4 ms·

> it makes me think about how people engage with movies and television - as passive, plot-and-character driven consumption (eg I hope Walter White survives) wit

> it makes me think about how people engage with movies and television - as passive, plot-and-character driven consumption (eg I hope Walter White survives) with no critical analysis of how and why the writers added ABC thematic element (eg Walter White as a motif of a toxically masculine narcissist with specialized knowledge as a larger critique how mass media tends to valorize their male leads in the same vein as many other prestige shows at the time like Mad Men), and the larger, downstream sociocultural impact that piece of media has on how people see the world (eg people who now have the Heisenberg tattoo, unironically) That's not the only smart-person way to read that show. And even if a character has flaws, or even if it's an outright villain, people can still like the character. If I tattoo Scar on me from the Lion King, does it mean I didn't understand that he's not a positive character? I can still think he's cool. I'm sure people also put Darth Vader tattoos on them. Also you're using phrases of political ideology that one doesn't have to subscribe to in order to enjoy the series.

paimapi 2mo ago
sure, that's very much the 'just let people like things' argument where literal white supremacists can enjoy Rage Against the Machine in spite of the music literally being in total opposition of their ideology everyone's free to enjoy media however they want, with whatever level of interpretation they like. I provided the BB references as short examples, they aren't meant to represent the definitive diagetic experience of the show. if you have a different view, great. if it was triggering for you to hear 'toxically masculine', also fine but... might be something worth self-examination on given that it's very much also a clinical and academic term [0] as much as it is one steeped in the artificially manufactured culture wars by people who don't want to change their anti-social behaviors I would also say that understanding Scar as a villain is the sixth grade reading level understanding of the character. and you're free to stay at that level of understanding. someone who wants to engage more critically might map the character to Claudius, comparing and contrasting how they're characterized given the context of the audience for Disney and Shakespeare, and appreciate the character that way, as a standardized trope utilized throughout all other forms of media. they may even get a tattoo of Scar, symbolizing their dive into the analysis my point is not that people should or shouldn't engage critically. it's that this practice of critical engagement, of being skeptical and analytical provides you with the skills to not be a total sucker who falls for the latest manufactured fad that someone with a strong theoretical understanding of semiotics and social capital created (ie most modern marketers). the pertinent example being how people engage with AI - seeing it either as a specialized tool with a set of flaws that need to be accounted for and checked against or as just some kind of authoritative voice because it sounds smart and so-called smart people like Elon are terrified of it and AGI. which, again, if you prefer the latter engagement all power to you but the chances of you taking some really bad advice forward is not negligible [0] https://www.wi.edu/news-Shifting-the-Conversation-From-Toxic-Masculinity-to-Male-Fragility https://www.wi.edu/news-Shifting-the-Conversation-From-Toxic...
- bonoboTP 2mo ago
  You're the live stereotype of that middle-of-bell-curve meme thing. Using thesaurus words is no longer impressive. And that academic world you refer to is a navel gazing self referential nothingburger. It's like a jumbled up string. You pull on the two ends and it turns out to be just a loop, it resolves to a big null.
  - paimapi 2mo ago
    you can have whatever opinion you want of me, friend, but for your own good I hope you develop better ways of processing your feelings so that you're not so reactive when someone mildly disagrees with you
    - bonoboTP 2mo ago
      There's less consensus around what you're talking about that you imagine, which was my initial point. Smart people aren't just this academic bubble that you think it is. Not seeing such views made you develop this association of "smart" has to mean "interprets cultural products according to my political ideology". My reactive reaction was to point out that this isn't so.
      - paimapi 2mo ago
        I didn't make any claim about being smart or not aside from brief mockery of people who care about the word and things like IQ tests I'd personally trust a rigorous, well-evinced, and methodical dissection of a topic by someone with completely average intelligence over a lazy broad generalization by someone who scored high on a paper test that people (wrongly) assume maps onto the ability to assess and analyze the world [0]. which isn't to say there isn't any clinical significance from something like the Stanford-Binet, it's just that there's a wide gulf between the lay person's understanding of 'high IQ' and clinical applications [1]. and, accordingly, I am someone who did score high enough on a psychologist administered IQ test when I was but a wee lad that universities were sending my family letters requesting that I be a part of their high-IQ child studies but you're convinced I'm middle of the curve so how valid is it, even? the thing I value from academia is predominantly peer review and constant critique by people whose entire job is to perform epistemically rigorous analysis. this is something that's very uncommon when it comes to culture warriors on social media. and you must be very far removed from any kind of academia if you think they all universally agree - put a post-structuralist in a room with someone who still favors deconstructionism and you won't hear the end of it funnily enough, clinical psychology is the research I linked to about toxic masculinity that you broadly generalized as worthless ivory tower ideology. so it wouldn't make sense then to value something like 'smarts' or 'IQ' since those, too, are concepts that emerged from the very same ivory towers, in those exact departments rife with ideological bias [0] https://som.yale.edu/news/2009/11/why-high-iq-doesnt-mean-youre-smart https://som.yale.edu/news/2009/11/why-high-iq-doesnt-mean-yo... [1] https://opened.cuny.edu/courseware/lesson/48/student/?section=9 https://opened.cuny.edu/courseware/lesson/48/student/?sectio...
lelanthran 2mo ago
> (eg Walter White as a motif of a toxically masculine narcissist with specialized knowledge as a larger critique how mass media tends to valorize their male leads Very confused about this: how would you write the character differently? The whole point of leads, whether male or female, is to be larger than life. All their characteristics, including growth or change, are exaggerations of reality. This specific character is supposed to be more villainous than reality, and if you take that away then you're simply going to have a show no one will watch.

paimapi 2mo ago

sure, that's very much the 'just let people like things' argument where literal white supremacists can enjoy Rage Against the Machine in spite of the music literally being in total opposition of their ideology everyone's free to enjoy media however they want, with whatever level of interpretation they like. I provided the BB references as short examples, they aren't meant to represent the definitive diagetic experience of the show. if you have a different view, great. if it was triggering for you to hear 'toxically masculine', also fine but... might be something worth self-examination on given that it's very much also a clinical and academic term [0] as much as it is one steeped in the artificially manufactured culture wars by people who don't want to change their anti-social behaviors I would also say that understanding Scar as a villain is the sixth grade reading level understanding of the character. and you're free to stay at that level of understanding. someone who wants to engage more critically might map the character to Claudius, comparing and contrasting how they're characterized given the context of the audience for Disney and Shakespeare, and appreciate the character that way, as a standardized trope utilized throughout all other forms of media. they may even get a tattoo of Scar, symbolizing their dive into the analysis my point is not that people should or shouldn't engage critically. it's that this practice of critical engagement, of being skeptical and analytical provides you with the skills to not be a total sucker who falls for the latest manufactured fad that someone with a strong theoretical understanding of semiotics and social capital created (ie most modern marketers). the pertinent example being how people engage with AI - seeing it either as a specialized tool with a set of flaws that need to be accounted for and checked against or as just some kind of authoritative voice because it sounds smart and so-called smart people like Elon are terrified of it and AGI. which, again, if you prefer the latter engagement all power to you but the chances of you taking some really bad advice forward is not negligible [0] https://www.wi.edu/news-Shifting-the-Conversation-From-Toxic-Masculinity-to-Male-Fragility https://www.wi.edu/news-Shifting-the-Conversation-From-Toxic...

bonoboTP 2mo ago
You're the live stereotype of that middle-of-bell-curve meme thing. Using thesaurus words is no longer impressive. And that academic world you refer to is a navel gazing self referential nothingburger. It's like a jumbled up string. You pull on the two ends and it turns out to be just a loop, it resolves to a big null.
- paimapi 2mo ago
  you can have whatever opinion you want of me, friend, but for your own good I hope you develop better ways of processing your feelings so that you're not so reactive when someone mildly disagrees with you
  - bonoboTP 2mo ago
    There's less consensus around what you're talking about that you imagine, which was my initial point. Smart people aren't just this academic bubble that you think it is. Not seeing such views made you develop this association of "smart" has to mean "interprets cultural products according to my political ideology". My reactive reaction was to point out that this isn't so.
    - paimapi 2mo ago
      I didn't make any claim about being smart or not aside from brief mockery of people who care about the word and things like IQ tests I'd personally trust a rigorous, well-evinced, and methodical dissection of a topic by someone with completely average intelligence over a lazy broad generalization by someone who scored high on a paper test that people (wrongly) assume maps onto the ability to assess and analyze the world [0]. which isn't to say there isn't any clinical significance from something like the Stanford-Binet, it's just that there's a wide gulf between the lay person's understanding of 'high IQ' and clinical applications [1]. and, accordingly, I am someone who did score high enough on a psychologist administered IQ test when I was but a wee lad that universities were sending my family letters requesting that I be a part of their high-IQ child studies but you're convinced I'm middle of the curve so how valid is it, even? the thing I value from academia is predominantly peer review and constant critique by people whose entire job is to perform epistemically rigorous analysis. this is something that's very uncommon when it comes to culture warriors on social media. and you must be very far removed from any kind of academia if you think they all universally agree - put a post-structuralist in a room with someone who still favors deconstructionism and you won't hear the end of it funnily enough, clinical psychology is the research I linked to about toxic masculinity that you broadly generalized as worthless ivory tower ideology. so it wouldn't make sense then to value something like 'smarts' or 'IQ' since those, too, are concepts that emerged from the very same ivory towers, in those exact departments rife with ideological bias [0] https://som.yale.edu/news/2009/11/why-high-iq-doesnt-mean-youre-smart https://som.yale.edu/news/2009/11/why-high-iq-doesnt-mean-yo... [1] https://opened.cuny.edu/courseware/lesson/48/student/?section=9 https://opened.cuny.edu/courseware/lesson/48/student/?sectio...

lelanthran 2mo ago

> (eg Walter White as a motif of a toxically masculine narcissist with specialized knowledge as a larger critique how mass media tends to valorize their male leads Very confused about this: how would you write the character differently? The whole point of leads, whether male or female, is to be larger than life. All their characteristics, including growth or change, are exaggerations of reality. This specific character is supposed to be more villainous than reality, and if you take that away then you're simply going to have a show no one will watch.