How is kindness a bad thing? I thought that was universally agreed to be a good message to have in a piece of media. I guess the excuse is they don’t want media to have messages at all but like, how would you even have a movie where the hero has no values that they stand for?
I like the Nathan Fillion comment during some red carpet interview when the interviewer was trying to egg him into saying something that would get rage clicks from one side or the other of the current political trash fire.
“its just a movie guys”
Superman was not a brooding edge lord until Snyder’s take outside of specific story runs, and it is obvious that a lot of people don’t know that.
Captain Hammer best superhero, who’s with me on this
I so want a sequel to the sing along blog.
Dr Horrible has become obsessed with reviving Penny by turning back time. He doesn’t care how many people need to die, because he believes he can “fix” things. But the risk of time travel is the destruction of the universe…
Captain Hammer, now knowing what pain is, has two choices, grow and overcome the pain, or continue to hide away…
And Penny. The multiple zombies, and clones, and computer simulations of Penny that were never “right”. Well, she too has her parts to play.
That plot was already made by marvel, almost to a T
love it, but it won’t happen.
Dr Horrible was released 17 years ago.
Cause Americans are obsessed with Rugged Individualism.
If you are in trouble, you don’t accept help, much less ask for it. You pull yourself up by your bootstraps and turn your fortunes around with grit and determination using nothing more than the loose change in your pocket.
Thats how anyone that needs help became nothing more than social parasites leeching off the rugged individualistic success of their betters.
Thats why Americans, on the whole, have all but erased empathy and good will towards others.
Its why 1/3rd of the country actively votes for weak, pathetic fascists who poorly playact as strongmen. Its why 1/3rd of the country didnt bother voting, because they have no problem with fasciatic strongmen punishing the weak and the other.
The New Religion of the American Orthodoxy is basically “Fuck you, Got Mine”.
Hyper-individualism is a much more modern idea that may have its roots in our founding but it was exploited by capitalism during the post-war financial boom last century.
Before we had media showing us “how it should be” families lived together throughout their lives, communities helped each other and American towns pulled together and helped each other in a variety of ways. The whole idea of single-family homes was invented by the housing industry to get people to buy three to four times as many homes. To sell this they started leaning harder into the idea that you’re the protagonist, you specifically, you are special just for being American, you are special for wanting your own things (that are advertised to you) and so on.
And before industrialized America and throughout the last several hundred MILLENNIA we were a communal species, it’s why we have so much contradictory hard-wiring that influences how we feel about our social standing, about other people’s feelings towards us, why there are so many people who latch onto authoritarians and fear strangers. These are ideas that run in direct opposition to “rugged individualism” and they are clear signs we’re not living the way we’ve been designed by literally millions of years of evolution.
Capitalism has pried apart the very fabric of our species and weaponized it.
You’re reciting history through rose colored glasses. The whole American dream has been to come here get some land of your own and go do your own thing.
There’s nothing “rosey” about the struggles of pioneering communities in early European settlement in the Americas, nor in the way that people pretty much had to shelter together for the last million years before America’s founding, my well-agreed on thesis is that community is how our species has survived and the idea of single-family homes and individualism is not only a new thing in our history but antithetical to our very nature as a species, which is why “social death” is a mentally and physically harmful condition that we’re all vulnerable to.
The “American Dream” was for people to make their own way, and at the time it was groups of people who settled and built communities, it was the drive for wealth along with the sudden vast tracts of land that came with America that encouraged people to start spreading out into single-family homes and leaving one’s community or family system. If you curl your lip at the idea of staying with your family through your life, that’s understandable, but that’s because families and our perceptions of family has changed. It’s not something easily reversible nor am I making a prescriptive statement, I am describing how things have changed and if I were to prescribe anything at all, it’s that we need to work harder at renormalizing actual socializing, at making and preserving friend groups so we learn and understand emotional intelligence, so challenge ourselves to new ideas and re-learn compromise and compassion, something not just missing from the worst people, but broadly through all ends of the political spectrum. Understanding that our current state of loneliness and depression and anxiety is not a natural part of our lives is an important fact that we can’t lose.
We are not living how we’ve been adapted by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution and it’s having profound impact on our collective mental health, and it’s allowing the atomization of our political perspectives to disastrous consequence.
Superman fighting the klan didn’t work because adults laughed at their hand signs and shit that were disclosed…
It’s because it got a generation of kids to see the klan as the bad guys
If Superman hated you, how the fuck were you going to indoctrinate your kid into the klan?
That’s why they’re always bitching about media. The people doing it are ignorant, but the ones telling them what to be mad about it are picking logical targets to fufil longterm goals.
It’s why fighting fascism is like losing weight, you can’t reach a goal and stop giving a fuck, it’s a lifestyle.
It’s why fighting fascism is like losing weight, you can’t reach a goal and stop giving a fuck, it’s a lifestyle.
Can confirm. 330lbs I said “I’ll reach 320.”
At 320 I said I’ll reach 310.
At 310 I said 300.
At 300 I said 290.
Then 280.
Then 270.
Then 260.
Then 250.
Then 240.
I went back up to 250. Oh no no no no no. Fuck that shit. I’m going to see 240. And when I do, it’ll set my sights on 230.
And when I see 230, I will hug someone. Because that will be 100lb.
Which means I’ll look to 220.
And then 210.
And 200.
I don’t know where my weight loss journey ends. I don’t know when I’ll feel at a healthy weight.
I just know I hope my journey brings me to a day when I get to punch a nazi.
Because nazi lives DON’T matter!
You’re gonna do it brudduh, don’t stop bettering yourself :)
The only good fascist is the one buried in the earth.
Wait are you saying that Hitler is good?
Well he did do one good thing in his life. He killed Hitler.
The last thing you said is why I got one of my bans on Reddit. Fuck Reddit.
The horrible thing about it all is that saying you should always punch Nazis was an uncontroversial statement even as recently as three years ago.
The only reason it’s now considered a terroristic threat is because powerful figures have started openly identifying with fascism.
We need to be saying it more, not less.
Send a text when you hit 0!
Well. Your journey took real strength. Ain’t that something? Keep fighting the good fight.
I mean Hitler did kill Hitler.
Just don’t think of it as a diet or oppressive. Make it a lifestyle. I’m still around 220 after 11 years of mostly stuck in bed. 16 years ago I was 350. A part of me wishes I was still 190 at 7%, but it is super hard for me to get that low. I just don’t have that kind of pain tolerance to deal with being light headed and hungry 24/7 while counting calories, eating constantly, but never meals or more than a few bites of dry salad or chicken. Without racing and riding like 400+ miles a week, I’m just not that kind of motivated. I’d much rather be lazy and eat meals with way too many calories at once but still far fewer than most people. I have no desire to binge or eat processed food of any kind any more. Avoiding dairy has also been super helpful too because that is a good excuse to avoid most junk people make, fast food, or restaurants the few chances I ever get.
Fighting for freedom never ends.
Holy shit you’re right.
I completely agree it’s like loosing weight, at a certain point it becomes actively harmful.
Billionaires like Peter Thiel have thought long and hard about why they can’t get everything they want. He has effectively said that his own policies would be so unpopular that nobody would ever vote for them, but that he has found the internet to be an effective tool to sway populations.
So what about us makes the world so good that they can’t fulfil their darkest desires? Social cohesion, knowledge and empathy.
What have himself, Muskrat et all have inundated us with over the last few years is their “antidote” to that: stranger danger, disinformation and “empathy is weakness”. It’s the playbook of the billionaire psychopath and people don’t realise they are dancing to their tune.
Interesting point! I’ve recently started thinking about the core message of Christ. It’s been misused and abused for millennia, but at its core it literally is “treat people like you would want them to treat you”.
But if everyone thought that way, where would the support for war come from? How can we justify monstrous behavior for profit without figuring out ways to make the victims seem like different people than we are? Horrible people who deserve the violence!
People have this ability to take the most constructive, beneficial and altruistic ideas and bend them to create victims and justify violence.
This shit has been happening since the first person used a thunderclap to elicit a sacrifice. The new church is social media, and the new congregation is worldwide.
Matthew 22:36-40 New International Version 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Word
For all the right wingers who think woke, pro immigrant superman is a new concept, reminder that this is a poster from the 1950s
Interestingly enough zero black people depicted, or any other races but white - just one dude with a dark orange complexion like the Mango Mussolini.
from this article:
Another story from 1953 called “People are People” has a Black youngster holding off an escaped lion until Superman can capture the animal. The owner of the circus the lion has escaped from wants to congratulate a white boy for his (nonexistent) heroism until Superman points out that the heroic young man was Black, and that the circus owner only wanted to congratulate the white boy because he was prejudiced.
Ethnicities. “Race” is a shit expression.
Agreed, but ‘ethnicity’ means something else, closer to ‘national origin’ mentioned on the poster. All the white people pictured may well be of different ethnicities, for example. ‘Ancestries’, perhaps? ‘Different skin color’?
But it’s three syllables shorter! That’s like 75% of the syllables. Won’t you think of the savings?
Yeah you got the crux of the problem here! Let‘s correct people that are saying the same with a bit of arrogance to have a dopamine kick and then let’s make a fight about this so we are pushing the other person away
God why everything has to be so divisive these days?!
Colour palette.
Interesting article about the history of ‘socialist superman’ during the depression and the ideological evolution.
Their religion / tribal cult only wants to use the United States, forget about “Truth, Justice and the American way”, they want US soldiers to pay with their blood.
Propaganda is powerful. You convince your followers that some classes of people don’t deserve kindness, you convince them that everything out of Hollywood is part of a leftist agenda, and once they believe both of those statements it’s very easy to spin this as further proof of the narrative they’ve already bought into.
I’m just baffled because not only is it way easier to not hate people, it’s way more beneficial for everyone.
These people are taking two mile hikes to find the perfect deer shit to shove down their throats.
You forget who benefits. It’s not the majority, correct.
That’s fully understood, we’re talking about propaganda, and I’m talking about who that propaganda affects.
You’re not wrong though at all. Arm yourself, convince anyone you can to do the same.
Only war is class war and I aim to win this bitch
Hey, fascists don’t deserve kindness.
But what if you kill them with kindness?
Whatever gets the job done.
I don’t care how you do it, it’s something that must be done either way.
Just be sure to make it look like an accident.
Feels wrong to hide it.
Like Bob Ross, just a happy accident.
In that case, the end justify the means. :-)
I disagree. Every person on this earth deserves happiness, and to avoid suffering. They also deserve kindnesa. That, however, does NOT mean they can do whatever they want. “Hey fascist, you do not get to tell people that kindness is bad” is not an unkind statement. You can have boundaries while still being kind. I really don’t believe we’re ever going to win the fight against fascism with more hate. Hate breeds hates. Kill them with kinds is a saying for a reason. If you tell a hateful person that you love them in spite of their hate, they don’t know what to do. They want people to hurt because they are hurt. If you accept their hurt, they will stop trying to hurt you (disclaimer this isn’t always black and white for each individual person, this is a philosophy that applies to humanity)
You’re just ignorantly wrong on that one. Way to completely fail to learn the lessons of MLK Jr. A person very much interested in being kind to others.
"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
and many other quotes with a similar glint. How was his kindness rewarded? (hint: he was murdered in front of his own house) Evil people DO NOT deserve kindness. Even Jesus went whipping up on shitheads trying to turn a profit in the church.
Only a complete fool willing to sit by and watch the world burn allows terrible people to march around with torches to set things alight.
Conservatives are still mad that Superman fought the kkk.
Which is admitting they side with the kkk, isn’t it
Well, yeah. They aren’t exactly trying to hide their white supremacist tendencies anymore.
If Superman were real, he 100% would have melted a lot of those racist fucks.
If you haven’t, I highly recommend reading “Superman Smashes the Klan.” An all-timer, based on a radio story from 1946, which was honestly its own kind of ballsy.
People angry that Superman represents kindness
Do these people exist? Is it just one troll, or a significant enough of a population to even give the slightest bit of thought?
I’ve met countless people who hate morals and will tell you you’re an idiot if you treat other humans as equals
No way
yes way. I have seen it with my own father. And the saddest part is they got this from religious rightwing media and have never ever interacted or had an opportunity to interact with the out-group that they are told to fear. Oh and, I am not from the 1st world. This shit is everywhere.
Business school and working at large corps. You inevitably meet a lot of those trump and tate wannabes
humans are just resources to expend and exploit.
I frequent dive bars. I have met plenty of people who believe in kindness, and love, and Jesus and shit - but not for immigrants, not for non-white people, not for criminals of any level. I straight up have had these people say this to my non-white face and then say, “oh but you don’t count because you have a job” or “you don’t count because you aren’t a drug addict”. Etc. etc.
These people suck fucking dick and I want them all to die.
It’s fucking ironic too when these same people talk about smoking weed, or stealing from big box stores self-checkouts, or vandalizing some dude’s car.
“Rules for thee, not for me.”
I read local obituaries solely to celebrate when I see some of these people die.
This is dark, but you fuckin do you gurl. Fuck em.
If only the circumstances that spawned them would change too…
Look at how many Americans would voluntarily die themselves just to prevent “unworthy” people from getting free health care.
These people exist.
Pain is the point for them
It’s one guy making the propaganda right now, but I assure you, in a week, everyone in your family that you try not to talk to will be spouting this horseshit.
Kidness is woke. And you know, woke is bad because reasons.
I really don’t know how to convince people they should care about others.
I don’t know how to teach empathy.
By exercising it at a young age in public schools.
And judging those without more harshly.
A few slaps on the butt (assisted by a carpet beater when the occasion demands it) will usually do it. At least that’s how my mom did it with us.
“You! Have! To be! Good! To! Your! Sister/neighbor/dog!”
(EDIT: /s if not clear)
People care about their in-group. Make being human their main identity.
we can purge those filthy xenos from the galaxy!
That’s the thing, isn’t it? You either have empathy, or you are the other species. The one that can’t comprehend that there is anything wrong with them, but the world would be better off without them.
Empathy can absolutely develop over time. This rhetoric is not useful. Even dumb fucking right wing pieces of shit feel empathy when their in-group is affected.
If hate can be learned so can empathy, what you’re suggesting is dehumanizing
Empathy can be developed over time by MOST people.
Also, performative empathy can be developed.
But then ALSO, anti empathy seems to be developing in society? Which is wild.
I am absolutely with you.
Also people should learn the difference between empathy and sympathy, the latter not as fatiguing and difficult to develop and often more useful.
Well, I have neither empathy or sympathy for those anymore. They dehumanized me first, after all.
I’m with you brother. They have dehumanized so much they are no longer human themselves. Right wing ideology is subhuman ideology, in all forms.
This includes liberals.
Oh fuck off would ya? Every time I test my empathy, I am basically shown to be simply unemphatetic. Doesn’t make me a monster - simply instead of feeling something is wrong, I have to think shit through.
And trust me, it’s even easier that way. Would I like someone to kick me? Maim me? Deport me? Does the net good outweight both the general consequence and the consequence for the other party? No? Then don’t fucking do it. Whether I like other party doesn’t take part in the process, which isn’t true for empathy.
You cannot. It’s either felt, or they’re shitspawn to be flushed.
There’s an underlying care instinct that needs to be activated. Its emotional; you can’t explain it, they have to experience it… There was a post years ago supposedly describing the empathic awakening of a white supremacist, which occurred as he was waiting to harm or harass a father and son on a bus, and the moment of awakening happened as he witnessed the father expressing his love for his son and something clicked for him, probably because he wanted that sort of affection from his dad and never got it.
Captain Archer had some good ideas. Turns out he really doesn’t like bullies.
If you can’t learn empathy, learn to spite the enemies of empathy
this is what those people want.
I only watched a cam-rip and stopped after Louis Lane “interviews” Superman which was painful to watch. The typical reporter tearing and deliberately misrepresenting or framing things in the dominant world order, every question a cut and propaganda criticizing people who disagree. It was kinda gaslighting, like “why did you attack our ally unprovoked?! Also some people are saying you’re an alien spy!”. Instead of asking questions to get the truth, they are loaded questions that can’t be answered without making yourself look bad.
What a total failures as a character introduction and makes her instantly an unlikeable removed. I mean holy shit is that bad storytelling. Or is that just me? If that is what you think a reporter should do, then don’t do it as a friend / girlfriend, and if that is how you see the world that you are not worthy of being the girlfriend of a hero like Superman. Because in my opinion you’re one of the villains in real life.
I do suspect this plays into why some people disliked superman. What people seek in these troubled times is strength. And they hate what tears strength down, seeking to control or subdue it or put it in it’s place in the proper order of things. They want someone to break things because deep down we all know the path we’re on right now leads downward (economic inequality, enshittification of products, appliances and services, climate change and environment, rising tensions, news and social media, post truth world). The people voting aren’t entirely wrong in just wanting to see the world burn.
There is a quote which I don’t know where it came from or remember well: “The samurai valued strength above anything else, because that is where all other values flow from”. Or differently: “The samurai believed that strength was the foundation of all values, as it enabled them to uphold honor, loyalty, and discipline.”
But our liberal world order sees strength as something that has to be separated, atomized, means tested and distributed into channels to control. Controlled by laws, bureaucracy or better yet, the dictates of capitalism, because it’s oh-so-efficient. I suspect right wingers like Homelander not because he’s a corporate product, but because he breaks out of that and goes rogue, and also rejects the “we must not kill anyone and obey the laws or we will be like the villains!” bullshit.
The cult of personality or hero worship represents a desire of people that someone comes and fixes all this shit and cuts through the red tape. Someone who has strength and the courage to use that strength, despite all the clever fucking shitty arguments and conventions to the contrary. Because we’ve heard it all before and it sounds so good but it’s clearly not working. Superhero movies are supposed to fulfill that wish and grand escapism into a world where our problems are magically solved. But recent movies (Marvel) failed to do that, instead pushing the failed real world fantasy of a liberal world order into the movies. Like the common trope of Washington and the government being fundamentally good and working well, except for a few bad apples, and as soon as you get the proof and give it to the good people or the newspapers, everything works out fine. Which is a painful reminder that it doesn’t in real life.
I suspect the “reactionary backlash” is not just about racism, it’s about the rejection of the distraction of identity politics - that if we only lean in more, if we accept different cultures, everything will be fine - because that is just distraction from the continued neoliberalism and disaster capitalism. But breaking things and bringing things to a head is also an opportunity - accelerationism.
These are just by jumbled thoughts on how this reflects on our culture war. Again, I haven’t watched the movie or read any of the right wing critiques, only seen the “liberal backlash to the backlash”. This controversy in itself is rather predictable and pisses me off. Like it’s a distraction in itself, a pair of two anger memes that complement each other perfectly are tossed into the ether to continue to keep us occupied.
Also after I stopped the movie I read some (serious) reviews and it’s also just a shitty movie.
If you’re going to use a movie to deliver populism and morality, it better be a good movie or you’re just handing ammunition to the world’s worst piles of shit.
We need to all collectively admit to ourselves that Superman is tired and over and from a different world. We can write new stories that will connect with and give hope to a far more apathetic and cynical population.
Edit: lot of people telling me it was a great movie, reflexive negative reactions are from guys who think it’s “cringe” to be at all genuine and thoughtful in a media work.
Yeah the value of art is that it can express or show things about the world that are hard to express in words. And we desperately need a new way and clarity about the failure of the old ways, because that is what leads to the cynicism and hopelessness. So either keep politics out of it and produce harmless entertainment, or have a bloody brilliant take on politics that provides actual artistic value.
I quite like superhero movies as escapism, like a fantasy world where clear definitions of good vs evil exist. But I can’t stomach biopics or docudramas that mix this fantasy with real world propaganda, like some nostalgic fantasy about US politics or journalism any more. It feels like they all want to recreate the beautiful fantasy of Sorkin’s “The White House” or the classic thriller take of “a bad apple in a good system” but today that is a dangerous lie.
The best example of how the world has changed and changed us is by rewatching The West Wing. A show that if aired today, would probably end up with the production studio burned down.
This POS
Benny (“having a wet pussy is a sign of an infection, according to my doctor wife”) is just jealous of anyone who can pull off an acting career.
It still feels weird when people mention he has a wife.
Not just bcs he is misogynist, but he looks gay AF.
You mean 5’10” tall Ben Shapiro? The guy that never talks about his height and is actually 5’6”? The self confident alpha male? Yeah fuck this guy.
Does alpha male mean closet gay?
Stupidman.
