point of order, video games are in stage 3 too: They're being made by women and failsons and disney suits (hence all the gamer word censorship and incredibly boring premises and lack of any vision)
I tried to show my wife the movie "Drive" a few weeks ago.
I hadn't seen it since I was single in my early twenties.
Every Nicolas Winding Refn movie I'd watched since this one had been a letdown, but "Drive" always held a spot in my mind as "the perfect one", "the important one", "the most accessible one".
All of this is true, but it is also true that Refn is right when he considers himself a pornographer.
Where once I thought of it as 'the coolest movie in the world' and a throwback to the gritty-yet-hyper-stylized action movies of the 70s and 80s, I now understand it as an unabashedly childish fantasy. A perfect encapsulation of the man-child attitude of my generation of the 2010s.
Gosling's character is one of those broken narcissistic nerds who can't relate to the world except from behind a movie tough guy mask. He does those 'little bad' things to reaffirm his own Steve McQueen-ness. But outside the fantasy of being able to intimidate pimps, drown shylocks, and stab mob bosses to death, he's just a creep who's trying to seduce his neighbor's wife.
Today, it's kind of embarrassing to admit I once idolized this anti-hero movie. The saving grace is the fact that I wasn't alone: it single-handedly launched a tumblr-wide obsession with shiny Japanese bomber jackets.
For my wife, it was a giant eye-roll punctuated by moments of deep disgust over all the unnecessary violence. If she hadn't taken a vow to stand by me for better or worse, I'm pretty sure this once-favorite movie would have diminished me in her eyes.
As for your analysis of the modern balding single dad, I think the perfect encapsulation of that is the pre-meltdown Mel Gibson historical epic. I used to joke with friends about how much easier it would be to find your life purpose if only the British would come and murder your family so you can have carte blanche to exact vengeance completely untethered from morality or logistical possibility. Your tie to superheroes makes a lot of sense given that this is kind of what happens to a good number of them. Peter Parker's parents may or may not have been murdered depending on which version of the comics you read, Batman's definitely were. As were (sometimes) Hansel's and Gretel's. Basically what I'm saying is: it's all a fairy tale.
Maybe the best part of Batman (2022) was that it brought Batman face-to-face with the endgame of his own philosophy, the purified version of it with all his presuppositions and baggage trimmed away. It’s not enough to simply be a symbol in our simulacrum, which becomes distorted and perverted as quickly as it was created. The end must be becoming the thing in itself, becoming something more. Someone has to pick up the torch and lead the people out of the flood; someone must bear the weight of glory; someone must carry the cross.
Asking “why me? why us?” does not answer the question of suffering. It only brings death. It was Job’s sin; it was Riddler’s sin. The answer, however hard it may be, is for me to sublimate my suffering into loving my neighbor as myself. Christ’s death was not only the thing in itself, but also a symbol to be imitated, however crude the imitation might be.
Even Christ prayed that his cup would be taken from him.
I haven’t looked into these extensively so don’t have a comprehensive list, but I believe the answers to both can be found in the horror genre.
Neurosis: cosmic horror, sometimes blended with action if the viewer is looking for a way out/flirting and not totally engulfed: Everything, Everywhere, All At Once - viewed from outside the protag’s POV, this is a story about immigrant moms and their culture-shock/struggle/generational trauma-induced mental illness.
Psychosis: apocalyptic horror, Walking Dead and The Purge being prime examples. The symbols are deconstructed and given completely inverted or nonsensical meanings. Hence, black mom with a samurai sword, or faceless punk dressed as Uncle Sam symbolizing the new generation dismantling the old.
BONUS: sadism/sociopathy: Saw-style torture porn in which the viewer is subtly or overtly meant to identify with the “villain” who is actually an extreme anti-hero. I’m willing to bet far more people were rooting for the paraplegic with a creepy doll than the unfaithful middle class dad who was forced to amputate his own leg in the first flick. Super hero companies understand this completely, which is why they made an entire “film” trying to ensconce the Joker in cinematic greatness. It’s why Disney made Moon Knight. But Horror is more fringe, so you’re not killing robbers and murderers, you’re torturing folks with bourgeois sins—lustful teenagers, absentee parents, etc.—to death.
Female “literally me” characters: pretty much any female protag in anything Shonda Rhymes has touched.
this is both a great sermon and analysis on very modern type of sin.
would love to see a deeper cut into one movie. but how would your analysis transfer from capeshit over to the tweecore 'indie' stuff like wes anderson baumback that ran through the 90s and 00s?
There's an instinct in men that tells them to attack other men in order to secure better mating opportunities for themselves. Careful you don't fall into that weakness. It's not heroic either.
This essay is kind of rambling, and makes obvious points about the industry. You say these men failed, are failures, are pathetic. But they have good salaries, houses, a wife (who they must obey) and children of their own. Would they have the same if they were more traditional? Maybe. But all the signals are telling them the opposite. The man who won't stand up to his wife and wrote God of War 3 would see his instinct to assert himself as negative, as he was trained, and so would hate that about himself. It's not always helpful to, like the enemy, simply attack men as being pathetic.
The young man wants to die nobly for a cause, the wise man wants to live humbly for one. Mr. JD Salinger said that in a book they made us read about teenage rebellion before we became teens and forgot the damn book, waste of time 2/5 on their part. Thanks for bringing it back : )
A pain that has been picking in my head recently: what if the reason one chooses to be an anti-hero, is not that they wish to be one and refused to be a hero proper, but that their only alternative is to be an anti-villain (AKA sadsack)? A type of consequentialists maladaptive crank who is only good as a jester? Very tempted to note that this may be tied to the Chris Chan affair. https://vironevaeh.com/2014/05/05/heroes-villains-anti-heroes-and-sadsacks/https://archive.ph/ETxFT
point of order, video games are in stage 3 too: They're being made by women and failsons and disney suits (hence all the gamer word censorship and incredibly boring premises and lack of any vision)
I tried to show my wife the movie "Drive" a few weeks ago.
I hadn't seen it since I was single in my early twenties.
Every Nicolas Winding Refn movie I'd watched since this one had been a letdown, but "Drive" always held a spot in my mind as "the perfect one", "the important one", "the most accessible one".
All of this is true, but it is also true that Refn is right when he considers himself a pornographer.
Where once I thought of it as 'the coolest movie in the world' and a throwback to the gritty-yet-hyper-stylized action movies of the 70s and 80s, I now understand it as an unabashedly childish fantasy. A perfect encapsulation of the man-child attitude of my generation of the 2010s.
Gosling's character is one of those broken narcissistic nerds who can't relate to the world except from behind a movie tough guy mask. He does those 'little bad' things to reaffirm his own Steve McQueen-ness. But outside the fantasy of being able to intimidate pimps, drown shylocks, and stab mob bosses to death, he's just a creep who's trying to seduce his neighbor's wife.
Today, it's kind of embarrassing to admit I once idolized this anti-hero movie. The saving grace is the fact that I wasn't alone: it single-handedly launched a tumblr-wide obsession with shiny Japanese bomber jackets.
For my wife, it was a giant eye-roll punctuated by moments of deep disgust over all the unnecessary violence. If she hadn't taken a vow to stand by me for better or worse, I'm pretty sure this once-favorite movie would have diminished me in her eyes.
As for your analysis of the modern balding single dad, I think the perfect encapsulation of that is the pre-meltdown Mel Gibson historical epic. I used to joke with friends about how much easier it would be to find your life purpose if only the British would come and murder your family so you can have carte blanche to exact vengeance completely untethered from morality or logistical possibility. Your tie to superheroes makes a lot of sense given that this is kind of what happens to a good number of them. Peter Parker's parents may or may not have been murdered depending on which version of the comics you read, Batman's definitely were. As were (sometimes) Hansel's and Gretel's. Basically what I'm saying is: it's all a fairy tale.
Maybe the best part of Batman (2022) was that it brought Batman face-to-face with the endgame of his own philosophy, the purified version of it with all his presuppositions and baggage trimmed away. It’s not enough to simply be a symbol in our simulacrum, which becomes distorted and perverted as quickly as it was created. The end must be becoming the thing in itself, becoming something more. Someone has to pick up the torch and lead the people out of the flood; someone must bear the weight of glory; someone must carry the cross.
Asking “why me? why us?” does not answer the question of suffering. It only brings death. It was Job’s sin; it was Riddler’s sin. The answer, however hard it may be, is for me to sublimate my suffering into loving my neighbor as myself. Christ’s death was not only the thing in itself, but also a symbol to be imitated, however crude the imitation might be.
Even Christ prayed that his cup would be taken from him.
I haven’t looked into these extensively so don’t have a comprehensive list, but I believe the answers to both can be found in the horror genre.
Neurosis: cosmic horror, sometimes blended with action if the viewer is looking for a way out/flirting and not totally engulfed: Everything, Everywhere, All At Once - viewed from outside the protag’s POV, this is a story about immigrant moms and their culture-shock/struggle/generational trauma-induced mental illness.
Psychosis: apocalyptic horror, Walking Dead and The Purge being prime examples. The symbols are deconstructed and given completely inverted or nonsensical meanings. Hence, black mom with a samurai sword, or faceless punk dressed as Uncle Sam symbolizing the new generation dismantling the old.
BONUS: sadism/sociopathy: Saw-style torture porn in which the viewer is subtly or overtly meant to identify with the “villain” who is actually an extreme anti-hero. I’m willing to bet far more people were rooting for the paraplegic with a creepy doll than the unfaithful middle class dad who was forced to amputate his own leg in the first flick. Super hero companies understand this completely, which is why they made an entire “film” trying to ensconce the Joker in cinematic greatness. It’s why Disney made Moon Knight. But Horror is more fringe, so you’re not killing robbers and murderers, you’re torturing folks with bourgeois sins—lustful teenagers, absentee parents, etc.—to death.
Female “literally me” characters: pretty much any female protag in anything Shonda Rhymes has touched.
this is both a great sermon and analysis on very modern type of sin.
would love to see a deeper cut into one movie. but how would your analysis transfer from capeshit over to the tweecore 'indie' stuff like wes anderson baumback that ran through the 90s and 00s?
There's an instinct in men that tells them to attack other men in order to secure better mating opportunities for themselves. Careful you don't fall into that weakness. It's not heroic either.
This essay is kind of rambling, and makes obvious points about the industry. You say these men failed, are failures, are pathetic. But they have good salaries, houses, a wife (who they must obey) and children of their own. Would they have the same if they were more traditional? Maybe. But all the signals are telling them the opposite. The man who won't stand up to his wife and wrote God of War 3 would see his instinct to assert himself as negative, as he was trained, and so would hate that about himself. It's not always helpful to, like the enemy, simply attack men as being pathetic.
Typo in the very first sentence; that should be the possessive "its", and not a contraction of "it is".
The young man wants to die nobly for a cause, the wise man wants to live humbly for one. Mr. JD Salinger said that in a book they made us read about teenage rebellion before we became teens and forgot the damn book, waste of time 2/5 on their part. Thanks for bringing it back : )
Ghost In The Shell makes a full juxtaposition of this.
Laughing Man / Kuze: The masked anti-hero Virgin.
"Major" Motoko: The visible unapologetic Chad(-ette).
What started as trope subversion in early science fiction soon became a reality of its own making.
A pain that has been picking in my head recently: what if the reason one chooses to be an anti-hero, is not that they wish to be one and refused to be a hero proper, but that their only alternative is to be an anti-villain (AKA sadsack)? A type of consequentialists maladaptive crank who is only good as a jester? Very tempted to note that this may be tied to the Chris Chan affair. https://vironevaeh.com/2014/05/05/heroes-villains-anti-heroes-and-sadsacks/ https://archive.ph/ETxFT