the issue on CNN like it was a political controversy with two equally legitimate interpretations." - BA-ZING!
You know, when I wrote the first draft of this story ~2 years ago, that line wasn’t that political or pointed… but, well, the more things change the more they stay the same, I guess.
Vaccine safety and climate change are the two most important (and therefore best-known) examples of the “science shows a fact is true; let’s debate whether science shows that fact to be true” phenomenon, but there are lots of others. One of the most infamous from history is the cigarette industry’s concentrated and largely successful effort to give non-scientists the impression for decades that there was “debate” or “controversy” about whether smoking could possibly increase one’s risk for lung and circulatory diseases. Because Philip Morris et al knew that they didn’t have to prove that cigarettes are safe (and of course couldn’t prove that cigarettes are safe) but that all they had to do was suggest that no one knows for sure.
The instance of this phenomenon nearest and dearest to my little Social Cognition-researching heart is the link between violent media and subsequent aggression. It’s fascinating how you can approach a non-psych person at a party and start talking about how video games about sharing can teach students to share, books that promote equality can promote readers’ efforts toward equality, radio shows about racism can teach people to oppose racism… and movies/games/shows that reward aggression teach viewers to be more aggressive. As of that last one, people stop nodding along and start claiming that that’s “controversial” and there’s “debate” about whether aggression can teach aggression, resorting to ridiculous extreme examples like “I played GTA as a kid and I never killed anyone” as if murder is the only type of aggression. Only the scientific consensus is in, and stories are persuasive. They persuade people to help others, and they persuade people to shout at/shove around/misinterpret others.
That uncertainty is no accident. It happens because of the news outlets that present the issue as “here’s a scientist talking about the scientific consensus which comes from actual scientific data gathered through the scientific method using strict empirical standards to test competing theories… and here’s a guy who plays video games all day who disagrees with the scientist. Let’s cover both sides of this debate with equal gravity.” It also happens because video game companies such as Ubisoft and EA Games fund “research” which finds that video games have the miraculous ability to train people in good behaviors while not training them at all in any bad behaviors.* Because as long as people keep thinking that “no one has proved cigarettes cause cancer” means “scientists don’t know whether cigarettes cause cancer,” they’ll keep on buying cigarettes.
*I don’t advocate for the ban of all violent video games, or even their censorship. I advocate for the informed consumption of violent media of all forms in moderation.
[*climbs off soapbox* *holsters megaphone*]
PewDiePie vs The Media
During February 2017, the world’s most famous Youtuber, Felix ‘PewDiePie’ Kjellberg, was called out by the Wall Street Journal over a series of seemingly anti semitic videos. In one of the videos, Kjellberg gives $5 to two men in India, in exchange for them going out into a public space with signs bearing hateful slogans such as “death to all jews”. In another of the videos, Kjellberg pays someone to dress like Jesus Christ while saying “Hitler did absolutely nothing wrong" (‘PewDiePie’, Youtube 2016). Kjellberg exacerbated the media frenzy by insinuating that the out-of-touch traditional media sought to defame him because they hadn’t properly understood his intentions behind the videos.
The consequence of this story was that Youtube and Disney severed ties with Kjellberg and his PewDiePie brand, damaging his overall credibility, and reputation as an entertainer - the debate over whether or not he is racist still rages on across the web.
What I found interesting about this story was not the content of his video, and the debate over whether or not Kjellberg and his ‘jokes’ are racist (the content of the videos is undeniably racist). It was his reaction to being called out by the media which piqued my interest. Throughout an eleven minute vlog reaction posted to his official Youtube channel, PewDiePie went on an offensive against the media, The Wall Street Journal in particular, who he accused of attempting to damage his career and image, and for misunderstanding the context surrounding the anti-semitic content of his videos.
It should be mentioned, that despite prefacing his vlog with an apology: “I’m sorry for the words that I used, as I know they offended people, and I admit the joke itself went too far”, Kjellberg thereafter immediately proceeds to defend his videos, declaring: “I do strongly believe that you can joke about anything… I love to push boundaries, but I consider myself a ‘rookie comedian’” , while adding that “A lot of people loved the video and a lot of people didn’t and it’s almost like two generations of people arguing if this is okay or not” (‘PewDiePie’, Youtube 2017).
Kjellberg is suggesting a disconnect between an audience who enjoy and ‘get’ his style of humour, and the media, who he paints as out of touch; lacking in satirical wit. In some ways, Kjellberg’s suggested disconnect parallels the divide between traditional media sources such as The Wall Street Journal and contemporary social media sources such as Youtube. If a professional, popular journalist were to come out with some racist material, they would be held accountable and risk damaging their careers. Kjellberg does not believe he should be held to the same standards, on blog post on his personal tumblr, he can be quoted as writing“I think of the content that I create as entertainment, and not a place for any serious political commentary.” (Kjellberg, F 2017). One has to wonder, though, at what point should he be taken seriously? As the most subscribed to Youtuber in the world, his influence cannot be overstated. This point becomes particularly salient when, as others have argued, a large proportion of Kjellbergs subscriber base is composed of children (Hernandez, Kotaku 2017), who may or may not possess the emotional maturity to fully grasp the complexity of the racial issues being made light of in his videos.
The disconnect between the two media worlds is shrinking rapidly and the two will continue to rub up against each other more and more as this PewDiePie controversy is sure to bring the gap closer as people begin to ponder and discuss the moral responsibilities that influential social media people have toward their audiences.
Yesterday I saw a movie with high production values but by story and characters so bad, it made me think about a style of writing I see in contemporary YA so often.
So... I call it “functional writing”. Technically a writer sets up a character with a dramatic, traumatic background story which logically would explain their motivation and why they act of their act. But in execution it’s at best lip service to have things (angsty things) happen without actually bringing any depth to the topic or the character acting in function of the plot to make “irrational” decisions.
GoT, Star Wars, HDM, empty shell Marvel movies, the 104th Toy Story, uncanny valley Disey “life action” only living because of their source material...
Let 2020 be the year the franchise hype, and the trend of “quick let’s adapt because it’s popular” trend implodes and cinemas get overtaken by small name directors creating their fresh new stories.
Female Character Descriptions Within Literary Works
I’m currently an intern for a publishing company, more specifically, a literary agent. I go through a lot of their emails where the literary queries come in and one of my main responsibilities is to take a look at the query letters and the first five pages of a person’s manuscript and either pass it on for the agent to take a look at, or kindly reply to tell the author their work isn’t quite what we’re looking for.
A lot of times it’s simply a matter of voice within the writing, but sometimes I get really crazy stuff in my inbox. You can write a great story about most topics, most - but I do get some wildly....creative...concepts that just won’t work or unfortunately a writer’s literary skills just aren’t up to par and their book is not ready to be published. That being said, there’s another category that has become popular in my short time as an intern and it’s really very alarming.
There’s a very bad trend of submissions from male writers who describe female characters in really disgusting ways. People may assume it's a stereotype, but I can confirm to you from going through these literary queries that there is a huge issue with older men writing books about teenage girls in particular.
Men old enough to be grandparents (who even mention in their query letter that they're grandparents) are describing teenage women changing their clothes in a sexual manner and focusing on erotic descriptions of their bodies when it is completely uncalled for.
This is not an isolated incident either. I've seen this time and time again in these submissions and mind you, I'm often only getting the first five pages of these authors' books. That means this type of description of young women is within those beginning pages. Today alone I got at least three queries that included this type of description.
I will be attaching some of these descriptions so that what I am talking about is understood, but I will be blacking out any author names or book titles to prevent trouble. I also apologize if Tumblr is turning the image quality to trash for all of these.
This is a letter I received. It seemed normal and I was intrigued to hear what the author was going to present in his five pages. I was very alarmed and disappointed to find the following:
One female character then goes on to call the other “a slut” and the character is described to be “in heat.” I was obviously kind of horrified by this, but soon realized it was going to be a common theme in a lot of queries.
The fact that men would be describing young women, or any woman, like this within the first few pages of their book suggests there’s a larger issue here that many of us are already familiar with. Young women, and women in general, are over-sexualized in our media, especially by men.
I think this is something we all need to become more aware of and try to correct within our own writing and the writing of our friends and loved ones. This is certainly not to say that men can never write stories about teenage women and that women or non-binary people can never fall prey to this in their writing as well, but the female perspective is important, cannot be overlooked, and men who write about teenage women should be held in check for what they are writing and creating.
on commodified feminism
really getting sick of commodified feminism. under the guise of widespread empowerment, feminism is getting weaponized by corporations through capitalism. all this girl power junk is just a way for them to sell products and media to us. they do not truly care about the representation they are providing or actually want to engage in any kind of feminist talking points/actual discussions on what feminism means for marginalized groups. I truly believe white feminism is taking over a lot of media and is pushing out other voices; voices that need to be heard.
I may have some unpopular opinions about some recent media works that are hailed as great “feminist” pieces, but it’s because it’s so clear that they are manufactured specifically to get that reaction from the masses. I think now more than ever, we need to think critically about what we consume, what feminism truly means to us at its core, and the dissonance between what feminism is ultimately meant to be versus what is being commodified and sold to us as feminism by capitalism.
