Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?

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I think it's mainly to do with cleaning up your own backyard before worrying about anyone else's, like how people can volunteer in third-world countries and get criticised for not caring about the impoverished of their home countries first.
Sure, and I've explicitly defended people from the "why don't you go protest in some place with Sharia law" deflection. But there's still something there that needs to be addressed (if only because you've drawn the lines of "your backyard" to mean all first world countries, apparently). Especially when, as I noticed in the next post, the argument is not really "it's worse elsewhere" but actually "the things you're attacking seem to be the only thing consistently alleviating oppression."

Lots of thoughtful arguments are expressed thoughtlessly. The question is whether we content ourselves with swatting the thoughtless versions away or, instead, address the best version (the "steel man") of the argument. It's actually a nice little microcosm of my repeated fruitless attempts to talk to you about this stuff and your apparent disinterest in same in favor of resetting the discussion by reading new users the progressive catechism again.

It's all just a deflection anyway - I was talking about social justice in the context of movies and HollowMan decided he'd rather drop his own glib brush-off by refusing to continue a movie-centric discussion on a movie forum and instead bring up global atrocities in an attempt to get "the West" off the hook.
So you're saying you resent it when people drag politics into your movies?



Welcome to the human race...
I mean, good of you to admit that you're fine with generalizations about massive groups of disparate people, I guess, but I feel like you should see why this is bad without it being pointed out. It's certainly at odds with mainstream progressive opinion even a decade or two ago.

I suspect that the distinction is that it's okay to generalize about some groups but not others, right? Presumably based on where you perceive them to fall on some oppression hierarchy. Which plays right into what the other person is saying here about washing away the distinctions between individuals, which seems like a bizarre way to champion diversity.
If it was really that much of a generalisation, I would've just said all men, which is why I continued the sentence to talk about specific examples like Birds of Prey, where it at least seemed to make sense that the male villains of a movie set in the criminal underworld would act sexist towards the film's heroines.

Geez, this is some leap. Where have you demonstrated (or even attempted to argue) that reducing people to groups alleviates oppression? Or that practicing individualism perpetuates it? Seems like history is overflowing with counter-examples.

And that's one of the reasons the comic doesn't really address the point, by the way: it's not "hey things could be worse" (that's an obvious straw man). It's "all the institutions and principles you're chipping away at are responsible for almost all of the advances you claim to be for." That doesn't make them beyond reproach, but you'd think it'd prompt a little self-reflection about the relationship there, at minimum.

I suspect what's really going on is just a simple bait-and-switch, though, where someone questions whether one form of social justice is really wise or good, and you come back with some broadside about all oppression, as if it's all of a kind and to question any of it is support the entire status quo. I've called out this rhetorical move before (I did not get a response).
I mean, I'd have gladly let HollowMan explain that point himself - if that's his understanding of the "progressive worldview", then what exactly does he consider to be viable alternatives? Anyway, I was thinking that it was a matter of reclaiming what it meant to be arbitrarily put into a group according to individual characteristics so that it wasn't a matter of being reduced to one so much as finding solidarity in one and rejecting the idea that you were being reduced to anything, which stood in opposition to how I read HollowMan's claim that it's actually the progressives who actively want to split society into groups of oppressor and oppressed when the whole point is to acknowledge that that split was already there.

Then there's the question of what exactly you mean by "institutions" or "principles", especially in the context of being responsible for acceptable advances. I could use some specific examples of what you're talking about (I'm guessing it's kind of a "capitalism built your iPhone" thing).
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If it was really that much of a generalisation, I would've just said all men, which is why I continued the sentence to talk about specific examples like Birds of Prey, where it at least seemed to make sense that the male villains of a movie set in the criminal underworld would act sexist towards the film's heroines.
Right, but if someone depicts a stereotype about some other group (women, let's say), would you consider it a valid defense to say "enough" women exhibited that trait for it to be okay? I'm guessing no.

I mean, I'd have gladly let HollowMan explain that point himself - if that's his understanding of the "progressive worldview", then what exactly does he consider to be viable alternatives?
Probably something like the conservative worldview. But, as always, you can decide to just imagine the best/most thoughtful response and engage with that preemptively, since that idea is a challenge to your worldview and needs to be addressed even if it's not what the other person means or says.

Note that this is already veering towards the "if you reject what I suggest you support the status quo" fallacy I mentioned before, too.

Anyway, I was thinking that it was a matter of reclaiming what it meant to be arbitrarily put into a group according to individual characteristics so that it wasn't a matter of being reduced to one so much as finding solidarity in one and rejecting the idea that you were being reduced to anything
I think it's potentially zero-sum, so that the happy balance you're describing is less having it both ways than it is accepting trade-offs, but that's arguable, at least.

But sure, belonging to a group can be nice and fortifying. It can also be dehumanizing. Progressive activists and white supremacists like to talk about minorities in group terms, after all. Modern progressivism is full of these tensions (and, in some cases, outright contradictions), but I'm not really getting the vibe they're even being noticed, let alone wrestled with.

which stood in opposition to how I read HollowMan's claim that it's actually the progressives who actively want to split society into groups of oppressor and oppressed when the whole point is to acknowledge that that split was already there.
The argument is not about whether the split exists, it's about whether it should be the primary axis along which you make judgments and inform policy.

There are a few thoughtful books about this idea, like A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell, and The Three Languages of Politics by Arnold Kling. The capsule version of each is that ideologies talk past each other by measuring issues along different metrics:
  • Conservatives measure things based on whether they favor civilization over barbarism
  • Progressives on whether they favor oppressor or oppressed, and
  • Libertarians on whether they favor individual liberty or state power.
None of these are really right or wrong. They all matter. But it's not really accurate to say progressivism is just noticing facts and divides that already existed: it's really the choice to measure and advocate primarily along that axis instead of others.

Then there's the question of what exactly you mean by "institutions" or "principles", especially in the context of being responsible for acceptable advances. I could use some specific examples of what you're talking about (I'm guessing it's kind of a "capitalism built your iPhone" thing).
I mean that all the things you think of as the Western status quo (religion, a near absolutist belief in free speech, and the culture as a whole) correspond overwhelmingly to massive civil rights advancements. You are free to speculate that this is a coincidence, or that one of these things is the real source of the correlation and not another, but the correspondence is so absurd that it really has to be addressed in some form, particularly from someone advocating we reform or tear down huge chunks of it.



Jeez you guys are really going at it...


So much said I don't know where to start, but I'll respond to this point first:


"which stood in opposition to how I read HollowMan's claim that it's actually the progressives who actively want to split society into groups of oppressor and oppressed when the whole point is to acknowledge that that split was already there"*




I don't acknowledge the split. Like I said in my previous post, oppression does exist in the world but no longer in the West, at least not on an institutional or large scale level. If this was a hundred years ago you'd have a point but it's not.*



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Well it just seems that a lot of people are just so racially and sexually sensitive with what goes in movies nowadays, and I do not understand what happened in the last few years as to where it's all coming from, which is what leads Hollywood to do this. It was said before, it was the internet, and people are being heard more but this only started in the last few years it seems, where as many people have had the internet for almost two decades now.

So it seems that something more in the last few years has caused this.



Well it just seems that a lot of people are just so racially and sexually sensitive with what goes in movies nowadays, and I do not understand what happened in the last few years as to where it's all coming from, which is what leads Hollywood to do this. It was said before, it was the internet, and people are being heard more but this only started in the last few years it seems, where as many people have had the internet for almost two decades now.

So it seems that something more in the last few years has caused this.
I'd tell you, but you probably won't believe me.

It is the internet...
but more specifically it's the rise of social media (Facebook, Twitter) AND of instantaneous+contentious internet connection (mobile phones)...All of that allowed SJWs to cruise the social media sites and have a voice. Some SJWs mean well...while other SJWs operate more like trolls and use a SJW hot button topic to get attention for themselves. That then causes a trend where more people do it and it starts to become part of our daily internet experience. Thus it seems that they have lots of sway in reality they just post and complain a lot. Sometimes the results are good, sometimes not.



Yeah technology has played a big part in enabling this movement to thrive.


I also think this is largely a Millennial Generation phenomenon. Partly a result of a generation in search of meaning and a cause; something to fill the void left by religion and nationalism and the Cold War.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Oh okay, it's just that people had the internet back in the 2000s, and the 2000s had some of the most offensive material in movies ever, especially in comedies. And those movies kept getting made no problem, when the internet was around, so I thought it must have been something else in the 2010's that caused this new sensitivity besides the internet, since the 2000s were so much more controversial in comparison.



Oh okay, it's just that people had the internet back in the 2000s, and the 2000s had some of the most offensive material in movies ever, especially in comedies. And those movies kept getting made no problem, when the internet was around, so I thought it must have been something else in the 2010's that caused this new sensitivity besides the internet, since the 2000s were so much more controversial in comparison.

Exactly my point. The past ten years or so is when the Millennial generation came of age and began to shape popular culture.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Oh okay, so maybe by the 2010s the millenials starting getting into their teens and early 20s and started voicing their different opinions more compared to people who are older?



So...is this discussion over, right on cue? Is it like I said earlier?

It's actually a nice little microcosm of my repeated fruitless attempts to talk to you about this stuff and your apparent disinterest in same in favor of resetting the discussion by reading new users the progressive catechism again.
If this is the plan, lemme know so I can just link back to the same old posts every time we go through this with some new member who expresses any amount of distaste for didactic progressiveness. Sure beats sinking actual time and thought into totally new, tailor-made replies that aren't going to get a response (or, apparently, even force a good faith reconsideration of the things being challenged that maybe shows up a little next time).



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Oh are you asking me? Maybe, I mean I couldn't think of anything to add, after all the points that are made so far.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Oh okay. Well it seems that Hollywood is under a lot more more pressure than before. For example, people on the internet complained about how they didn't like how Sonic the Hedgehog looked in the movie, so the filmmakers went back and reanimated him. Or fans online kept talking about how they wanted a Zack Snyder cut of Justice League, and the producers got Zack Snyder to make a new cut.

But you never see Hollywood bow down to this kind of pressure before. In the 90s for example, if people wrote it in letters to the filmmakers of Godzilla (1998), saying they didn't like the look of the new Godzilla, the filmmakers wouldn't have gone back and changed it. They would have released the movie as is.

Or if they complained about Super Mario Bros (1993), being a poorly edited story, and they wrote letters saying go back and cut us the real story you shot, and make it better, they wouldn't have done it.

So what's with the bowing down to pressure today, compared to before? Why it it that Hollywood thinks they are on such thin ice with people?