If we can celebrate a marxist reading of donkey kong country, we can celebrate a marxist reading of parasite
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i think the real tragedy of parasite is that the class consciousness not only comes far too late, but is altogether a fleeting, isolated moment of clarity that even kang-ho is unable to recognize after the act is finished.
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I like that argument because it actually does get at the crux of my problem here; the former is creative and funny and engaging whereas the latter somehow deletes nuance from the original work
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I donāt feel like Iāve deleted any nuance in my reading of the movie!
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i think i might be reacting especially caustically to this movie because i feel like there is a weird pattern of like āme getting paid = marxismā memes on twitter that i am reasonably sure are meant to be facetious or ironic or whatever but i honestly canāt tell and i find it bewildering, and a lot of The Discourse about this movie seemed to tap into that
but once again i guess the actual moral of the story is that i need to look at twitter less and only talk about these things with people who i know well enough to be able to tell the difference between shitposting and sincerity
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Iām going to pretend this is real and imagine a banana republic held to ransom by greedy Kongs and the Kremlin raceās attempts to drive the economy by placing bananas in sometimes risky-and-rewarding places.
donkey kong internationale
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I have issues with Knives Outās politics, mostly because the patriarch, while he does the nice thing and sees his children are all miserable people and decides to leave money to someone āmoreā deserving, is engaging in some privileged white savior-ism and dies because he thinks he knows better than his minority caretaker
it wants to only condemn the children but is more saying āwell, even rich with well intentions are badā, which it already does with Goop daughter-in-law being poised as the rich liberal who cares more about money, and the movie almost says as much when Blanc tells Marta she would have managed to see him through the night if she hadnāt been convinced to not call 911, but, uh
I had a point here, somewhere. something about how all rich white people are automatically evil and all minorities are pure or something? I donāt know anymore.
good movie though.
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i know i just posted about leaving twitter, but this reminds me that someone commented that if Johnson makes more movies with Blanc as his Poirot, he should just make Daniel Craig do a totally different bizarre regional accent in every one with no explanation
iirc he actually replied saying that he had already considered it, which, ā¦ good
that is exactly the level upon which the movie can be enjoyed. it is a smorgasbord of actors doing weird voices.
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one thing that knives out and parasite have in common is the absolute most vapid takes for both movies are like āthat house is awesome, i wanna live in it lolā
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bring back crumbling symbolic gothic estates in fiction imo
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Check out Crimson Peak
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That house is awesome, I want to live in it
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lol
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@u_u your qualms with parasite kind of remind me of the discourse around this is america when that music video was released
I remember reading something about how artists loved the video but activists hated it and it kind of seems like parasite is doing the same thing re capitalism
like, yes, depicting the state weāre in doesnāt really do anything to solve the problem of actually being in that state
but I also think that when you have something like parasite depicting our current state in such an interesting way I donāt necessarily feel like the movie needs to tell us how to leave it
in a similar vein Iāve been trying to figure out what I would even say if I wanted to make videogames these days and thereās not really an interesting way to say āwe should all unionizeā in a videogame, I might as well just tell that to people and save myself the trouble
but like, if thereās a game like night in the woods that talks about a town going through stuff after unions have been gutted thatās totally cool
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I hadnāt thought about This is America in relation to Parasite but thatās a really good comparison to consider.
Yes! This is a great point and I think is a huge part of why I keep thinking about the movie months after I saw it. It does so much so well itās almost overwhelming.
I definitely donāt think itās the filmās responsibility to provide solutions, and I donāt think thatās at all what it is setting out to do. I do not go so far into the āParasite is not political itās just a farceā camp, I think I agree that the movie is pretty explicitly leftist or at least anti-capitalist. And I donāt think itās the filmās fault that a lot of memeposts about it have flattened out so much of its depth.
I think I am always getting backed into this weird corner re: politics both here and elsewhere online and probably mostly inside my mind wrt my take on ākill your landlord lel letās do cultural revolutions againā online leftism so I donāt want to drag it up again, but all of that stuff is very depressing for me and maybe my reaction to the reception of this movie is part of that. I should probably just have a personal rule of logging off every time I see a twitter tankie post maoist kitsch.
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For myself, I am very happy not outsourcing aesthetic critique to political activists. For people who do, I have to wonder what they get out of it, other than a feeling of relief at only consuming preapproved media. May as well lionize the MPAA ratings at that point
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I still havenāt seen it, but I think I just had the shortest term mandela effect problem of all time because I was convinced Ford V Ferrari was directed by Michael Mann until this morning
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thatās not entirely mandela, he was involved with some iteration of it at some point afaik