So I have been stewing on making a thread about this topic for awhile now and I decided to bite the bullet. I'm of the opinion that the internet conspiracy outage cycle has damaged the way we're allowed to discuss contentious films online. If a film becomes politicized enough, good faith criticisms get drowned in a sea of alt-right bullshittery. Its hard to have a discussion about films such as The Last Jedi, Captain Marvel, and the upcoming The Rise of Skywalker because discussing the text became secondary to "Rose Tico and Holdo raped my childhood/Brie Larson is a misandrist/mary sues' etc
For those who are unaware, The Fandom Menace are a group of youtubers who have made a niche for themselves complaining about social justice, political correctness, and forced diversity being shoved into popular movies. Whats especially problematic is that they act as "fans" that are being mistreated and post content titled shit like "Fans vs Disney: A Star Wars Story". They dress up their reactionary diatribes as reviews. They discuss the movie through their political lens of it being sjw or not They complain about women being seen as powerful and or equal to in positions of power to men. They whine about politics being shoved down their throat while also complaining when a movie does not conform to their particular worldview. They also use unrelated movies as a cudgel against "sjw" movies. The obvious example of this was when they promoted Alita as a non sjw alternative to Captain Marvel. Nothing in Alita actually aligns with this reactionary shit. Hell, box office numbers show they probably never even saw Alita.
This kind of content can get a ton of views. We have all gotten recommended that "The Last Jedi is a cinematic failure" video where the creator refers to Kelly Marie Tran as "the yellow bitch" and other garbage like this because the youtube algorithm promotes this content. It ends up intersecting with toxic fandom entitlement and it leads to people getting radicalized by this bile and sharing it elsewhere. You see people talk about female characters under the lens of "are they a mary sure or not" when they'd never have this discussion over male characters.
Before you respond "just ignore it, none of it really matters, movies aren't political", movies do not exist in fucking vacuum and all art is political. Their place in history of its release and the reaction to it are all relevant. Making something apolitical or wanting things to be apolitical is actually a reflection of your own worldview. The representation in Black Panther is a key element to the popularity of the film and why it was such a landmark and box office sensation. Dismissing it as "politics" does a disservice to anything you you intended to discuss about the film.
/rant
For those who are unaware, The Fandom Menace are a group of youtubers who have made a niche for themselves complaining about social justice, political correctness, and forced diversity being shoved into popular movies. Whats especially problematic is that they act as "fans" that are being mistreated and post content titled shit like "Fans vs Disney: A Star Wars Story". They dress up their reactionary diatribes as reviews. They discuss the movie through their political lens of it being sjw or not They complain about women being seen as powerful and or equal to in positions of power to men. They whine about politics being shoved down their throat while also complaining when a movie does not conform to their particular worldview. They also use unrelated movies as a cudgel against "sjw" movies. The obvious example of this was when they promoted Alita as a non sjw alternative to Captain Marvel. Nothing in Alita actually aligns with this reactionary shit. Hell, box office numbers show they probably never even saw Alita.
This kind of content can get a ton of views. We have all gotten recommended that "The Last Jedi is a cinematic failure" video where the creator refers to Kelly Marie Tran as "the yellow bitch" and other garbage like this because the youtube algorithm promotes this content. It ends up intersecting with toxic fandom entitlement and it leads to people getting radicalized by this bile and sharing it elsewhere. You see people talk about female characters under the lens of "are they a mary sure or not" when they'd never have this discussion over male characters.
Before you respond "just ignore it, none of it really matters, movies aren't political", movies do not exist in fucking vacuum and all art is political. Their place in history of its release and the reaction to it are all relevant. Making something apolitical or wanting things to be apolitical is actually a reflection of your own worldview. The representation in Black Panther is a key element to the popularity of the film and why it was such a landmark and box office sensation. Dismissing it as "politics" does a disservice to anything you you intended to discuss about the film.
/rant
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