Anon watches Black Panther
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What I can't understand is how the moral of Black Panther got so horribly misinterpreted. The whole point of the movie was how past injustices create present violence, and the dangers of succumbing hatred. The villian is a literal standin for BLM for crying out loud! While the protagonist learns to combat systemic injustice by lifting his "brothers" up, not tearing his "enemies" down.
Yet the take away seems to have been "We Wuz Kangs!"
Leftists think they're Prince T'Challa; they're actually Killmonger
kinda frightening how a movie that was CLEARLY about people taking responsibility for their own people spawned so many sincere “I was rooting for Killmonger” takes at the time
This unironically
I'm not so sure.
I think that they'd probably argue that Killmonger was a good guy.
Even if the movie intended Killmonger to be the bad guy, it sure did everything it could to make you feel sorry for him, going so far as to give him a dignified death where T'Challa shows him the utmost respect. Even though he was racial supremacist who wanted to turn Wakanda into an imperial superpower and subjugate all non-black races...in other words, a fascist in the same line as Hitler and Mussolini, aka EVERYTHING THE LEFT SAYS IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD AND DEHUMANIZES AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY!
Might as well add abusive patriarchal misogynist to his rap sheet, considering he murdered his girlfriend as well.
The movie unquestionably presents itself in racialist overtones (and frankly, the whole concept does too), because what you have between T'Challa and Killmonger is a conflict between an (Ethno-) National Royalist and a National Socialist.
Neither of them being challenged on ethno-nationalism, though.
People still do.
imagine their faces when they realise their side of politics was the reason European monarchy's were destroyed
Reminds me of how Zootopia's anti-racism message gets muddled by what actually happens in the movie.
What's up with Zootopia? I'm not a furry, pedo, or parent, so I haven't seen it.
"Predators" vs "Prey" dynamic. Predators were violent savages in the past, but learned to be civilized. Many Prey discriminate against them because they still believe that predators are inherently violent.
The carnivores were presented as 'historically savage', and the prey presented as "historically civilized". And the underlying assumption made by all the characters is that it's 'it's in their nature', clearly a reference to social darwinism. At one point it turns out that the mayor of the city is running a concentration camp/experiment lab that kidnaps predators, and runs experiments on them to figure out why they're violent.
And the city depicted in the movie appears to idealize a literal segregated society, in the Jim Crow sense. Sure, no group is put at an obvious disadvantage, but each group/culture lives in its own neighborhood, works a specific set of jobs, etc, and overall everyone seems to casually accept (and be very happy with) self-segregation.
The message is supposed to be "predators are normal people and shouldn't be treated differently from prey" and "all cultures should be respected", but the way it's presented is "we should do that by ignoring the biological traits and historical interactions of the groups" which is unintentionally really racist.
One part you left out is that it turns out the predators going savage was a conspiracy engineered by the sheep.
The sheep were poisoning random predators with a blow dart and drugs that would revert them to animal instincts, then making sure the resulting rampage made the news. This was all to create racial tensions between predators and prey.
My takeaway from the movie was media hype. The racist issues in the movie would not have happened if their media didn't blindly report on the savage predators without doing real journalism.
That too. The press conference scene where they kept misinterpreting people's words was spot on.
Yes, forcing Judy in front of the cameras was a huge mistake. She's not a PR person, and had absolutely no business talking to the press, for one thing. Police forces usually have a guy who handles that shit (and it should have been Clawhauser.)
Oy Vey
I'm no stormfag, but I saw this parallel as well
Yeah I dunno how anyone watches that movie and misses that the prey were right, and the predators still have a suppressed, violent nature. I also thought it was odd that predators made up exactly 13% of the population but committed 50% of the crimes.
They reveal later in the movie that prey could go savage just like predators, and that the predators going savage was not due to innate biological traits.
Admittedly I was losing consciousness by that point in the movie.
I've watched it, and I don't think everyone's giving you enough information.
Fundamentally, the artists explored racial tensions in a genuinely honest way, without using any group as a stand-in for some real life counter part. There is no "orcs are blacks" argument here.
Zootopia is effectively a multi-species city state with extra-ordinary influence. However, in order for it to function, it requires significant collaboration between different species and their ecosystems.
u/AlwysHideUrPowerLevl is wrong to call it Jim Crow segregation, or for that segregation to be idolized. There is no such social authoritarianism. However, the writers aren't delusional, they & the animators make it clear that in this society, you social divisions are emergent. Mice and Elephants simply can't have a homogeneous society where anyone can literally do everything that everyone else can.
This recognition that pure equality is impossible is a major part of the story line. Impossible as it is, some people want to try and push the boundaries of the social order. That is embodied in the primary female protagonist: Judy Hopps, a rabbit that wants to be a cop. She faces, not discrimination, but a significant lack of affirmation and support because she's attempting to do something very difficult. Rabbits can't physically coerce Polar Bears. They are not all equal. However, if you are truly clever, you can get a little further. Nothing's truly impossible to achieve at least a few times, it's just not at all easy, and you can't expect anyone to pave the way for you.
The secondary protagonist is a male Fox that Judy has to manipulate into working with her to solve a series of disappearances: Nick Wilde. Where Judy represents naive optimism that is 'filled with determination', Nick is the flip side of that: demonstrating a highly cynical view of both the city and it's system. He's quite blunt about the fact that you can't just be anything you want, but he also doesn't think that you can be anything outside of your stereotype.
The character interaction is that Judy's naivete is confronted by Nick's realism, and Nick's pessimism is confronted by Judy's perseverance.
The general lesson overall is that it's okay to inhabit some part of the system, and that we are not all equal to the point of homogeneity; but it's okay to try and be something extra. Just as long as your realize that that thing that makes you special is going to cost you something substantial, and you're not at all guaranteed to be supported in your efforts.
That's the general philosophy of the movie, which is sound, but the racial tension of the movie is also valid. The society keeps telling itself that it is a completely unified society of good and happy people, but as Nick points out, this simply isn't real. Underlying tensions between every group exist, and it's not always shared. People tend to rely on their own underlying stereotypes to their own harm without ever looking at the individual.
Over and over again we see people making reasonable assumptions based off of stereotypes, but failing to understand that those assumptions are not necessarily true. Judy is a stereotyped as a dumb bunny, but she is clearly one of the more clever and intelligent individuals in the move. Nick is a sly Fox, a bit of a rogue, but is shown to be fiercely loyal and caring. The Mayor, a lion, is seen to be in charge and commanding, but this stereotype is used explicitly as a weapon against him to have him be overthrown by his assistant (a sheep and the antagonist), who he has been disrespectful to and ignored the threat she posed. The predators generally are seen as highly dangerous because of their innate violent nature, but the prey animals are the one pushing these stereotypes out of fear. Even the antagonist sheep points out that predators tend to dominate positions of power and control, and that it's basically the sheep's time to take over as a result of this.
The movie attempts to point out that the Stereotype Threat, is a real threat that you should simply rely on because it seems to make sense at first glance, and that those who keep doing that, are going to get ... heh, the wool literally pulled over their eyes.
The movie attempts to genuinely push their created setting to it's limits by making it's individuals in conflict with the expectation of the collective. The expectation, the stereotype, isn't even fully wrong, but it isn't actually useful on the individual level where it may genuinely count the most.
I admit, I tend to view the world in a similar way, so I greatly appreciated the movie for that reason.
It sounds absolutely bonkers to say, but when it comes to addressing racial tension, I'd put Zootopia up with "In The Heat Of The Night". As well received as it was, I think it's still under-rated.
I'm going to have to watch this now.
It's honestly worth a watch, unfortunately, we've spoiled a chunk of it.
I'd like to point out that the numbers Bellwether spews at the climax don't reflect mammalian predator-prey ratios, but white-nonwhite ratios. Zootopia is majority prey, at about 92%. In a natural ecosystem, that would be too few predators, BUT, it is about right for the amount of whites globally (about 8%) - a minority accused of hogging all the positions of power. Yet the average moron thinks the predators are the POC fake "minorities". Of course, these are the same sort of yobs who think the hyaenas in the Lion King are "exiles" somehow (when it's made very clear that they are masters of their own territory/ethno-state, which includes a fucking elephant graveyard, which basically means several tons of free meat occasionally presents itself quite willingly. Why do they live so poorly, then? Well, did you check out their numbers? No birth control.)
Also, the writers claimed to be careful to not include domesticated species (since Man never existed to make them), but those Sheep are clearly of the domesticated sort.
Firstly, that depends on the kind of predator and it's hunting style. Secondly, I think you are reading far too much into the writer's intent when I haven't seen any such evidence for such a comparison, and instead of seen only explicit denials.
One of the scenes that was left on the 'cutting room floor' because it was too dark was for all predators to have their aggression controlled with shock collars, and that Judy & Nick were to observe a Polar Bear birthday party (that was a coming of age celebration: literally: a bear-mitzfa) where the child polar bear would get a shock collar, and be exposed to the pain of wearing one for the first time in his life. This has no real racial allegory, and is (as the writers explained) more akin to an allegory about how animals are controlled. You really can't make an allegory to Polar Bears as Jews, so that wouldn't make sense outside of the pun alone (which if were honest, was probably 90% of the intent).
The Lion King doesn't make sense to draw an ethnic allegory around when it's relationships are all clan and tribe based.
Because that's how the ad companies hyped it. It's absolutely hyped as racialist propaganda, and to an extent, it's setting is.
At the critical release, there was some Afro-Centrist lunatic on the Red Carpet hyping this up as a racial masterpiece. BLM was basically using Black Panther as the KKK used "Birth Of A Nation".
Why doesn't the movie defeat their own rhetoric? Have you ever known a leftist to care about the truth? The same thing happened with Captain Marvel. The critics were literally just enjoying a dopamine rush of them pretending they were Captain Marvel without taking two seconds to think about the story. The racialists were basically saying: you was kangs, now you can be kangs! Nobody who advocated for it, watched it.
The movie, generally, was fine.
Kind of like how people see the film "Get Out". So many people say how it apparently tackles the modern issues of racism in "Trump's America". Yet funny enough, that wasn't even the goal that Peele was going for. According to his own words, it was supposed to be about the "racism" from elite white liberals. The type about them holding up blacks on some type of pedestal.
Which makes sense considering the film is about a family wanting to steal and live in (Not sure how else to describe it) black bodies because that's they consider to be superior. Though I don't think he did much of a good job portraying that apparent message. The obvious reference to slave auctions scene being the biggest example.
Right, the issue of "negrophillia". I think Peele has tried to ret-con his own movie with some of his current ideological activism. There's a weird moment early in the film where the protagonist's girlfriend interjects herself into a traffic stop and accuses the cop of being racist for stopping her boyfriend, even though the cop didn't show any signs of being racist. He's said in later interviews that the "originally" planned to end the movie with the regular police showing up instead of the security guard friend, and in that ending, the protagonist would end up in prison for the rest of his life. He said he didn't do it because it would be 'too depressing'.
Peele's comedic history hasn't shown him to be an avid racialist as far as I've seen, but he seems to have started going down that path ever since the Get Out was well recieved.
To be fair, he was more complex than the standard Marvel villain. His motives had more nuance than "person with same powers as hero, but evil" or "use big beam of energy in the sky to kill everyone."
I honestly think Killmonger is one of the better marvel villains in the MCU. Nowhere near Thanos, but far from forgettable.
Is that movie really over 2 years old now?
This reminds me of watching the new season of Top Boy. I sensed they were going to drag Brexit into it somehow, and it literally took a few minutes before someone mentioned Brexit.
Is this true? I've never seen it.
Yes
That's black "culture" for you, at least according to the tolerant left. Just like how the most technologically advanced people in the world still use spears as weapons. Because that's what they think black people do: throw spears.
I-is this really true? Why do they keep stereotyping themselves so much?
Try Lovecraft Country and weep. Black people having conversations? Must be about racism then!
Basketball was invented by freed slaves looking for a way to pass the time between rap battles.