What has become of humanity...
...when they now make movies like Suicide Squad, Venom, Joker, etc. encouraging us to root for the bad guys?
share"Someone on TV told me to be outraged about this!"
*cues outrage*
Amen.
share
MovieChat Forums > Joker (2019) Discussion > What has become of humanity...
[deleted]
WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY
shareBad is good. Lots of girls dig bad boys that get into trouble. Nice guys finish last as they say.
shareI wasn't rooting for Joker.
shareThe movie is a reflection of society and not one that determines how people act.
shareIt's not "humanity."
I can't say this enough--since the 1970s, Hollywood has been taken over by a nihilist douchebags. It started with guys like Sam Peckinpah and 40 years later, this is where we're at. Nihilists worship amorality because they all jerked off to Ayn Rand novels as teenaged edgelords. Now that they're in control of mass media, they keep pushing sociopaths as anti-heroes to mainstream their toxic ideology.
What are you, a fucking Jehovah's witness? What kind of manchild needs everything to be morally in black and white? The real world is not like that. Rarely are there ever actual "good guys" and "bad guys".
If you believe this, then you have bought into a lie. A lie that even many children are aware is false
Spoken like an Ayn Randite.
shareShut the fuck up
shareI'm still talking, bitch. What were you saying?
See, that's what happens when you're an Internet Tough Guy. You talk like you're some Hell's Angel who's intimidating enough to actually get people to shut up. But they keep talking anyway because you're just a bitch typing from behind a computer screen.
I'm still talking. Again, what were you saying?
[deleted]
Why do I care that you're calling me the C-word, when this all started with you screaming at me to "shut the fuck up"? I'm still talking. When are you going to make me "shut the fuck up", Internet Tough Guy? Oh, wait--you're not.
BTW, you call me the c-word, because like every Incel afraid of sex, the vagina is a scary thing to you, so you see it as a slur. That's all that word means. "I'm afraid of vagina and women."
Statistically, the STD rates among young women today indeed make the vagina a scary place for men.
Guys, all these women do is project their bullshit onto us....just ignore it, that's how you take their power away.
Yeh, none of that is even remotely true but you keep spouting your feminazi bull.
Just FYI no such thing as the C-word, it is infact a real word.
cunt
/kʌnt/
Learn to pronounce
nounvulgar slang
noun: cunt; plural noun: cunts
a woman's genitals.
an unpleasant or stupid person.
Your quote that it means - "I'm afraid of vagina and women.", not by the oxford dictionary it doesn't.
You really are quite something.
Again with Ayn Rand? She's accused of the EXACT opposite, that everything IS black and white.
And aesthetically, she despised the rise of the anti-hero.
"Observe, in literature, the emergence of a thing called anti-hero, whose distinction is that he possesses no distinction -- no virtues, no values, no goals, no character, no significance -- yet who occupies, in plays and novels, the position formerly held by a hero, with the story centered on his actions, even though he does nothing and gets nowhere. Observe that the term "good guys and bad guys" is used as a sneer -- and, particularly in television, observe the revolt against happy endings, the demands that the "bad guys" be given an equal chance and an equal number of victories."
"Like a mixed economy, men of mixed premises may be called "gray"; but, in both cases, the mixture does not remain "gray" for long. "Gray," in this context, is merely a prelude to "black." There may be "gray" men, but there are no "gray" moral principles. Morality is a code of black and white. When and if men attempt a compromise, it is obvious which side will necessarily lose and which will necessarily profit. '
-Ayn Rand (from the "The Cult of Moral Grayness")
Once again, you couldn't be more wrong. She would completely agree with the OP. As you did with comedy and Tarantino, you consistently give these inaccurate history lessons and baseless conclusions that are just rationalizations to a cover for a simple "I don't like this" or "I do like this".
Yep, I have actually read her novels. Finished The Fountainhead, couldn't finish Atlas Shrugged. Her writing is basically propaganda. The good guys are impossibly idealistic superpeople and her villains are mustache-twirling puppetmasters.
Don't care about philosophy, so I won't comment on her ideas, but from an artistic standpoint her writing is trash and I in no way align myself with her
The novels are an expression of her philosophy. But whether you or anyone else align or not is beside the point. To think that the content of film and tv is evidence of a Hollywood creating from her philosophy is ridiculous. They can't stand her aesthetics or her politics. If it had been anyone but atomicgirl, I'd think they must be joking due to the reality being the polar opposite of what she said.
shareThe novels are an expression of her philosophy.
Oh, you never read her philosophical writings, never saw her TV interviews. You just think the novels comprised of everything that she said and thought.
To think that the content of film and tv is evidence of a Hollywood creating from her philosophy is ridiculous.
Ayn Rand was the single most influential person in America in the 20th century and has influenced everything from politics and economics to, yes, even pop culture. She was a media darling throughout her lifetime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_influenced_by_Ayn_Rand
To say that she couldn't have influenced mass media is laughably naive--and dangerously so.
Almost all of the current directors are obsessed with her, including Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan, and the parallels between her ideas and their movies have been discussed to hell and back.
Of Course Zack Snyder Wants To Adapt An Ayn Rand Novel
https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/03/17/of-course-zack-snyder-wants-to-adapt-an-ayn-rand-novel
Critic's Notebook: The Case Against 'Interstellar'
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/critics-notebook-case-interstellar-747630
The Dark Knight Rises – An Ayn Rand Hero, But Christian
https://dumpsterreview.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/the-dark-knight-rises/
Ayn Rand's warped superheroes: Of course Zack Snyder's vision of "greatness" owes everything to "The Fountainhead"
https://www.salon.com/2016/03/18/ayn_rands_warped_superheroes_of_course_zack_snyders_vision_of_greatness_owes_everything_to_the_fountainhead/
It's amazing to me the great lengths people will go to downplay Ayn Rand's influence. On one hand, she's the greatest thinker who ever lived. But then point out how far reaching (and negative) her influences, and she becomes this semi-obscure person who just wrote books that only a few die hard fans know about. share
Just what I thought. You haven't read Ayn Rand at all. What you think you know comes 2nd-hand from critics who don't understand, haven't actually read her either -- or hate her politics so much that they need to attack the rest. I've read everything. I've seen all the interviews. Every talk, every lecture. I know her chapter and verse. That's how I picked off the stupidity of your reply to cyberbob (who clearly isn't an Ayn Rand fan). And your ability to read and comprehend stinks. He said he didn't care about her explicit philosophy, so I was informing him that it is implied through her fiction anyway. Without reading her non-fiction, he was still able to discern her aesthetics more than you.
But let's look at your "sources" that you think shows that Hollywood movies are based around her philosophy, b/c these...
"Nihilists worship amorality because they all jerked off to Ayn Rand novels as teenaged edgelords. Now that they're in control of mass media, they keep pushing sociopaths as anti-heroes to mainstream their toxic ideology."
And being an 'Ayn Randite" means that you'd say things like...
"What kind of manchild needs everything to be morally in black and white? The real world is not like that. Rarely are there ever actual "good guys" and "bad guys"." -
...which might be the most laughably bad interpretation of an Ayn Rand ever. Her worst critics wouldn't say that. Artistically, she's belittled by those same critics for the opposite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_influenced_by_Ayn_Rand
Where are the screenwriters and "nearly all" directors? There are so many but they're not listed in a source you've provided?
But let's get to Zack Snyder b/c he's actually made the "Ayn Rand fan" claim. I bet he thinks so. But he brought Alan Moore's Watchmen -- of all things -- to the big screen. Let's see what self-professed anarchist, Alan Moore, thinks of Rand, her ideas, Steve Ditko, and his work.
http://www.twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/articles/09moore.html
(cont)
Did you read it? Again, like most anti-hero depiction, Watchmen is at odds both implicitly and explicitly with her philosophy. Actual Objectivists (not to be confused with "Rand fans") find Zack Snyder to be horrid aside from his stylized visuals. The Rorschach character is a direct swipe at Ayn Rand acolytes. His name and his mask is about more than the psychological test. It's about his moral rigidity and seeing it all as black and white. Objectivists cringe at what ZS might do with The Fountainhead. Some of them gave a mild nod to 300 only b/c it depicts heroes vs tyranny and mysticism. (Now Leonidas is a nihilist anti-hero sociopath?!?)
https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/03/17/of-course-zack-snyder-wants-to-adapt-an-ayn-rand-novel
Yeah, this seems written by someone with a deep understanding of philosophy. Or maybe just a tiny hit piece that someone who doesn't want to bother to read the source material might slurp up. The writer clearly found their target audience in you.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/critics-notebook-case-interstellar-7476
Ah, so a critic saying "Has Nolan been reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged?" settles it, huh? And MM's character is another "nihilist anti-hero sociopath"??! As usual, and like this article, your argumentation is all over the place. The idea that a movie that concludes that love is the answer to a problem that they've been trying to solve with logic and scientific understanding comports with Ayn Rand's philosophy is laughable. She'd groan at where Interstellar winds up.
https://dumpsterreview.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/the-dark-knight-rises/
Did you even read this? Or just google Rand and Nolan then copy and paste? Although he gets some stuff blatantly wrong, I can tell this person has done some reading of the source material. And yes, some Objectivists like a portion of this film, some of which is correctly identified. But tell me where your "amoral, nihilist, sociopath anti-hero" thesis shows up? That's Nolan's Batman now?!
(cont)
Who was The Joker in TDK? An ACTUAL nihilist, amoral sociopath -- who is depicted as the VILLAIN -- who our HERO, Batman, fights against. What exactly is Nolan stuffing us with? Are you really claiming that Joker as protagonist and anti-hero in the Phillips film expresses the same philosophy as what Nolan did by making him the villain and antagonist in TDK? Which is it? Ayn Rand would favor Nolan's handling if for no other reason than that he maintains an actual hero and villain, and that he doesn't do what Phillips does, that he doesn't give determinist rationalizations for Joker's character and actions. Objectivists root for Nolan's Batman, not Phillips' Joker.
Snyder might fashion himself an Objectivist but his canon speaks for itself -- Watchmen in particular, which is a takedown of the concept of hero, including the Ditko/Rand connection.
Others have seen elements in some of Nolan's movies -- but to the extent they exist, they go against your thesis of the amoral, nihilist, anti-hero depiction. Clearly Interstellar shares no philosophic DNA with Phillips Joker. Even his film that had the Joker character didn't handle it in the same way. There's not a hint of sympathy or context for The Joker in TDK. Contrast that with Phillips Joker to see how off-base you are.
Wherever you find an Arthur Fleck, Travis Bickle, Alex Delarge, Patrick Bateman, Walter White or Tony Soprano, you're not in the realm of Ayn Rand's aesthetics. You're on the other side of the spectrum. AR is about Gary Cooper in High Noon, not Will Munny in Unforgiven. That's her philosophy as applied to aesthetics, and she's been ripped with comments nearly identical to "What kind of manchild needs everything to be morally in black and white? The real world is not like that. Rarely are there ever actual "good guys" and "bad guys"." since forever. And that's what made your reply so inane.
https://www.quora.com/What-movies-best-embody-Ayn-Rands-Objectivism-philosophy
Fin
And aesthetically, she despised the rise of the anti-hero.
What on earth does her hatred of the anti-hero have to do with the fact that today's Hollywood filmmakers are basing so much of their movies around her philosophies?
BTW, did you actually read that entire essay? Rand was complaining about a new form of morality that doesn't recognize a rigid form of good and evil, and she said the anti-hero was a reflection of this moral ambiguity. Well, she was wrong. An anti-hero has never been a morally ambiguous figure, not in her time or in ours. In her day, an anti-hero was someone who was clearly on the side of good but had anti-heroic characteristics. In our day, it's now any sociopath who has righteousness on his side because he's somehow risen above selflessness and compassion.
The bottom line is that you're trying to prove some point about how Ayn Rand couldn't be responsible for the way today's anti-hero are being written, when she herself didn't even understand what an anti-hero was. share
Good grief. Her hatred of the anti-hero's emergence in lit/tv/film comes from her philosophy -- specifically the branch known as aesthetics. Nothing being made now and little of what was made back then jives with her philosophy. Objectivists can't find a movie that passes muster. The closest they've ever endorsed, other than those based on her novels, is Chocolat.
It's painfully clear that you don't know her philosophy at all. And it's patently absurd for you to declare that what's being offered today is "based on her philosophies". You couldn't come up with content more antithetical to her philosophy than a film like Joker. It goes against everything: her metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics -- all of it. I've actually read her stuff. That's how I know how wrong you are. You haven't. That's why you made the mistake.
For someone who wants to come off as the wise old owl who has seen it all and knows it all, your scholarship stinks. You've just absorbed a few wrong notions in a second, third or fourth-handed way, then added a dollop of your own conjecture, before passing it off as knowledge when it is anything but. You need to brush up. Look at the posts from "Geff" on Joker to understand what philosophy is being expressed. He has it right. You got the wrong philosophy and the wrong philosopher -- by 180 degrees. As I said, she'd agree with the OP and what they've identified.