The movies that the underground doesn't want you to see

So, you know, there's movies that the censors don't want to you watch for being lude, grotesque, taboo and gross but what about flipping this around? What are some movies that the underground countercultures don't want you to see? What sort of movies would they abhor the same way the mainstream abhors disgusting depictions? What are the underlying reasons that they would hate said creations? Do you suppose there's some sort of psychological explanations for these accept/reject extremes?

I'm not much of a mind reader but my opinion is that a viewer rejects something because it makes them uncomfortable or disgusted or simply makes them feel bad and so I would guess their motivations are something along the lines of "I reject this because I don't like the way it makes me feel and I am paying to be entertained not dejected." I don't know, do you think I'm anywhere near being on the money here?

Could be that I’m just misreading the thread massively…I love my weird underground entertainment, though at a certain point it does seem to become more about the shock value than any underlying message or whatnot. When it comes to ‘grotesque and taboo’, though, I often feel this is done for the shock factor alone (‘Dashcam’ is an apt recent example), and that dampens my enjoyment somewhat not because I’m squeamish or anything, but just because, you know, why, what’s the point here, is there a point here?

As a huge generalisation, the more counterculture-inclined acquaintances and family in my life abhor ‘Hollywood’ as a concept (which usually leads me to remind them that ‘Joker’ and ‘Natural Born Killers’ or whatever was deemed controversial back in the day belong in that category). I do see where that stance is coming from, so I guess all manner of big-budget Nolan-Spielberg-Ridley Scott-whatever-it-might-be can potentially invite the wrath and contempt from the counter culture side. It’s not surprising that ‘the underground’ would sneer at ‘Mission Impossible x ∞‘, ‘Tenet’ and ‘Indiana Jones 5’ (then again, at this point, who wouldn’t?).

As to why that could be the case, for me personally, though I watch all big budget films pretty religiously if only to ‘keep up’, I think it’s about their predictability and the supposedly ‘natural’/‘inevitable’ plot points/outcomes that ultimately get old and just feel very forced at times, very ‘rule book’. Now, I’ll probably never be a proper devoted convert into all things counterculture, but I understand the exasperation with ‘redemption arc, fatal flaw, characters can never get what they want, mission can never quite succeed, cute dogs/kids/secondary characters must die with much tragedy, blah blah blah’. Ultimately, it’s just boring. I’ve been feeling that way for at least ten years, so I don’t know if it’s something personal to me.

On a more general popular psychology level, in my experience, some people who think in that way love to feel enlightened/like they’ve got a more refined, quirky taste than ‘the majority’. Nothing wrong with that, but that could be an internal subconscious motivation to sneer at all things ‘Lord of the Rings’ etc. (that’s something I relate to — always struggled a bit with getting into anything involving non-human furry or tailed-endowed anthropomorphic protagonists). I’m not entirely sure about people rejecting forms of entertainment/films merely/primarily because they make them feel bad. I mean, sure, although at a certain point of one’s cinephile journey, one might enjoy feeling challenged and, as such, be more inclined to sit through films that make one uncomfortable (though that’s deeply personal and predicated on so many other factors). But I think the underground could well just feel bored/exasperated with the ‘narrative formula’, and frankly, who could blame them.

This movie was banned in France for many years. One of the very best. "The Battle of Algiers"

__________________
https://www.youtube.com/c/LoyalOpposition

Who are these censors that you speak of? The Hays Code officially known as The Motion Picture Production Code ended in 1966 though it was basically defunct by 1963.


Avatar: The Way of Water...or maybe that's so mainstream that it appeals to the most rebellious elements of the counterculture.


Probably anything Marvel or Disney.

One can't have a cause if they don't hate on something.
I charge $300 a hour for psychological explanations, I take Bitcoin only.

Seriously I would say many (but not all) watch movies because they like the way it makes them feel. Now the rub is a movie might make them feel negative but that's the feeling that they seek. I don't think everyone wants only to be entertained by a movie and certainly not everyone wants a happy ending.


Bitcoin please, I don't deal in currency

I suppose that you could say it like, what would the censored censor were the red pen in their hands and the situation flipped upside down? What films would they ban were they in control? What big budget films would they silence and push out of the public view? And... is there some deeper psyche meaning to all this struggle to control these things, that both the top and the bottom have in common?

Talent agencies such as CAA have an understanding with their actors concering decency standards and public image as do the production companies follow their own decency codes. These things are handled internally now and much of the time the content of the movie, like the dialogue, gets more scrutinized the larger the company is paying for it. There is no external censor anymore, agreed, but Mr. $30m per movie cant simply go around raising hell, theyd lose their contracts, and same goes on set and in the content of the movie. These understandings vary agency to agency and production company to production company, depending on who is running the show, but theres always close watch on the content.

Idiocracy (2006)
-more than just prophetic

it has electrolytes

This 1st post you made reads differently than what you just said above: What you said above sounds like your talking about offscreen behavior of actors while the 1st post reads like a group of people aka 'censors' who view already made movies and stop people/or some people from viewing them. I'm guessing you have a beef about some actor who was kicked off a movie or not hired because they did something that was social unacceptable? Is that it? If so who did what?

I don't know, is beef in your context short for be effeminate?

The point of this thread is many fims have been banned, censored and rated in such a way as to exclude them from mainstream awareness. Now, my question is, what would the censored choose to remove or edit and why? What big films are taboo to them? We know what irks the topman in cinema, what in cinema irks the other extreme?

The 'censored' aren't some amorphous blob of people who all think the same.


Also those who are censored might have a likelihood of understanding why censorship is bullshit, no matter what one's political or moral outlook is.

Disney's Song of the South (1946)

I've never seen it because it's banned (although I seem to remember younger cousins having copies among their kiddie videos, but I obviously never gave it a second thought since, at the time, it was just one Disney movie in a stack of many).

When I was little I had books with the stories of Br'er Rabbit (& co.) in them - which were featured as animated stories in Song of the South.

Is it actually banned? Or has Disney decided for itself that it doesn't want this movie seeing the light of the day?


These are different things.

The latter, I guess...
I had Googled "when was it banned" and the answer was that "in December of 2001, Song of the South was withdrawn worldwide."

Based on Disney's current standards, it seems like they should be withdrawing a lot of the stuff that put the company on the entertainment map.

I'd say the "underground" of "elite" cinephiles doesn't want you to see some extremely obscure films that they keep on their external hard drives locked inside titan chests with locks attached to an atomic bomb that sets off after three wrong combinations have been entered. The password is a tightly guarded secret and is only available on a clandestine Discord server that you can join only after pledging eternal alliance to the LGBT+ crowd of Letterboxd.

The mentality of seeing certain films as too precious for the uncouth yokels to even begin salivating over is commonplace among people whose sole prerogative is having the newest, most expensive iPhone AND praising Communism on each step they take and not seeing the irony.

So yes, it's not that those imps don't want you to see some meaningless mainstream movie. No. They don't want you to see an obscure Holy Grail that makes them feel special because they are the only person who logged it on Letterboxd. Other people watching it would mean the only thing that makes them feel special is now gone and all they can do now is resort to inciting a faux revolution in their heads while sending cringe socialist tweets from an Apple product.

__________________
Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

They should take their movies to film festivals. I don't understand why you'd put so much into making a movie to lock it away like that unless it was junk then thats entirely understandable.

WTF...I was discussing this idea of censorship with you and then out of the blue you make an ad hominem attack.

Act III

How about you answer your own question:
So tell us what movies are you specifically talking about? And who or what is this underground counterculture? And how would they have the power to stop people from watching movies?

Yes Disney sucks! But technically Song of the South isn't banned, it's withdrawn from service by the copyright holder, Disney. It's a chickenshit move but not the same as censorship. It's more about corporate greed. BTW anybody who wants a link to watch Song of the South is easy enough it's on the internet if you look for it.