What should or shouldn’t be shown on TV?

[Pies4shaw]

Collingwood games should not be shown live. There should be a new rule that they are not televised unless the ‘pies win, in which case Channel 7 should be obliged to show them on continuous repeat until the next Collingwood game. Tell me that wouldn’t be a great boost for the psychological health of most decent Australians.

[think positive]

Sounds fair!!

[K]

... Should I provide spoilers here?!

Nickster silence is taken as a "yes". (Just like US democracy.) Stand by for exciting spoilers!

Hmm... They all have alcoholism and death, but the details matter. ...
Previous versions: Swimming in the ocean. Driving a car. etc.

[What'sinaname]

Show more Jacinda Ardern
Show less Snott Morrison

[stui magpie]

Unless they’re an opportunity to spend time with your mum, that is...

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/20/politics ... index.html

That belongs in the WTF thread.

The fact that the old girl refused his offers to leave, she may have learned something.

[K]

[K]

WaPo:

'Outrage is a commodity': Director bashes 'far left' criticism of Joker

https://www.theage.com.au/culture/movie ... 52vgl.html

"This week, the families of those killed in a mass shooting at a Colorado movie theatre in 2012 asked Warner Bros. to donate proceeds to groups supporting victims and urged Congress to pass bipartisan gun-control legislation. The theatre in Aurora where the massacre took place during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises is refusing to show Joker, a manager told The Washington Post.
...

"He could easily be adopted as the patron saint of incels," Time magazine critic Stephanie Zacharek, wrote, referring to an online community of men who espouse violently misogynist views and share anti-feminist hate online. "Arthur inspires chaos and anarchy, but the movie makes it look like he's starting a revolution, where the rich are taken down, the poor get everything they need and deserve, and the sad guys who can't get a date become killer heroes." "

[David]

^ Seems like there’s been a lot of over-the-top silliness about that film, although I have to say my own interest in seeing it is pretty much zero. All of this outrage is a marketer’s dream, in any case.

[stui magpie]

It would be interesting as, as a long time comic book reader, Joker never had an origin story. He was supposedly a petty crook called red Hood, who escaped from Batman by swimming through some toxic sludge which turned his hair green and skin chalk white. The mental disintegration slowly followed the physical one.

So this would be, as mentioned in the article, a movie with no real backstory to be faithful to, it's a movie in it's own right dresssed up as a comic book movie.

[think positive]

WaPo:

'Outrage is a commodity': Director bashes 'far left' criticism of Joker

https://www.theage.com.au/culture/movie ... 52vgl.html

"This week, the families of those killed in a mass shooting at a Colorado movie theatre in 2012 asked Warner Bros. to donate proceeds to groups supporting victims and urged Congress to pass bipartisan gun-control legislation. The theatre in Aurora where the massacre took place during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises is refusing to show Joker, a manager told The Washington Post.
...

"He could easily be adopted as the patron saint of incels," Time magazine critic Stephanie Zacharek, wrote, referring to an online community of men who espouse violently misogynist views and share anti-feminist hate online. "Arthur inspires chaos and anarchy, but the movie makes it look like he's starting a revolution, where the rich are taken down, the poor get everything they need and deserve, and the sad guys who can't get a date become killer heroes." "

That’s a dangerous mix for someone watching who’s a little twisted and looking for an excuse to go nuts. But then someone looking for an excuse will find one. Almost Halloween, I guess this year something will finally outsell that scary scream mask.

Bit of a long bow to draw, doubt I’d watch it, I didn’t get through dark knight.

[K]

It always sounds so self-serving when a film critic starts complaining. e.g. Scott Mendelson:


‘Joker,’ ‘The Hunt’ And The Myth Of Movies Inspiring Violence

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmende ... 5ad90b1b46

"There are a few movies over the decades, like Taxi Driver, A Clockwork Orange and Natural Born Killers, which have inspired real-life violence. However, and this is a key distinction, they have mostly inspired the specifics of violent action rather than the violent act itself. Individual pieces of pop culture, be it movies, TV or video games, don’t turn empathetic people into murderers. We know this because the science says as much again, and again and again. Even the rise of violence in PG-13 flicks (as post-Columbine pressures and the allure of worldwide box office glory led Hollywood to nip-n-tuck arguably R-rated genre films like Taken and White House Down into the PG-13 box) ran parallel with a decrease in violent crime from 1985 to 2015.

That doesn’t mean pop culture has no impact on the culture. Institutional sexism and racism, be it implicit or explicit, has led to a pop culture mostly populated by white guys saving the day and getting the girl (who is presented as a damsel or a game-ending trophy) and/or flawed white dudes behaving badly in prestigious, critically-acclaimed crime dramas. ...
...

Or maybe The Hunt was a small sacrificial lamb while Joker is an essential end-of-2019 release. My worry remains that the back-and-forth over whether Joker will be a lit match will become a self-fulfilling prophecy which will be the match that lights a fuse. Dave Cullen, who literally wrote the book on Columbine, is among many who have argued that the mass media attention over a mass shooting is a variable in inspiring the next one. The sheer amount of mass shootings over the last several years, an upswing coinciding with the 2004 failure to renew a Clinton-era assault weapons ban, has turned them into almost par-for-the-course. To someone who wants to plan a “spectacle murder” which gets a bit more attention than what has become the norm…"


[And Dave Cullen is just a journo. Just following one crime and writing about it doesn't make you an expert.]

[K]

The article links to these:

http://openvault.wgbh.org/exhibits/tele ... ce/article

https://www.massgeneral.org/News/newsar ... px?id=3929

https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarde ... 12df29328e


[I haven't looked yet, but I don't know why they insist on claiming they've "shown there is no link". Surely all they've done is fail to find a link.]

[K]

Why Everyone Is Freaking Out About ‘Joker’

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/cu ... ut-891081/

"Many claim the film is a romanticization of incel culture. ...

This narrative is very similar, in numerous ways, to that of many disenfranchised young white men who become radicalized, or black-pilled, and embark on shooting sprees. And this parallel was not lost on many critics, including Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair, who wrote that the film “may be irresponsible propaganda for the very men it pathologizes. Is Joker celebratory or horrified? Or is there simply no difference?” he asks.

... Time‘s film critic Stephanie Zacharek leveled a similar critique against the film, referring to Joker as “aggressive and possibly irresponsible” and referring to a romantic subplot involving Fleck’s neighbor as a way to frame Fleck as “the patron saint of incels.” By framing Fleck as an underdog antihero of sorts rather than a homicidal maniac, Zacharek accuses director Todd Phillips of being overly sympathetic to the plight of similarly disenfranchised young white men who wish to act out on their violent impulses. “The movie lionizes and glamorizes Arthur even as it shakes its head, faux-sorrowfully, over his violent behavior,” Zacharek writes."

[David]

Can anyone explain exactly what the precise "incel" link to this film is supposed to be? Does the character actually identify as one, or is "incel" just shorthand now for any man who is socially maladjusted and has experienced romantic rejection? Because, if so, treating this film as some unprecedentedly dangerous film tapping into a violent movement does seem pretty overblown; films that depict alienated, violent antiheroes are as old as the hills.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/s ... in-phoenix

Rather, Arthur is driven by a (still very incel-esque) need to be seen and loved.

Crikey! What kind of perverted shit is that? Clearly our villains must have no vaguely sympathetic backstories or recognisable emotions whatsoever...

[stui magpie]

This is a good review of the film from someone who has actually seen it, it doesn't get released in theaters til October 4.

Trailing clouds of controversy, “Joker” descends upon us. The online discussion has mounted from the rampant to the manic, undeterred, or perhaps exacerbated, by the fact that nobody, apart from critics and festivalgoers, has actually seen the movie. (Emotions run high when people are low on facts.)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019 ... ing-matter


Worth a read.

Here’s the deal. “Joker” is not a great leap forward, or a deep dive into our collective unconscious, let alone a work of art. It’s a product. All the pre-launch rumblings, the rants and the raves, testify to a cunning provocation, and, if we yield to it, we’re not joining a debate; we’re offering our services, unpaid, to the marketing department at Warner Bros. When Dalí and Buñuel made “L’Âge d’Or” (1930), they wanted to start a riot, and they succeeded, but “Joker” yearns for little more than a hundred op-ed pieces and a firestorm of tweets. With ticket sales, naturally, to match.