I'm a huge fan of the show and W's head was on a pike?!?

On the other side of that coin, in Roma Downey's Bible saga the devil looked an awful lot like Obama.

Someone mentioned Hollywood and the love fest with Roman Polanski. That is one that has always seemed remarkably insane and has nothing to do with politics.

It wasn't super obvious front and center, but fans did spot it and the production crew confirmed it. They claimed it was an accident, but I have a hard time believing that. There are too many eyes on the set.

One gets caught up in the "art" of things.

It's like my love for The Beatles. Just because I loved their music doesn't make me a druggie.

I get that it's on a grander scale in Hollywood, but the premise is the same

That's awesome.

Yes but we are talking about an admitted child rapist that fled judgement.

Charpie said:

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One gets caught up in the "art" of things.

It's like my love for The Beatles. Just because I loved their music doesn't make me a druggie.

I get that it's on a grander scale in Hollywood, but the premise is the same

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Another thing, I think some people give Polanski a little bit of PTSD leeway because of what happened to his wife. Also, hasn't Polanski's victim forgiven him and sorta played it off in a way?

I'd like to hope that if he was as bad as Sandusky or something, that even Hollywood would be disgusted of him.

I alluded to something similar earlier in the thread. So freakin spot on

I think what frustrates people are forced narratives. When a movie or really any art is well done and things fit naturally into the storyline, there is less complaining.

With that said, there is a segment of the population that has absolutely zero tolerance for a narrative that does not match theirs. Given the nature of news catering to set audience groups, it isn't a shock that people are sensitive to opposing perspectives.

TCTTS said:

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I'll give you TLJ's wealth inequality. That was eye roll inducing and handled terribly. But Wall-E as "political propaganda"? Come on.

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This is the same site where people were saying The Muppets was was anti capitalism and oil.

Wow. Of course. Glad I missed that one.

TCTTS said:

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I don't expect all politics to be removed, but I'm going to point out when the politics they inject is naive and idiotic. Discussing movies (all aspects) is what this board is all about.

aTmAg said:

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TCTTS said:

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I don't expect all politics to be removed, but I'm going to point out when the politics they inject is naive and idiotic. Discussing movies (all aspects) is what this board is all about.

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Yeah, there's a huge difference between a theme of good/evil/authoritarian/etc and just forcing a trump joke in say ballers for a bad laugh. Sure, it happened a ton in the past, but that doesn't mean people didn't complain about it back then. They just didn't have an internet forum to complain about it on or twitter.

With how many options there are for entertainment now, it probably matters more than ever because it's easy to not watch certain things.

Also, this guy in the tweets thinks he's way smarter than he actually is.

The Lost said:

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aTmAg said:

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I don't expect all politics to be removed, but I'm going to point out when the politics they inject is naive and idiotic. Discussing movies (all aspects) is what this board is all about.

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Yeah, there's a huge difference between a theme of good/evil/authoritarian/etc and just forcing a trump joke in say ballers for a bad laugh. Sure, it happened a ton in the past, but that doesn't mean people didn't complain about it back then. They just didn't have an internet forum to complain about it on or twitter.

With how many options there are for entertainment now, it probably matters more than ever because it's easy to not watch certain things.

Also, this guy in the tweets thinks he's way smarter than he actually is.

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To me, jabs here and there aren't as bad as when movies lie about events to push their propaganda. For example, I bet the average American still incorrectly thinks that poor people really were locked behind gates to die on the Titanic or that they limited life boats in order to not "disrupt the view". For 30 years Americans were irrationally scared to death of nuclear energy because of The China Syndrome. Meryl Streep helped put many apple growers out of business due to her bogus 60 minutes apple scare broadcast. Crap like that.

Unlike W's head on a pike and jabs here and there, these things do real damage to people's lives.

Charpie said:

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But why is that the fault of the entertainment industry?

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If somebody knowingly lies about something, how is that not their fault?

If I lied to you and convinced you to spend money where you otherwise wouldn't have, that would be fraud. Wouldn't that be my fault too?

TCTTS said:

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I'll give you TLJ's wealth inequality. That was eye roll inducing and handled terribly. But Wall-E as "political propaganda"? Come on.

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I remember a friend of mine going on and on about how it's an insight into global warming and an alarmingly eerie look into our future if we don't make a change now. I could only think, "WTF? How did you watch a feel good animation and get that?"

I'm not trolling.

If I go to the movies to be "entertained" as so many of you put out there, why do I expect a director's political bias to influence me? Holy crap, I saw the Star Wars movies as a kid on opening day! My mother took us because she is an awesome mom. I promise you, not once did anything we saw in a movie influence us to think one way or another. Why? Because they are movies, for crying out loud.

At some point, we have to be responsible to own our beliefs. It's a freaking excuse to blame everyone else on why people believe stupid stuff.

Dude..its a movie.

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To me, jabs here and there aren't as bad as when movies lie about events to push their propaganda.

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You understand... most movies are fiction. Right?

And yes, I'm including movies "based on real events".

If you want movies that take zero dramatic license, I'd direct you towards documentaries.

Charpie said:

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Dude..its a movie.

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Tell that to the people who have lost their jobs or had a whole host of other bad things happen to them as a result.

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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To me, jabs here and there aren't as bad as when movies lie about events to push their propaganda.

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You understand... most movies are fiction. Right?

And yes, I'm including movies "based on real events".

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Plenty of them are based (or pretend to be based) on factual events.

We would have vastly safer nuclear energy right now if it wasn't for the China Syndrome. Instead we depended on coal for a few more decades, and now Hollywood is complaining about pollution.

This is what we were talking about before. You aren't interested in a discussion.

But hey, I'll play. Can you site people who lost their jobs over a movie? How many jobs were lost?

So you must be one of those people who blames all real life violence on violent movies, right?

Hollywood should probably stop making action movies altogether.

Apologies for the respost but we've got this discussion happening in two places and I feel like I addressed several of the comments here:

Stan Lee, as an example of a mainstream creator, has always been cutting edge and very social justice forward in the stories he was telling, and the I would have to imagine the characters he created generated a lot of controversy when they were created. One of the Marvel editors recently found this gem from the back pages of a Marvel comic in April 1970:

The X-Men were a group of people being feared and hated in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, and a lot of their stories were metaphors for that (it's not coincidence Magneto's origin stems from Nazi Germany). He also created Black Panther, Luke Cage, and Sam Wilson in the 60s.

The Matrix is buried in philosophy and social references (there have been entire books written and there's a commentary track with a well known Harvard philosopher and he even appears in the film). It's hard not to find themes of slavery, salvation, enlightenment, and many others throughout those films. Most any film based around The Hero's Journey (which is most of them) can have salvation themes drawn from them, and scifi as a whole has always been political and philosophical as has been mentioned.

The Harry Potter series is another pretty explicit example of a racial/social class conversation in mainstream film. Maybe Harry not being a non-white ethnicity veils some of the metaphor, but he was pretty blatantly discriminated against for his background (as was Hermione for that matter). And there's dozens more examples in very popular films as briefly covered in that twitter thread.

If the complaint is one of heavy handedness then that's a different argument, bad filmmaking is bad filmmaking no matter the subject matter. I thought the concept of Canto Blight was great, particularly in the idea of introducing these shades of gray into a previous black and white Star Wars world, but it definitely could have been handled with more finesse.

As far as an attack on conservative values, I can see that to an extent (and my own views have shifted far less conservative over time) but you also have to look at the current climate. For better or worse and regardless of political persuasion, the current climate is one of fear and exclusion for a lot of people and the current administration is pretty target rich. People tend to see when their side gets called out but find it "normal" when someone of opposite beliefs is the target of ridicule. As with most political topics the truth lies somewhere in the middle there, and good writers can weave those ideas into a story while making them feel natural for their characters in the world they inhabit.

Charpie said:

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This is what we were talking about before. You aren't interested in a discussion.

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So what have I said that in any way implies that I'm not interested in a discussion? Is it simply because I haven't agreed that you are right and I'm wrong? Is that all it takes to be accused of not being "interested in a discussion"?

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But hey, I'll play. Can you site people who lost their jobs over a movie? How many jobs were lost?

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The nuclear industry was severely hampered after the China Syndrome. Many promising nuclear research was cancelled as a result of the political pressure. Those are real jobs lost and societal benefits squandered. And it's impossible for me to know how many exactly, but it was a lot.

Look up Meryl Streep's role in the Apple scare. Those farms that closed and families who lost their livelihoods were real.

What movie are we talking about with that apple scare thing?