Really good stuff. I really like your point of view when discussing these things. Like just the way that you discuss people who are in many cases totally deserving of derision, but without develolving into that, while at the same time not letting them off the hook in any way. I think in one of your other videos you said something about trying to come from a place of empathy and it shows. But you walk the line so well. Like not that anyone has to do that or anything. Anger and frustration at incel logic is like, yeah. Completely understandable and natural. I guess I just mean that your viewpoint feels unique and therefor refreshing.
Huge. The content is just tooo good. I am blown away. My third video for the day- I just found this channel- today. Oh- and he references bell hooks. Win.
The irony brvh. Falling Down is obviously a critique of the edgelord, and mocks him throughout. The scene where the "not economically viable" Black man is arrested is the most telling, Dfens and him are dressed the exact same. That imagery was purposeful. Dfens is walking around, with a bag full of guns, getting away with literal murder, while the Black man is arrested for peacefully protesting.
...because they are NOT edgelord movies, merely because edgelords selectively take away from them what they want anyway? Joker wasn't about entitlement. He was empathetic & trying to avoid negativity etc. He both tried to contribute, and he needed help. The offered help was mostly from black women. While the tipping point was the drunken yuppies that bullied him on the train - white rich dudes. Even after he goes beyond Self Defence & kills the last one, he continues to be otherwise empathetic until he reads his mother's file & what seems to be a misframing of her role in his own abuse. While none of his subsequent actions were good, especially murdering his mother, it's a contrived Origin Story. The only entitlement here is human rights. Yet because it is a film that zeroes in on an individual, people are imposing personal entitlement messaging upon it overall.
@@LikeCarvingACake I feel that Falling Down is a terribly frustrating and blinkered movie. It gets so much right in situating white male terrorism within an ecosystem of right wing activism and its attendant revanchism and longing to restore the ancien regime. But it's also far too sympathetic to the framing of that activist right and treats its assertions as far too legitimate. It downplays the fact that Michael Douglas' character lived a very privileged life and snapped when his position of dominace and primacy was challenged even slightly. He wants to die not just because he's unemployed and his wife and children will get his life insurance money, but more because he lives in a world where white men's centrality is eroding. To men like D-Fens, that's a life not worth living.
You should inclued American Psycho in this. Because the main gist of them is that they are not understood by their audience, which likely ISNT the guys who gravitate to it. They're just nuts looking for pointers. In Christian Bales 'career breakdown' he says that he met a bunch of traders for The Big Short or whatever it was called and ALL the traders absolutely loved American Psycho. He said "loved its irony you mean" and they didn't get it. They LITERALLY were that psycho. I'd be afraid of doing anything satirical becaues you know there are going to be nuts out there who think its a blueprint.
That’s stupid. Create what you want. Art does not force ordinary people to turn into psychopaths; if a guy sees your satirical work as a blueprint he already had big problems to begin with.
Why don't you go into the fakeness of much of these "issues," such as the Jussie Smollett case, or the Covington case, or the Rittenhouse case, or the fake "hijab grabbing Trump supporters," etc? Oh, wait, I answered my own question.
No way man, this is exactly the same thing as people saying "Videogames create violence". Art is art, and shouldn't be taken away because the worst people take the worst interpretation
The replies are missing that very important bit in your comment about Christian Bale trying to say, "oh, you mean that you loved the irony?" and the traders missing what he meant.
I thought joker was cool when it came out because of its anti capitalist and pro Medicare for all message, then when I found out why most people liked it I kinda went quiet... 😅
I really don't like how I let myself feel put off by people's response to the film. The actual message that it's conveying is absolutely something I can get behind, but as you said, the reason most people like it is just taking me further away from publicly appreciating it.
I never understood people who can't like something just because of the way others do. Like if a Fandom changes anything about the media itself. Is it becuase you fear to be perceived wrongly? I feel that's a weak mindset.
I love Falling Down. It's one of my favorite movies. But the most important part of the movie is when he realizes, HE IS the bad guy. That's the whole point of the movie for me. His realization that his "righteous" anger isn't righteous and that he's been left holding the bag for a society that threw him overboard. He's the patsy. He did what they told him and then they sold him out.
Exactly, I like FD in general, but it's sad and hurtful he thought so little of us here that he assumed the intended audience of Falling Down doesn't understand that he's a tragedy, a warning, to NOT let our white privileged egos run the show, because that identity was forced on us. He and Falling Down are on the same side, but he thinks so little of us he doesn't interpret the movie that way.
a subtle element of the movie, though, is how the main character has been "made an example of" in the past. This leads to the main character being cast to lower echelon of society, where he is left to maintain his station, with no hope to improve things in life. It's not right of him, but the main character (called D-FENS) is taking out his frustration on the world not allowing him to try to be a better person, because he already made mistakes in the past.
That and his dark side. It was verbally and mentally abusive towards his wife, even when life was good. His mother was afraid of him. He had that anger bubbling inside of him. He just had an excuse to let it out.
The Joker was real meaningful to me at first because it was relatable in a tragic way. I'm mentally ill, I experience psychosis and don't always have a stable grasp on the existence of other people, and the film spoke to a fear of never being able to escape that state of mind. I thing I understood pretty soon after watching it that a lot of people would see the joker character at the end as a win, rather than him not having any way of holding onto mental stability. The movie has a really sad ending to me, but people seeing it as good are getting a way different message.
Same. I notice most people here perceived their own strong messages from the movie; _"anti-capitalist", "white man warning", "mental health awareness" "social medicare";_ very political and no mention of any personal relation whatsoever, either as Joker to themselves or to Phoenix, the actor, and his history. To me it was profoundly significant that De Niro was the host, and the one shot, due to his own scandal in the industry. I thought I was going paranoid watching it. Nothing about the casting matters to me in the context of the plot. Anyone with any orientation could've been Joker so long as he danced, but nobody seems to think the condition or twisted expression of him was important, despite being integral to the film in my eyes. So that's kinda disappointing that everyone overlooks, but if it didn't strike them, it's not what they needed. I still think a divergent playout with his suicide is equally strong. The ending had nothing satisfying or happy about it; I just appreciate good acting.
Reminds me of people who think the midsommar ending was a win. Like, entirely missing the point Kinda funny because the predecessor, Hereditary, looks like a bad ending, but it's ironically a good ending lmao
@@jonahnesmith7004 Right, right. Hereditary left me quite cold, but Midsommar I genuinely loved and laughed the way through even though I knew it wasn't right; at least I related to Pugh's character. Not every movie's meant to be judged for it's morality.
When I was 15 I worked at a McDonold's and a customer was mad about is order and he asked me if I had ever seen Falling Down. My manager asked him to leave.
And people are saying that people no longer want to work. There has been an extreme loss of civility in our society and on top of that it's low paying.
@IntrepidTit You have a point in acquaintances, friendships, relationships, and business partnerships. But the waiter, fast food worker, or any service worker doesn't need to see it. You don't need to turn into a monster because you didn't get 3 ketchups.
The hilarity of edgelords loving Heath Ledger's Joker is that Joker in that movie is proven ~*~wrong~*~. "When the chips are down", people chose to NOT kill an entire ship of other people to save themselves. His plan failed, he was wrong about the basic humanity of people.
That scenario was performed in fictional world and now obviously jokers thinking or philosophy will be shown as wrong because DC is a comic about superheroes and superheroes represents the bright side, morally good side. Thats why both of the ship didn't blow each other up.Now if we see such scenarios in real life I doubt whether things would come out the same as it did in the movies.
I think it's fallacious to make arguments based on fictional stories and apply them to real life. Jordan Peterson does this constantly and acts like renowned fiction is essentially as evidential as science. But fiction can be different. They could have written the movie where the Joker won. In fact, he has won in many instances in comics. That doesn't say anything about whether he's right.
That was one of the few times--maybe the only time--he was wrong about people in the movie. Yes, his basic premise that people are innately corrupt was proven wrong. But it's understandable how he came to hold that view--many people even find it relatable. Ledger's Joker is such a great villain precisely because he knows how people work and how shitty they can be.
@@Mutantcy1992 the theory isn't because it's fiction it's true in real life but because it's a successful fiction it says something true in real life. If we enjoy a film where the prisoners dilemma comes out in that direction then it says something about the class of people who enjoy it. Such as maybe they want that to be true.
@@yautjacetanu Okay, but that's not true. The popularity of a piece of fiction doesn't correlate to "that's how people really act," especially not when it comes to movies. And who says the popularity of movies is about the way people want things to be? Star Wars? Avengers? Do people want things to be like those movies? No, it's just entertaining fantasy.
27:26 I see a lot the same rhetoric when it comes to Homelander. People say that if we all had powers, we’d be just like him, but forget why he is the way he is. Homelander wasn’t raised with any real love or compassion, and especially never taught right from wrong. He even acknowledges this when talking to the mother of his child, saying that Ryan (His Son) is already at a better place then he was growing up because he had a mom, but still needs interaction with the outside world. I understand there would be bad people if we had superpowers, but there’s no fucking way we’d all be like Homelander.
So true. I saw a guy talking about the comic when he SAs starlight along with two other supers and said we would all do that if we had powers with no repercussions. And everyone was like NO TF WE WOULDNT😂
Y'know when I was watching the boys that was how I was feeling but then that made me think "good God American society has just socialized a bunch of psychopaths, huh" because I wouldn't want to be that way, I just felt like I'd have to be that kind of person to get ahead.
Isn't that why some people idolise him? Because they relate to him? The more you try to make a character shameful and unlikeable, the more people who feel the same way about themselves, and get treated the same way by others, will be drawn to that character.
@@Shh.ItsAllOkay. some people relate to what he’s been through, yeah, but nobody should strive to be what he’s become. If you’re already like that, rip, but some people are idolizing what he became as a result of what he went through and try to follow in his footsteps.
@@Cobble01 Same to you, actually. I was seeing it through a completely different lens. You learn to dismiss the actions of villains in films when they're the most relatable characters, because they're often minorities. ...Which I realise isn't that helpful in this context. :)
I've always thought it would be an interesting sociological experiment to show Falling Down to a group of people and ask each of them at what point they thought he crossed the line.
I think it’s interesting that they have to write in a scene with a Neo-Nazi asshole to distance Michael Douglas from accusations of racism despite the fact that all of his violence in the first part of the film is targeted at minorities even as he claims that it’s about economics. Pretty revealing.
You can do the same thing with Breaking Bad. The best part for me was reflecting on when I thought Walt crossed the line, and realising he'd actually crossed it a lot earlier, but I was too caught up in his story to recognise that
@@irresponsibledad I was just thinking about that. We know Walter is the villain from the start. He is a villain in his own terms, who violates his own moral code very early on through transgressions that you or I might see as forgivable, if not acceptable and then spirals out of control. While you're supposed to empathise with him, he's not sympathetic. His actions are "evil" from a very early stage, except he goes from hapless and desperate, to deliberate and manipulative.
If he focused solely on destabilizing institutions that were oppressive instead of harming people who caused him minor inconveniences along the way, you'd get a much more sympathetic revolutionary instead of an edgelord.
The killer who shot up the movie theater did not dye his hair to look like the joker. That was just a rumor that was floating around at that time. The only reason he shot up the dark knight movie showing was cause he had plotted out the layout of the theater and decided that theater would be the hardest to escape from. Apparently he dyed his hair because "orange symbolizes bravery" whatever that means.
Apparently he has schizophrenia and that doesn’t excuse his actions at all but he justified it as the orange haired him was a separate individual than the natural hair him.. there’s some interesting interviews of him done years after the massacre where he is in a mental hospital and talks about this. Again I want to emphasise that doesn’t excuse his actions at all he still murdered innocent people, but i find his mental health pretexts interesting
Don't add logic and truth here we have an agenda to push which is why we have to brand adult theme movie lovers as far right edgelords. That guy was obviously a bigoted edgelord that should be mocked not looked at as a symptom of an underlying problem unless you can use it to advance yourself or your political ideology like the maker of this video did.
"It is much easier to attack feminism and minorities than it is to attack social systems." MESSAGE! It is extremely frustrating that the subject group you mention can recognize these social issues but seem to be incapable/unwilling of using their proximity to the gatekeepers of the society that they hate to positively impact society.
proximity to gatekeepers of society? so wherever you are from minorities or women are not allowed to participate in elections? congratulations, you have exactly the same proximity as most of the rest of society.
whether correct or not, they feel certain rhetoric from progressives seems to blame them personally for these plights whereas their own feelings of powerlessness contradicts being told they hold a lot of power
When I was a kid I came home from school one day to tell my grandma what I’d learned in history class. My grandma loves history so it’s the way we bonded. I started going into great detail about how incredible Robert E. Lee was to fight for our country. My grandma was entirely confused and had to stop and tell me Robert E. Lee was a confederate soldier. Basically long story short my history text book hated Ulysses S Grant and Loved Robert E Lee and didn’t even mention what side of history either of them where on! I a little black kid had a history text book that idolized a lot of bad people. Having to unlearn that the “founding fathers” weren’t great and noble people is a struggle and it’s upsetting that we rewrite history so we can idolize horrible people.
In don’t think it’s the sense of rewriting, it’s just giving the sense that they had at the time to us, other than that first bit. But of course we’re gonna find out people in the past weren’t great, but that’s inevitable because of the simplicity that their moral standards weren’t the same as ours today. Give us a few centuries and any person we consider good today might be considered abhorrent in the future. It’s not bad idolize the good that was done in the past as long as you’re able to realize that it’s the deeds your idolizing and not the person.
The Founding Fathers weren't horrible people, they were great for their time, specially in the context of the cause they fought for... As humans, we're all flawed, and if we pick people from a completely different time and put them there just like it, well, they will be filled with ideas and behaviors that we now deem bad.
In my case, an uncle was dismayed by the racism I was learning in literature class organised a Black classics intervention for me. He started me on a journey to deconstruct White supremacy and I'm so grateful. It did way more good than he ever knew.
In part because of you, I have been opening up to my family and friends about the true causes of many social and economic issues. I always felt powerless to enact change in my community and in the world at large, but just having the conversations seems to wake people up out of their daze. The revolution will not be televised, but it will be streamed online. Ty for your work brother! I love you all.
I love this quote from the actor who played Archie Bunker: “The American white man is trapped by his own cultural history. He doesn't know what to do about it. Archie's dilemma is coping with a world that is changing in front of him. He doesn't know what to do except to lose his temper, mouth his poisons, look elsewhere to fix the blame for his own discomfort. He isn't a totally evil man. He's shrewd. But he won't get to the root of his problem, because the root of his problem is himself, and he doesn't know it. That is the dilemma of Archie Bunker.” -Carrol O’Connor, 1972
@@dude9318 they’re talking about the “white man” portion. Even though nothing said was demeaning of the entire white race. They’re most likely another alt righter/white nationalist.
I am a white man born in the late 70s. Gen X is the least parented generation. That was due to the breakdown of the nuclear family, which itself was an invention of post-WWII America. We went from tremendous wealth sufficient that a white men could potentially become the sole breadwinner of a small family property to full-time working and single parents treading the poverty line. This shift in wealth and demographic largely ignored non-whites, who have been dealing with the realities of hand-to-mouth living for literally thousands of years. I got to live the latchkey kid life, complete with abusive step-dads, welfare cheese, and peer violence in schools. That was Reagan's America. In my life up until my 30s, I never met another human being who actually lived the nuclear family life. Yet we are instructed by older white men that this is our inheritance and legacy. It is just a myth, a myth that lasted less than decade of American life. But damned if us white Americans don't pine for it.
What makes u assume....that most non whites lived "hand -to- mouth" for thousands of years" ? Native Americans lived vastly comfortable lives that appealed to runaway indentured servants from Europe. Mexico aNd most of South America is actually more resource rich than the USA. Who coopt almost every bit of that. The richest man on earth was African. It was not unknown for an African to live 120 years + The invention of say the leisure concept of University came from West Africa, the What u are describing was typical of Europe. Prior to black Moorish influence. And your write off the bulk of civilization in favor of WS fantasy. Mythology the vlogger here indicates.
@@celesteadeanes4478 I don't believe he's claiming to be W supremacist at all tho. He's indicating that he had a difficult childhood that didn't jive with the "leave it to beaver" facade that media liked to portray for middle class (Wht) america; and he would have liked to have had that, who wouldn't?? Everyone wants safety and stability in their life esp in their childhood and everyone deserves that.
@@celesteadeanes4478 also he just meant that at least for the history of the US, minority communities have always gotten the short end of the stick. Now prior to Wht colonization, when these populations could live in their own indigenous ways, I'm sure that was different.
Taxi Driver is such a great example of this, even Scorsese was outraged when some guy tried to replicate the behavior of Travis. He almost stopped making films because people weren't getting the message of the film and he thought it was his fault. You should do a Scorsese video because his whole career is about the dichotomy of violence and ambition of the American society. It would be interesting to see it analyzed by you.
Yeah yeah because Travis who want God to send his rain to wash of his new York liberal city from the degeneration the veteran who don't believe in a young girl doing what the girl was doing under the name of women (lib) who want to take a stand against all of this who doesn't know his society anymore from the point it was to the way its moving a progressive way is obviously a liberal movie and this character is obviously on the side of the left and for sure anyone who watch this will take it wrong being a non conservative movie lol what is this do yall leftists think that movie on your side
Two replies to your comment were invisible. But good comment. Travis = Conservative. Cannot even think of how to collectively and peacefully protect the innocent.
@@Achrononmaster yeah yeah yall liberals be saying that right wingers don't get movies a man who pray that God will send his rain to wash off his new York city liberal city who is filled with degen and that is literally in front of yall eyes when Travis point out to the girls of the street and the gangs.. Etc but oh oh yeah Travis is a woke social justice warrior Travis stand for the lgbt and women rights Travis is definitely a women right advocate lol yall are not funny
I was a white kid in the suburbs. I remember always wanting to be that edgelord as a teenager. Largely because, looking back, you knew your life was actually pretty boring, that you weren't dealing with real struggles, you were probably gonna wanna get a job that someone just set you up with, and things were largely only ever going to be "pretty good" for you; no real highs or lows. I was really into gangster rap and the heaviest metal you could find because you wanted to feel like life mattered, because you're not going through the trials that people are really supposed to have to. The whole global economy is set up by your recent ancestors to work for you, and not for other people. I wanted to earn my own job, so I went into college and tried to do it on my own, and I haven't been the kind of affluent you need to be to be the kind of person you're talking about since. I'm all about society sharing everything, racial equality, gay rights... you name a leftist cause, I'm in on it. I have my own edge to deal with. I can still enjoy movies and TV shows like this, but it's not the core of my being like it used to be. What really codified everything at once was Melissa Villaseñor's "White Male Rage" song on SNL. You realize that white men are the only people allowed to be "angry" about things in society, without other white people trying to put these non-white people in check. It's a white privilege thing, sure, but I hope I can use my "White Male Rage" to help other people as best as I can from here on out. Just a rant, good video, I hope to not be one of the people you're talking about here.
I personally think there is a disconnect in ideology between white and colored spaces because there are actually two sides to the system: social and economic. People of color and a lot of time women have had both systems set up against them, while white men have only every really had one. So as the economic system starts to be strangled and wealth condensed upward, many of the lower economic class are starting to feel the starting of pressure that other classes have felt for decades. You see this in white liberal spaces like "Late Stage Capitalism", who seem to think capitalism is now failing at its late stages, when the realization is that it has always been failing minorities and is just starting to effect white people. You will always see a more aggressive push back when taking power away from a previously privileged group then you would with a disenfranchised one. White people are always shocked that slaves didnt fight back even when they massively outnumbered the slave owners. So we will see an increase in violence from white men in particular who are raised to think the system is going to provide for them, and then find out that it is increasingly being taken from them too in favor of the top 1%. Then they hear people say that they are the problem for being white, and that people of color want to take away their privilege, and an existential dread kicks in that make them fear that they will continue to fall further down. This leads them down the rabbit hole of white supremacy and disillusion instead of realizing that a more fair and balanced economic system would benefit everyone.
As 26 year old black male. Man i salute you for keeping it real about the way things are. Not that i'm trying to be a victim but sometimes i feel like i don't have a voice, or it just isn't heard . Whenever we speak up on something it's always "why does it always have to be about race" or "those types of things don't happen anymore" or better yet they just try to shut us up altogether. Love you my guy
Yeah man all my problems don't matter because children are starving in Africa! Like who cares about my stress, anxiety, depression? Black suffer 9001x that DAILY being called slurs and threatened by rampant lynch mobs across the USA. I am truly so privileged. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Defining real struggle as something only connected to your identity/ethnicity does not make sense to me. Because there is a lot of real struggles that any human can experience and cause material/psychological damage. I think there is little value to degrade your own problems, I think it will lead to people losing interest in changing society broadly, something the neo-liberal order actually prefer. It would love to only make incremental changes to please a small group of people while not dealing with the core issue.
Most of these movies are criticizing the angry white men they’re about, or at least satirizing the society that produces them. It’s astonishing that people walk away from Fight Club thinking Tyler Durden is a hero when he is a toxic manifestation of the protagonist’s delusions, or miss the irony of Travis Bickle being celebrated as a hero in Taxi Driver when he’s actually a lunatic who just narrowly happened to assassinate some pimps instead of a politician. As you pointed out, Falling Down literally contains a scene in which the protagonist realizes he is the villain of the story. (The Joker is a much lesser film than the rest, and The Matrix doesn’t quite fit the same mold as the rest as the hero isn’t toxic). But you are absolutely correct… white guys who feel cheated by society idolize these characters. Our culture lies to us, and some people cannot handle the dissonance and target their rage in all the wrong directions (women, minorities, etc.). Recognizing one lie doesn’t necessarily mean you recognize another. Lots of these angry white guys see the lie of the promises made to them, but they don’t see the bigger lies of white supremacy and patriarchy. I could’ve so easily been one of these guys. I was so close. I understand where they’re coming from, they’re just wrong-headed about a lot of things they’re not even conscious of. We have to stop teaching young white men to expect unreasonable things, and we have to stop expecting unreasonable things of them. It basically is going to take increased exposure to a broader more diverse range of perspectives, and it could take generations, but there’s reason for some optimism there. Great video!
Love all these movies, but yeah I agree. People sympathize with injustice, and movies like Joker and Fight Club both have their main charecters be victims of injustice. So when the audience sees the main charecters dark side, they rationalize it as injustice. Validating a excuse, and lots of the time blinding the audience to the rest of the charecters immoral actions. Then they connect with these charecters and therefore create a neckbeard.
@@messiah7344 it also helps that the characters are white guys. Because if a black man was running around causing this type of mayhem I doubt very seriously that he would get any type of sympathy.
@@messiah7344 Killmonger represents to me the divide between Africans that are from the continent versus Africans that were dispersed because of the transatlantic slave trade.
Your last paragraph made a really interesting point. I am a POC so white men is a group I’m naturally not a part of. But what you say did make me think. It’s kinda true, society does have this narrative that white men are the most privileged group of people at the moment. And when you are a white male and your “failing” at life - I could see how for some it will really mess with their world view. I’m sure more factors contribute but I could see this being a big one.
The craziest thing about Falling Down is that the man's first action in the film is to become the thing he hates and he just never realizes it. He is mad at traffic, and makes traffic worse in retaliation. the entire movie is him showing how he is all these things that he is saying he hates.
@@kait-9939 The neo-Nazi guy is the only person he actually kills, if I remember right. He's really not on a "hate crime spree". The only thing that could possibly count in that direction would be his initial attack on the Korean guy's store. And even that seemed to be mostly about the high prices. There's bigotry operating too, but it never seems to be much of a motivating factor in his acts of violence. His targets are minor and major systemic injustices, rude and obnoxious people, and whoever directly crosses him. But it could be that he kills the Nazi because he's the one person he comes across who really most resembles himself.
@@Avoidiacthe motivation of most kinds of hate crimes is do to ignorance. It’s an indirect kind of hatred that the people getting subjected to it feel intimately. When you spew your anger from the systems that effected you mindlessly you start hurting others the same way you were hurt You will just be feeding into the public outrage with no benefit to anyone and the people up top get to laugh at the show
Falling Down was pretty clear about showing that the Michael Douglas character was the villain. It was sympathetic to the character in explaining how his world was taken away from him but his flaw was his failure to adapt. He could not see how change could be for the better. His "bad day" did not have to be bad; it was his perception of his experience that made it bad. On a larger, social-political level, the movie is aimed at social conservatives who want to take us back to some supposed golden age (the 50's) when America still "worked".
Thank you. How so many people miss this point is beyond me. It's explicitly spelled out at the end when Prendergast confronts him at the end. "I'm the bad guy?"
I watched the movie some weeks ago, and was utterly surprised at what it was actually like. I had expected it to be some sort of parody film of like living out the power fantasy everyone has once in a while when confronted with the absurdities of the small and big struggles in our day-to-day lives. Instead, though Michael Douglas is shown some sympathy, he clearly is the bad guy and just makes things worse for him and everyone around him. The power fantasy is there, but he only makes things worse when acting out in the way he does. He's not filling the role of a hero in the movie, but a villian; he's not setting things in order and bringing happiness and relief, but causing disorder and suffering. The topics are serious as well, he can't accept the divorce he has had, and seems to suffer from some sort of mental illness as well. It's really strange to me now to see all the memes idolizing the movie and his character when in the actual movie he tries to forcibly visit his ex-wife and daughter whilst armed to the teeth. Occasionally it's a fun romp, and at times he does arguably good things (like the confrontation with the surplus store owner) but mostly it's tragic, and though we can feel sorry for Michael Douglas and wish he'd found help to relieve his suffering, he's definitely the villain.
I don't think it was clear at all. The single most tender moment in the whole film is when he breaks into his ex-wife's house and watches videos of him being an abusive asshole to them. He is just blank about it, it's playing in the background. And the dog comes up and snuggles with him. The message in this scene is that we should feel sorry for him for his failings.
@@transentient That's not the message I got from that scene at all. I wouldn't call it "tender" in the least. It's harrowing. It's showing that he's not just a normal guy having "a really bad day." It's showing that his tendency to lash out and be abusive whenever things don't go his way is a deeply embedded part of his personality and that maybe his intentions towards his family aren't as wholesome as he makes them sound. This is the film saying, "In case you were confused, this is not a good guy." I think you're just reading too much into the dog nuzzling up to him.
I liked the Joker movie when I first saw it and I still like it. It portrays a man from the lower end of society, with a traumatic childhood and with poor education being treated so horribly by the system that he turns into a senseless murderous monster. To me it portrays a critique of capitalism, showing what it can turn fairly sympathetic people into. It's not my problem that some insane online Nazis somehow sympathise with the supervillain and monster of the movie.
I mean, you can argue that a significant chunk of the black community in America is going through what the joker did. Which is how hoodlums are created.
@@GreyrainLife maybe I'm wrong, but if art didn't change behaviour culutures wouldn't emphasize showing art to children. If art didn't change behaviour it wouldn't be censored in some way in every country on earth. The entire realm of religious iconography and heroic stories wouldn't exist. The Louvre wouldn't exist. I think the point of art is to place someone in a particular frame of mind, which is the prerequisite to action. If art didn't change bwhaviour, why would this video have been made in the first place?
@@GreyrainLife also I think it logically follows that saying that propaganda isn't art and stuff you disagree with isn't propaganda, you disprove your own point since no one within a culture would consider their own propaganda as propaganda, they would call it art
I was always surprised by people who wanted to be like Tyler Durden. I actually thought Fight Club did a good job of demonstrating some of the flaws of being a hyper-masculine guy who wants to destroy society. Tyler Durden is a great character, but he's not someone I'd ever want to be.
to me it's like the nietzschean aspect of becoming your true self, despite the world around you. He essentially embraces the parts of his psyche that he formerly rejected in order to fulfill himself. also I wish there was a real fight club (as in the fighting aspect itself)
@@Charlie_probably... so you WANT to do what tyler was doing in fight club? Did you watch the movie at all, or in fact the video above this comment section?
@@benschmitt7035 no I don't believe in returning to an anprim society. I phrased my first comment wrong. I was trying to play devil's advocate as to why people like the movie so much. I think it's an interesting story about a toxic relationship with oneself with an interesting gay subtext.
It always mystified me that people who loved the aggreivement revenge movies did not transfer any sympathy or empathy from fictional characters to the fight against institutional racism we see today. I know it's now a trite phrase, but Rage Against the Machine wasn't about your parents dude.
I feel so dumb, I JUST noticed that you change your stack of books based on the topic at hand!!! I LOVEEEE THAT! Giving us immediate access to more information on each subject, yes! The ones in this video are so, so good. I read Angry White Men when it came out, and it completely changed who I was and my perspective on these issues as I could not understand it at all. It gave me an understanding as to MY contributions to this culture, and how I (a non-binary person) contributed to it during my "edgier" phase and put me in a greater position to reverse those wrongs.
To me, Fight Club is about a man that is so jaded by what society says is important that he loses his mind trying to find meaning. In the end, all that is really important is love, which he had in front of him the whole time, but he just couldn't see it.
As always the book is better. Pahlaniuk is fairly obviously a leftist but a bit male centric. I have a hard time nailing down chuck pahlaniuk's worldview except that it's def dark. Also much of fight club the film was ripped out of his subsequent book. I also liked joker but it's also a toxic ass story
Fight Club the movie is an adaptation of the book that makes it about capitalism. Millennials didn't have the same opportunities as Gen-X so they don't see the existential dread. Whenever I watch videos like this I realize we watched these movies with different eyes.
It's about white boys whose feelings are hurt because they aren't as important as all the movies tell them they should be. When Luke Skywalker and James Bond, and Superman all look like you and the whole world tells you you're special because you are a "white man" .... well when you are pathetic or average white man, then there is rage. These guys become school shooters, edge lords, guys that randomly quote the joker at parties. The find a masculine leader in Tyler and find a father figure that tells them how to become a man, since they have failed to live up to the ideal media gave them.
I think saying it's purely a criticism of capitalism isn't quite right though. At a deeper level the film is more accurately about authenticity especially related to what it means to be a white male. Tyler Durden is very much the hypermasculine ideal that white men are told they'd become if they just do white masculinity right. The main source modern men have of this ideal comes from massmedia, which is intrinsically linked to the capitalist system. That's why Tyler Durden attacks societal institutions that he thinks are connected to capitalism, because it's how he believes men will finally be truly free to be themselves. He doesn't see the irony that as a product of capitalism, he also can't live without it. On essence, the influence of capitalism as a communicator of white masculinity can only be severed not through the destruction of society, but through the destruction of clinging to such ideals. This is why the narrator must shoot himself because by killing himself or rather his beliefs in white masculinity can he become his authentic self.
@@Kamishi845 interesting take. I don't think this is a critique of capitalism though. I think it's a critique of looking for meaning in material things. Capitalism has nothing to do with materialism imo. Capitalism is as old as trading and bartering and is based on the idea that indivifual humans own things and that they should be compensated when someone wishes to have what belongs to them. Life has always been about survival and it is survival and anger about not getting what we believe that we deserve that brings out the violent nature in men. This is not exclusive to white men. I do agree however that our idea of what constitutes masculinity often comes from the media and can be shaped by them to a large extent.
Hello 👋 millennial white lady here, found you via Drake Diss video but have been working my way through the rest of your content. I appreciate the way you communicate your ideas and I have learned a whole bunch thanks for all the content. 😊
I'm a white southerner and there a lot of impoverished white men who feel pushed aside by society. They think, "Why are there people in the (seemingly) same position as me getting help for no other reason than their skin color, while I'm being left behind to struggle for myself?" There is a struggle to see the broader systemic issues because they view everything through the lens of the individual and merit.
Job stability is quickly becoming a fantasy and everyone is treated as expendable even what we’re once cushy jobs, but instead of looking at capitalism they blame women, poc ect
@@FernandoTorrera Not only expendable unfortunately, Exploitable as well. We are being crushed for pennies all while politicians & media conglomerates get people to argue against their own best interests.
@@Alex_Barbosa -- Exactly. What's occurring now isn't a bug in the system. It's the core feature of the American Individualism system. As George Carlin stated, "The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it." European-Americans have been imparted the pacifying ideology of American Exceptionalism/Individualism to hold on to and they're waking to the truth that it was and has always been rubbish. Now, they're throwing hissy fits, essentially.
I was about 16 when I first saw Falling Down in the theater. I had a different take on it at the time. In the beginning of the movie, the main character was easy to sympathize with, and even cheer on as the Anti-Hero. I was blind to the idea that this was entitlement at the time. The Fast Food place represented inconveniences set forth by the system for completely arbitrary reasons, and here was a guy that wasn't going to just swallow it like Pavlov's dog when the bell rings. The scene with the gang I viewed as a chihuahua managing to chase off a pack of wolves. I didn't notice the racism to it at the time, because I was a teen that was really into Gangsta Rap at the time, and I saw LA Gangs as the modern mafia, or fearsome warlords, and here was this whimpy guy taking control of the situation. The scene in the convenience store represented a fad that would continue to grow, when instead of pricing items at a modest profit over cost, merchants started raising prices to the highest point the market would bear before loss of business would lose more money than could be gained by the price gouging. To put this in perspective, in 1993, I could get a 16oz bottle of pop from just about any gas station in my area for $0.75 or less, so the idea of paying more than that for a 12oz aluminum can seemed ridiculous, and would feel like taking advantage of you as a customer. But about halfway through the movie, the veil starts to lift... and we begin to see that our "Anti-Hero" who was bucking the status quo, was actually not a good guy at all.... he was a sick man, an abusive and demanding man.... and that everything we cheered up until this point, was not him bucking the system in order to right wrongs, but actually the product of his deep seated misanthropic anger. He was a man who would be fully willing to harm innocent people. And my stomach knotted up at the realization that I had been cheering him on in the beginning of the movie. As a teen, my biggest takeaway from the movie was this: "The Enemy of my enemy is not my friend." All that being said, Me, being an adult now, and having taken the time to learn about my privilege and the shadier histories of society as a whole in this country, I recognize the validity in most of your critiques. But I wanted to share how I saw the movie through the eyes of a 16 year old white boy.
@@dreamsprayanimation yeah, of course. Privilege is not binary. You can have white privilege while still being disadvantadged because of ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, etc. Even circumstance. Privilege isn't about having a perfect life within a society.
@Oo. I'm very sorry for those things, but most (serious) essayists do touch on those topics. Those would equate to wealth/class privilege and the privilege of being able-bodied/minded. I never truly realized what privilege was till part of mine was taken away, and I still know I'm extremely privileged despite circumstances. I know that if you had faced the set of problems I've faced while living in extreme poverty with a ruined mental health, the exact same set of problems would have been infinitely worse for you. That people don't make that nuance, that teenagers on twitter don't even know what nuance is yet, all of that doesn't change privilige itself.
I have the same sorta reading of this film. By the time they're on the pier and Defense is like 'I'm the bad guy?' it seems so OBVIOUS that he's the bad guy and the fact that I'd been feeling sympathy towards him or even cheering him on initially suddenly made me feel REALLY uncomfortable. This film is great!
I recently watched all of the Matrix movies and honestly, it's incredibly surprising to me that edgy white men latched on to it so much. Granted, I went in knowing the directors are trans women. But generally speaking, aside from the white leads, the cast is incredibly diverse. Morpheus' character expands so much after the second movie, beyond just mystic teacher. The human city is depicted as sexually liberated. Most of the heroes are women. Even Neo and Trinity have a really tender relationship. The series ends with Neo not destroying the machines, but working with them and establishing peace, to destroy the real villain: Agent Smith, whose thirst for control consumed everything. I feel like it's really easy to see that the Matrix is about social boundaries. Concepts like gender, race, class, are only socially imposed and can be deconstructed with work. But then again most people probably only watched the first film.
Yeah, I felt the inclusion of the Matrix trilogy in this dialog was completely unfair because it ignores all the Eastern philosophy that is displayed as part of the story's narrative. I mean, they tried to get Will Smith to play the lead, and Keanu Reeves was the one who ended up accepting the part. So I don't see how the Matrix series qualifies for his video essay's argument.
@@galek75 what do you mean? Those who escaped the matrix still have to return to it, to live by its rules to continue their goal. Yet, they know those rules don't have to be real. The only one who is truly free of the false limits of the matrix is Neo. In real life, we have those social boundaries. But we don't /have/ to. Race and gender only exist because of the societal belief in them. Many people are currently working hard to demolish this societal barriers, through dismantling systemic racism, advocating for socialist principles, and getting rid of the false gender binary.
I’m just now being introduced to your content & I love what I’m learning. I will say, as a fossil old enough to have seen Falling Down in the theatre, it made such a huge impact on me exactly because the whole movie did build up to the scene where he interacted with then shot the neo-nazi and did exactly what you suggested: faced the fact that they were not only not that different but that he was, in fact, a less honest man bc of his unwillingness to see or admit his extreme entitlement based on all he was certain he was owed. In fact, every other character in the movie saw it except him & tried in various ways to show & tell him that he was not actually superior, but his determination to make others hurt bc he was angry overrode his ability to see and hear any better than he had ever been able to. I left that movie sad & very moved. As a young adult, I was certainly examining my own biases far more honestly afterwards (I hope).
I find myself connecting to characters regardless of my awareness of them being tragedies. I think I just appreciate the representation of tragedies because they can feel more real, and I like seeing the story told well.
This is literally what is happening with most of the people who critique the film. Its a tragedy about a villain and the triggers that turned them into a villain. Its ridiculous that people think the film idolised the main character. I feel a lot of people are projecting their own views onto the film, rather than see the film for what it is.
I'm black but I still find myself gravitating towards movies like Fight Club and Joker and whatnot. In a sense, it feels like they tell my story. I have no purpose, or I've lost my purpose, then something sparks up that gives my life a more... cynical... meaning. I've had depression and those movies helped me realize that the cure to depression is to find your purpose in life, and then spend every waking moment of your being attempting to complete that purpose. My purpose? To become a very highly skilled fighter. And that's what I've been doing for the past 11 years since I realized that was what I wanted to ever since I was 12. I'm 23 now and what would be called a heavyweight boxer, black belt in judo, karate and now practicing muy thai and krav maga. I don't really identify with right-leaning politics at all, but the movies of that nature helped me claw my way out of a dark time.
The great thing about films like Joker is that the represent society as it is, rather than as various political groups are claiming it to be. No-one is going to be so naive as to claim that a black person in modern America will face no prejudice whatsoever, but at the same time the idea that prejudice is a simple thing that flows in one direction from an objectively 'powerful' group to an objectively 'powerless' one is simplistic and nonsensical. There's a reason so many films about disillusioned white men exist; it's because the reality of being a white man in the US is shit, not because white people have it worse than black people but because the possibility of realising oneself as an individual has disappeared entirely. Joker, Falling Down, and other films like Fight Club are about people who try to make their own meaning in the world, and about how this almost always appears violent to everyone else because it disrupts the everyday order into which the individual disappears in the first place. I'm glad you found something meaningful in your life. Don't let anyone take it away from you (and don't let anyone tell you that they know better than you about your life).
Unironically you should watch longform interviews with Michael Jai White, that guy is aspirationally introspective. A couple choice examples are him talking about how Martin Sheen would be on his Mt. Rushmore because of how much he respected other people when he met him, or that time he was dead set on having an intellectual conversation with a large group of white supremacists to non-combatively pick apart their beliefs. This dude, is fit, black Uncle Iroh irl.
I just found falling down an incredibly sad movie and an incredibly sad protagonist. I don't think it's problematic for a large majority of people and I do think we need more movies with unreliable narrators. Starting the movie I was like hell yeah, let's go defense! The amount of times I've just wanted to leave a traffic jam and just be free... And the first things he does are somewhat alright, but you slowly get a profile for the kinds of fallacies or emotions he's falling for. And it makes you reflect and see these things in yourself and others around you. It kind of makes you realize that you yourself may be an unreliable narrator and that the things you want may already cross some lines for some people. Just like he in the end was so suddenly surprised "Am I the bad guy?" "Yes!". I think way more people are the bad guys without realizing the consequences of our actions than they think. Probably me too... These kinds of movies are exploring and showing the extremes so that we can explore the same things on a smaller scale.
I re-watched "Falling Down" a few years ago with a a friend. We didn't have a term for it, but "Aggrieved Entitlement: The Movie" was definitely the term we were looking for.
I think a lot of people who go through "Aggrieved Entitlement" have a moment where they look in mirror and see some blatant version of themselves and then reject it just like Dfens did with that Nazi in the surplus store. There's this failure to see themselves as what they truly are. I think Falling Down is important because it highlights and humanizes some of the problems but needed a clearer lens so people finding themselves on that path could divert themselves from it.
@@elustran Short reply: yes. Long reply: it's really hard. Even just looking at Falling Down, he is convinced he's the good guy. Heck, he shoots a nazi, which puts him in the same camp as Indiana Jones, Sgt. Nick Fury, and countless other pulp heroes. How could he possibly be the bad guy if he's killing nazis? And when people aren't willing to ask the question "Am I maybe acting like the bad guy here?" they're very unlikely to come to the conclusion "Yes, yes I am the bad guy". And, no, I don't know how to do better with stuff like this. I think maybe part of it is to deny these characters either a "winning" ending or a "blaze of glory" ending. Give them endings that cannot be mythologized or idolized. Have them go out with a whimper. I feel like the show "The Shield" did that pretty well. Unfortunately, those endings tend to not sell tickets, so... I dunno.
@@horribleprogram i get you, however, gotta disagree. it's very naive to think that any human can write anything without bias. *acknowledging* one's biases and emotion in academic writing should be its future, imho
16:57 ironically Fight Club can be on that list too. That's one the problems with conservatives. Fight Club is literally about how bullsh!t the fight clubs are and how those men went from one dysfunctional place to another. Heck, conservatives legit think Carlin is on their side despite that man consistently talking about how much he despises them
I guess conservatives misunderstood Fight Club and Carlin, because they're nostalgic for Victorian bare-knuckle boxing and like Carlin's "no rights" joke.
No, it's about how they went from weakness to strength, which, while not moral, and while not enough to sustain you, is the first step towards better. Because you can't be good without having some strength of character. They did go from one form of dysfunction to another, but that other form of dysfunction is a step in a direction that moves towards functionality. Carlin despised conservatives in his time, and he was a liberal back then, modern conservatives hold most of the same views as 90s liberals.
I seem to notice that internet conservatives like to do that to anything that seems “Tough” or “Rebellious”, for example, I see loads of people who take “Rebellious” music from back then, which usually criticized conservatism and capitalism, and they make it seem like they would be on their side today I see this happen with old punk bands like Dead Kennedies, and they think that “Right wing is the new punk rock”, or with the rap-metal band Rage Against The Machine, where I see many of them say “It’s such a shame RATM became the thing they swore to destroy”, despite the fact that all of their music had been far-left from day one, and the band members still stand by those views to this day, so they get mad that they can’t apply their own ideology to it
@@MorbidMindedManiac "Right wing is the new punk rock" was the funniest thing I saw people say online, lmao. It's conservatism. It's literally the opposite of pushing the social envelope!
I once read a book in the perspective of a character who was in a sort of Falling Down situation. His whole life he thought if he just did the right things, listened to the system and followed the rules, he would be rewarded. Everyone around him, including his family and loved ones, would be punished and oppressed, but he thought it was their own fault because he saw them as troublemakers. But he would be good and none of that stuff would happen to him. Inevitably, the system pulled the rug out from under him, ruining any chance he had at a good, normal life. Instead of taking this out on everyone around him, he joined those who were actively working against the system. It's quite... weird to read Falling Down as anything other than someone STILL not understanding who the true oppressor is.
This will probably be taken as a defense of D-FENS, which is not my message -- but movies have to be taken in their historical context. I was just a teenager at the time, but my impression was and is that 30 years ago it was really the norm not to understand or bother to think much about systems of oppression. Especially if you were white and middle-class or above. This wasn't a common topic on local or cable shows, or in most newspapers and magazines, which is what we had then. Internet was still fledgling. Many people were exposed to these ideas in college, or outside of it, but many more got their degrees without bothering. It's impressive to me how much overall consciousness has grown, in general, in the last 20-30 years. This part will sound like a defense of D-FENS. His acts of half-random violence were deplorable and would be in any era. But put yourself in the shoes of this man as much as possible, meaning you have to be familiar with the socio-cultural climate of the time, and during the preceding time of his life. He's a baby boomer while they were on top of the world, was an engineer I believe, good job, loving family, good neighborhood, until he and his wife seperated and he lost the job. He'd always been clean-cut American dream boy, playing by the rules, which had apparently worked well for him until those downturns. At this point, if he's not engaged in serious self-reflection, he'd be prone to some bitter ruminations about society. And in the early 90s, and being the solitary, friendless person he is, he wouldn't be likely to stumble across any literature or anything else to point him in the right direction and keep him from going off the rails like he did. Unless he actively sought out such information. But he didn't. He AVOIDED seeking truth -- possibly out of frustrated hopelessness, and/or he was arrogant/unaware enough to believe he possessed it already. So, his initial transgression was buying into the system which implicitly said he'd have a good life as a white male U.S. citizen, provided he worked well and followed the rules. But the system has no real concern for him as an average individual, regardless of his generally privileged identity. In the end he's just another pawn who's a little higher up than some other pawns and a lot lower down than a rare few. And we're almost all pawns, whose chief characteristics are that they're expendable and nearly powerless to affect the game, or only incidentally affect it in tiny ways. Like prey.
@@AvoidiacIn the 1970s, and to some extent the 1980s, there was a lot of attention on societal critique. People were exploring feminism, racial equality, gay rights, etc. But the 80s & 90s also saw a conservative backlash against those movements. And the 1990s began with the Rodney King video. Then the police who beat him were acquitted, leading to protests and riots around the country. My point is that for adults in the 1990s, if they chose to ignore systemic oppression, then they were deliberately turning their heads. It’s not like the information wasn’t available. Yes, it was harder to read books and magazines when you had to get a physical copy. Plenty of us did it anyway.
Falling down actually helped me realize I was destroying myself when I saw it like a decade ago. Im confused as to how so many people miss the entire point of that movie
Like. JOEL SCHUMACHER directed it. This is not supposed to be a white male power fantasy. You are supposed to see the dichotomy between D-Fens and our old cop fella.
You should tell us what you see as the point. I see it as a man who is mad at the world for both rudeness and injustice. He's gone off the edge......but I don't see the lead character as racist. Perhaps misanthrope is a better word?
@davidking4838 I don't think he's meant to be inherently racist, but he's representative of a demographic with a lot of crossover, right? From what I've heard, the biggest demographic for stochastic terrorism is lonely white men finding out life isn't as simple as the exchange they were promised and having trouble coping, which usually comes with hardcore conservative beliefs on gender roles, and occasionally some kind of expectation of white providence, programmed intentionally or not
i really appreciate that your content discusses men and masculinity in a way that isnt just "men are bad yucky!!!" its so important that we educate men on this stuff without making them feel alienated or ostracized because if they do then theyre way less likely to actually pay attention to whats being said, so im really glad your videos exist!! thank you so much and i cant wait to see what you have to say next!!
??? What. His whole video is ridiculing and talking shit about white men who are struggling really tough mentally. I don’t understand these people. It’s like if they pour gasoline on a fire and then gets surprised when it starts to fucking burn.
As a white south african male i would just throw in a comment on the mythology around percieved traditional masculinity (16:00) and the rewards that ostensibly go along with it. You say that some white males feel cheated when they dont achieve the status in society that they expected, and that they feel diminished and cheated by society. I would suggest, based partially on personal life experience, that these radicialized men feel like failures (for not living up to an unrealistic ideal), and that it is this dissapointment and perhaps even deep frustration and hatred toward self, that is primarily toxic. That all gets projected on one or other scapegoat in all to many cases, and of course that wreaks havoc on society. I just felt the need to stress that. Oh , and i havent lived in SA for some twenty years, but that is the society that shaped me in large part. Not to simplify the broader points you put across in a wonderfully concise and persuasive manner in this video though.
As a middle-class white man raised by Fox News watching parents, I know this feeling so well. Thankfully I was reached before I became an incel and have been working hard as hell to be a better member of my community. But this video is phenomenal and I look forward to more insight! Thank you for the hard work
the way media and health care has been allowed to fall in the hands of rampant capitalists is the great tragedy of the american experiment. add to that the Military Industrial Complex, the Prison system and Policing to Budget and... it's enough for anyone to lose hope. speaking of which; I am absolutely astounded that the rage of underprivileged white men is always directed at minorities and "liberals", instead of the mechanisms that use them for profit. anyone want to shed a light on that? is it misguided patriottism?
@@crazyrr144 since the term incel gets very closely attributed to misogyny and misogynists- I think what they meant was that they didn't become a redpill/misogynistic incel. And no, a lot of beauty standards and criteria for what people find attractive is messed up and contorted
Man these long-form, nuanced, considerate discussions are what social media needs. This was an awesome critique, entertaining, and without any of the outrage or other baloney tactics.
Just like Fight Club and The Matrix, I felt like Joker also had a lot of social commentary and undertones but were somehow overlooked by media. Late stage capitalism, mental health, wealth inequality, family dynamics. But all the media seemed to see was that it was a hyper edgelord film. To be honest it probably has a lot to do with the previous Dark Knight shooting. People were just scared and that's understandable.
I don't think so. The media chooses NOT to address those issues because it's too dangerous and takes them down a rabbit hole they'd rather not go down. So they stick to the surface with a cultural, non political viewpoint. See it over and over again in so many dramas. For e.g., Breaking Bad is about a lot of things but what I don't see any US critic mention is that BB is partly a critique on the US health system.
I came out of Joker surprised at the Marxist approach it seemed to take. Even tho the director denied it and said it wasnt? The class antagonism, the alienation, the environment and history that shaped the actions and reactions of the character showing that people aren't just "evil" and it's often material conditions and the such that actually influence them the most.
The people who think Fight Club is some right-wing manifesto never read the book or know anything about the author. But there were people out there that did not realize Rage Against the Machine was politically radical, so a lack of comprehension is rampant in society.
@@marcantoinelab12321 Yeah it worked off the "Killing Joke's" "One bad day" concept and gave Joker A LOT of bad days. Yet you can see it isn't just him yet the city itself was rotting and the city itself just needed "one bad day" that's what it got. Then we still got the setup that it was ALL in his head the whole time so what is "real" and what is just him creating it?
@@clayjack9969 Eventhough in the big retrospective of The Watchmen, Rorschach was right. All those people died for nothing, he and the comedian died for nothing. The whole story is more bleek now that it's all meaningless. Unless you want to work off the "Doomsday Clock" storyline and Manhattan gave his world a true "Superman"
The thing is, the Joker wasn’t portrayed as actually improving the world, he was just frustrated with the world and took it out in all the wrong ways. The movie has a clear line between empathizing with him and the things he does wrong
It wasn't that clear to me. Nevertheless, I didn't have any inpulse to try to become like him, because the movie was rather as an interesting view, from a sociological perspective.
12:15 context for the Mr. Robot scene, for those unaware: This speech is revealed to be what Elliot _wants_ to say to his therapist, but it ends up being his own thoughts instead (you can hear the reverberated voice of his therapist clicking him back into reality.) It's an early episode of the show but it succinctly explains why he basically wants to Hack The Planet and why he gets caught up with Mr. Robot. Elliot gets better later on in the show (a rarity for this genre) but this scene is a good illustration of what's being talked about in this essay. Also, Mr. Robot rules; check it out if you haven't yet! :)
@@meatbot.404 it’s a pretty good show, I’d say pretty far from cringe, one of the only shows I think computer savvy folks can watch and not die inside when someone is talking about programming or hacking… handles this whole “societal angst” thing pretty well too, doesn’t go overboard trying to make him righteous for all this stuff, mostly just confused & misguided, like most guys that actually think like that.
@@meatbot.404 You can't judge any piece of art on a clip. It's a great show which delves into the human psyche through the perspective of mental health (social anxiety, depression, narcissistic personality disorder, dissociative personality disorder, addiction, psychosis...). Every single character is meaningful and adds a different perspective to the collective, yet completely individual human experience we all live. The show is also really current and manages to brilliantly capture our modern society and the social discontent post 2008 and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Sam Esmail is a really unique and creative director and some of the scene are pure magic. There's honestly very little wrong with the show, the concept, the cinematography, the acting, the characters, the music, and the pacing are all brilliant. Highly recommend if you're already interested in watching it.
@@meatbot.404 On the contrary, I thought it only got worse and ended on the stupidest note I could imagine, especially insulting those who know any reference to the hacking & thematic material.
I'm not quite to the halfway point, so this may be moot, but I think people have a hard time digesting the concept of a main character you shouldn't identify or look up to. Which is to say that media literacy is just not at a great rate for the general populace.
Or that you can identify with and still see how their outlook and behavior is problematic and ignore the critiques built in. The whole vigilante antihero as an outright hero even if the media they are in is critiquing it (the co-opting of the Punisher comes to mind, even if the different media interpretations have other issues)
@@mggardiner4066 " you can identify with and still see how their outlook and behavior is problematic" that's the point of fight club in a way as well; understand the motivations, deplore the 'solutions' they come up with. if that's not ironic, given some of the misguided fans of these movies. it's almost like they are meant as manuals for a certain public as to what not to do. /jk i still think Falling Down is an exception, the protagonist is not the protagonist, it's about the fall-out (the wife and daughter) and the way the general public doesn't catch on to domestic toxic situations. the way the viewer only sees D-Fens for what he is until late in the game is analogous to how neighbours and friends mistake abuse for lovers quarrels and choose to look away from abuse until it's too late when the signs were always there.
I'm surprised you didn't bring up Marvin Heemeyer and his Killdozer, as it's a perfect real-life example of Falling Down and the way it was misunderstood. Especially the part where he's viewed as a noble martyr and is often paired with imagery and quotes from Falling Down. Would have been a pretty solid way to tie the movies you discussed into how the behaviors of the people who like them misunderstand the films.
@@makhnothecossack4948 He also didnt care that he couldve though. Him not killing anyone was rather circumstance than intention. He drove his bulldozer into random buildings, stores, while almost having no field of view. There couldve been people in the way so many times, yet he still chose to blindly ram through store walls etc.
@@pffpffovich2398 kind of, but not really. One of the buildings he slammed into was a clothing store which, while owned by one of his adversaries, could've easily just had people inside. Similar things with other buildings. Also, he himself caused alot of his own "misfortune" wanting quick cash and selling land without properly reading the contract
@@pffpffovich2398 he nearly killed a bunch of children in the town hall library who barely escaped and tried to blow up propane tanks that would’ve caused a large explosion that could’ve injured or killed civilians
man, this is my second video I've watched of yours and I got to say this is quality discourse and study. As an Indigenous man in America, I've been observing these types of behaviors for years in white men and you have given me the words to explain it all. Thank you
@@lancewalker2595 aw buddy are you feeling called out ? No one is directly talking about "you" when criticizing something like masculinity. Its about criticizing those concepts that people latch onto, and the ensuing priviledge within modern soceity from said premises. It is not a criticism of you as a human being, but maybe a way of taking the time to self reflect and learn something new about yourself and the world you may not have noticed because youre not directly affected by it
@@lancewalker2595 the criticisms are aimed at the concepts of whiteness and patriarchy. If you think that's a personal attack, then you absolutely have the most to learn. For example, I am also a white male, and yet its obviously not a direct criticism towards me as a person. Its simply an analysis of the fundamental soceital structures from which I benefit (but which I never chose to be a part of). It's not a bad or negative thing to take a look inward at our place within society and try to learn from it
I would love to know how much casting Will Smith instead of Keanu would've changed the film. It's pretty hard for me to imagine Will Smith, a titan of charisma, playing an isolated, awkward, lonely computer hacker. Especially Will Smith ca 1999. IMO part of the reason for why Keanu works as Neo is that his acting suits the movie's tone and style: stilted, somewhat off balance, fairly cold emotionally. I can only see Will Smith being distracting in that kind of movie.
The way the Wachowskis tell it, Will wanted the movie to be funnier. The way Will tells it, he just couldn't get his head around what the movie was actually about.
And lets nor forget matrix its basically a copycat of a japanese anime lol, man you americans love to put everything o skin color Now even heroe tales and underdog bringing down a system fighting alongside the plebs its a withe american creation, he even says "the god old days nostalgia" its a racist america thing, when every society in human history expressed this "good old times" nostalgia Now 1 thing, will smith would definitely suck for matrix, but Denzel Washington would have been amazing
30 year old white guy and big ol lefty here. Definitely fell into the 4chan edgelord shit in my early teens. I was a conservative middle schooler which... like what the fuck? There is nothing worse than conservative kids. Really loved this video and subscribed. I think you nailed it. I think you touched on the two things I consider the biggest aspects of this toxic white American culture. American exceptionalism and a misunderstanding of what everyday racism looks like. Post-MAGA, it seems clear that there are millions of people in this country that genuinely believe "America is great. I am American. I am great.". Which ultimately translates into "I am free to do whatever I want and if you oppose me you are a communist." It's national narcissism being compressed into an individuals identity and self-worth. I believe I've seen the term "Tucker's Cat" in reference to the right's idea of what racism is. That racism can only exist as the most egregious, N-word shouting, hood wearing, nazi flying, actively lynching a black person, kind of person. Anything short of that is dismissed as "snowflakes" or "just a joke. I actually experienced this a few hours ago. I live in Manhattan and was out walking my dog when two 20 something white women not wearing masks walked by a group of Chinese people wearing masks. One of the white women said "I shouldn't of left Florida with all these Chinese, I'm definitely going to get COVID!". I told them to get their racist asses out of the fucking city. They replied with "It was just a joke, I forgot New Yorkers are so sensitive." The level of casual dismissal really stuck with me. Infuriated me actually. Just, a complete lack of awareness or empathy. No regard (or probably knowledge) of the hate crimes Asians have faced in the city over the last year. I think as a country we put way too much importance on intent. When conservatives consistently vote to empower white supremacy, regardless of if that's their intention, they're still upholding white supremacy. I get caught up thinking about the paradox of tolerance. Maybe it's that inner white rage I'm still struggling with but it's hard to imagine that embracing them will change anything. In my opinion, conservative thought in this country has been on the wrong side of history at every possible moment. Anyway, it's 2:30 am and I'm rambling. Loved the video and looking forward to watching more.
Came across your channel through the Bo Burnham video and I’m here to stay. Amazing content. I love it. I’m from Brazil and I teach English as a second language. I often recommend video essay channels to my students so they can have a meaningful and thoughtful contact with the language, and I’m definitely going to recommend your channel. Congratulations for the great work.
As a white male, this video made me feel so uncomfortable and exposed. But I liked it. It’s been days since I watched it and I can’t stop thinking about how true it is. You nailed it.
The hardest thing I've found to explain to other white men my age (early 40s) is that the term "toxic masculinity" doesn't mean that men or masculinity are inherently toxic. It's getting them to accept that certain things they were taught about "how to be a man" are actually toxic to THEM and the rest of society. I know when I was younger I definitely had an uncritical love of movies like Taxi Driver. I was a product of the era of the traditional patriarchy where men were stunted emotionally unless it was lust or rage and if one was unable to find a place in society the only way to establish yourself (or take revenge) was through acts of violence as a right of passage. It's a major theme in the works of Sam Peckinpah for example. It's only in the last 10 or 15 years that I've come to realize that society was never egalitarian or meritocratic and that these images were fantastical. I wasn't able to verbalize that though and your explanation helped with that especially reframing it in a healthy perspective. I do think the entitled aggression is a great descriptor. At the same time I'm able to understand why (erroneously) white men feel marginalized. They are in a position where their previous status has been destabilized and other groups are constantly reminding them of it and pushing to enshrine that destabilization. So they feel that violence (the traditional means of establishing power and identity) is what is required to reconcile the situation. They have yet to realize that the same elements that produce these toxic beliefs and behaviors in them effect others even more so and that the deconstruction of these idols should be a shared effort. Like you I hope that the future is better. Great video.
White men don't just *feel* marginalised; they *are* marginalised. A narrow-minded, highly reductionist view has become fashionable, through which it has become popular to assume that any white man who doesn't appear to recognise his own privilege is mistaken and needs to be educated (usually they are expected to educate themselves, based on the idea that everyone else is supposedly tired of doing the 'emotional labour' required to help these men 'understand' the 'truth' of themselves; this is a useful convenience on the part of people whose entire worldview would fall apart at the slightest hint of a question). What this view doesn't understand is that, in reality, neither being white nor being male confers any specific advantage, and that the only way to pretend that it does is to invoke a similarly reductionist idea of what it is to be black and/or female, namely that the latter are oppressed merely by virtue of sharing a society with white men. This entire view has likely emerged, at least in part, from our propensity to prefer simplistic explanations and solutions (reality, of course, is a fundamentally complex phenomenon). The most interesting thing is that if we actually *listened* to white men, instead of assuming we already know enough about them, we would discover that reducing them to their skin colour and gender ignores the many varied problems they deal with on a day-to-day basis. One of these problems is that they have constantly been denied a voice; wealthy people tend to be more influential and have greater access to power and speech platforms, and while it might be more likely that wealthy people are white and male than black and/or female, it doesn't follow that a white male is likely to be wealthy, and most of them aren't; as such, they are at the mercy of a myriad of rules and expectations that they have no power to resist (and if they do they are highly likely to be marginalised and ostracised e.g. if they don't have a job, or a partner/family, or even decent physical or mental health). We should be looking at society and trying to see the problems we face, but we're not; instead, we're assuming we already know what they are and are then interpreting the world in ways that conform to our hypotheses. We claim that minorities should have a voice, but we're never willing to listen to them unless they parrot exactly what we expect them to say i.e. that they are victims of a white supremacist structural racism. Any black person who offers an alternative view is dismissed as having 'internalised whiteness', where 'whiteness' is nothing more than a god-of-the-gaps term meant to stand in for an utter lack of a credible explanation. TL;DR - pay attention to the world and the people in it, and resist the urge to see it through a lens. Masculinity may be harmful in some forms, but femininity should not be considered a wholly safe alternative. Sometimes we need strength, aggression and stoicism.
I like to explain it like this: "Lets talk about toxic mushrooms and why you shoulnd't eat them." "Oh so now mushrooms are toxic???!!!" "No, just the toxic ones, so please stop eating them."
I don't think D-Fens was ever intended to be or portrayed as the hero of Falling Down, and anyone trying to read the film as a defiant declaration of violent working class white triumph is on a fool's errand. In the scene in the neo-Nazi's storeroom, you'll notice that soon after hearing the Nazi tell him "we're the SAME, you and me!" and he shoots him, but the next shot D-Fens fires is actually at the mirror as he's looking at himself. Then he finishes off the Nazi. He has a painful moment of self-awareness that the Nazi was telling the truth and he can't stand to see what he is. At the end of the film he explicitly comes to the realization that he's the villain of his story. Over and over again he is seen as being an outcast abusive psychopath, a sad, unhinged and enraged manbaby with an explosive temper and a child's understanding of the world. The film doesn't glorify Bill Foster, but it doesn't entirely condemn or vilify him either. Robert Duvall's Detective Prendergast is a foil for D-Fens and you have to compare and contrast the two men's wildly differing responses to being obsolete white men in America to appreciate the nuance of the storytelling rather than assume D-Fens is the protagonist of the film simply because he's the lead character.
And some people think Tyler Durden is the hero of Fight Club, or Starship troopers was a straight movie about patriotism, or Robocop was not pointing out the folly of capitalism. Lots of people can't see the subtext even when it's straight text.
The mention of white men feeling entitled to something that they've been conditioned to expect and then being angry when they don't get it is interesting to me, because as a white man I never felt that way but it's probably because I'm a gay man in the south and my high school experience was a pretty tense anxiety ridden part of my life and I can't say things got that much better even after the fact, so from a pretty early age I knew that whatever success white men had come to expect did not include white men like me, and their picture of success and happiness was very much not my picture of success and happiness
@@Scruffy-qi3ik not really, if we add intersectionality then it's clear to see why this isn't a surprise. Most people want to continue seeing things from a one directional viewpoint as if people's identities are not multi layered
It's basic "because he does it on TV, I can do it too" even when the TV clearly says that it's wrong BoJack Horseman, The Joker, Rick are all people you should not idolise or look up to, and it's also the writers job to make sure that the audience knows and understands that, to avoid falsely justified bad behaviour in our world.
And with Bojack and Rick, the curtain is pulled back in later seasons to reveal how they were gross and selfish all along and we were just blinded by the perspective of the narrative.
AAAHHHH I COULD KISS YOU FOR MENTIONING BOJACK HORSEMAN! If you don’t mind I’m gonna rant about this for a little. The whole Philbert episode in bojack horseman was dedicated for people who find comfort and acceptance to relating too bojack. Bojack didn’t feel as bad when he was watching and playing the role of Philbert because Philbert understood him, Philbert was him, and Philbert did good things too so he’s not completely a bad guy he’s just a human who made mistakes or whatever bojack interpreted to be. Then when Diane realizes that bojack took the show in a way that made him feel less shittier about himself (like this video is talking about) she went off on bojack and told him it shouldn’t make him feel better about who he is, or that he deserve anything sympathy from people just cause he was down on his luck, that isn’t what he should’ve token away from this. And people though Diane was being too harsh on bojack (because secretly they feel like she’s being too harsh to them.) flash foward season six when everything came back to bojack, when the curtain unraveled and bojack had no where to hide his behaviour, people felt so much empathy for bojack. It’s crazy because the creator of the show has always been telling and warning us that bojack is not a good person. Bojack doesn’t truely truely want to change. Bojack purposely falls into these patterns with himself and people and him getting sober didn’t ultimately change who he was and what he did. He is not supposed to get away with this. He is not supposed to be the victim and they did an awesome job at showing how everything he did came back to him, cause he is not the good guy who did bad things. He was the bad guy in many peoples lives and just cause he was self aware of it to a certain extent did not give him a free pass.
@@marcoosorio3705 yeah I say all this but could never say I despise him weirdly enough. I just feel sad when I think of bojack, In a way of"when did you cross the line and can you ever go back?
@@vice2versa The video author isn't ignoring anything. He's pointing out that a large cohort of mostly white men are completely missing the point of movies like this.
I can also say it has a pretty strong anti-medicine message which was super helpful to the already huge anti-meds discourse out there for mentally ill people
@@seltythe movie JOKER is not anti-meds, as the character gets progressively crazier and more insane and violent when he no longer can have his meds because the city closed his public hospital pdychiatric wing. How can anyone not see that?
It doesn't say anything new, but the basic message of "the system oppresses the working class" always needs to be heard by new audiences. If it's packaged in a way that more people listen, I can get behind it. The pitfall is obviously when edgelords distort the message into something it wasn't meant to be as he explained. Maybe the Joker wasn't the right character to use since he does so many horrible things.
@@karlmay5306 Thanks for introducing me to that film. Based on what I read, I'll have to give it a try if I can brace myself tight enough for the ride lol
@@MachFiveFalconYep and the message also has an overarching point about ableism and about the lack of support for people with disability specifically. For that, it does kinda add something new imo or at least something rare to see in mainstream movies. It really baffles me how the edgelords just skip over that part.
I think black men did the same thing with Erik Kilmonger. A character who was trying to "help his people" but also admitted he's killed his own people to get to his goal, not to mention his unwarranted aggression towards that elderly black woman, and people were saying he was right and was the actual hero. Like they really couldn't tell they were cheering on essentially someone that would be their own downfall.
He made accurate criticisms of the established power. But then was comically villainous in how he dealt with people so the movie could end with him beaten and that be good. The movie is very liberal in its philosophy on power struggles. A truly great movie would have been if Eric had won and just straight up become the new Black panther.
Kilmonger was correct but because Marvel is liberal propaganda they had to make him go overboard cartoon evil to delegitimize his views. It's common in liberal media to see a revolutionary figure whose heart is in the right place but they "go too far" by using violence and thus have to be rejected.
@@amuroray9115 My comment is not sarcasm. The villain in the movie Black panther is great in so far as he makes accurate criticism, and weak in so far as he is then made exaggeratedly evil so that he can still be seen as the villain.
this is a fascinating video, I liked all the movies except the joker, but dad always reminded me, just because they are the main character doesn't mean they are the good guy, he told me to watch falling down as a horror movie from the pov of the monster, he is a lefty, pacifist vet, glad he raised me, and not my friend's dads.
Thank you so much for the shoutout dude!!! You made a great video. I was unaware of the weird fan base the movie had and I think it’s a shame most people misinterpret the movie bc I do think the movie gets you to understand why he thinks the way he does even though it ultimately shows he’s wrong.
Yeah I was unaware but not surprised... hence the thesis of this video. I'm just happy your commentors never made it over here. Also make more videos dude.
Wow, this is deep. White guy here. I think having kids recently has made me examine a lot of what I inherited about masculinity in effort to not perpetuate some of the same things. Trying to heal, and trying to not do patriarchy! Thank you for these insights.
Kids, don't do patriarchy, one day you're just chilling wih your friends doing some patriarchy and before you know it you start going on the hard stuff and your life is ruined
Thank you for talking about Falling Down and the main character that a lot of people didn't seem to get. D-FENS is basically a "Leave it to Beaver", 1950s "man of the house" that went through a psychotic breakdown over the fact that the world was not owed to him, and the film is a deconstruction of the sort of conservative middle-class patriarch these figures are. I think that his murder of the neo-Nazi and the argument with the Korean store owner is an interesting mirror to how America sees itself: fighting Nazis and using surveillance to subvert and disrupt the KKK, while engaging in imperialism abroad, and implicitly upholding white supremacy. It's this insidious "respectable" racism, high moralism and even the fact that he was embedded in the military-industrial complex and definitely the twist that he was a domestic abuser drives the parallels even more to me.
@@shaunsteele8244 You obviously don't understand the point I was making, and it's not about him being a "wealthy white man". I suspect that you're not the type who'd get it after an explanation, so I'm just gonna tell you to sod off.
" think that his murder of the neo-Nazi and the argument with the Korean store owner is an interesting mirror to how America sees itself: fighting Nazis and using surveillance to subvert and disrupt the KKK, while engaging in imperialism abroad, and implicitly upholding white supremacy" honestly never thought of it as symbolism. cheers!
I loved Falling Down when it came out, and I still think it’s a fantastic and subversive movie. It starts as this revenge porn fantasy. Superficially it’s about this seemingly upstanding guy who’s reached the end of his tether. But by the end it’s crystal clear that he is NOT the hero, he’s the villain. Robert Duvalls character sums this up when he speaks the truth about exactly what Michael Douglas’ character was planning to do (going home to kill his ex-wife and child). Anybody watching that movie who thought Douglas’ character who didn’t understand that, wasn’t paying attention.
It turns out that all it takes to disrupt the mystique surrounding The Dark Knight and Heath Ledger's Joker is to simply juxtapose GIFs of Stanley rolling his eyes, lol
@@usefulidiot21 it is true indeed, you can find vids where he talks about that. He even believes that turning down the role was a good thing for the movie
I love your treatment of this subject. It hits close to home for a younger me and I still occasionally struggle with some of the mental tricks I learned that create this sense of righteousness.
Thank you for that powerful endorsement. Please do what you can to make it happen. Share it with your peers In your social.media circles etc. I want this message to spread for more than just building the channel.
@@FDSignifire Your comments on "Falling Down" are pretty darn true. My father LOVES the movie. But he's also a 61 year old man-child who feels like the country owes him, but not the "welfare people" (as you can tell, after the way he was when I was a child, I do not have a very high opinion of the man). For myself, I can see why the movie resonates, because sometimes I really sympathize with the "Jesus this traffic is driving me up the wall!" feelings. However, I find myself personally much more aligned with Robert Duvall's character: A man all the other cops look down on who has a dominating wife. Regardless of all of this (I especially like the part where he tells his wife he may be late and she just has to get over it), he does what's right and gives "D-FENS" the cold hard truth: Yeah, it sucks..what happened to him sucks, sometimes life sucks. But that's no defense for his rampage and all he has done that day, and decides he's not going to retire just yet after "D-FENS", in a particularly craven way to avoid responsibility for his crimes, uses his daughter's water pistol to attain "suicide by cop". Sorry, I don't have a high opinion on Micheal Douglas' character, and knowing Joel Schumacher's stances on things, I don't think you are supposed to. He's supposed to be someone you, on some level, pity and can sympathize with, but in the end, what he's done is horrible and he's pretty much irredeemable.
@@bcw1313 so in terms of the extremes of these types, economics is not as huge a factor as you think, at least in terms of their personal SES. That said, I definitely see this problem to be partially explained by alienation and late capitalism, but a video can only be so long, and this one in particular was hard enough to pull into something resembling a cohesive thought
I was just bringing your channel up to a few people! I initially had a spot of disagreement but that quickly went away with your explanation and research! I really respect your perspective on this and can’t wait to see what you create next.
The Joker was about class warfare. It wasn't a white incel treatment. It was an indictment of Reaganomics and neoliberalism in the face of a tone deaf establishment. It was brilliant.
@@77Creationjust like they ruined American psycho, and ironically, the movie was directed by a gay man and the book was written by a transgender woman, same thing with the matrix, it was literally written by a woman.
@Comics By the Numbers "The largest tool of white supremacy has been open discourse and free and fair elections." Then by your logic Africa is run by fascists.
That the protagonists in these films can be seen as role models is mad. The re-contextualisation of criticism as a supportive narrative underlines that we do not think rationally, but emotionally.
Comparing characters to movies and using it to spread hate throughout the internet is completely idiotic. Do you see how much precious time you're wasting talking about how "problematic" MOVIE CHARACTERS are? You people are clowns.
@@mr.herbert532 What are you doing here watching this video? At least we are taking part in discussion. You’re sitting, typing pathetically at people having a conversation and you’re calling us clowns?
I disagree extremely with your reading of Joker. Arthur Fleck is treated sympathetically, but the film absolutely doesn't condone what happens. It's a story of how a heartless society with gutted healthcare engenders further dysfunction. Contrary to other characters, Arthur wasn't entitled. This is a fundamental difference. He deserved to be treated as a human being and was denied that. I feel that many people are forgetting that he suffered from mental health issues and by incorrectly reducing him to basically just an entitled white man, they undermine these very real issues and how people suffer from them. It feels almost sociopathic, to just call him an entitled white man instead of addressing the sociological conditions behind what he became. And again, nobody should condone what he became. The film does not.
To me that final hero shot as he dances on the cop car in the middle of a riot that he caused... yeah idk if it's fair to say the movie doesn't lionize his violent spectacle. I was on the fence about the film until the end, but that shot to me drove home my perception.
I'm with you here, Joker to me is a very good movie in showing how society truly treats people that are different. And all it takes is a bad day to make someone go from trying to make it to a killer. I can't say I look at joker as a hero cause I thought going in how are they going to tell his backstory because he is crazy and evil. So the way they went with it in the movie I enjoyed cause it's different for me as someone who doesn't watch a lot of movies
Keep in mind even the mental health Fleck gets is government funded and in his eyes inadequate. It's not society that turned him into a murderer, he is a violent murderer that blames society. That's the whole point of Robert De Niro's point of telling him to take responsibility for himself.
@@EpicWin1337 oh of course in the end it all falls to him and the choices he makes. But as you said, it was the Gov health that he felt was inadequate and if the government health is as inadequate as it is in real world . Then we can only draw the conclusion that a little better gov health would improve his outlook. In the end for me the story of Joker is just a mirror to the face of the choices we do and don't make on the daily. Rather we are a murder or just someone trying to be a good citizen. The question falls, what are you doing to make the world better for someone else? At least that's what I came away with from watching Joker
@@FDSignifire yeah I thought the same thing initially about the moving idolizing the violence he cause but now I believe that it was to show the final stage in his character’s development, he went from a man who was beat down by society, then his next stage was someone unafraid to fight back (not saying he should have killed those people because murder is still a terrible act) against those he deemed awful or who had wronged him, and that scene of him dancing in the car was him realizing that he just enjoys the chaos he brought, the scene wasn’t to make the audience idolize it, it was showing him taking the final step towards becoming the joker as he realizes he loves causing chaos. Sorry if I explained this badly
From what I can see, the main issue with these edge-lord types is a major lack of perspective. Experience with cultures and communities different from your own is important to understanding the world we live in.
I think one of the things that's missing in the discussion about why the collapse of society is so appealing is how it also removes the responsibility/copiability of white men for the system that made them feel so miserable. If the world collapses then I won't have this stupid job, I won't have these shitty relationships, I won't have this shitty government, etc. but it also helps them skirt the real answer which is, I won't have to actually sit with myself and fix what the fuck is wrong with me so I can figure out how the fuck to fix all this shit. Externalizing the threat is kind of the move of my people for sadly a long, long time.
@@cavy369 It's not an easy answer. One of the things someone could do who is struggling with a shitty job, shitty relationships, shitty government etc, is think about what they want from life and what a more bearable life would look like. Steps one could take; -remove bad friends, if no good friends remain then try to start better friendships. Know what to look for in people who you want to be friends with -break up a relationship that isn't worth saving -ignore societal pressure to have a relationship in the first place. Aim to be a complete and fulfilled person without a romantic relationship, so that when you do get into one and it's a good one it's a bonus and not an attempt to fill a hole in your life or your heart. -vote for parties that you think will help get the world to where you want it to be -job fulfillment may be more rewarding than a higher salary. If you have a shitty job there may be options to talk about with your boss so you can perform different tasks in the workplace, so that your day doesn't feel so boring. You may be able to transfer, or get a job with a different company entirely. Some people say changing from an office job to a job where they actually made something with their hands (like a cobbler) made them feel more fulfilled, like they could see their work mattered. -money does matter. Your colleague who does the same as you do may get paid more because they negotiated a better salary. -if you live somewhere where an illness could bankrupt you consider what you need to do to move to a place where that wouldn't be a likely outcome from an illness. -get rid of the "living for the weekend" mentality. People will probably enjoy their weeks more if they planned boardgame nights or something similar (taking into account weekday bed time of course) during the work week. It's something to look forward to on a tuesday or wednesday evening. -get a hobby you're passionate about. Sometimes the answer is not to play along with the system at all. If there's societal pressure to have a partner, get married, have kids, buy a house, buy a car, etc but you don't want to and don't need to, then don't do it.
Shouldn't the system be attacked more than the individuals within it? Telling individuals to solve the problem solely by themself is the same as telling individuals to solve climate change by themselves, it's limited and ultimately ineffective if the system and society at large perpetuates that problem. And the white men responsible for that system are like what 1% of white men in general? It seems really dumb to blame the general public of white men for what rich white men do in in power, seems like taking the blame off them. I've noticed this "taking responsibility for your group" rhetoric only seems to apply to white men, any other group is would be considered bigotry to do so. And before anyone says it's different because oppression, you shouldn't generalise groups once they're no longer oppressed in your eyes, it's not fair to the decent members in that group.
This 'The chosen one' or as you call it 'special boy' trope always kind of iffed me. Especially in computer games but also in other media. it's just so unrealistic and kills all immersion to me. This hyping up of the lone wolf instead of making all of us realize that we need to stick together, whatever our ethnicity may be, is just not helping. I really appreciate your take on this, you verbalize a lot of the stuff that I couldn't but that kind of naggs me.
It's to reinforce liberal hyperindividualism. Don't think about working together to change a system, just put your hopes in some guy. Make sure to vote for him!
@@mohq9573 I think this is interesting to thinking about, but I also think some of this is unintentional byproduct of writing fiction. It's easier to use an audience proxy or anchor character to introduce or ground the audience into the story, especially with sci fi worlds
It helped to provide context to why anime and manga is also so massive in these communities. I've always felt uncomfortable in any online space with anime and manga communities because of the overwhelming presence of these incel types, and it's an interesting possible connection as to why these communities overlap so much
Love to see that "It wasn't just Tulsa" bit, because I grew up in Tulsa, and the Race Massacre is discussed pretty frequently and candidly in our school system (at least in my experience) but we hardly ever heard of any other examples. Good to see them put to light so people can learn more about the history
Saw the thumbnail, and I immediately thought "Oh lord." Your introduction to this video is so incredibly well spoken, tactful and well thought out. It's the perfect way to approach the volatility of this subject. Bravo.
To me is always so crazy that people idealize this movies as a guide, to me Fight Club and Joker are about overlooked mental illness in a society that don't want to talk about it, even when I was a teenager I didn't see this movies characters as heroes. It is really shocking for me.
Exactly. Joker has quite a few messages that you can take from it, but I'd definitely say the message "lets stop treating the mentally ill like shit" was one of, if not the most important and the clearest
I think the conflation of "incels" getting "inspired by" joker speficially is disingenuous. I think it's easy to think that if you have preconceived notions of both, but coming to that idea would just be confirmation bias. If anything, the people I saw championing the movie (on social media) were left leaning, progressive people - the people or sympathize with Marxism/socialism - ideologies that support the idea of the current status quo being set on fire/emploded so self-identified "better" systems could take its place.
@@CATALYSTdrummer Agreed, I'm socialist, female poc and have mental illness and I loved Joker. It gave a voice to some issues I hadn't seen addressed in mainstream movies in a long time. It's a huge shame that the imo minority of loud narcissists claimed it for their own :(
@@Aurora_Celeste_ASMR nobody claimed it as their own, the left media was the one who stirred up shit. If the joker was a poc women, i guarantee you the movie would've been celebrated by everyone alike. But since it depicts a "white" man its automatically dismissive and supposedly advocates for violence. This is the reason hollywood movies are becoming more and more dogshit by the day. Performative wokeness and political correctness.
About fight club, which I love, and I'm probably biased because I am pretty sure I looked more into the movie than the typical college bro who likes it at surface level, I was like that the first time I watched it, after the third I looked into psychological analysies of the movie by different psychologists, and I really enjoy the movies portrayal of the male fantasy and what It can mean and every different subgenre of it that all different men embody, rather than thinking about it as "tyler durden is the shit, wish I could be him" which would be the superficial take on it, I think fans and haters alike get too caught up in the edgy hypermasculinity and charm of the movie that they miss out on the meat and potatoes of all the subtext, the movie gives, therefore giving it this bad reputation of being this incel-bro movie about hitting eachother
I remember watching falling down as a kid. It was a formative piece of media for me - not because I agreed with d-fens and what he did, but because I had never seen a narrative where a protagonist could be the one doing bad things. It shaped the way I viewed media for years to come - never conflating protagonist and good-doer again.
As someone who's worked in the field of mental health. All races with the right amount of mental illness are attracted to whats edgy because at first they are empowered and just trying it out. But ultimately everyone is different and whatever path is in front of them and the influences that surround them will dictate what happens. Thing is most people are just simply uneducated and can't tell the difference between a cautionary tale/ tragic warning from a power fantasy. Believe me I worked with at risk youth for almost three years. I've watched tons of movies with them and witness how they see video games. In terms of general audience anything is possible of course. But in mental illness I find that they relate to the emotions of characters who represent "fuck society" but they don't know what it means usually. Or have a super warped idea of it.
That validates the arguments that media is harmful. Since it is for those that don't understand and it just isn't violence, yet romance, and trauma count too. I've grew up watching a lot of a lot I knew I shouldn't been watching yet it was also right there. For me I knew I was affect yet I also wouldn't blame the media for my own actions. Yet for others, since I too worked in mental health. Some of them see the world in a light others would be blinded by.
@@jayncoclassic TOS is just terms of slavery which excuses them for the dumbass shit people do. Yet will also turn their back on the very concept when they want to drag that part of media as well.
Society is mean to people who are mentally ill or just wired differently. I loved the joker movie because of simple lines like "the hardest part about having a mental illness is everyone expects you to act like you don't have one". And also "If it were me dying on the street you wouldn't bat an eye". Not so much the rage killing and mob forming. It's like I felt validated. Maybe dealing with shame is a common issue what do you think?
I understand your concern for these movies being viewed as “heroic edge lord” tales, but I respectfully have to offer a different example. I’m a middle aged white guy, and saw Falling Down when it came out, saw Joker when it came out, and both of these struck me, at the time of watching and still today, as tragic portraits of the ways people crack under pressure, not in an admirable way, but in a pitiful and depraved way. I’ve assumed that the writers and directors of these (and similar films) see them that way, too, but I haven’t looked into that. The idea that white men see the broken maniacs as heroes is something I haven’t seen in any of the people I know, but I believe what you’ve seen, and I agree wholeheartedly that it’s a disturbing take on these movies and characters. I guess I just had to speak up, as one of the many people who share your concerns, regardless of their race.
I mean you don't even have to look around since social media is right here on our palms. Just watch how many people are idolizing the wrong behaviours and Calling things like that "Sigma behaviour". Its all over internet and normalised as hell. Even i started calling joker some kind of hero because i fell into this herd mentality even though I'm neither white nor a male. I thought it's a cool and "thought provocative" stand
Also keep in mind that he actively twists the narrative and hides details such as how D-FENS is also responsible for the deaths of other white men, at least one of which is definitely racist -but nah, let's just point to that one scene with the Korean storekeep, call him racist then call it a day. Let's also leave out the part where the storekeep initiates hostilities in reaching for a baseball bat. Let's ALSO leave out the fact that the video about Falling Down is flat-out incorrect in saying that D-FENS "does nothing" about the neo-nazi. Christ, yes, D-FENS has guns, what -did you think that meant he was gonna pull out a pair of rifles and start blasting? That is literally the mindset of 6-year-olds playing Grand Theft Auto for the first time. D-FENS only does what he does in the finale because what little patience he has left in him is spent and gone by the end of the day. EVEN THEN he doesn't just engage in wanton murder -he is even surprised and distraught at the revelation that he is the bad guy. Him going on a murder spree was never the point. Anyway, this guy's real message, at the end of the day, is basically that white men have it better than everyone else, and therefore have no valid reason to sympathize with the people in these sorts of movies. It is literally "Yeah, you think you got it bad, I'm black", but dressed up a little prettier and using movies for reference. "You can't blame art for behavior" then stop trying to do exactly that with these movies.
@Eyes Full of Sky You want cookie points for not being racist? The thing with the storekeep is actual social commentary on how white people always support storekeepers when they're being hostile towards black patrons. But now that it's directed towards a white person 'suddenly' it's an issue
@Zero Bullet's i loooove it when i get to read a long comment with multiple sections criticizing something i just watched but i also love it when i get all the way through and just get confused at the incredible ways people manage to interpret media
Also, in your "Edgelords hate society" section, I do not mean to overstep by saying. But found it interesting because the part where you mentioned that men in society do not get taught properly what masculinity is, that they learn a façade of it through pop-culture movies, comic books and history book lessons, stood out to me. Wholeheartedly agree. Masculinity is also attacked for what it is not. I read this book: *King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: The Archetypes of the Mature Masculine* and it really opened my eyes. Maybe you can take a look at it if you haven't yet. It's based on Jungian philosophy and takes lessons taught by our ancient ancestors from all across the globe and cultures. The BEST take I've seen so far on masculinity and it speaks of modern issues surrounding it as well. Thanks F.D
@@LadyAstarionAncunin If you're a doormat in life, and get "used and abused" and taken advantage of, that's never a good thing. Regardless of the gender of whom you bend over for. I do not fully agree with your statement. Check out *King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: The Archetypes of the Mature Masculine* . Very good read for an in-depth look at masculinity as seen through the ages. There's a section that delves into the "Lover" archetype, in where the authors describe the right ways men should view, and treat, women (basically like partners / friends / allies). Could help shed some light for you.
@@LadyAstarionAncunin given lancelot and gwenhwyfar were a classic example of courtly love in its heydey, i'm picturing lancelot in simp form and laughing at the absurdity. thank you for that imagery!
@@LadyAstarionAncunin benedick basically calls Claudio a simp for the whole courtly love thing in Much Ado About nothing so simps have just been bullied forever lol [edit: spelling]
I've always thought the same way about those movies but never had the vocabulary to articulate it the way you have done. Thank you for putting that out there. Very well said.
What’s so bad about the Jokers portrayal of the mental health system is the fact that they wanted to make a statement about metal health with a character who the audience wants to see go insane and kill people. If the film ended with Arthur getting help the film wouldn’t have a reason to exist because it’s called Joker and the audience wants a Joker. Look at something like Manchester by the Sea and how it takes on the subject about how masculine men deal with raw depression it gave you a scenario where you wanted them to get better Joker doesn’t have that at all. You also have the bizarre fact that it’s set in the late 70’s but they were trying to make a comment on today’s mental health service which was very very different from the one of today. Then you have the fact that Arthur isn’t trying himself to get better but rather indulging in things that make his situation worse.
Your analysis is off. The joker definitely tries to get help and you see that with them attempting to interact with the shitty US health system. Its only once the health system stops helping the joker that the joker starts to lose their grip. Rewatch the film. Its clearly there.
@@jkjkjkkjkjk that’s the health care system of the late 70’s/early 80’s but in a fictional world. And this point shows the flaw in the film because we didn’t see him on his medication we don’t know if he helped. Yes the black mental health care nurse/doctor wasn’t great but he wasn’t exactly trying either. That’s the other thing that was interesting there were 2 black people who worked in the system who were shown as being objects who stopped Arthur. Wouldn’t that have been a more interesting way to go to make this character quasi racist.
@@c17sam90 the point is you claimed he wasn't trying to help himself, and i can assure you from spending lots of time working with and around people who are struggling mentally, even showing up to an appointment is doing work. He was engaging, therefore, trying to get himself better, which is opposite to what you were saying. He only started indulging once the healthcare system let him down... Thats when things go wrong... Its perfectly played out in the film that way, so that is clearly what the film is trying to say.
@@jkjkjkkjkjk you worked in a fictional city in a fictional time period’s mental health world? This is the problem with the concept it in no way reflects the world we know today because A it’s set in a fictional universe completely and B it’s set nearly 40 years ago. Arthur was chain smoking and if is remember correctly drinking a lot. I go back to my first complaint if you call the film Joker as an audience you want character to go crazy and kill people. That’s flaw it only exists as film for that moment.
@@c17sam90 that makes no sense. A fictional time period? The 70s actually existed my dude, and even so its irrelevant. The story could have been told in any modern era, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, whatever. The point is, the film is about someone with mental health issues. People in any of these eras have the same mental health issues as now. You originally claimed he didn't try to get better. But I've proved to you, yes he did try, it was the healthcare system that failed him... you dont want to admit you're wrong on that point, so you seem to keep dodging and changing that point.
I believe you missed the mark on a couple points (as valid as your critiques are): If “crime and social dysfunction come down to predictable social conditions” like you said at the start, then Arthur Fleck’s Joker is not simply an edgelord idol. He’s a victim of the same system that’s turned poor Black men to crime. As for D-FENS in Falling Down-I do feel much of his misfortune is karma for his participation in the military industrial complex, but it feels like you skew (disproportionately) towards conservative “personal responsibility” talking points for him, with little weight put on the system in which he found himself. I can give examples (I believe you misread the golf course scene, the protestor scene, the neo-Nazi scene, and your assertion that he “got a few innocent people killed” is a reach). In the end, it feels like you would have a much more charitable interpretation of both characters were they Black. Good dissection either way, especially the point about many reactionary men misusing their energy to build a “kinder, gentler, better-designed patriarchy that puts them at the center of the power with none of the side effects”-I gave it a like and will check more of your videos
It's been a while since I watched Falling Down but I do feel like my man missed the mark a little. It plays to me like he's fed up with the bullshit of the system and he's mentally ill and lashing out at that system. The part where he can't get his breakfast, it's important to note that it's literally 5 minutes past where they stopped serving breakfast. It's not the poor worker's fault, of course, but the scene is more about the absurdity of the arbitrary and strict cut off time. It's pretty much just observational comedy.
@@CeeJayThe13th Yeah the film in a lot of times was out of bounds ridiculous on purpose. The shouty movie people in that Mercedes stuck in traffic, the bumping into the plastic surgeon and that huge mansion? The way the rocket launcher worked out etc. I didn't really think anyone was viewing him as a role model when it simply was that kind of overblown lol
The vantage point of marginalized identities and unmarginalized identities will inherently be different, and that in itself will lead to different executions of the same system. I understand that you want to recognize how white men can also be sent through the oppressive system and are victimized in certain ways (and I do agree that is an important thing to recognize in the conversation) however, this type of understanding seeks to ignore that the white identity of those characters were integral to their formed viewpoints on the world and their actions. Race as a construct (same with gender, and other classes indirectly) was built to structure us within the system, and whiteness specifically was built with the promise of access, options, entitlement, etc. This isn't an immediate 'pass' on life but it's something our lives and our understandings of the world will live in context to. I don't know what race you are, but I see a lot of white/unmarginalized people on the left reduce the impact of race/marginalized identities on the system in favor of a general understanding that we're 'all victims' and that reduction is more dangerous than eye-opening.
@@domachondri @mochondrius White identity? maybe racists have that notion but as a white person, I tend to view the people through the lens of their character and actions. You should be more concerned with class disparity than what color people's skin is. White people do not have special advantages. if they do, I've been missing out my whole life. You're obsession with race makes you equate white with inherently priviledged. Please give me one example of white priviledge. A black person in the same class rank as a white person does not have fewer oppotunities to get out of poverty. Classism is blind to race. I had to struggle through poverty while trying to afford an education. I didn't get scholarships based on my skin color. I still got paid slave wages from multibillion dollar companies. I don't get special white healthcare. The broken system affects everybody, not just black people or minorities. These movies are a critique of a corrupt system but of course when it's a white guy in the role, the matter is skewed towards white entitled edgelords rather than corruption.
What is so common to all of these movies that blows my mind about their absolute misinterpretation from edgelords is that they all comment that the reason they are in the situations they are in are as a result of allowing late stage capitalism to ruin society.
You’re gonna be big in this platform
Really good stuff. I really like your point of view when discussing these things. Like just the way that you discuss people who are in many cases totally deserving of derision, but without develolving into that, while at the same time not letting them off the hook in any way. I think in one of your other videos you said something about trying to come from a place of empathy and it shows. But you walk the line so well.
Like not that anyone has to do that or anything. Anger and frustration at incel logic is like, yeah. Completely understandable and natural. I guess I just mean that your viewpoint feels unique and therefor refreshing.
You're gonna be big, kid. BIG.
Not if ewetewb has anything to say about it
Huge. The content is just tooo good.
I am blown away. My third video for the day- I just found this channel- today.
Oh- and he references bell hooks. Win.
yeah he Is thanks to jlongbone lmao
It’s so bonkers to me that most edgelord movies these people attach themselves to are actually scathing critiques of the values they hold dear
The irony brvh. Falling Down is obviously a critique of the edgelord, and mocks him throughout. The scene where the "not economically viable" Black man is arrested is the most telling, Dfens and him are dressed the exact same. That imagery was purposeful. Dfens is walking around, with a bag full of guns, getting away with literal murder, while the Black man is arrested for peacefully protesting.
@@LikeCarvingACake 📠
...because they are NOT edgelord movies, merely because edgelords selectively take away from them what they want anyway? Joker wasn't about entitlement.
He was empathetic & trying to avoid negativity etc. He both tried to contribute, and he needed help. The offered help was mostly from black women. While the tipping point was the drunken yuppies that bullied him on the train - white rich dudes. Even after he goes beyond Self Defence & kills the last one, he continues to be otherwise empathetic until he reads his mother's file & what seems to be a misframing of her role in his own abuse. While none of his subsequent actions were good, especially murdering his mother, it's a contrived Origin Story.
The only entitlement here is human rights. Yet because it is a film that zeroes in on an individual, people are imposing personal entitlement messaging upon it overall.
@@LikeCarvingACake I feel that Falling Down is a terribly frustrating and blinkered movie. It gets so much right in situating white male terrorism within an ecosystem of right wing activism and its attendant revanchism and longing to restore the ancien regime. But it's also far too sympathetic to the framing of that activist right and treats its assertions as far too legitimate. It downplays the fact that Michael Douglas' character lived a very privileged life and snapped when his position of dominace and primacy was challenged even slightly. He wants to die not just because he's unemployed and his wife and children will get his life insurance money, but more because he lives in a world where white men's centrality is eroding. To men like D-Fens, that's a life not worth living.
A society that is trained to buy shit buys shit. A society that is trained to think shit thinks shit. Or whatever
You should inclued American Psycho in this. Because the main gist of them is that they are not understood by their audience, which likely ISNT the guys who gravitate to it. They're just nuts looking for pointers.
In Christian Bales 'career breakdown' he says that he met a bunch of traders for The Big Short or whatever it was called and ALL the traders absolutely loved American Psycho. He said "loved its irony you mean" and they didn't get it. They LITERALLY were that psycho. I'd be afraid of doing anything satirical becaues you know there are going to be nuts out there who think its a blueprint.
That’s stupid. Create what you want. Art does not force ordinary people to turn into psychopaths; if a guy sees your satirical work as a blueprint he already had big problems to begin with.
@@iamjackspyramidshapedhelmetrightwinger movies, songs and books are made TO BE BLUEPRINTS.
Why don't you go into the fakeness of much of these "issues," such as the Jussie Smollett case, or the Covington case, or the Rittenhouse case, or the fake "hijab grabbing Trump supporters," etc? Oh, wait, I answered my own question.
No way man, this is exactly the same thing as people saying "Videogames create violence". Art is art, and shouldn't be taken away because the worst people take the worst interpretation
The replies are missing that very important bit in your comment about Christian Bale trying to say, "oh, you mean that you loved the irony?" and the traders missing what he meant.
I thought joker was cool when it came out because of its anti capitalist and pro Medicare for all message, then when I found out why most people liked it I kinda went quiet... 😅
THIS!
But I knew immediately folks would miss a lot of that
I really don't like how I let myself feel put off by people's response to the film. The actual message that it's conveying is absolutely something I can get behind, but as you said, the reason most people like it is just taking me further away from publicly appreciating it.
@@youbasictoxicconch yup, it's truly unfortunate. I think it's Important to have more people take it back from the public misunderstanding
I never understood people who can't like something just because of the way others do. Like if a Fandom changes anything about the media itself. Is it becuase you fear to be perceived wrongly? I feel that's a weak mindset.
It’s a film about mistreated man who one day had enough. I don’t think capitalism has much to do with it
I love Falling Down. It's one of my favorite movies. But the most important part of the movie is when he realizes, HE IS the bad guy. That's the whole point of the movie for me. His realization that his "righteous" anger isn't righteous and that he's been left holding the bag for a society that threw him overboard. He's the patsy. He did what they told him and then they sold him out.
Bingo!
Exactly, I like FD in general, but it's sad and hurtful he thought so little of us here that he assumed the intended audience of Falling Down doesn't understand that he's a tragedy, a warning, to NOT let our white privileged egos run the show, because that identity was forced on us. He and Falling Down are on the same side, but he thinks so little of us he doesn't interpret the movie that way.
a subtle element of the movie, though, is how the main character has been "made an example of" in the past. This leads to the main character being cast to lower echelon of society, where he is left to maintain his station, with no hope to improve things in life. It's not right of him, but the main character (called D-FENS) is taking out his frustration on the world not allowing him to try to be a better person, because he already made mistakes in the past.
The character and his situation is understandable, but it highlights a dysfunctional society if you are willing to look deeper.
That and his dark side. It was verbally and mentally abusive towards his wife, even when life was good. His mother was afraid of him.
He had that anger bubbling inside of him. He just had an excuse to let it out.
The Joker was real meaningful to me at first because it was relatable in a tragic way. I'm mentally ill, I experience psychosis and don't always have a stable grasp on the existence of other people, and the film spoke to a fear of never being able to escape that state of mind.
I thing I understood pretty soon after watching it that a lot of people would see the joker character at the end as a win, rather than him not having any way of holding onto mental stability. The movie has a really sad ending to me, but people seeing it as good are getting a way different message.
Same. I notice most people here perceived their own strong messages from the movie; _"anti-capitalist", "white man warning", "mental health awareness" "social medicare";_ very political and no mention of any personal relation whatsoever, either as Joker to themselves or to Phoenix, the actor, and his history. To me it was profoundly significant that De Niro was the host, and the one shot, due to his own scandal in the industry. I thought I was going paranoid watching it.
Nothing about the casting matters to me in the context of the plot. Anyone with any orientation could've been Joker so long as he danced, but nobody seems to think the condition or twisted expression of him was important, despite being integral to the film in my eyes. So that's kinda disappointing that everyone overlooks, but if it didn't strike them, it's not what they needed. I still think a divergent playout with his suicide is equally strong. The ending had nothing satisfying or happy about it; I just appreciate good acting.
I guess people forget joker gets his ass beat by batman after that 🤣
Reminds me of people who think the midsommar ending was a win. Like, entirely missing the point
Kinda funny because the predecessor, Hereditary, looks like a bad ending, but it's ironically a good ending lmao
@@jonahnesmith7004 Right, right. Hereditary left me quite cold, but Midsommar I genuinely loved and laughed the way through even though I knew it wasn't right; at least I related to Pugh's character. Not every movie's meant to be judged for it's morality.
@@OttoGrainer27 very true, but it's important to understand the messages of movies and take the right things away from them
When I was 15 I worked at a McDonold's and a customer was mad about is order and he asked me if I had ever seen Falling Down. My manager asked him to leave.
Just recently there was a lady who pulled out a gun at Chipotle for not getting her food
And people are saying that people no longer want to work. There has been an extreme loss of civility in our society and on top of that it's low paying.
@IntrepidTit You have a point in acquaintances, friendships, relationships, and business partnerships. But the waiter, fast food worker, or any service worker doesn't need to see it. You don't need to turn into a monster because you didn't get 3 ketchups.
@@dorothymonroepeople to want to support a broken system. Fuck capitalism
So your manager didn't watch Falling Down
The hilarity of edgelords loving Heath Ledger's Joker is that Joker in that movie is proven ~*~wrong~*~. "When the chips are down", people chose to NOT kill an entire ship of other people to save themselves. His plan failed, he was wrong about the basic humanity of people.
That scenario was performed in fictional world and now obviously jokers thinking or philosophy will be shown as wrong because DC is a comic about superheroes and superheroes represents the bright side, morally good side. Thats why both of the ship didn't blow each other up.Now if we see such scenarios in real life I doubt whether things would come out the same as it did in the movies.
I think it's fallacious to make arguments based on fictional stories and apply them to real life. Jordan Peterson does this constantly and acts like renowned fiction is essentially as evidential as science.
But fiction can be different. They could have written the movie where the Joker won. In fact, he has won in many instances in comics. That doesn't say anything about whether he's right.
That was one of the few times--maybe the only time--he was wrong about people in the movie. Yes, his basic premise that people are innately corrupt was proven wrong. But it's understandable how he came to hold that view--many people even find it relatable. Ledger's Joker is such a great villain precisely because he knows how people work and how shitty they can be.
@@Mutantcy1992 the theory isn't because it's fiction it's true in real life but because it's a successful fiction it says something true in real life.
If we enjoy a film where the prisoners dilemma comes out in that direction then it says something about the class of people who enjoy it. Such as maybe they want that to be true.
@@yautjacetanu Okay, but that's not true. The popularity of a piece of fiction doesn't correlate to "that's how people really act," especially not when it comes to movies.
And who says the popularity of movies is about the way people want things to be? Star Wars? Avengers? Do people want things to be like those movies? No, it's just entertaining fantasy.
27:26 I see a lot the same rhetoric when it comes to Homelander. People say that if we all had powers, we’d be just like him, but forget why he is the way he is. Homelander wasn’t raised with any real love or compassion, and especially never taught right from wrong. He even acknowledges this when talking to the mother of his child, saying that Ryan (His Son) is already at a better place then he was growing up because he had a mom, but still needs interaction with the outside world. I understand there would be bad people if we had superpowers, but there’s no fucking way we’d all be like Homelander.
So true. I saw a guy talking about the comic when he SAs starlight along with two other supers and said we would all do that if we had powers with no repercussions. And everyone was like NO TF WE WOULDNT😂
@@Isthisjoebiden that's an admission/confession by that person. Exactly. Says more about him than about "everybody".
Y'know when I was watching the boys that was how I was feeling but then that made me think "good God American society has just socialized a bunch of psychopaths, huh" because I wouldn't want to be that way, I just felt like I'd have to be that kind of person to get ahead.
We couldnt all be homelander though. There can be only 1 strongest being.
They did everything they could to portray Joker as somebody you’d never want to be around and people still idolized him.
Isn't that why some people idolise him? Because they relate to him? The more you try to make a character shameful and unlikeable, the more people who feel the same way about themselves, and get treated the same way by others, will be drawn to that character.
@@Shh.ItsAllOkay. some people relate to what he’s been through, yeah, but nobody should strive to be what he’s become. If you’re already like that, rip, but some people are idolizing what he became as a result of what he went through and try to follow in his footsteps.
@@Cobble01 Ah, sorry, I think I misunderstood what you were getting at. I agree.
@@Shh.ItsAllOkay. nah it’s ok it actually made me think about it more
@@Cobble01 Same to you, actually. I was seeing it through a completely different lens.
You learn to dismiss the actions of villains in films when they're the most relatable characters, because they're often minorities. ...Which I realise isn't that helpful in this context. :)
My young adult son and I recently discovered that we both independently started following your channel which I thought was pretty cool. Thank you!
Good job dad!
Lol thats awesome
Wild. Same thing happened to me and my brother today. 🤔
That’s awesome! A lot of people can’t share these kind of things with their parents
I felt bad for giving you a like because you had 444 and I thought that was cool. But not as cool as you and your son so my bad bruh.
I've always thought it would be an interesting sociological experiment to show Falling Down to a group of people and ask each of them at what point they thought he crossed the line.
I think it’s interesting that they have to write in a scene with a Neo-Nazi asshole to distance Michael Douglas from accusations of racism despite the fact that all of his violence in the first part of the film is targeted at minorities even as he claims that it’s about economics. Pretty revealing.
When he killed the nazi
You can do the same thing with Breaking Bad. The best part for me was reflecting on when I thought Walt crossed the line, and realising he'd actually crossed it a lot earlier, but I was too caught up in his story to recognise that
@@irresponsibledad I was just thinking about that. We know Walter is the villain from the start. He is a villain in his own terms, who violates his own moral code very early on through transgressions that you or I might see as forgivable, if not acceptable and then spirals out of control. While you're supposed to empathise with him, he's not sympathetic. His actions are "evil" from a very early stage, except he goes from hapless and desperate, to deliberate and manipulative.
Hé never actually killed anyone though
"The whole movie is him trying to destroy or destabilize the things he has no power over"
Damn, that encapsulates so much about the edgelord worldview
If he focused solely on destabilizing institutions that were oppressive instead of harming people who caused him minor inconveniences along the way, you'd get a much more sympathetic revolutionary instead of an edgelord.
The killer who shot up the movie theater did not dye his hair to look like the joker. That was just a rumor that was floating around at that time. The only reason he shot up the dark knight movie showing was cause he had plotted out the layout of the theater and decided that theater would be the hardest to escape from. Apparently he dyed his hair because "orange symbolizes bravery" whatever that means.
Apparently he has schizophrenia and that doesn’t excuse his actions at all but he justified it as the orange haired him was a separate individual than the natural hair him.. there’s some interesting interviews of him done years after the massacre where he is in a mental hospital and talks about this. Again I want to emphasise that doesn’t excuse his actions at all he still murdered innocent people, but i find his mental health pretexts interesting
Don't add logic and truth here we have an agenda to push which is why we have to brand adult theme movie lovers as far right edgelords. That guy was obviously a bigoted edgelord that should be mocked not looked at as a symptom of an underlying problem unless you can use it to advance yourself or your political ideology like the maker of this video did.
yep the Joker imitation shit was fabricated by the press.
No one here cares about information that refutes their ideology
@@briannawaldorf8485 he did not have schizophrenia I think but he's been chronically mentally ill since he was very young. Very tortured soul
"It is much easier to attack feminism and minorities than it is to attack social systems." MESSAGE! It is extremely frustrating that the subject group you mention can recognize these social issues but seem to be incapable/unwilling of using their proximity to the gatekeepers of the society that they hate to positively impact society.
that was my favorite quote in this
proximity to gatekeepers of society? so wherever you are from minorities or women are not allowed to participate in elections? congratulations, you have exactly the same proximity as most of the rest of society.
The people smart enough to see the whole picture are not at all interested in fixing these systems. Not worth the effort
@@Setep2k that is inaccurate.
whether correct or not, they feel certain rhetoric from progressives seems to blame them personally for these plights whereas their own feelings of powerlessness contradicts being told they hold a lot of power
When I was a kid I came home from school one day to tell my grandma what I’d learned in history class. My grandma loves history so it’s the way we bonded. I started going into great detail about how incredible Robert E. Lee was to fight for our country. My grandma was entirely confused and had to stop and tell me Robert E. Lee was a confederate soldier. Basically long story short my history text book hated Ulysses S Grant and Loved Robert E Lee and didn’t even mention what side of history either of them where on! I a little black kid had a history text book that idolized a lot of bad people. Having to unlearn that the “founding fathers” weren’t great and noble people is a struggle and it’s upsetting that we rewrite history so we can idolize horrible people.
In don’t think it’s the sense of rewriting, it’s just giving the sense that they had at the time to us, other than that first bit. But of course we’re gonna find out people in the past weren’t great, but that’s inevitable because of the simplicity that their moral standards weren’t the same as ours today. Give us a few centuries and any person we consider good today might be considered abhorrent in the future. It’s not bad idolize the good that was done in the past as long as you’re able to realize that it’s the deeds your idolizing and not the person.
The Founding Fathers weren't horrible people, they were great for their time, specially in the context of the cause they fought for... As humans, we're all flawed, and if we pick people from a completely different time and put them there just like it, well, they will be filled with ideas and behaviors that we now deem bad.
In my case, an uncle was dismayed by the racism I was learning in literature class organised a Black classics intervention for me. He started me on a journey to deconstruct White supremacy and I'm so grateful. It did way more good than he ever knew.
It’s really astounding how much of American education is just propaganda
@@Scruffy-qi3ik I’m pretty sure it’s just propaganda
In part because of you, I have been opening up to my family and friends about the true causes of many social and economic issues. I always felt powerless to enact change in my community and in the world at large, but just having the conversations seems to wake people up out of their daze. The revolution will not be televised, but it will be streamed online. Ty for your work brother! I love you all.
Lmfaooo what
Utter cringe. You have been brainwashed my friend.
I love this quote from the actor who played Archie Bunker: “The American white man is trapped by his own cultural history. He doesn't know what to do about it. Archie's dilemma is coping with a world that is changing in front of him. He doesn't know what to do except to lose his temper, mouth his poisons, look elsewhere to fix the blame for his own discomfort. He isn't a totally evil man. He's shrewd. But he won't get to the root of his problem, because the root of his problem is himself, and he doesn't know it. That is the dilemma of Archie Bunker.” -Carrol O’Connor, 1972
Archie's real problem is that the wrong side won in 1945
I love all the undisguised racism in this whole thing. we're really making progress thanks to all of this. back to war I guess.
@@jaymac493 what do you mean
@@dude9318 they’re talking about the “white man” portion. Even though nothing said was demeaning of the entire white race. They’re most likely another alt righter/white nationalist.
@@jaymac493 it's ok to be a bigot, as long as you're white, you're "not a bad guy"
I am a white man born in the late 70s. Gen X is the least parented generation. That was due to the breakdown of the nuclear family, which itself was an invention of post-WWII America. We went from tremendous wealth sufficient that a white men could potentially become the sole breadwinner of a small family property to full-time working and single parents treading the poverty line. This shift in wealth and demographic largely ignored non-whites, who have been dealing with the realities of hand-to-mouth living for literally thousands of years. I got to live the latchkey kid life, complete with abusive step-dads, welfare cheese, and peer violence in schools. That was Reagan's America. In my life up until my 30s, I never met another human being who actually lived the nuclear family life. Yet we are instructed by older white men that this is our inheritance and legacy. It is just a myth, a myth that lasted less than decade of American life. But damned if us white Americans don't pine for it.
What makes u assume....that most non whites lived "hand -to- mouth" for thousands of years" ? Native Americans lived vastly comfortable lives that appealed to runaway indentured servants from Europe. Mexico aNd most of South America is actually more resource rich than the USA. Who coopt almost every bit of that. The richest man on earth was African. It was not unknown for an African to live 120 years + The invention of say the leisure concept of University came from West Africa, the What u are describing was typical of Europe. Prior to black Moorish influence. And your write off the bulk of civilization in favor of WS fantasy. Mythology the vlogger here indicates.
@@celesteadeanes4478 I don't believe he's claiming to be W supremacist at all tho. He's indicating that he had a difficult childhood that didn't jive with the "leave it to beaver" facade that media liked to portray for middle class (Wht) america; and he would have liked to have had that, who wouldn't?? Everyone wants safety and stability in their life esp in their childhood and everyone deserves that.
@@celesteadeanes4478 also he just meant that at least for the history of the US, minority communities have always gotten the short end of the stick. Now prior to Wht colonization, when these populations could live in their own indigenous ways, I'm sure that was different.
I'm sorry you had a rough childhood. The Right-wing has done incalculable damage to this country
I hope things are better for you now.
@@celesteadeanes4478 lol. this is typical african revisionism. lay off the propaganda. and no, north africa isn't the same thing as sub saharan africa
Taxi Driver is such a great example of this, even Scorsese was outraged when some guy tried to replicate the behavior of Travis. He almost stopped making films because people weren't getting the message of the film and he thought it was his fault. You should do a Scorsese video because his whole career is about the dichotomy of violence and ambition of the American society. It would be interesting to see it analyzed by you.
The way I've seen 4chan white men idolize and glorify the suffering and edginess of these fictional men
Yeah yeah because Travis who want God to send his rain to wash of his new York liberal city from the degeneration the veteran who don't believe in a young girl doing what the girl was doing under the name of women (lib) who want to take a stand against all of this who doesn't know his society anymore from the point it was to the way its moving a progressive way is obviously a liberal movie and this character is obviously on the side of the left and for sure anyone who watch this will take it wrong being a non conservative movie lol what is this do yall leftists think that movie on your side
Two replies to your comment were invisible. But good comment. Travis = Conservative. Cannot even think of how to collectively and peacefully protect the innocent.
@@Achrononmaster yeah yeah yall liberals be saying that right wingers don't get movies a man who pray that God will send his rain to wash off his new York city liberal city who is filled with degen and that is literally in front of yall eyes when Travis point out to the girls of the street and the gangs.. Etc but oh oh yeah Travis is a woke social justice warrior Travis stand for the lgbt and women rights Travis is definitely a women right advocate lol yall are not funny
Yall liberals be funny sometimes do u know that u really think taxi driver is a liberal movie 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I was a white kid in the suburbs. I remember always wanting to be that edgelord as a teenager. Largely because, looking back, you knew your life was actually pretty boring, that you weren't dealing with real struggles, you were probably gonna wanna get a job that someone just set you up with, and things were largely only ever going to be "pretty good" for you; no real highs or lows. I was really into gangster rap and the heaviest metal you could find because you wanted to feel like life mattered, because you're not going through the trials that people are really supposed to have to. The whole global economy is set up by your recent ancestors to work for you, and not for other people.
I wanted to earn my own job, so I went into college and tried to do it on my own, and I haven't been the kind of affluent you need to be to be the kind of person you're talking about since. I'm all about society sharing everything, racial equality, gay rights... you name a leftist cause, I'm in on it. I have my own edge to deal with. I can still enjoy movies and TV shows like this, but it's not the core of my being like it used to be.
What really codified everything at once was Melissa Villaseñor's "White Male Rage" song on SNL. You realize that white men are the only people allowed to be "angry" about things in society, without other white people trying to put these non-white people in check. It's a white privilege thing, sure, but I hope I can use my "White Male Rage" to help other people as best as I can from here on out.
Just a rant, good video, I hope to not be one of the people you're talking about here.
I personally think there is a disconnect in ideology between white and colored spaces because there are actually two sides to the system: social and economic. People of color and a lot of time women have had both systems set up against them, while white men have only every really had one. So as the economic system starts to be strangled and wealth condensed upward, many of the lower economic class are starting to feel the starting of pressure that other classes have felt for decades. You see this in white liberal spaces like "Late Stage Capitalism", who seem to think capitalism is now failing at its late stages, when the realization is that it has always been failing minorities and is just starting to effect white people. You will always see a more aggressive push back when taking power away from a previously privileged group then you would with a disenfranchised one. White people are always shocked that slaves didnt fight back even when they massively outnumbered the slave owners. So we will see an increase in violence from white men in particular who are raised to think the system is going to provide for them, and then find out that it is increasingly being taken from them too in favor of the top 1%. Then they hear people say that they are the problem for being white, and that people of color want to take away their privilege, and an existential dread kicks in that make them fear that they will continue to fall further down. This leads them down the rabbit hole of white supremacy and disillusion instead of realizing that a more fair and balanced economic system would benefit everyone.
As 26 year old black male. Man i salute you for keeping it real about the way things are. Not that i'm trying to be a victim but sometimes i feel like i don't have a voice, or it just isn't heard . Whenever we speak up on something it's always "why does it always have to be about race" or "those types of things don't happen anymore" or better yet they just try to shut us up altogether. Love you my guy
"as a white kid" so brave
Yeah man all my problems don't matter because children are starving in Africa! Like who cares about my stress, anxiety, depression? Black suffer 9001x that DAILY being called slurs and threatened by rampant lynch mobs across the USA. I am truly so privileged. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Defining real struggle as something only connected to your identity/ethnicity does not make sense to me. Because there is a lot of real struggles that any human can experience and cause material/psychological damage. I think there is little value to degrade your own problems, I think it will lead to people losing interest in changing society broadly, something the neo-liberal order actually prefer. It would love to only make incremental changes to please a small group of people while not dealing with the core issue.
Most of these movies are criticizing the angry white men they’re about, or at least satirizing the society that produces them. It’s astonishing that people walk away from Fight Club thinking Tyler Durden is a hero when he is a toxic manifestation of the protagonist’s delusions, or miss the irony of Travis Bickle being celebrated as a hero in Taxi Driver when he’s actually a lunatic who just narrowly happened to assassinate some pimps instead of a politician. As you pointed out, Falling Down literally contains a scene in which the protagonist realizes he is the villain of the story. (The Joker is a much lesser film than the rest, and The Matrix doesn’t quite fit the same mold as the rest as the hero isn’t toxic).
But you are absolutely correct… white guys who feel cheated by society idolize these characters. Our culture lies to us, and some people cannot handle the dissonance and target their rage in all the wrong directions (women, minorities, etc.).
Recognizing one lie doesn’t necessarily mean you recognize another. Lots of these angry white guys see the lie of the promises made to them, but they don’t see the bigger lies of white supremacy and patriarchy.
I could’ve so easily been one of these guys. I was so close. I understand where they’re coming from, they’re just wrong-headed about a lot of things they’re not even conscious of.
We have to stop teaching young white men to expect unreasonable things, and we have to stop expecting unreasonable things of them. It basically is going to take increased exposure to a broader more diverse range of perspectives, and it could take generations, but there’s reason for some optimism there.
Great video!
Love all these movies, but yeah I agree. People sympathize with injustice, and movies like Joker and Fight Club both have their main charecters be victims of injustice. So when the audience sees the main charecters dark side, they rationalize it as injustice. Validating a excuse, and lots of the time blinding the audience to the rest of the charecters immoral actions. Then they connect with these charecters and therefore create a neckbeard.
@@messiah7344 it also helps that the characters are white guys. Because if a black man was running around causing this type of mayhem I doubt very seriously that he would get any type of sympathy.
@@grapeshotWell sorta, Killmonger faced injustice, and people still loved him. But yeah I see what you mean.
@@messiah7344 Killmonger represents to me the divide between Africans that are from the continent versus Africans that were dispersed because of the transatlantic slave trade.
Your last paragraph made a really interesting point. I am a POC so white men is a group I’m naturally not a part of. But what you say did make me think. It’s kinda true, society does have this narrative that white men are the most privileged group of people at the moment. And when you are a white male and your “failing” at life - I could see how for some it will really mess with their world view. I’m sure more factors contribute but I could see this being a big one.
The craziest thing about Falling Down is that the man's first action in the film is to become the thing he hates and he just never realizes it. He is mad at traffic, and makes traffic worse in retaliation. the entire movie is him showing how he is all these things that he is saying he hates.
"I'm the bad guy?"
"Yeah."
"How'd that happen?"
My favorite scene is when he meets the Nazi, and claims he's not like him. Meanwhile he's on a hate crime spree!
@@kait-9939 The neo-Nazi guy is the only person he actually kills, if I remember right.
He's really not on a "hate crime spree". The only thing that could possibly count in that direction would be his initial attack on the Korean guy's store. And even that seemed to be mostly about the high prices. There's bigotry operating too, but it never seems to be much of a motivating factor in his acts of violence. His targets are minor and major systemic injustices, rude and obnoxious people, and whoever directly crosses him.
But it could be that he kills the Nazi because he's the one person he comes across who really most resembles himself.
@@Avoidiacwhooosh
@@Avoidiacthe motivation of most kinds of hate crimes is do to ignorance. It’s an indirect kind of hatred that the people getting subjected to it feel intimately.
When you spew your anger from the systems that effected you mindlessly you start hurting others the same way you were hurt
You will just be feeding into the public outrage with no benefit to anyone and the people up top get to laugh at the show
Falling Down was pretty clear about showing that the Michael Douglas character was the villain. It was sympathetic to the character in explaining how his world was taken away from him but his flaw was his failure to adapt. He could not see how change could be for the better. His "bad day" did not have to be bad; it was his perception of his experience that made it bad. On a larger, social-political level, the movie is aimed at social conservatives who want to take us back to some supposed golden age (the 50's) when America still "worked".
Thank you. How so many people miss this point is beyond me. It's explicitly spelled out at the end when Prendergast confronts him at the end. "I'm the bad guy?"
I watched the movie some weeks ago, and was utterly surprised at what it was actually like. I had expected it to be some sort of parody film of like living out the power fantasy everyone has once in a while when confronted with the absurdities of the small and big struggles in our day-to-day lives. Instead, though Michael Douglas is shown some sympathy, he clearly is the bad guy and just makes things worse for him and everyone around him. The power fantasy is there, but he only makes things worse when acting out in the way he does. He's not filling the role of a hero in the movie, but a villian; he's not setting things in order and bringing happiness and relief, but causing disorder and suffering. The topics are serious as well, he can't accept the divorce he has had, and seems to suffer from some sort of mental illness as well. It's really strange to me now to see all the memes idolizing the movie and his character when in the actual movie he tries to forcibly visit his ex-wife and daughter whilst armed to the teeth. Occasionally it's a fun romp, and at times he does arguably good things (like the confrontation with the surplus store owner) but mostly it's tragic, and though we can feel sorry for Michael Douglas and wish he'd found help to relieve his suffering, he's definitely the villain.
I don't think it was clear at all. The single most tender moment in the whole film is when he breaks into his ex-wife's house and watches videos of him being an abusive asshole to them. He is just blank about it, it's playing in the background. And the dog comes up and snuggles with him. The message in this scene is that we should feel sorry for him for his failings.
No the movie is pretty anti capitalist, there’s even a scene where a black guy in the same exact clothing as Bill is being discriminated against
@@transentient That's not the message I got from that scene at all. I wouldn't call it "tender" in the least. It's harrowing. It's showing that he's not just a normal guy having "a really bad day." It's showing that his tendency to lash out and be abusive whenever things don't go his way is a deeply embedded part of his personality and that maybe his intentions towards his family aren't as wholesome as he makes them sound. This is the film saying, "In case you were confused, this is not a good guy."
I think you're just reading too much into the dog nuzzling up to him.
I liked the Joker movie when I first saw it and I still like it. It portrays a man from the lower end of society, with a traumatic childhood and with poor education being treated so horribly by the system that he turns into a senseless murderous monster. To me it portrays a critique of capitalism, showing what it can turn fairly sympathetic people into. It's not my problem that some insane online Nazis somehow sympathise with the supervillain and monster of the movie.
I mean, you can argue that a significant chunk of the black community in America is going through what the joker did. Which is how hoodlums are created.
“You cannot blame art for behavior.” Gold star statement right there.
*ignores the existence of propaganda in a video about propaganda arguing that propaganda changes behavior *
@@Jebcbeb propaganda isn't art, and also propaganda is whatever information you don't agree with
@@GreyrainLife maybe I'm wrong, but if art didn't change behaviour culutures wouldn't emphasize showing art to children. If art didn't change behaviour it wouldn't be censored in some way in every country on earth. The entire realm of religious iconography and heroic stories wouldn't exist. The Louvre wouldn't exist. I think the point of art is to place someone in a particular frame of mind, which is the prerequisite to action. If art didn't change bwhaviour, why would this video have been made in the first place?
@@GreyrainLife also I think it logically follows that saying that propaganda isn't art and stuff you disagree with isn't propaganda, you disprove your own point since no one within a culture would consider their own propaganda as propaganda, they would call it art
No, but some art definitely contributes to it or acts as a catalyst
I was always surprised by people who wanted to be like Tyler Durden. I actually thought Fight Club did a good job of demonstrating some of the flaws of being a hyper-masculine guy who wants to destroy society. Tyler Durden is a great character, but he's not someone I'd ever want to be.
to me it's like the nietzschean aspect of becoming your true self, despite the world around you. He essentially embraces the parts of his psyche that he formerly rejected in order to fulfill himself. also I wish there was a real fight club (as in the fighting aspect itself)
@@Charlie_probably... you mean like a boxing gym or something ? What is a "real" fight club lol
@@benschmitt7035 underground bare knuckle mma
@@Charlie_probably... so you WANT to do what tyler was doing in fight club? Did you watch the movie at all, or in fact the video above this comment section?
@@benschmitt7035 no I don't believe in returning to an anprim society. I phrased my first comment wrong. I was trying to play devil's advocate as to why people like the movie so much. I think it's an interesting story about a toxic relationship with oneself with an interesting gay subtext.
It always mystified me that people who loved the aggreivement revenge movies did not transfer any sympathy or empathy from fictional characters to the fight against institutional racism we see today. I know it's now a trite phrase, but Rage Against the Machine wasn't about your parents dude.
Word
That's because they have no interest in talking to you
@@sabiti5428 lol what?
Those fictional characters that they empathize and sympathize with are white.
Because they don’t care about anyone else. That’s where the self-entitlement comes in. They think those messages are for them “alone.”
I always walk away from your videos feeling like I learned something. You are a teacher, sir!
Funny part is he actually did teach for many years before making youtube videos 😄
When the only acceptable level of nonconformity portrayed in media is "madness", you get people liking either conformity or "madness".
I feel so dumb, I JUST noticed that you change your stack of books based on the topic at hand!!! I LOVEEEE THAT! Giving us immediate access to more information on each subject, yes! The ones in this video are so, so good. I read Angry White Men when it came out, and it completely changed who I was and my perspective on these issues as I could not understand it at all. It gave me an understanding as to MY contributions to this culture, and how I (a non-binary person) contributed to it during my "edgier" phase and put me in a greater position to reverse those wrongs.
To me, Fight Club is about a man that is so jaded by what society says is important that he loses his mind trying to find meaning. In the end, all that is really important is love, which he had in front of him the whole time, but he just couldn't see it.
As always the book is better. Pahlaniuk is fairly obviously a leftist but a bit male centric. I have a hard time nailing down chuck pahlaniuk's worldview except that it's def dark. Also much of fight club the film was ripped out of his subsequent book. I also liked joker but it's also a toxic ass story
Fight Club the movie is an adaptation of the book that makes it about capitalism. Millennials didn't have the same opportunities as Gen-X so they don't see the existential dread. Whenever I watch videos like this I realize we watched these movies with different eyes.
It's about white boys whose feelings are hurt because they aren't as important as all the movies tell them they should be. When Luke Skywalker and James Bond, and Superman all look like you and the whole world tells you you're special because you are a "white man" .... well when you are pathetic or average white man, then there is rage. These guys become school shooters, edge lords, guys that randomly quote the joker at parties. The find a masculine leader in Tyler and find a father figure that tells them how to become a man, since they have failed to live up to the ideal media gave them.
I think saying it's purely a criticism of capitalism isn't quite right though. At a deeper level the film is more accurately about authenticity especially related to what it means to be a white male. Tyler Durden is very much the hypermasculine ideal that white men are told they'd become if they just do white masculinity right.
The main source modern men have of this ideal comes from massmedia, which is intrinsically linked to the capitalist system. That's why Tyler Durden attacks societal institutions that he thinks are connected to capitalism, because it's how he believes men will finally be truly free to be themselves.
He doesn't see the irony that as a product of capitalism, he also can't live without it. On essence, the influence of capitalism as a communicator of white masculinity can only be severed not through the destruction of society, but through the destruction of clinging to such ideals. This is why the narrator must shoot himself because by killing himself or rather his beliefs in white masculinity can he become his authentic self.
@@Kamishi845 interesting take.
I don't think this is a critique of capitalism though. I think it's a critique of looking for meaning in material things.
Capitalism has nothing to do with materialism imo. Capitalism is as old as trading and bartering and is based on the idea that indivifual humans own things and that they should be compensated when someone wishes to have what belongs to them.
Life has always been about survival and it is survival and anger about not getting what we believe that we deserve that brings out the violent nature in men. This is not exclusive to white men.
I do agree however that our idea of what constitutes masculinity often comes from the media and can be shaped by them to a large extent.
Hello 👋 millennial white lady here, found you via Drake Diss video but have been working my way through the rest of your content. I appreciate the way you communicate your ideas and I have learned a whole bunch thanks for all the content. 😊
I'm a white southerner and there a lot of impoverished white men who feel pushed aside by society. They think, "Why are there people in the (seemingly) same position as me getting help for no other reason than their skin color, while I'm being left behind to struggle for myself?" There is a struggle to see the broader systemic issues because they view everything through the lens of the individual and merit.
Job stability is quickly becoming a fantasy and everyone is treated as expendable even what we’re once cushy jobs, but instead of looking at capitalism they blame women, poc ect
@@FernandoTorrera Not only expendable unfortunately, Exploitable as well. We are being crushed for pennies all while politicians & media conglomerates get people to argue against their own best interests.
Would you call it a skewed version of american individualism?
@@johnindigo5477 Id just call it American Individualism
@@Alex_Barbosa -- Exactly. What's occurring now isn't a bug in the system. It's the core feature of the American Individualism system. As George Carlin stated, "The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it." European-Americans have been imparted the pacifying ideology of American Exceptionalism/Individualism to hold on to and they're waking to the truth that it was and has always been rubbish. Now, they're throwing hissy fits, essentially.
I was about 16 when I first saw Falling Down in the theater. I had a different take on it at the time. In the beginning of the movie, the main character was easy to sympathize with, and even cheer on as the Anti-Hero. I was blind to the idea that this was entitlement at the time. The Fast Food place represented inconveniences set forth by the system for completely arbitrary reasons, and here was a guy that wasn't going to just swallow it like Pavlov's dog when the bell rings. The scene with the gang I viewed as a chihuahua managing to chase off a pack of wolves. I didn't notice the racism to it at the time, because I was a teen that was really into Gangsta Rap at the time, and I saw LA Gangs as the modern mafia, or fearsome warlords, and here was this whimpy guy taking control of the situation. The scene in the convenience store represented a fad that would continue to grow, when instead of pricing items at a modest profit over cost, merchants started raising prices to the highest point the market would bear before loss of business would lose more money than could be gained by the price gouging. To put this in perspective, in 1993, I could get a 16oz bottle of pop from just about any gas station in my area for $0.75 or less, so the idea of paying more than that for a 12oz aluminum can seemed ridiculous, and would feel like taking advantage of you as a customer.
But about halfway through the movie, the veil starts to lift... and we begin to see that our "Anti-Hero" who was bucking the status quo, was actually not a good guy at all.... he was a sick man, an abusive and demanding man.... and that everything we cheered up until this point, was not him bucking the system in order to right wrongs, but actually the product of his deep seated misanthropic anger. He was a man who would be fully willing to harm innocent people. And my stomach knotted up at the realization that I had been cheering him on in the beginning of the movie. As a teen, my biggest takeaway from the movie was this: "The Enemy of my enemy is not my friend."
All that being said, Me, being an adult now, and having taken the time to learn about my privilege and the shadier histories of society as a whole in this country, I recognize the validity in most of your critiques. But I wanted to share how I saw the movie through the eyes of a 16 year old white boy.
Do you consider the Irish or Armenian to be privileged due to their whiteness?
@@dreamsprayanimation yeah, of course. Privilege is not binary. You can have white privilege while still being disadvantadged because of ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, etc. Even circumstance. Privilege isn't about having a perfect life within a society.
@Oo. I'm very sorry for those things, but most (serious) essayists do touch on those topics. Those would equate to wealth/class privilege and the privilege of being able-bodied/minded. I never truly realized what privilege was till part of mine was taken away, and I still know I'm extremely privileged despite circumstances. I know that if you had faced the set of problems I've faced while living in extreme poverty with a ruined mental health, the exact same set of problems would have been infinitely worse for you. That people don't make that nuance, that teenagers on twitter don't even know what nuance is yet, all of that doesn't change privilige itself.
I have the same sorta reading of this film. By the time they're on the pier and Defense is like 'I'm the bad guy?' it seems so OBVIOUS that he's the bad guy and the fact that I'd been feeling sympathy towards him or even cheering him on initially suddenly made me feel REALLY uncomfortable. This film is great!
🤓
I recently watched all of the Matrix movies and honestly, it's incredibly surprising to me that edgy white men latched on to it so much. Granted, I went in knowing the directors are trans women. But generally speaking, aside from the white leads, the cast is incredibly diverse. Morpheus' character expands so much after the second movie, beyond just mystic teacher. The human city is depicted as sexually liberated. Most of the heroes are women. Even Neo and Trinity have a really tender relationship. The series ends with Neo not destroying the machines, but working with them and establishing peace, to destroy the real villain: Agent Smith, whose thirst for control consumed everything. I feel like it's really easy to see that the Matrix is about social boundaries. Concepts like gender, race, class, are only socially imposed and can be deconstructed with work. But then again most people probably only watched the first film.
Yeah, I felt the inclusion of the Matrix trilogy in this dialog was completely unfair because it ignores all the Eastern philosophy that is displayed as part of the story's narrative. I mean, they tried to get Will Smith to play the lead, and Keanu Reeves was the one who ended up accepting the part.
So I don't see how the Matrix series qualifies for his video essay's argument.
@@Magus_Union he does mention that, like fight club, the ideology of the movie doesn't align with the people who attach themselves to it.
@@Magus_Union I mean the term "red-pilled" was entirely co-opted by the right. He's not far off with the people who claim to love this movie
Using deconstruction against social categories is kinda dumb, cuz we still have them.
@@galek75 what do you mean? Those who escaped the matrix still have to return to it, to live by its rules to continue their goal. Yet, they know those rules don't have to be real. The only one who is truly free of the false limits of the matrix is Neo. In real life, we have those social boundaries. But we don't /have/ to. Race and gender only exist because of the societal belief in them. Many people are currently working hard to demolish this societal barriers, through dismantling systemic racism, advocating for socialist principles, and getting rid of the false gender binary.
I’m just now being introduced to your content & I love what I’m learning.
I will say, as a fossil old enough to have seen Falling Down in the theatre, it made such a huge impact on me exactly because the whole movie did build up to the scene where he interacted with then shot the neo-nazi and did exactly what you suggested: faced the fact that they were not only not that different but that he was, in fact, a less honest man bc of his unwillingness to see or admit his extreme entitlement based on all he was certain he was owed. In fact, every other character in the movie saw it except him & tried in various ways to show & tell him that he was not actually superior, but his determination to make others hurt bc he was angry overrode his ability to see and hear any better than he had ever been able to. I left that movie sad & very moved. As a young adult, I was certainly examining my own biases far more honestly afterwards (I hope).
Feel like most of these directors would agree with you and never intended their main characters to be idolized. These movies are mostly tragedies.
Tragedy, satire and blatant irony is far too often lost on the masses. Which is a shame really.
I find myself connecting to characters regardless of my awareness of them being tragedies. I think I just appreciate the representation of tragedies because they can feel more real, and I like seeing the story told well.
This is literally what is happening with most of the people who critique the film. Its a tragedy about a villain and the triggers that turned them into a villain. Its ridiculous that people think the film idolised the main character. I feel a lot of people are projecting their own views onto the film, rather than see the film for what it is.
Taxi Driver is the classic example
the movies are good...the audiences are just morons.
I'm black but I still find myself gravitating towards movies like Fight Club and Joker and whatnot. In a sense, it feels like they tell my story. I have no purpose, or I've lost my purpose, then something sparks up that gives my life a more... cynical... meaning. I've had depression and those movies helped me realize that the cure to depression is to find your purpose in life, and then spend every waking moment of your being attempting to complete that purpose. My purpose? To become a very highly skilled fighter. And that's what I've been doing for the past 11 years since I realized that was what I wanted to ever since I was 12. I'm 23 now and what would be called a heavyweight boxer, black belt in judo, karate and now practicing muy thai and krav maga. I don't really identify with right-leaning politics at all, but the movies of that nature helped me claw my way out of a dark time.
Stop, this doesn’t fit into the race based narrative we’re trying to tell here. 😂
The great thing about films like Joker is that the represent society as it is, rather than as various political groups are claiming it to be. No-one is going to be so naive as to claim that a black person in modern America will face no prejudice whatsoever, but at the same time the idea that prejudice is a simple thing that flows in one direction from an objectively 'powerful' group to an objectively 'powerless' one is simplistic and nonsensical. There's a reason so many films about disillusioned white men exist; it's because the reality of being a white man in the US is shit, not because white people have it worse than black people but because the possibility of realising oneself as an individual has disappeared entirely. Joker, Falling Down, and other films like Fight Club are about people who try to make their own meaning in the world, and about how this almost always appears violent to everyone else because it disrupts the everyday order into which the individual disappears in the first place.
I'm glad you found something meaningful in your life. Don't let anyone take it away from you (and don't let anyone tell you that they know better than you about your life).
"I Still Find Myself" - what does your being Black have anything to do with it? You're right, it doesn't ane the author is nuts.
Unironically you should watch longform interviews with Michael Jai White, that guy is aspirationally introspective.
A couple choice examples are him talking about how Martin Sheen would be on his Mt. Rushmore because of how much he respected other people when he met him, or that time he was dead set on having an intellectual conversation with a large group of white supremacists to non-combatively pick apart their beliefs.
This dude, is fit, black Uncle Iroh irl.
I just found falling down an incredibly sad movie and an incredibly sad protagonist. I don't think it's problematic for a large majority of people and I do think we need more movies with unreliable narrators. Starting the movie I was like hell yeah, let's go defense! The amount of times I've just wanted to leave a traffic jam and just be free... And the first things he does are somewhat alright, but you slowly get a profile for the kinds of fallacies or emotions he's falling for. And it makes you reflect and see these things in yourself and others around you. It kind of makes you realize that you yourself may be an unreliable narrator and that the things you want may already cross some lines for some people. Just like he in the end was so suddenly surprised "Am I the bad guy?" "Yes!". I think way more people are the bad guys without realizing the consequences of our actions than they think. Probably me too... These kinds of movies are exploring and showing the extremes so that we can explore the same things on a smaller scale.
I re-watched "Falling Down" a few years ago with a a friend. We didn't have a term for it, but "Aggrieved Entitlement: The Movie" was definitely the term we were looking for.
I just choked on my drink lol
I think a lot of people who go through "Aggrieved Entitlement" have a moment where they look in mirror and see some blatant version of themselves and then reject it just like Dfens did with that Nazi in the surplus store. There's this failure to see themselves as what they truly are. I think Falling Down is important because it highlights and humanizes some of the problems but needed a clearer lens so people finding themselves on that path could divert themselves from it.
@@elustran Short reply: yes.
Long reply: it's really hard. Even just looking at Falling Down, he is convinced he's the good guy. Heck, he shoots a nazi, which puts him in the same camp as Indiana Jones, Sgt. Nick Fury, and countless other pulp heroes. How could he possibly be the bad guy if he's killing nazis? And when people aren't willing to ask the question "Am I maybe acting like the bad guy here?" they're very unlikely to come to the conclusion "Yes, yes I am the bad guy".
And, no, I don't know how to do better with stuff like this. I think maybe part of it is to deny these characters either a "winning" ending or a "blaze of glory" ending. Give them endings that cannot be mythologized or idolized. Have them go out with a whimper. I feel like the show "The Shield" did that pretty well. Unfortunately, those endings tend to not sell tickets, so... I dunno.
That movie fucking sucked. I was hoping for a 90s joker. I hated the main character the whole time.
How can anyone like Michael Douglas in this?
@@upperclassnoobs you aren't supposed to like him. The whole point of the movie is that he's an entitled prick.
i always love how nuanced your takes are. Critique out of empathy and understanding is where the real depth is.
@@horribleprogram i get you, however, gotta disagree.
it's very naive to think that any human can write anything without bias. *acknowledging* one's biases and emotion in academic writing should be its future, imho
The man’s really smart but this is by no means a nuanced take
I feel the same! The video has a great balance of this
16:57 ironically Fight Club can be on that list too. That's one the problems with conservatives. Fight Club is literally about how bullsh!t the fight clubs are and how those men went from one dysfunctional place to another. Heck, conservatives legit think Carlin is on their side despite that man consistently talking about how much he despises them
I guess conservatives misunderstood Fight Club and Carlin, because they're nostalgic for Victorian bare-knuckle boxing and like Carlin's "no rights" joke.
I'd say it's not misunderstanding from some people but rather how some promote right leaning ideas to seem cooler.
No, it's about how they went from weakness to strength, which, while not moral, and while not enough to sustain you, is the first step towards better. Because you can't be good without having some strength of character. They did go from one form of dysfunction to another, but that other form of dysfunction is a step in a direction that moves towards functionality.
Carlin despised conservatives in his time, and he was a liberal back then, modern conservatives hold most of the same views as 90s liberals.
I seem to notice that internet conservatives like to do that to anything that seems “Tough” or “Rebellious”, for example, I see loads of people who take “Rebellious” music from back then, which usually criticized conservatism and capitalism, and they make it seem like they would be on their side today
I see this happen with old punk bands like Dead Kennedies, and they think that “Right wing is the new punk rock”, or with the rap-metal band Rage Against The Machine, where I see many of them say “It’s such a shame RATM became the thing they swore to destroy”, despite the fact that all of their music had been far-left from day one, and the band members still stand by those views to this day, so they get mad that they can’t apply their own ideology to it
@@MorbidMindedManiac "Right wing is the new punk rock" was the funniest thing I saw people say online, lmao.
It's conservatism. It's literally the opposite of pushing the social envelope!
I once read a book in the perspective of a character who was in a sort of Falling Down situation. His whole life he thought if he just did the right things, listened to the system and followed the rules, he would be rewarded. Everyone around him, including his family and loved ones, would be punished and oppressed, but he thought it was their own fault because he saw them as troublemakers. But he would be good and none of that stuff would happen to him. Inevitably, the system pulled the rug out from under him, ruining any chance he had at a good, normal life. Instead of taking this out on everyone around him, he joined those who were actively working against the system. It's quite... weird to read Falling Down as anything other than someone STILL not understanding who the true oppressor is.
The Simpson’s, Homer’s enemy
This will probably be taken as a defense of D-FENS, which is not my message -- but movies have to be taken in their historical context. I was just a teenager at the time, but my impression was and is that 30 years ago it was really the norm not to understand or bother to think much about systems of oppression. Especially if you were white and middle-class or above. This wasn't a common topic on local or cable shows, or in most newspapers and magazines, which is what we had then. Internet was still fledgling. Many people were exposed to these ideas in college, or outside of it, but many more got their degrees without bothering. It's impressive to me how much overall consciousness has grown, in general, in the last 20-30 years.
This part will sound like a defense of D-FENS. His acts of half-random violence were deplorable and would be in any era. But put yourself in the shoes of this man as much as possible, meaning you have to be familiar with the socio-cultural climate of the time, and during the preceding time of his life. He's a baby boomer while they were on top of the world, was an engineer I believe, good job, loving family, good neighborhood, until he and his wife seperated and he lost the job. He'd always been clean-cut American dream boy, playing by the rules, which had apparently worked well for him until those downturns. At this point, if he's not engaged in serious self-reflection, he'd be prone to some bitter ruminations about society. And in the early 90s, and being the solitary, friendless person he is, he wouldn't be likely to stumble across any literature or anything else to point him in the right direction and keep him from going off the rails like he did. Unless he actively sought out such information. But he didn't. He AVOIDED seeking truth -- possibly out of frustrated hopelessness, and/or he was arrogant/unaware enough to believe he possessed it already.
So, his initial transgression was buying into the system which implicitly said he'd have a good life as a white male U.S. citizen, provided he worked well and followed the rules. But the system has no real concern for him as an average individual, regardless of his generally privileged identity. In the end he's just another pawn who's a little higher up than some other pawns and a lot lower down than a rare few. And we're almost all pawns, whose chief characteristics are that they're expendable and nearly powerless to affect the game, or only incidentally affect it in tiny ways. Like prey.
@@AvoidiacIn the 1970s, and to some extent the 1980s, there was a lot of attention on societal critique. People were exploring feminism, racial equality, gay rights, etc. But the 80s & 90s also saw a conservative backlash against those movements. And the 1990s began with the Rodney King video. Then the police who beat him were acquitted, leading to protests and riots around the country.
My point is that for adults in the 1990s, if they chose to ignore systemic oppression, then they were deliberately turning their heads. It’s not like the information wasn’t available. Yes, it was harder to read books and magazines when you had to get a physical copy. Plenty of us did it anyway.
Falling down actually helped me realize I was destroying myself when I saw it like a decade ago.
Im confused as to how so many people miss the entire point of that movie
Like. JOEL SCHUMACHER directed it. This is not supposed to be a white male power fantasy. You are supposed to see the dichotomy between D-Fens and our old cop fella.
It's literally called falling down. How does anybody read that name and be like "This is a success story!"
You should tell us what you see as the point. I see it as a man who is mad at the world for both rudeness and injustice. He's gone off the edge......but I don't see the lead character as racist. Perhaps misanthrope is a better word?
@davidking4838 I don't think he's meant to be inherently racist, but he's representative of a demographic with a lot of crossover, right? From what I've heard, the biggest demographic for stochastic terrorism is lonely white men finding out life isn't as simple as the exchange they were promised and having trouble coping, which usually comes with hardcore conservative beliefs on gender roles, and occasionally some kind of expectation of white providence, programmed intentionally or not
@@davidking4838 ironically the only person he kills in the movie is the racist lol
i really appreciate that your content discusses men and masculinity in a way that isnt just "men are bad yucky!!!"
its so important that we educate men on this stuff without making them feel alienated or ostracized because if they do then theyre way less likely to actually pay attention to whats being said, so im really glad your videos exist!! thank you so much and i cant wait to see what you have to say next!!
??? What. His whole video is ridiculing and talking shit about white men who are struggling really tough mentally. I don’t understand these people. It’s like if they pour gasoline on a fire and then gets surprised when it starts to fucking burn.
You seem to have pretty low standards thanks to feminism lol
AKA constructive criticism; otherwise, it's just acrimony disguised as criticism.
@@marvin2678 you completely missed the point of this comment didn't u?
@@marvin2678 u guys always find a way to tie it back to feminism, don’t you?
As a white south african male i would just throw in a comment on the mythology around percieved traditional masculinity (16:00) and the rewards that ostensibly go along with it. You say that some white males feel cheated when they dont achieve the status in society that they expected, and that they feel diminished and cheated by society. I would suggest, based partially on personal life experience, that these radicialized men feel like failures (for not living up to an unrealistic ideal), and that it is this dissapointment and perhaps even deep frustration and hatred toward self, that is primarily toxic. That all gets projected on one or other scapegoat in all to many cases, and of course that wreaks havoc on society. I just felt the need to stress that.
Oh , and i havent lived in SA for some twenty years, but that is the society that shaped me in large part.
Not to simplify the broader points you put across in a wonderfully concise and persuasive manner in this video though.
As a middle-class white man raised by Fox News watching parents, I know this feeling so well. Thankfully I was reached before I became an incel and have been working hard as hell to be a better member of my community. But this video is phenomenal and I look forward to more insight! Thank you for the hard work
the way media and health care has been allowed to fall in the hands of rampant capitalists is the great tragedy of the american experiment.
add to that the Military Industrial Complex, the Prison system and Policing to Budget and... it's enough for anyone to lose hope.
speaking of which; I am absolutely astounded that the rage of underprivileged white men is always directed at minorities and "liberals", instead of the mechanisms that use them for profit. anyone want to shed a light on that?
is it misguided patriottism?
you cant become an incel, you either are or you arent and you still didnt say if youre actually not anymore
leftists are the opposite of working hard
leftists think because they are working on a failed "revolution" no one asked for that it's enough and they shouldn't need a job to get paid
@@crazyrr144 since the term incel gets very closely attributed to misogyny and misogynists- I think what they meant was that they didn't become a redpill/misogynistic incel.
And no, a lot of beauty standards and criteria for what people find attractive is messed up and contorted
Man these long-form, nuanced, considerate discussions are what social media needs. This was an awesome critique, entertaining, and without any of the outrage or other baloney tactics.
it’s not good
Just like Fight Club and The Matrix, I felt like Joker also had a lot of social commentary and undertones but were somehow overlooked by media. Late stage capitalism, mental health, wealth inequality, family dynamics. But all the media seemed to see was that it was a hyper edgelord film. To be honest it probably has a lot to do with the previous Dark Knight shooting. People were just scared and that's understandable.
I don't think so. The media chooses NOT to address those issues because it's too dangerous and takes them down a rabbit hole they'd rather not go down. So they stick to the surface with a cultural, non political viewpoint. See it over and over again in so many dramas. For e.g., Breaking Bad is about a lot of things but what I don't see any US critic mention is that BB is partly a critique on the US health system.
I came out of Joker surprised at the Marxist approach it seemed to take.
Even tho the director denied it and said it wasnt?
The class antagonism, the alienation, the environment and history that shaped the actions and reactions of the character showing that people aren't just "evil" and it's often material conditions and the such that actually influence them the most.
The people who think Fight Club is some right-wing manifesto never read the book or know anything about the author. But there were people out there that did not realize Rage Against the Machine was politically radical, so a lack of comprehension is rampant in society.
@@marcantoinelab12321 Yeah it worked off the "Killing Joke's" "One bad day" concept and gave Joker A LOT of bad days. Yet you can see it isn't just him yet the city itself was rotting and the city itself just needed "one bad day" that's what it got. Then we still got the setup that it was ALL in his head the whole time so what is "real" and what is just him creating it?
@@clayjack9969 Eventhough in the big retrospective of The Watchmen, Rorschach was right. All those people died for nothing, he and the comedian died for nothing. The whole story is more bleek now that it's all meaningless. Unless you want to work off the "Doomsday Clock" storyline and Manhattan gave his world a true "Superman"
Misdirected anger coupled with changes in society, create a dangerous cocktail for everyone.
The thing is, the Joker wasn’t portrayed as actually improving the world, he was just frustrated with the world and took it out in all the wrong ways. The movie has a clear line between empathizing with him and the things he does wrong
Not at the end though. He should have lost something at the end like mentally ill people in real life. Instead he "wins" and everyone is happy.
It wasn't that clear to me. Nevertheless, I didn't have any inpulse to try to become like him, because the movie was rather as an interesting view, from a sociological perspective.
12:15 context for the Mr. Robot scene, for those unaware: This speech is revealed to be what Elliot _wants_ to say to his therapist, but it ends up being his own thoughts instead (you can hear the reverberated voice of his therapist clicking him back into reality.) It's an early episode of the show but it succinctly explains why he basically wants to Hack The Planet and why he gets caught up with Mr. Robot. Elliot gets better later on in the show (a rarity for this genre) but this scene is a good illustration of what's being talked about in this essay. Also, Mr. Robot rules; check it out if you haven't yet! :)
I mean Mr Robot is a trip. That ending really upends what you think is really going on the whole time.
Glad to hear that it gets better, I’ve been interested in it, but clips like this always made it look a lil cringe
@@meatbot.404 it’s a pretty good show, I’d say pretty far from cringe, one of the only shows I think computer savvy folks can watch and not die inside when someone is talking about programming or hacking… handles this whole “societal angst” thing pretty well too, doesn’t go overboard trying to make him righteous for all this stuff, mostly just confused & misguided, like most guys that actually think like that.
@@meatbot.404 You can't judge any piece of art on a clip. It's a great show which delves into the human psyche through the perspective of mental health (social anxiety, depression, narcissistic personality disorder, dissociative personality disorder, addiction, psychosis...). Every single character is meaningful and adds a different perspective to the collective, yet completely individual human experience we all live. The show is also really current and manages to brilliantly capture our modern society and the social discontent post 2008 and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Sam Esmail is a really unique and creative director and some of the scene are pure magic. There's honestly very little wrong with the show, the concept, the cinematography, the acting, the characters, the music, and the pacing are all brilliant. Highly recommend if you're already interested in watching it.
@@meatbot.404 On the contrary, I thought it only got worse and ended on the stupidest note I could imagine, especially insulting those who know any reference to the hacking & thematic material.
I'm not quite to the halfway point, so this may be moot, but I think people have a hard time digesting the concept of a main character you shouldn't identify or look up to. Which is to say that media literacy is just not at a great rate for the general populace.
Or that you can identify with and still see how their outlook and behavior is problematic and ignore the critiques built in. The whole vigilante antihero as an outright hero even if the media they are in is critiquing it (the co-opting of the Punisher comes to mind, even if the different media interpretations have other issues)
@@mggardiner4066 " you can identify with and still see how their outlook and behavior is problematic"
that's the point of fight club in a way as well; understand the motivations, deplore the 'solutions' they come up with.
if that's not ironic, given some of the misguided fans of these movies.
it's almost like they are meant as manuals for a certain public as to what not to do. /jk
i still think Falling Down is an exception, the protagonist is not the protagonist, it's about the fall-out (the wife and daughter) and the way the general public doesn't catch on to domestic toxic situations.
the way the viewer only sees D-Fens for what he is until late in the game is analogous to how neighbours and friends mistake abuse for lovers quarrels and choose to look away from abuse until it's too late when the signs were always there.
I'm surprised you didn't bring up Marvin Heemeyer and his Killdozer, as it's a perfect real-life example of Falling Down and the way it was misunderstood. Especially the part where he's viewed as a noble martyr and is often paired with imagery and quotes from Falling Down. Would have been a pretty solid way to tie the movies you discussed into how the behaviors of the people who like them misunderstand the films.
Though Heemeyer didn't kill anyone except himself, and if I remember correctly it was on purpose.
@@makhnothecossack4948 He also didnt care that he couldve though. Him not killing anyone was rather circumstance than intention. He drove his bulldozer into random buildings, stores, while almost having no field of view. There couldve been people in the way so many times, yet he still chose to blindly ram through store walls etc.
@@katocs He deliberately attacked the properties of those who fucked his life up tho
@@pffpffovich2398 kind of, but not really. One of the buildings he slammed into was a clothing store which, while owned by one of his adversaries, could've easily just had people inside. Similar things with other buildings. Also, he himself caused alot of his own "misfortune" wanting quick cash and selling land without properly reading the contract
@@pffpffovich2398
he nearly killed a bunch of children in the town hall library who barely escaped and tried to blow up propane tanks that would’ve caused a large explosion that could’ve injured or killed civilians
I think the quote at the end of falling down is overlooked and tragic.
"I'm the bad guy?" Really felt like it hit hard when I watched it.
man, this is my second video I've watched of yours and I got to say this is quality discourse and study. As an Indigenous man in America, I've been observing these types of behaviors for years in white men and you have given me the words to explain it all. Thank you
I'm glad you can explain me to myself, you sir, however, will remain a mystery to me... I haven't even met you after all.
@@lancewalker2595 aw buddy are you feeling called out ?
No one is directly talking about "you" when criticizing something like masculinity. Its about criticizing those concepts that people latch onto, and the ensuing priviledge within modern soceity from said premises. It is not a criticism of you as a human being, but maybe a way of taking the time to self reflect and learn something new about yourself and the world you may not have noticed because youre not directly affected by it
@@benschmitt7035 No. I'm white. And I'm a dude. So his bigotry is aimed at me. And fuck that noise. He doesn't know me. It's that simple.
@@lancewalker2595 the criticisms are aimed at the concepts of whiteness and patriarchy. If you think that's a personal attack, then you absolutely have the most to learn.
For example, I am also a white male, and yet its obviously not a direct criticism towards me as a person.
Its simply an analysis of the fundamental soceital structures from which I benefit (but which I never chose to be a part of). It's not a bad or negative thing to take a look inward at our place within society and try to learn from it
@@benschmitt7035 You bore me darling.
"Karen got wild except it's a dude" ,
This dude summed this movie up in one simple and perfect sentence . Love it .
@Bären Television Z sorry it took so long king, here's your crown.
"There will always be some who will hate what I am talking about, but that is the nature of opinion".
The Matrix lead was turned down by Will Smith. If he had accepted it, it would be interesting to see what the analysis would have been.
@@jaxsonlee10 It probably would've worked anyway. People love Will Smith.
I would love to know how much casting Will Smith instead of Keanu would've changed the film. It's pretty hard for me to imagine Will Smith, a titan of charisma, playing an isolated, awkward, lonely computer hacker. Especially Will Smith ca 1999. IMO part of the reason for why Keanu works as Neo is that his acting suits the movie's tone and style: stilted, somewhat off balance, fairly cold emotionally. I can only see Will Smith being distracting in that kind of movie.
@@jayman5234 I, Robot flopped completely
The way the Wachowskis tell it, Will wanted the movie to be funnier. The way Will tells it, he just couldn't get his head around what the movie was actually about.
And lets nor forget matrix its basically a copycat of a japanese anime lol, man you americans love to put everything o skin color
Now even heroe tales and underdog bringing down a system fighting alongside the plebs its a withe american creation,
he even says "the god old days nostalgia" its a racist america thing, when every society in human history expressed this "good old times" nostalgia
Now 1 thing, will smith would definitely suck for matrix, but Denzel Washington would have been amazing
30 year old white guy and big ol lefty here. Definitely fell into the 4chan edgelord shit in my early teens. I was a conservative middle schooler which... like what the fuck? There is nothing worse than conservative kids. Really loved this video and subscribed. I think you nailed it.
I think you touched on the two things I consider the biggest aspects of this toxic white American culture. American exceptionalism and a misunderstanding of what everyday racism looks like. Post-MAGA, it seems clear that there are millions of people in this country that genuinely believe "America is great. I am American. I am great.". Which ultimately translates into "I am free to do whatever I want and if you oppose me you are a communist." It's national narcissism being compressed into an individuals identity and self-worth.
I believe I've seen the term "Tucker's Cat" in reference to the right's idea of what racism is. That racism can only exist as the most egregious, N-word shouting, hood wearing, nazi flying, actively lynching a black person, kind of person. Anything short of that is dismissed as "snowflakes" or "just a joke. I actually experienced this a few hours ago. I live in Manhattan and was out walking my dog when two 20 something white women not wearing masks walked by a group of Chinese people wearing masks. One of the white women said "I shouldn't of left Florida with all these Chinese, I'm definitely going to get COVID!". I told them to get their racist asses out of the fucking city. They replied with "It was just a joke, I forgot New Yorkers are so sensitive."
The level of casual dismissal really stuck with me. Infuriated me actually. Just, a complete lack of awareness or empathy. No regard (or probably knowledge) of the hate crimes Asians have faced in the city over the last year.
I think as a country we put way too much importance on intent. When conservatives consistently vote to empower white supremacy, regardless of if that's their intention, they're still upholding white supremacy. I get caught up thinking about the paradox of tolerance. Maybe it's that inner white rage I'm still struggling with but it's hard to imagine that embracing them will change anything. In my opinion, conservative thought in this country has been on the wrong side of history at every possible moment.
Anyway, it's 2:30 am and I'm rambling. Loved the video and looking forward to watching more.
Lol so you still an edge lord is basically what your saying
always nuanced, insightful, enlightening videos. grateful for these essays, especially the ones discussing hip hop
Came across your channel through the Bo Burnham video and I’m here to stay. Amazing content. I love it. I’m from Brazil and I teach English as a second language. I often recommend video essay channels to my students so they can have a meaningful and thoughtful contact with the language, and I’m definitely going to recommend your channel. Congratulations for the great work.
I had to double-take because you kinda look like me in your PFP lol
As a white male, this video made me feel so uncomfortable and exposed. But I liked it. It’s been days since I watched it and I can’t stop thinking about how true it is. You nailed it.
🤢🤢🤢
@@gungun5845 😋🤪😭
Corey Koon
Good boy. Now sit.
You tasted a sand grain in a Universe we black folk live in.. I hope this mustard seed moves mountains for you..😉💯✊🏾
The hardest thing I've found to explain to other white men my age (early 40s) is that the term "toxic masculinity" doesn't mean that men or masculinity are inherently toxic. It's getting them to accept that certain things they were taught about "how to be a man" are actually toxic to THEM and the rest of society. I know when I was younger I definitely had an uncritical love of movies like Taxi Driver. I was a product of the era of the traditional patriarchy where men were stunted emotionally unless it was lust or rage and if one was unable to find a place in society the only way to establish yourself (or take revenge) was through acts of violence as a right of passage. It's a major theme in the works of Sam Peckinpah for example.
It's only in the last 10 or 15 years that I've come to realize that society was never egalitarian or meritocratic and that these images were fantastical. I wasn't able to verbalize that though and your explanation helped with that especially reframing it in a healthy perspective. I do think the entitled aggression is a great descriptor.
At the same time I'm able to understand why (erroneously) white men feel marginalized. They are in a position where their previous status has been destabilized and other groups are constantly reminding them of it and pushing to enshrine that destabilization. So they feel that violence (the traditional means of establishing power and identity) is what is required to reconcile the situation. They have yet to realize that the same elements that produce these toxic beliefs and behaviors in them effect others even more so and that the deconstruction of these idols should be a shared effort. Like you I hope that the future is better. Great video.
White men don't just *feel* marginalised; they *are* marginalised. A narrow-minded, highly reductionist view has become fashionable, through which it has become popular to assume that any white man who doesn't appear to recognise his own privilege is mistaken and needs to be educated (usually they are expected to educate themselves, based on the idea that everyone else is supposedly tired of doing the 'emotional labour' required to help these men 'understand' the 'truth' of themselves; this is a useful convenience on the part of people whose entire worldview would fall apart at the slightest hint of a question). What this view doesn't understand is that, in reality, neither being white nor being male confers any specific advantage, and that the only way to pretend that it does is to invoke a similarly reductionist idea of what it is to be black and/or female, namely that the latter are oppressed merely by virtue of sharing a society with white men. This entire view has likely emerged, at least in part, from our propensity to prefer simplistic explanations and solutions (reality, of course, is a fundamentally complex phenomenon).
The most interesting thing is that if we actually *listened* to white men, instead of assuming we already know enough about them, we would discover that reducing them to their skin colour and gender ignores the many varied problems they deal with on a day-to-day basis. One of these problems is that they have constantly been denied a voice; wealthy people tend to be more influential and have greater access to power and speech platforms, and while it might be more likely that wealthy people are white and male than black and/or female, it doesn't follow that a white male is likely to be wealthy, and most of them aren't; as such, they are at the mercy of a myriad of rules and expectations that they have no power to resist (and if they do they are highly likely to be marginalised and ostracised e.g. if they don't have a job, or a partner/family, or even decent physical or mental health).
We should be looking at society and trying to see the problems we face, but we're not; instead, we're assuming we already know what they are and are then interpreting the world in ways that conform to our hypotheses. We claim that minorities should have a voice, but we're never willing to listen to them unless they parrot exactly what we expect them to say i.e. that they are victims of a white supremacist structural racism. Any black person who offers an alternative view is dismissed as having 'internalised whiteness', where 'whiteness' is nothing more than a god-of-the-gaps term meant to stand in for an utter lack of a credible explanation.
TL;DR - pay attention to the world and the people in it, and resist the urge to see it through a lens. Masculinity may be harmful in some forms, but femininity should not be considered a wholly safe alternative. Sometimes we need strength, aggression and stoicism.
I like to explain it like this:
"Lets talk about toxic mushrooms and why you shoulnd't eat them."
"Oh so now mushrooms are toxic???!!!"
"No, just the toxic ones, so please stop eating them."
@@satyasyasatyasya5746that is…. Not the best explanation I’ve heard
I don't think D-Fens was ever intended to be or portrayed as the hero of Falling Down, and anyone trying to read the film as a defiant declaration of violent working class white triumph is on a fool's errand. In the scene in the neo-Nazi's storeroom, you'll notice that soon after hearing the Nazi tell him "we're the SAME, you and me!" and he shoots him, but the next shot D-Fens fires is actually at the mirror as he's looking at himself. Then he finishes off the Nazi. He has a painful moment of self-awareness that the Nazi was telling the truth and he can't stand to see what he is. At the end of the film he explicitly comes to the realization that he's the villain of his story. Over and over again he is seen as being an outcast abusive psychopath, a sad, unhinged and enraged manbaby with an explosive temper and a child's understanding of the world. The film doesn't glorify Bill Foster, but it doesn't entirely condemn or vilify him either. Robert Duvall's Detective Prendergast is a foil for D-Fens and you have to compare and contrast the two men's wildly differing responses to being obsolete white men in America to appreciate the nuance of the storytelling rather than assume D-Fens is the protagonist of the film simply because he's the lead character.
And some people think Tyler Durden is the hero of Fight Club, or Starship troopers was a straight movie about patriotism, or Robocop was not pointing out the folly of capitalism.
Lots of people can't see the subtext even when it's straight text.
The mention of white men feeling entitled to something that they've been conditioned to expect and then being angry when they don't get it is interesting to me, because as a white man I never felt that way but it's probably because I'm a gay man in the south and my high school experience was a pretty tense anxiety ridden part of my life and I can't say things got that much better even after the fact, so from a pretty early age I knew that whatever success white men had come to expect did not include white men like me, and their picture of success and happiness was very much not my picture of success and happiness
Ditto!
Almost like trying to generalize a group to a point is kind of pointless
@@Scruffy-qi3ik exactly
Same. Kinda glad I am not straight.
@@Scruffy-qi3ik not really, if we add intersectionality then it's clear to see why this isn't a surprise. Most people want to continue seeing things from a one directional viewpoint as if people's identities are not multi layered
It's basic "because he does it on TV, I can do it too" even when the TV clearly says that it's wrong BoJack Horseman, The Joker, Rick are all people you should not idolise or look up to, and it's also the writers job to make sure that the audience knows and understands that, to avoid falsely justified bad behaviour in our world.
And with Bojack and Rick, the curtain is pulled back in later seasons to reveal how they were gross and selfish all along and we were just blinded by the perspective of the narrative.
AAAHHHH I COULD KISS YOU FOR MENTIONING BOJACK HORSEMAN! If you don’t mind I’m gonna rant about this for a little. The whole Philbert episode in bojack horseman was dedicated for people who find comfort and acceptance to relating too bojack. Bojack didn’t feel as bad when he was watching and playing the role of Philbert because Philbert understood him, Philbert was him, and Philbert did good things too so he’s not completely a bad guy he’s just a human who made mistakes or whatever bojack interpreted to be. Then when Diane realizes that bojack took the show in a way that made him feel less shittier about himself (like this video is talking about) she went off on bojack and told him it shouldn’t make him feel better about who he is, or that he deserve anything sympathy from people just cause he was down on his luck, that isn’t what he should’ve token away from this. And people though Diane was being too harsh on bojack (because secretly they feel like she’s being too harsh to them.) flash foward season six when everything came back to bojack, when the curtain unraveled and bojack had no where to hide his behaviour, people felt so much empathy for bojack. It’s crazy because the creator of the show has always been telling and warning us that bojack is not a good person. Bojack doesn’t truely truely want to change. Bojack purposely falls into these patterns with himself and people and him getting sober didn’t ultimately change who he was and what he did. He is not supposed to get away with this. He is not supposed to be the victim and they did an awesome job at showing how everything he did came back to him, cause he is not the good guy who did bad things. He was the bad guy in many peoples lives and just cause he was self aware of it to a certain extent did not give him a free pass.
@@leviismyhusband5411 thanks for yoyr breakdown, ive finally came to understand why i despised bojack so fXking much
@@marcoosorio3705 yeah I say all this but could never say I despise him weirdly enough. I just feel sad when I think of bojack, In a way of"when did you cross the line and can you ever go back?
If there's one thing I know for sure,this film,Joker, basically taught us that bullying people is not funny.It's painful and traumatic.
Exactly but fake intellectual like the video author ignore that part of the message.
@@vice2versa The video author isn't ignoring anything. He's pointing out that a large cohort of mostly white men are completely missing the point of movies like this.
I can also say it has a pretty strong anti-medicine message which was super helpful to the already huge anti-meds discourse out there for mentally ill people
@@seltythe movie JOKER is not anti-meds, as the character gets progressively crazier and more insane and violent when he no longer can have his meds because the city closed his public hospital pdychiatric wing. How can anyone not see that?
ew@@vice2versa
Joker was precisely as profound as I was expecting from the director of The Hangover
It doesn't say anything new, but the basic message of "the system oppresses the working class" always needs to be heard by new audiences. If it's packaged in a way that more people listen, I can get behind it. The pitfall is obviously when edgelords distort the message into something it wasn't meant to be as he explained. Maybe the Joker wasn't the right character to use since he does so many horrible things.
@@MachFiveFalcon everyone who loved Joker should be forced to watch Bad Boy Bubby.
@@karlmay5306 Thanks for introducing me to that film. Based on what I read, I'll have to give it a try if I can brace myself tight enough for the ride lol
@@MachFiveFalconYep and the message also has an overarching point about ableism and about the lack of support for people with disability specifically. For that, it does kinda add something new imo or at least something rare to see in mainstream movies.
It really baffles me how the edgelords just skip over that part.
I think black men did the same thing with Erik Kilmonger. A character who was trying to "help his people" but also admitted he's killed his own people to get to his goal, not to mention his unwarranted aggression towards that elderly black woman, and people were saying he was right and was the actual hero. Like they really couldn't tell they were cheering on essentially someone that would be their own downfall.
He made accurate criticisms of the established power. But then was comically villainous in how he dealt with people so the movie could end with him beaten and that be good. The movie is very liberal in its philosophy on power struggles. A truly great movie would have been if Eric had won and just straight up become the new Black panther.
this moive is state influenced like "Birth of a Nation" in 1918. It is a an a assignment. U really think this stuff is organic?
Kilmonger was correct but because Marvel is liberal propaganda they had to make him go overboard cartoon evil to delegitimize his views. It's common in liberal media to see a revolutionary figure whose heart is in the right place but they "go too far" by using violence and thus have to be rejected.
@@Ryan90red is this sarcasm?
@@amuroray9115 My comment is not sarcasm. The villain in the movie Black panther is great in so far as he makes accurate criticism, and weak in so far as he is then made exaggeratedly evil so that he can still be seen as the villain.
this is a fascinating video, I liked all the movies except the joker, but dad always reminded me, just because they are the main character doesn't mean they are the good guy, he told me to watch falling down as a horror movie from the pov of the monster, he is a lefty, pacifist vet, glad he raised me, and not my friend's dads.
Thank you so much for the shoutout dude!!! You made a great video. I was unaware of the weird fan base the movie had and I think it’s a shame most people misinterpret the movie bc I do think the movie gets you to understand why he thinks the way he does even though it ultimately shows he’s wrong.
Yeah I was unaware but not surprised... hence the thesis of this video. I'm just happy your commentors never made it over here.
Also make more videos dude.
@@FDSignifire planning on it over the summer. Just gotta find some free time
@@jaxsonlee10 Nah, man, because white men white men etc. or something.
@@jaxsonlee10 when you have videos being made called “Falling Down vs Feminism” I will argue there are people who definitely misinterpret the movie
@@jaxsonlee10 I think you meant: "I didn't misinterpret this movie. I get it and what it's about. I'm a fan cuz I like it."
Thanks for the hard work, research, reflection and nuance you put into these! 🙌🏿
Wow, this is deep. White guy here. I think having kids recently has made me examine a lot of what I inherited about masculinity in effort to not perpetuate some of the same things. Trying to heal, and trying to not do patriarchy! Thank you for these insights.
Kids, don't do patriarchy, one day you're just chilling wih your friends doing some patriarchy and before you know it you start going on the hard stuff and your life is ruined
😂😂😂😂
Patriarchy doesn't exist, kid
Thank you for talking about Falling Down and the main character that a lot of people didn't seem to get. D-FENS is basically a "Leave it to Beaver", 1950s "man of the house" that went through a psychotic breakdown over the fact that the world was not owed to him, and the film is a deconstruction of the sort of conservative middle-class patriarch these figures are. I think that his murder of the neo-Nazi and the argument with the Korean store owner is an interesting mirror to how America sees itself: fighting Nazis and using surveillance to subvert and disrupt the KKK, while engaging in imperialism abroad, and implicitly upholding white supremacy. It's this insidious "respectable" racism, high moralism and even the fact that he was embedded in the military-industrial complex and definitely the twist that he was a domestic abuser drives the parallels even more to me.
LMAO a white man doing well for himself is not "white supremacy"
@@shaunsteele8244 You obviously don't understand the point I was making, and it's not about him being a "wealthy white man". I suspect that you're not the type who'd get it after an explanation, so I'm just gonna tell you to sod off.
" think that his murder of the neo-Nazi and the argument with the Korean store owner is an interesting mirror to how America sees itself: fighting Nazis and using surveillance to subvert and disrupt the KKK, while engaging in imperialism abroad, and implicitly upholding white supremacy"
honestly never thought of it as symbolism.
cheers!
I loved Falling Down when it came out, and I still think it’s a fantastic and subversive movie. It starts as this revenge porn fantasy. Superficially it’s about this seemingly upstanding guy who’s reached the end of his tether. But by the end it’s crystal clear that he is NOT the hero, he’s the villain. Robert Duvalls character sums this up when he speaks the truth about exactly what Michael Douglas’ character was planning to do (going home to kill his ex-wife and child).
Anybody watching that movie who thought Douglas’ character who didn’t understand that, wasn’t paying attention.
@@CharlieNoodles or are White Supermancists
It turns out that all it takes to disrupt the mystique surrounding The Dark Knight and Heath Ledger's Joker is to simply juxtapose GIFs of Stanley rolling his eyes, lol
Still a cool movie though
It is worth mentioning here that the role of Neo was originally offered to Will Smith, but he turned it down to do Wild Wild West.
If that's true, then thank goodness.
@@usefulidiot21 it is true indeed, you can find vids where he talks about that. He even believes that turning down the role was a good thing for the movie
I love your treatment of this subject. It hits close to home for a younger me and I still occasionally struggle with some of the mental tricks I learned that create this sense of righteousness.
This video is one of the most important of its kind. I hope a ton of people see it. Well done.
Thank you for that powerful endorsement.
Please do what you can to make it happen. Share it with your peers In your social.media circles etc. I want this message to spread for more than just building the channel.
@@FDSignifire Your comments on "Falling Down" are pretty darn true. My father LOVES the movie. But he's also a 61 year old man-child who feels like the country owes him, but not the "welfare people" (as you can tell, after the way he was when I was a child, I do not have a very high opinion of the man). For myself, I can see why the movie resonates, because sometimes I really sympathize with the "Jesus this traffic is driving me up the wall!" feelings.
However, I find myself personally much more aligned with Robert Duvall's character: A man all the other cops look down on who has a dominating wife. Regardless of all of this (I especially like the part where he tells his wife he may be late and she just has to get over it), he does what's right and gives "D-FENS" the cold hard truth: Yeah, it sucks..what happened to him sucks, sometimes life sucks. But that's no defense for his rampage and all he has done that day, and decides he's not going to retire just yet after "D-FENS", in a particularly craven way to avoid responsibility for his crimes, uses his daughter's water pistol to attain "suicide by cop". Sorry, I don't have a high opinion on Micheal Douglas' character, and knowing Joel Schumacher's stances on things, I don't think you are supposed to. He's supposed to be someone you, on some level, pity and can sympathize with, but in the end, what he's done is horrible and he's pretty much irredeemable.
@Keiron Augustin look up the work of Micheal Kimmel
@@bcw1313 a bit but not really, in retrospect I could have touched class a bit more.
@@bcw1313 so in terms of the extremes of these types, economics is not as huge a factor as you think, at least in terms of their personal SES. That said, I definitely see this problem to be partially explained by alienation and late capitalism, but a video can only be so long, and this one in particular was hard enough to pull into something resembling a cohesive thought
I was just bringing your channel up to a few people!
I initially had a spot of disagreement but that quickly went away with your explanation and research! I really respect your perspective on this and can’t wait to see what you create next.
The Joker was about class warfare. It wasn't a white incel treatment. It was an indictment of Reaganomics and neoliberalism in the face of a tone deaf establishment. It was brilliant.
People know what Joker is about. Doesn't mean incel's didn't try to ruin it.
I am 100% in agreement with you. Also, the lead actor - Phoenix - is a brilliant actor who deserved his Academy Award.
@@77Creationjust like they ruined American psycho, and ironically, the movie was directed by a gay man and the book was written by a transgender woman, same thing with the matrix, it was literally written by a woman.
@@marioncarbonell6047 where are you seeing that American psychos author is trans? I don’t see that when googling
@@marioncarbonell6047 I think you got your infos mixed up
"You will never destroy the master's house with the master's tools." Such a good quote.
@Comics By the Numbers Elaborate.
@Comics By the Numbers Also on a literal level it makes no sense.
@@beatrizrosa6101 China does that like every century or two.
@Comics By the Numbers "The largest tool of white supremacy has been open discourse and free and fair elections."
Then by your logic Africa is run by fascists.
Critical race theory garbage
That the protagonists in these films can be seen as role models is mad. The re-contextualisation of criticism as a supportive narrative underlines that we do not think rationally, but emotionally.
Comparing characters to movies and using it to spread hate throughout the internet is completely idiotic. Do you see how much precious time you're wasting talking about how "problematic" MOVIE CHARACTERS are? You people are clowns.
@@mr.herbert532 then never talk about a movie ig, or better yet don’t watch a film analysis vid
@@bobsburgers8497 It's called criticism get use to it you numbty
@@mr.herbert532 What are you doing here watching this video? At least we are taking part in discussion. You’re sitting, typing pathetically at people having a conversation and you’re calling us clowns?
@@dongxx hey numbty they’re complaining about a person talking about important parts of a movie when they clicked on a film analysis vid
I disagree extremely with your reading of Joker. Arthur Fleck is treated sympathetically, but the film absolutely doesn't condone what happens. It's a story of how a heartless society with gutted healthcare engenders further dysfunction. Contrary to other characters, Arthur wasn't entitled. This is a fundamental difference. He deserved to be treated as a human being and was denied that. I feel that many people are forgetting that he suffered from mental health issues and by incorrectly reducing him to basically just an entitled white man, they undermine these very real issues and how people suffer from them. It feels almost sociopathic, to just call him an entitled white man instead of addressing the sociological conditions behind what he became. And again, nobody should condone what he became. The film does not.
To me that final hero shot as he dances on the cop car in the middle of a riot that he caused... yeah idk if it's fair to say the movie doesn't lionize his violent spectacle. I was on the fence about the film until the end, but that shot to me drove home my perception.
I'm with you here, Joker to me is a very good movie in showing how society truly treats people that are different. And all it takes is a bad day to make someone go from trying to make it to a killer.
I can't say I look at joker as a hero cause I thought going in how are they going to tell his backstory because he is crazy and evil. So the way they went with it in the movie I enjoyed cause it's different for me as someone who doesn't watch a lot of movies
Keep in mind even the mental health Fleck gets is government funded and in his eyes inadequate. It's not society that turned him into a murderer, he is a violent murderer that blames society. That's the whole point of Robert De Niro's point of telling him to take responsibility for himself.
@@EpicWin1337 oh of course in the end it all falls to him and the choices he makes.
But as you said, it was the Gov health that he felt was inadequate and if the government health is as inadequate as it is in real world . Then we can only draw the conclusion that a little better gov health would improve his outlook.
In the end for me the story of Joker is just a mirror to the face of the choices we do and don't make on the daily. Rather we are a murder or just someone trying to be a good citizen. The question falls, what are you doing to make the world better for someone else? At least that's what I came away with from watching Joker
@@FDSignifire yeah I thought the same thing initially about the moving idolizing the violence he cause but now I believe that it was to show the final stage in his character’s development, he went from a man who was beat down by society, then his next stage was someone unafraid to fight back (not saying he should have killed those people because murder is still a terrible act) against those he deemed awful or who had wronged him, and that scene of him dancing in the car was him realizing that he just enjoys the chaos he brought, the scene wasn’t to make the audience idolize it, it was showing him taking the final step towards becoming the joker as he realizes he loves causing chaos. Sorry if I explained this badly
From what I can see, the main issue with these edge-lord types is a major lack of perspective. Experience with cultures and communities different from your own is important to understanding the world we live in.
I think one of the things that's missing in the discussion about why the collapse of society is so appealing is how it also removes the responsibility/copiability of white men for the system that made them feel so miserable. If the world collapses then I won't have this stupid job, I won't have these shitty relationships, I won't have this shitty government, etc. but it also helps them skirt the real answer which is, I won't have to actually sit with myself and fix what the fuck is wrong with me so I can figure out how the fuck to fix all this shit.
Externalizing the threat is kind of the move of my people for sadly a long, long time.
how do you fix it though? how does one "fix" oneself and a system which is (seems) unfixable?
White men? Met A LOT of people who follow this pattern
@@cavy369 It's not an easy answer. One of the things someone could do who is struggling with a shitty job, shitty relationships, shitty government etc, is think about what they want from life and what a more bearable life would look like.
Steps one could take;
-remove bad friends, if no good friends remain then try to start better friendships. Know what to look for in people who you want to be friends with
-break up a relationship that isn't worth saving
-ignore societal pressure to have a relationship in the first place. Aim to be a complete and fulfilled person without a romantic relationship, so that when you do get into one and it's a good one it's a bonus and not an attempt to fill a hole in your life or your heart.
-vote for parties that you think will help get the world to where you want it to be
-job fulfillment may be more rewarding than a higher salary. If you have a shitty job there may be options to talk about with your boss so you can perform different tasks in the workplace, so that your day doesn't feel so boring. You may be able to transfer, or get a job with a different company entirely. Some people say changing from an office job to a job where they actually made something with their hands (like a cobbler) made them feel more fulfilled, like they could see their work mattered.
-money does matter. Your colleague who does the same as you do may get paid more because they negotiated a better salary.
-if you live somewhere where an illness could bankrupt you consider what you need to do to move to a place where that wouldn't be a likely outcome from an illness.
-get rid of the "living for the weekend" mentality. People will probably enjoy their weeks more if they planned boardgame nights or something similar (taking into account weekday bed time of course) during the work week. It's something to look forward to on a tuesday or wednesday evening.
-get a hobby you're passionate about.
Sometimes the answer is not to play along with the system at all. If there's societal pressure to have a partner, get married, have kids, buy a house, buy a car, etc but you don't want to and don't need to, then don't do it.
Shouldn't the system be attacked more than the individuals within it? Telling individuals to solve the problem solely by themself is the same as telling individuals to solve climate change by themselves, it's limited and ultimately ineffective if the system and society at large perpetuates that problem. And the white men responsible for that system are like what 1% of white men in general? It seems really dumb to blame the general public of white men for what rich white men do in in power, seems like taking the blame off them. I've noticed this "taking responsibility for your group" rhetoric only seems to apply to white men, any other group is would be considered bigotry to do so. And before anyone says it's different because oppression, you shouldn't generalise groups once they're no longer oppressed in your eyes, it's not fair to the decent members in that group.
I fail to see how this is a white man thing tbh.
This 'The chosen one' or as you call it 'special boy' trope always kind of iffed me. Especially in computer games but also in other media. it's just so unrealistic and kills all immersion to me. This hyping up of the lone wolf instead of making all of us realize that we need to stick together, whatever our ethnicity may be, is just not helping. I really appreciate your take on this, you verbalize a lot of the stuff that I couldn't but that kind of naggs me.
It's to reinforce liberal hyperindividualism. Don't think about working together to change a system, just put your hopes in some guy. Make sure to vote for him!
@@mohq9573 I think this is interesting to thinking about, but I also think some of this is unintentional byproduct of writing fiction. It's easier to use an audience proxy or anchor character to introduce or ground the audience into the story, especially with sci fi worlds
Keyword is Computer Games not Video Games.. targeted audience indeed..
It helped to provide context to why anime and manga is also so massive in these communities. I've always felt uncomfortable in any online space with anime and manga communities because of the overwhelming presence of these incel types, and it's an interesting possible connection as to why these communities overlap so much
We're all the chosen one
Love to see that "It wasn't just Tulsa" bit, because I grew up in Tulsa, and the Race Massacre is discussed pretty frequently and candidly in our school system (at least in my experience) but we hardly ever heard of any other examples. Good to see them put to light so people can learn more about the history
Saw the thumbnail, and I immediately thought "Oh lord." Your introduction to this video is so incredibly well spoken, tactful and well thought out. It's the perfect way to approach the volatility of this subject. Bravo.
To me is always so crazy that people idealize this movies as a guide, to me Fight Club and Joker are about overlooked mental illness in a society that don't want to talk about it, even when I was a teenager I didn't see this movies characters as heroes. It is really shocking for me.
Exactly. Joker has quite a few messages that you can take from it, but I'd definitely say the message "lets stop treating the mentally ill like shit" was one of, if not the most important and the clearest
I think the conflation of "incels" getting "inspired by" joker speficially is disingenuous. I think it's easy to think that if you have preconceived notions of both, but coming to that idea would just be confirmation bias.
If anything, the people I saw championing the movie (on social media) were left leaning, progressive people - the people or sympathize with Marxism/socialism - ideologies that support the idea of the current status quo being set on fire/emploded so self-identified "better" systems could take its place.
@@CATALYSTdrummer Agreed, I'm socialist, female poc and have mental illness and I loved Joker. It gave a voice to some issues I hadn't seen addressed in mainstream movies in a long time. It's a huge shame that the imo minority of loud narcissists claimed it for their own :(
@@Aurora_Celeste_ASMR nobody claimed it as their own, the left media was the one who stirred up shit. If the joker was a poc women, i guarantee you the movie would've been celebrated by everyone alike. But since it depicts a "white" man its automatically dismissive and supposedly advocates for violence. This is the reason hollywood movies are becoming more and more dogshit by the day. Performative wokeness and political correctness.
About fight club, which I love, and I'm probably biased because I am pretty sure I looked more into the movie than the typical college bro who likes it at surface level, I was like that the first time I watched it, after the third I looked into psychological analysies of the movie by different psychologists, and I really enjoy the movies portrayal of the male fantasy and what It can mean and every different subgenre of it that all different men embody, rather than thinking about it as "tyler durden is the shit, wish I could be him" which would be the superficial take on it, I think fans and haters alike get too caught up in the edgy hypermasculinity and charm of the movie that they miss out on the meat and potatoes of all the subtext, the movie gives, therefore giving it this bad reputation of being this incel-bro movie about hitting eachother
I remember watching falling down as a kid. It was a formative piece of media for me - not because I agreed with d-fens and what he did, but because I had never seen a narrative where a protagonist could be the one doing bad things. It shaped the way I viewed media for years to come - never conflating protagonist and good-doer again.
“unreliable narrators” would be the term I think
As someone who's worked in the field of mental health. All races with the right amount of mental illness are attracted to whats edgy because at first they are empowered and just trying it out. But ultimately everyone is different and whatever path is in front of them and the influences that surround them will dictate what happens.
Thing is most people are just simply uneducated and can't tell the difference between a cautionary tale/ tragic warning from a power fantasy. Believe me I worked with at risk youth for almost three years. I've watched tons of movies with them and witness how they see video games. In terms of general audience anything is possible of course. But in mental illness I find that they relate to the emotions of characters who represent "fuck society" but they don't know what it means usually. Or have a super warped idea of it.
That validates the arguments that media is harmful. Since it is for those that don't understand and it just isn't violence, yet romance, and trauma count too. I've grew up watching a lot of a lot I knew I shouldn't been watching yet it was also right there. For me I knew I was affect yet I also wouldn't blame the media for my own actions. Yet for others, since I too worked in mental health. Some of them see the world in a light others would be blinded by.
@@ExeErdna can you explain why Tearms of service exist? I think you'll find the point you're looking for there
@@jayncoclassic TOS is just terms of slavery which excuses them for the dumbass shit people do. Yet will also turn their back on the very concept when they want to drag that part of media as well.
They also like spiderman
Society is mean to people who are mentally ill or just wired differently. I loved the joker movie because of simple lines like "the hardest part about having a mental illness is everyone expects you to act like you don't have one". And also "If it were me dying on the street you wouldn't bat an eye". Not so much the rage killing and mob forming. It's like I felt validated. Maybe dealing with shame is a common issue what do you think?
I understand your concern for these movies being viewed as “heroic edge lord” tales, but I respectfully have to offer a different example. I’m a middle aged white guy, and saw Falling Down when it came out, saw Joker when it came out, and both of these struck me, at the time of watching and still today, as tragic portraits of the ways people crack under pressure, not in an admirable way, but in a pitiful and depraved way. I’ve assumed that the writers and directors of these (and similar films) see them that way, too, but I haven’t looked into that. The idea that white men see the broken maniacs as heroes is something I haven’t seen in any of the people I know, but I believe what you’ve seen, and I agree wholeheartedly that it’s a disturbing take on these movies and characters.
I guess I just had to speak up, as one of the many people who share your concerns, regardless of their race.
I mean you don't even have to look around since social media is right here on our palms. Just watch how many people are idolizing the wrong behaviours and Calling things like that "Sigma behaviour". Its all over internet and normalised as hell. Even i started calling joker some kind of hero because i fell into this herd mentality even though I'm neither white nor a male. I thought it's a cool and "thought provocative" stand
Also keep in mind that he actively twists the narrative and hides details such as how D-FENS is also responsible for the deaths of other white men, at least one of which is definitely racist -but nah, let's just point to that one scene with the Korean storekeep, call him racist then call it a day. Let's also leave out the part where the storekeep initiates hostilities in reaching for a baseball bat. Let's ALSO leave out the fact that the video about Falling Down is flat-out incorrect in saying that D-FENS "does nothing" about the neo-nazi.
Christ, yes, D-FENS has guns, what -did you think that meant he was gonna pull out a pair of rifles and start blasting? That is literally the mindset of 6-year-olds playing Grand Theft Auto for the first time. D-FENS only does what he does in the finale because what little patience he has left in him is spent and gone by the end of the day. EVEN THEN he doesn't just engage in wanton murder -he is even surprised and distraught at the revelation that he is the bad guy. Him going on a murder spree was never the point.
Anyway, this guy's real message, at the end of the day, is basically that white men have it better than everyone else, and therefore have no valid reason to sympathize with the people in these sorts of movies. It is literally "Yeah, you think you got it bad, I'm black", but dressed up a little prettier and using movies for reference.
"You can't blame art for behavior" then stop trying to do exactly that with these movies.
@Zero Bullet's yeah, probably lol.
@Eyes Full of Sky You want cookie points for not being racist?
The thing with the storekeep is actual social commentary on how white people always support storekeepers when they're being hostile towards black patrons. But now that it's directed towards a white person 'suddenly' it's an issue
@Zero Bullet's i loooove it when i get to read a long comment with multiple sections criticizing something i just watched but i also love it when i get all the way through and just get confused at the incredible ways people manage to interpret media
Also, in your "Edgelords hate society" section, I do not mean to overstep by saying. But found it interesting because the part where you mentioned that men in society do not get taught properly what masculinity is, that they learn a façade of it through pop-culture movies, comic books and history book lessons, stood out to me. Wholeheartedly agree. Masculinity is also attacked for what it is not. I read this book: *King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: The Archetypes of the Mature Masculine* and it really opened my eyes. Maybe you can take a look at it if you haven't yet. It's based on Jungian philosophy and takes lessons taught by our ancient ancestors from all across the globe and cultures. The BEST take I've seen so far on masculinity and it speaks of modern issues surrounding it as well. Thanks F.D
Men treating women with a kind of admiring deference a la "courtly love" was once seen as manly. Now it's seen as being a simp.
@@LadyAstarionAncunin If you're a doormat in life, and get "used and abused" and taken advantage of, that's never a good thing. Regardless of the gender of whom you bend over for.
I do not fully agree with your statement. Check out *King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: The Archetypes of the Mature Masculine* . Very good read for an in-depth look at masculinity as seen through the ages. There's a section that delves into the "Lover" archetype, in where the authors describe the right ways men should view, and treat, women (basically like partners / friends / allies). Could help shed some light for you.
@@LadyAstarionAncunin given lancelot and gwenhwyfar were a classic example of courtly love in its heydey, i'm picturing lancelot in simp form and laughing at the absurdity. thank you for that imagery!
@@LadyAstarionAncunin benedick basically calls Claudio a simp for the whole courtly love thing in Much Ado About nothing so simps have just been bullied forever lol [edit: spelling]
The author of that book died in a toxically masculine murder/suicide where he killed his wife and then himself.
I've always thought the same way about those movies but never had the vocabulary to articulate it the way you have done. Thank you for putting that out there. Very well said.
I believe it's either the stoics or epicureans that said: Nothing messes with a person's emotions more than to have their expectations broken.
Stoics are nimrods
What’s so bad about the Jokers portrayal of the mental health system is the fact that they wanted to make a statement about metal health with a character who the audience wants to see go insane and kill people. If the film ended with Arthur getting help the film wouldn’t have a reason to exist because it’s called Joker and the audience wants a Joker. Look at something like Manchester by the Sea and how it takes on the subject about how masculine men deal with raw depression it gave you a scenario where you wanted them to get better Joker doesn’t have that at all.
You also have the bizarre fact that it’s set in the late 70’s but they were trying to make a comment on today’s mental health service which was very very different from the one of today. Then you have the fact that Arthur isn’t trying himself to get better but rather indulging in things that make his situation worse.
Your analysis is off. The joker definitely tries to get help and you see that with them attempting to interact with the shitty US health system. Its only once the health system stops helping the joker that the joker starts to lose their grip. Rewatch the film. Its clearly there.
@@jkjkjkkjkjk that’s the health care system of the late 70’s/early 80’s but in a fictional world. And this point shows the flaw in the film because we didn’t see him on his medication we don’t know if he helped. Yes the black mental health care nurse/doctor wasn’t great but he wasn’t exactly trying either. That’s the other thing that was interesting there were 2 black people who worked in the system who were shown as being objects who stopped Arthur. Wouldn’t that have been a more interesting way to go to make this character quasi racist.
@@c17sam90 the point is you claimed he wasn't trying to help himself, and i can assure you from spending lots of time working with and around people who are struggling mentally, even showing up to an appointment is doing work. He was engaging, therefore, trying to get himself better, which is opposite to what you were saying. He only started indulging once the healthcare system let him down... Thats when things go wrong... Its perfectly played out in the film that way, so that is clearly what the film is trying to say.
@@jkjkjkkjkjk you worked in a fictional city in a fictional time period’s mental health world? This is the problem with the concept it in no way reflects the world we know today because A it’s set in a fictional universe completely and B it’s set nearly 40 years ago. Arthur was chain smoking and if is remember correctly drinking a lot. I go back to my first complaint if you call the film Joker as an audience you want character to go crazy and kill people. That’s flaw it only exists as film for that moment.
@@c17sam90 that makes no sense. A fictional time period? The 70s actually existed my dude, and even so its irrelevant. The story could have been told in any modern era, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, whatever. The point is, the film is about someone with mental health issues. People in any of these eras have the same mental health issues as now.
You originally claimed he didn't try to get better. But I've proved to you, yes he did try, it was the healthcare system that failed him... you dont want to admit you're wrong on that point, so you seem to keep dodging and changing that point.
I believe you missed the mark on a couple points (as valid as your critiques are):
If “crime and social dysfunction come down to predictable social conditions” like you said at the start, then Arthur Fleck’s Joker is not simply an edgelord idol. He’s a victim of the same system that’s turned poor Black men to crime.
As for D-FENS in Falling Down-I do feel much of his misfortune is karma for his participation in the military industrial complex, but it feels like you skew (disproportionately) towards conservative “personal responsibility” talking points for him, with little weight put on the system in which he found himself.
I can give examples (I believe you misread the golf course scene, the protestor scene, the neo-Nazi scene, and your assertion that he “got a few innocent people killed” is a reach). In the end, it feels like you would have a much more charitable interpretation of both characters were they Black.
Good dissection either way, especially the point about many reactionary men misusing their energy to build a “kinder, gentler, better-designed patriarchy that puts them at the center of the power with none of the side effects”-I gave it a like and will check more of your videos
It's been a while since I watched Falling Down but I do feel like my man missed the mark a little. It plays to me like he's fed up with the bullshit of the system and he's mentally ill and lashing out at that system. The part where he can't get his breakfast, it's important to note that it's literally 5 minutes past where they stopped serving breakfast. It's not the poor worker's fault, of course, but the scene is more about the absurdity of the arbitrary and strict cut off time. It's pretty much just observational comedy.
@@CeeJayThe13th Yeah the film in a lot of times was out of bounds ridiculous on purpose.
The shouty movie people in that Mercedes stuck in traffic, the bumping into the plastic surgeon and that huge mansion?
The way the rocket launcher worked out etc.
I didn't really think anyone was viewing him as a role model when it simply was that kind of overblown lol
The vantage point of marginalized identities and unmarginalized identities will inherently be different, and that in itself will lead to different executions of the same system. I understand that you want to recognize how white men can also be sent through the oppressive system and are victimized in certain ways (and I do agree that is an important thing to recognize in the conversation) however, this type of understanding seeks to ignore that the white identity of those characters were integral to their formed viewpoints on the world and their actions. Race as a construct (same with gender, and other classes indirectly) was built to structure us within the system, and whiteness specifically was built with the promise of access, options, entitlement, etc. This isn't an immediate 'pass' on life but it's something our lives and our understandings of the world will live in context to.
I don't know what race you are, but I see a lot of white/unmarginalized people on the left reduce the impact of race/marginalized identities on the system in favor of a general understanding that we're 'all victims' and that reduction is more dangerous than eye-opening.
@@domachondri I respect that, good points
@@domachondri @mochondrius White identity? maybe racists have that notion but as a white person, I tend to view the people through the lens of their character and actions. You should be more concerned with class disparity than what color people's skin is. White people do not have special advantages. if they do, I've been missing out my whole life. You're obsession with race makes you equate white with inherently priviledged. Please give me one example of white priviledge. A black person in the same class rank as a white person does not have fewer oppotunities to get out of poverty. Classism is blind to race.
I had to struggle through poverty while trying to afford an education. I didn't get scholarships based on my skin color. I still got paid slave wages from multibillion dollar companies. I don't get special white healthcare. The broken system affects everybody, not just black people or minorities. These movies are a critique of a corrupt system but of course when it's a white guy in the role, the matter is skewed towards white entitled edgelords rather than corruption.
What is so common to all of these movies that blows my mind about their absolute misinterpretation from edgelords is that they all comment that the reason they are in the situations they are in are as a result of allowing late stage capitalism to ruin society.