Random Thought and Controversies

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Posted by Jinnistan
3/19/2024 4:21 pm
#101

There's been one controversy from this year's Oscars which has managed to linger on past a week, and predictably it also happens to be a dumb non-controversy.  Or rather, it's a controversy that manages to be more revealing to those who find it controversial.  (I did not, in fact, take much notice of it at the time, nor mention it in the Awards thread, outside of recognizing it as a solitary incident of anyone mentioning the war in Gaza, which is remarkable in itself, considering the frequency of disruptions at some other awards shows this year.)

The story is about Jonathan Glazer's remarks, which were so innocent that they had to have been mangled out of context or even in some cases completely rewritten in order to make hay out of them.  So let's just upfront note his precise words, and understand the context of his award-winning latest film, Zone of Interest, which is about humanity's perverse tolerance for and capacity to ignore atrocities around us:

All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present — not to say, "Look what they did then", rather, "Look what we do now." Our film shows where dehumanization leads, at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present. Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?

The most common distranslation was to accuse Glazer of "refuting his Jewishness", rather than his refuting his Jewishness "being hijacked by an occupation".  One actor, Noa Tishby, accused Glazer's speech of being an "attempt to blame global issues on his Jewishness and the Holocaust".  Similarly, some people accused Glazer of making a direct comparison (ie, "moral equivalency") to the atrocities of the Holocaust and the Gaza sieze (as if such a comparison of 6 million > 30K was humane in the first place), when Glazer is pointing out that the problem is with using the Holocaust as a just pretense for committing the atrocities of the occupation, and how this is a blasphemy to the victims of both.  In fact, it's clear for any honest eyes and ears that the specific equivalency which Glazer is making is in the act of dehumanization - or the specific kind of dehumanization which leads to refusing to recognize the humanity of the other.

So yesterday, when a coalition of 450 Jewish professionals in Hollywood issued a missive denouncing Glazer's speech, it also tellingly offered a small glimpse into exactly what kind of dehumanization Glazer was implying.  Noting that Glazer's words were carefully articulated to not blame one side over the other but to lay blame on each side's dehumanizing rhetoric and actions toward the other, it's worth pointing out how so many of his detractors just assume his blame lies squarely with the Israeli state (or "Jewishness" more generally).  Let me highlight the proverbial 'smoking gun' in this letter:

The use of words like ‘occupation’ to describe an indigenous Jewish people defending a homeland that dates back thousands of years, and has been recognized as a state by the United Nations, distorts history.

Was Jonathan Glazer describing the state of Israel when he used the word "occupation"?  I mean, since this letter's authors went out of their way to invoke the authority of the United Nations, maybe we should consult that body on what it is they mean when they designated the "occupied territories"?  Could this possibly be the "occupation" that Glazer happens to be referring to?  The same "occupied territories" which has seen a "conflict for so many innocent people" in the vacuum of a legitimate Palestinian state?

So the question is, why would these Hollywood Jews automatically assume that the "occupation" refers to the entirety of Israel?  Maybe for the same reason that they implicitly dismiss the "indigenous" claims of Palestinians?  The fact that none of these Hollywood Jews are equally upset with Netanyahu for duplicitously preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state, in these occupied territories, over the 30 years that he and his party have been in power?  Or perhaps it's also a fact that these Hollywood Jews do not recognize the legitimacy of the Palestinians to have an autonomous state of their own?  Like they weren't even humans?  And clearly these Hollywood Jews are incapable of the very basic understanding that the absence of this Palestinian state, and the perpetual dehumanized and disenfranchised nebula which breeds a parallel dehumanized resentment, has maybe actually made the state of Israel less secure?

Finally, laughably, the letter includes a throwaway gesture of sanctimony: "Every civilian death in Gaza is tragic. Israel is not targeting civilians. It is targeting Hamas."  But are they even "civilians" when they lack a legitimate civil infrastructure?  Isn't it tragic that they don't have civil legitimacy?  It has to be a form of dehumanization that allows for the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent children to be tolerable on your conscience.  Which is easier when your government leaders don't respect a distiction between "civilians" and Hamas.


 


 
Posted by Rock
3/19/2024 8:26 pm
#102

I know Variety initially mangled his remarks but issued a correction pretty shortly. But that hasn’t stopped people from deliberately misinterpreting them. It’s the same move of conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, just even more obvious and in bad faith than usual.


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Posted by crumbsroom
3/20/2024 6:26 am
#103

They like to pretend they are getting hung up on the way in which Glazer spoke (which, as Jinnistan has gone through, is actually not the controversy they are saying it is), but what is underwriting all of it, as usual, is that there cannot be any criticisms pointed towards the military actions deployed by the government of Israel. Which is absolutely insane on its face. Everyone knows all sorts of governing parties, even those which have been elected democratically, can behave badly. Some out of ignorance, some out of fear and some out of pure malice. But when it comes to this situation, even when we are watching civilian death counts mount day by day, with seemingly no end in sight, and a government that clearly does not care who they are killing along with the supposed targets, any questioning of these actions is immediately shamed as not only being anti-semetic, but an act that aids the eradication of all jews everywhere.

So to show any concern for one type of person, is an immediate affront towards another type of person.

What did Glazer say about dehumanization again?


 

 
Posted by Jinnistan
3/20/2024 2:36 pm
#104

There's been a lot of 'true colors' moments since October 7th, and this is one of the more glaring.

The insidious thing about dehumanization is how its perpetrators find ways to rationalize and deny that they're doing it.  There's always some bigger picture or long-term abstract goal.  (see: Effective Altruism) 

I am more concerned about growing dehumanization from the left, not because it's necessarily worse than right-wing forms (which are more open and honest if anything), but because it threatens to erode the liberal/civil rights moral authority of our position.  The Atlantic piece, from Simon Sebag Montefiore, that I linked above (under "refusing"), is worth reading, although it is lengthy and I have my disagreements with a number of minor points.  (Montefiore, for example, I believe has been one of those critical of Glazer's Oscar speech, ftr.)  But I think the overall thesis that is presented, along with a more complicated and nuanced perspective on the historical context of the Levant is definitely refreshing compared to most of the knee-jerk commentary that I've been reading.  Despite some occasional flaws (which I could and might go into further), I think it's ultimately an important message for the left to resist engaging in a hypocritical pattern of dehumanization:

[T]he decolonizing narrative is much worse than a study in double standards; it dehumanizes an entire nation and excuses, even celebrates, the murder of innocent civilians. As these past two weeks have shown, decolonization is now the authorized version of history in many of our schools and supposedly humanitarian institutions, and among artists and intellectuals. It is presented as history, but it is actually a caricature, zombie history with its arsenal of jargon—the sign of a coercive ideology, as Foucault argued—and its authoritarian narrative of villains and victims. And it only stands up in a landscape in which much of the real history is suppressed and in which all Western democracies are bad-faith actors.

Recently, I had a falling out with a lefty podcast, Majority Report w/ Sam Seder.  Immediately after Oct. 7th, they were quite clear in condeming the barbaric act of terrorism by Hamas.  But slowly, over the ensuing weeks, we begin to see the inching towards defending these actions, sometimes led by such old-school leftist icons such as Norman Finkelstein, who said Hamas' actions on Oct 7th "warms every fiber of my soul".  (Leftists should be used to such disappointments in our elders in the past decade, as we've seen everyone from Seymour Hersh to Noam Chomsky deform into Putin apologists.)  So finally, earlier this month, when I heard Seder's producer (but not Seder himself) refer to Hamas as a "legitimate resistence organization", I had to email some patented Jinniscorn on their asses.  This is also during a time where some of our more progressive congresspeople - Bernie Sanders, AOC, Summer Lee, Jamaal Bowman - have been publicly harassed by protesters upset that they have not been supportive enough to this resistence.

But there was some karmic comeuppance.  Curiosity always compels, so about a week later, on March 8th actually, I tune into the Sam Seder livestream, while they were taking phone calls, only to see the hosts confronted by one of these pro-Hamas protesters, accusing the hosts of being "liberal Zionists" because - although they support "the resistence", although they support "dismantling the Western colonial project of Zionism", although they support a one-state solution under which Israeli Jews will inevitably be a minority - the Majority Report hosts are not yet willing to sign on to the demands of the complete expulsion of Jewry from Palestinian lands.  The caller acknowledged that these people "will not go peacefully", so the proposal of escalating a large scale war for this ethnic cleansing cannot be misunderstood.  The caller then accused Seder's own Jewishness and whiteness for his inability to support such a cause.  Unsurprisingly, Sam Seder's Youtube channel has yet to make this 'streaming-exclusive' video of the phone call interaction available to view for anyone who missed it.  The left could do itself some favors by stop acting like such people do not exist.
 


 
Posted by Jinnistan
4/02/2024 2:27 pm
#105

Jinnistan wrote:

I hope he finally gets around to doing that episode dedicated to AI that Apple wouldn't let him make.

And viola! here it is, and thankfully focused on the labor displacement issue:




It's spish how no one seems interested in describing what the American workforce will look like in the next decade or two.  Instead, we're being sold this illusion of luxury, sitting around and asking our phones stuff, with very little consideration of how the bottom 98% will be able to continue to afford these devices and services.  Just like the "gig economy" tried (and largely succeeded) to fool us with the promise of "freedom" and mobility, at the cost of our health benefits and pensions.  "Without the tax of people", indeed.

And it also brings to mind an earlier post in this thread, from last May, which I'll bump here for relevance:

Technology is supposed to help people, not replace them.  A.I. researcher Ben Goertzel had a troubling prediction that A.I. could replace 80% of all jobs.  The problem with that is not only Goertzel's enthusiasm at the prospect, but in the complete indifference to finding new ways to employ this 80% of the current workforce.  "People can find better things to do with their life than work for a living."  Oh?  And how will they afford to do all of these better things?  Because unless you're also proposing a more utopian overthrow of our entire economy (and best of luck), I don't think most people will find abject poverty as a better thing to do with their lives.  And, btw, Goertzel is a cognitive scientist who happens to be the CEO of an A.I. research laboratory, so he apparently enjoys working for a living.  This proposal of selling his product as a means of improving your life ("no more work!!!") is as much a bluff as the so-called "gig economy".  This is another example of how the rich are looking to off-load the bottom-feeding 80% of the population.  ("You'll all be better off!")  More wisdom from Douglas Rushkoff.


 
Posted by Jinnistan
4/16/2024 8:25 am
#106

Pre-emptive note that this is not a screed about Beyonce doing a country music crossover.

It's more of a screed about how marketing obscures actual music history.

I came across an article from the "TikTok video correspondent" at Mother Jones, which tends not to be the type of site where pop culture native advertising is common.  The headline caught my eye: Beyonce Just Covered the Beatles in the Most Authentic Way Possible, By Honoring Black History.

"Authentic" is one of those words that no longer means anything.  It's been completely subjugated as purely a marketing buzzword, like "artisanal" or "organic".  The problem with this headline isn't just that it somewhat implies that The Beatles' original version may have been less than authentic.  This isn't really about The Beatles.  What it insults is the authenticity of all of the other many cover versions of "Blackbird", and indeed all of the rest of the Beatles' catalogue, by Black musicians throughout this musical history.  You see, Beyonce's cover of "Blackbird" isn't bad.  It's fine.  Is it authentic?  No, it's a commercial pose, just as the rest of Beyonce's album is a pose.  Because Beyonce is the epitome of an Instagram Pop Star, very little that she does is not heavily manicured, manipulated and calculated for public consumption.  It's the opposite of authentic.  And because Beyonce's mythical narrative about the significance, or even (urgh) subversiveness, of her recent genre crossover has to be based around some pretense of unprecedented scale, in order to view this version of "Blackbird" as a truly authentic celebration of Black history, we then have to ignore the actual musical history of Black soul, jazz and gospel renditions of the Beatles' music, and how this musical history happens to be far more relevant to the Civil Rights era that Beyonce is claiming to "reissue".

Beyonce is not even authentic enough to sing in her live performances.  I'm just saying.  You know who could?  Aretha, Diana, Tina.  Look, if you're reaching for the Queen's crown, you need to know the competition.  All of these women took various Beatles' songs inspired by authentic Southern gospel music ("Let It Be", "Hey Jude") and re-rooted them back into the source tradition, bringing it back home.  Are any of these cover versions less authentic than Beyonce?  Again, perhaps you can convince the youth who are no longer aware of these gospel soul roots, because authentic gospel is as irrelevant to today's R&B as authentic C&W is to today's Nashville Pop.  When we're talking about Beyonce's "genre-defying" crossover, we should be clear on exactly what the genres are, because neither one of them are authentic anymore.  To call Beyonce "most authentic" then is an insult to a legacy of Soul music that was directly at the heart of the Civil Rights era.  It is not a celebration but an omission of Black history, because if we understood this in the context of that history, then suddenly Beyonce's feat becomes a lot less impressive.  Beyonce is not the first Black woman to cover "Blackbird" or to do so in a way which celebrates Blackness as music and history.  Not even relatively recently.














Did I mention that Tina Turner was also about 10 times a better dancer than Beyonce is?  I mean, in addition to Tina being able to sing powerfully in key while she was doing it?  For years after she was older than Beyonce is now?  I don't want to get carried away about it.  Maybe I bring it up because Tina Turner was also one of the best candidates for a true country/soul/rock crossover.  Tina's funk always had some twang to it.  She never lost that shacktown Nutbush Tennessee sensibility of a country girl raised on her bare feet.  Tina is the better doppleganger for Dolly Parton in that sense.  Tina wasn't afraid of honky boogie like "Get Back" or "Proud Mary", the latter a song that could easily be played on C&W radio in the '60s.  "Country soul" was a recognized subgenre for awhile, soul with a strong honky-tonk flavor, and Tina Turner was not above covering "Drift Away", one of the bigger mainstream country hits of the '70s.  It wasn't unusual.  Ray Charles recorded two C&W LPs a decade before that, and Isaac Hayes' biggest hit before "Shaft" was a Glen Campbell cover.  This all starts to make sense when we think back to last year's documentary on Little Richard which referred to him as "forgotten".  Indeed, a lot of this mid-20th Century Black musical history is becoming more and more frequently overlooked, as well as the traditions it represents.  Some things just no longer fit the presumed paradigm, like the inter-racial Booker T & the MGs, a grits 'n' soul group that sounds at home in both a Memphis jukejoint and a Nashville Waffle House.  The fact they did an entire cover of Abbey Road just does not compute into easy Civil Rights stereotypes.

But Beyonce will be applauded for daring to do country (five years after Lil' Nas X) and daring to cover the Beatles (because who the hell does she think she is?).  It's just hype and contrived controversy, and nothing that wasn't done more authentically over 50 years before.  I hope she gets her Super Bowl out of it.
 


 
Posted by Jinnistan
4/24/2024 4:07 pm
#107

So I guess it's true that Paste magazine removed the by-lines from their reviews of Taylor Swift's album because of death threats?  I thought for a pleasant day or two that this was a joke that went viral.

That sounds normal.  I'm not sure I really understand anything that's been going on with all of this, but I applaud Ms. Grace Byron for putting her name on this.  I just choose to be amused with it.
 


 
Posted by Jinnistan
8/23/2024 12:17 pm
#108

We've seen it for awhile now of course, but it seems to be especially acute this summer.  A lot of the online entertainment media (Vulture, AV Club) will commit to weeks of promotional manufactured hype designed to sell tickets to films that their own critics end up trashing as soon as they're allowed to see them, which is usually too late to affect opening weekend. 

But this week with the completely unwanted Crow remake, this marketing tactic looks like intentional parody.  These sites have spent a few weeks hyping "Goth Summer", with nearly daily articles and listacles devoted to all things Goth, from the Cure to Hot Topics to whatever, and the endgame is clearly to build up hype for the uber-Gothic embodiment that is The Crow.  But do any of these publications feel a little guilty, a little complicit, once it's clear to everyone that this has all been a cheap ploy to pump sales of a film that no one, by their own eventual admission, wanted to see in the first place?  Do they even feel a little used, due to the fact that, despite being expected to spend all of this energy in generating the hype, the studios won't even allow you to preview the film in question until it's too late to warn your suffering loyal audience - who, for some reason, you still expect to continue taking your site seriously - until after their dollars have been grifted?  I understand that these sites need the money, but is it too much to ask to at least ascertain whether these films are worth the co-sign before committing to shilling for them?

Anyway, whudathunk?  Apparently The Crow is a piece of shit.  Thanks for wasting everyone's time.
 


 
Posted by Jinnistan
9/07/2024 12:04 am
#109

Oh this goddamn AV Club.

You may have noticed but AV Club has managed to get sold from G/O Media to Paste and the result is a slightly more annoying layout and most of the same writers.

Little irritations.  I have nothing against this Pop Quiz Hot Shot, apparently a British mix of pop culture trivia game show and improv comedy talk show.  But in promoting the America version of the show, they tout the headline "bridging the media literacy gap".  You see, this is the problem with the lack of media literacy.  That's not what 'media literacy' means.  Media literacy is not the trivial ability to distinguish a Pac-man from a Pikachu.  Media literacy is not whether or not you know the latest slang on TikTok.  Media literacy involves the critical process of comprehending how information works in a media environment.  Media literacy would be the ability to identify the artifice of generational marketing, for example.  Or the feeble allure of "FOMO" and the other empty incentives which make pop culture more about compulsive consumerism than actual cultural expression.

But that's not the most embarrassing thing on AV today.  That would have to be their review of this new documentary, Look Into My Eyes, which works as an advertisement for psychic grifters, and whose propaganda value is measured by the reviewers' utter credulity.  Look at this filth: "Whether or not it’s all real is beside the point.."  But is it though?  "If it succeeds, does it matter if it’s truthful?"  It might!  Should we ask Trump?  Truth is just whatever you can get away with, right?  Turns out that certain delusions can be quite palliative, but just because it "feels good", especially in a temporary moment, is that enough to warrant calling it "healing", as this review does?  Where's the follow-up with these clients?  If they do actually believe that these psychics have these magical abilities to help them connect with their loved ones, their ancestors, their pets, then isn't the psychic creating an emotional dependence on their service here?  Wouldn't true healing - if we can bother to entertain the idea that truth is preferable - involve a more personal understanding and resolution of these issues that one doesn't feel require external intervention?  "Psychics are almost like therapists, and they offer a type of emotional catharsis that therapists cannot".  Based on what exactly?  Kinda like how Aaron Rodgers went to someone who was "almost" a doctor, who provided immunization that the vaccines could not?  Seriously, this is some pretty crazy reactionary anti-science going on here.  But, hey, who cares?  What is truth really?  Does it even matter?

This reviewer is willing to buy-in to the doc's apparent sympathy for these psychics, marveling at their empathy and sensitivity.  "Interestingly, none of the interviewed psychics are straight, white, cis men."  These psychics are a fun bunch: "lonely", "outsiders", "particularly religious", "struggled with a difficult upbringing by an addict father", "felt isolated by her narcissist parents’ disinterest in her artistic pursuits".  Can anyone even imagine why any of these people would seek out positions of emotional power over others?  And even if we allow that there are many therapists, and any other 'mentor' types with a similar authority over vulnerable people, who have the opportunity to exploit their positions, the psychic has the advantage of claiming a certain exclusivity of sensitive access that can only be matched by maybe a priest (and, yes, it definitely matters whether or not such claimed access is "real" or not).  But is it exploitative, especially when you put these raw, vulnerable emotions out for public viewing?  "The way their face crumples, their eyes close, a single tear runs down their cheek....when they give themselves over totally to the agony of their emotions in front of someone who is a complete stranger."  Yes, that's exactly what "exploitative" means.  It's a prostitution of a person's intimacy.  And if you find this to be entertaining, then you're probably an awful person who never got over the cancellation of Teen MomAnd unless you're Dr. Drew, therapists thankfully do not put their work out for public consumption.
 


 
Posted by crumbsroom
9/07/2024 2:42 pm
#110

It's great to think that lying to people in such a way that a person never entirely proceeds through their stages of grief, and are forever kept in a kind of limbo where they feel they have to keep returning to the one person who allows them to  continue with their illusion that their loved one isn't completely gone....through lies and exploitation....as long as they keep getting their cash.....yeah, really healthy 'therapy' there, you anti-truth fucks.



 

 
Posted by Jinnistan
9/07/2024 4:24 pm
#111

I don't know how we got to a place where anyone thinks that empathy equals "pay me to lie to you".

I did go back to check the comments, and I guess it's encouraging that they were almost universally disparagng of the review for all of the same reasons.

Is there a new wave of Woo on the rise with these kids?  I noticed on another article on one of these same sites where a writer referred to an actor as a "cusper", implying there was some kind of personality trait associated with that term that I was supposed to be aware of.  I had no idea.  I looked it up.  It refers to someone born on the transition from one zodiac sign to another.

Here's an interesting question: how long will it be before I'm called a misogynist for making fun of astrology?
 


 
Posted by crumbsroom
9/07/2024 10:28 pm
#112

Jinnistan wrote:

Here's an interesting question: how long will it be before I'm called a misogynist for making fun of astrology?

It would make you a Libra, you saucy bitch.

 
Posted by Jinnistan
9/13/2024 1:03 pm
#113

crumbsroom wrote:

It would make you a Libra, you saucy bitch.

You're getting warmer....

You guys may be aware that I hate Speak No Evil.  What did I give it?  2, 3 stars?  Either way, it was bullshit sadism exercise.  And it's now getting an American remake release.  And it's so fuuny to read this AV Club review trying to act like the film had anything salvagable going on.

Specifically, the review moans over the lack of the originals's "sharp social commentary".  Ooh!  So sharp it was!  They call the original as "brilliantly bleak", because people are super impressed these days with bleakness (dark = depth; as we all learned from Batman).  What else do you expect from a film from James Watkins, whom the review helpfully reminds directed the "excellent slasher" Eden Lake, in fact a similarly sadistic exercise in torturing otherwise normal being, presumably as punishment for being normal people?  This is reinforced in the review when it places the blame on the victims of Speak No Evil for their own torture, for their "bourgeois agreeability".  For the sin of being nice, in other words.  For being civil to strangers.  For this, and presumably only this, reason, this family apparently deserves - per this sharp social commentary - to be tortured and (*SPOILER*) slaughtered by completely blameless sociopaths. 

Also, "underlying interrogations of masculinity are abandoned", like this is supposed to be Straw Dogs all of a sudden, "uncovering the false protection inherent to the nuclear family", like this means a goddamn thing.  Similarly, the husband is criticized for being an "ill-equipped husband", but in contradiction the wife is faulted for being willing to "sacrifice anything for the collective preservation of her family" as if this were a weakness.

Finally, it's worth noting, this review actually punishes this remake for not adhering to the original's ultimate triumph of the sociopaths and "robs audiences of the darkness".  Don't get me wrong, I'm sure this remake is a piece of shit.  I'm just saying, so is the reviewer Natalia Keogan, a bitch so dumb she's celebrated Deep Blue Sea as the "anti-Jaws".


 
Posted by crumbsroom
9/13/2024 1:43 pm
#114

I've been spending a lot of time on buses, hate reading a lot of sites similar to AV Club, and it's clear as day that a bulk of their contributors or leaning heavily on ChatGPT already. Sometimes they forget to fix up the completely nonsensical sentences. It's really embarrassing.

Not that there is a much of a difference between this and what they write organically. At some point, it seems people came to believe that just using lots of adjectives and adverbs is what makes a good writer. Not ideas. Not style. Not anything resembling humor or insight or knowledge or some semblance of artistic interpretation. Just a bunch of Thesaurus thumbing to fill up their meagre word counts.


 

 
Posted by Rock
9/13/2024 3:41 pm
#115

AV Club at one point created filler pages for practically every movie ever made just to drive clicks. So I wouldn’t put it past them to have writers using ChatGPT, especially as a bunch of their previous writers were I think either let go or left in protest over management changes. (Not that I think previous writers were especially good, outside a few exceptions.)


I am not above abusing mod powers for my own amusement.
 
Posted by Rock
9/13/2024 3:43 pm
#116

I like Deep Blue Sea though lol


I am not above abusing mod powers for my own amusement.
 
Posted by Jinnistan
9/13/2024 11:49 pm
#117

crumbsroom wrote:

I've been spending a lot of time on buses, hate reading a lot of sites similar to AV Club, and it's clear as day that a bulk of their contributors or leaning heavily on ChatGPT already. Sometimes they forget to fix up the completely nonsensical sentences. It's really embarrassing.

I dipped over to one of the Paste sister pages, Splinter, and they are just as atrocious.  It's like an entire generation of writers who can't come to grips with the psychological damage that Twitter has wrought on their humor and ability to think with any complexity.

And also the typos.  I get it, I make mistakes all the time.  But it seems weird to me that even this humble little blog o' mine has a silent edit feature but these professional sites are so incapable of simple corrections.  A recent AV Club article noted that James Brolin was not going to get the role as Hal Sparks.  And before you wonder why an 80-year-old actor would even want the role as a 00s VH1 celebrity, you might figure out that they meant to say Josh Brolin is not getting the role as Hal Jordan (Green Lantern), which makes slightly more sense.  Just for clarity, I want to point out that I added this entire paragraph after the fact using the edit feature, so AV Club really has no excuse other than sloth and apathy.

Rock wrote:

I like Deep Blue Sea though lol

But is it the "anti-Jaws", though?  And even if it were, how could that possibly be a good thing?

(My best understanding is that instead of Jaws' "man vs. nature" conceit, DBS makes "man" the villain due to its tampering with nature - which is hardly a novel concept, especially as late as 1998.  Frankenstein was 1812, folks.  But anyway, you can identify a consistent strain of fashionable misanthropy in Natalia's perspective which would explain why she would see sadism as profound social commentary.)
 


 
Posted by Rock
9/14/2024 12:18 am
#118

I guess the only clear contrast is that Jaws hides the shark while Deep Blue Sea doesn’t, despite the dodgy effects. But it’s not exactly wall to wall shark attacks either.


I am not above abusing mod powers for my own amusement.
 
Posted by Rampop II
9/14/2024 5:09 am
#119

 
Posted by Rock
9/14/2024 12:05 pm
#120

lol


I am not above abusing mod powers for my own amusement.
 


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