Oscar Picks

Your Most Controversial Film Opinions?

Tools    





It makes you not watch some potentially great films, thus creating a hole in your film knowledge. It also conditions you to keep looking for flaws in filmmakers instead of in their art, completely missing the point. Finally, it gives you an 'easy' way out of the dilemma, probably not even tackling it. Instead of wrestling with it and recognizing the obvious divide, you just cop out of it thus perpetuating your bias. This further conditions you to want from the world exactly what YOU want in the exact way YOU want: "Either you're a good human being, or I'll boycott anything you create, regardless of its quality!".

You become holier-than-thou and treat artists like role models, whom they're not supposed to be. The question is: where's your line? I bet you're not comfy with murderers (Caravaggio is out) and rapists (Roman Polański is out). What about adulterers (is Hong Sang-soo out?) and propagandists (is Joris Ivens out?)? What about films you disagree with politically and morally? And so on. You might have a cut-off point somewhere, but I'm not sure if you can give a defensible reason for why it's there and not somewhere else.

This isn't a contest in purity. Not everything in your appreciation of art has to be noble. In this specific case, you're just asked to separate art from the artist. Even hardcore proponents of the auteur theory understand that there's a difference between the two plus that there's a difference between the artist person and the person person.

It's closer than you may think, though it's more salient when discussing artists who willingly put the bad stuff in their films and thus actually or seemingly champion it.
peace and love but i don't care about any of this



People are always trying to tell other people how to live their lives.
Doing so made humanity flourish.

peace and love but i don't care about any of this
You may not care but it doesn't mean that your deeds don't have their negative consequences, too. Still, not caring often creates a placebo effect to the point your deeds might indeed end up less damaging than they'd be if you cared. It just works like that.
__________________
San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.



I think after the third time someone has said they don't care about something, it's time to move on. It's reasonable to say "not caring results in X," but that's already been said. No need to beat a dead horse. Plenty of other controversial opinions to get needlessly worked up about.

Also, people should feel free to continue discussing the topics raised by that particular controversial opinion, just don't badger someone who's already politely decided to opt out.



People are always trying to tell other people how to live their lives. MoFos you're free to watch or not watch whatever the hell you want.
Absolutely! But when you go to the trouble to tell us what you, personally, refuse to watch, you're inviting commentary. And we have every right to agree or disagree, to say "Amen!" or "Well, that's a bit silly."

When you raise your hand and announce to the whole class that "I will NOT watch X," you've taken a rhetorical and ethical stand. You're indicating to us "what you believe," where you draw the line, morally. And the personal proclamation, however politely and gently proffered, is an invitation to the rest of us to join in ("Yes, I am also Spartacus!"). We're "norming" each other in a web of interinfluence. At the point that we say it publicly, we're in each other's business. That's OK. Conversation should challenge us. Art should challenge us.



When you raise your hand and announce to the whole class that "I will NOT watch X," you've taken a rhetorical and ethical stand.
Hm, that depends on the circumstances.
This thread invites us to tell about our controversial opinions, and it kind of implies that whatever we say it should be free of criticism. Otherwise, don't ask what you don't want to know.



Victim of The Night
Being able to see the humanity, even in terrible people, is a good thing.


The more we try to pretend that people who do monstrous things arent also human, aren't also sometimes possessed with good attributes as well, also might have things to teach us about ourselves, is to not deal with the terrible things they do honestly.


Not that this makes it incumbent on anyone to participate in their artwork or seek it out. But to try and distance ourselves from these sorts of people by labelling them Monsters, and treating them as something other than human who arent also capable of painting a nice watercolor, is I think to let humankind off the hook for it's worst deeds.


We have to see bad people as human if we have any hope of understanding why they do these bad things.
Well, to be clear, I am not against watching art by bad people, personally. But I understand if someone else feels that way and I don't hold it against them or judge them as lesser for it. I think that was my point.



Victim of The Night
Kirk is better than Picard. Because Kirk has Spock. Riker's okay. But he's no Spock.
I really like Picard but I don't think he ever challenged Kirk in my mind. When they were on-screen together in whatever that one was, Kirk won yet again. And I really like Patrick Stewart a lot.



Victim of The Night

This isn't a contest in purity. Not everything in your appreciation of art has to be noble. In this specific case, you're just asked to separate art from the artist. Even hardcore proponents of the auteur theory understand that there's a difference between the two plus that there's a difference between the artist person and the person person.

It's closer than you may think, though it's more salient when discussing artists who willingly put the bad stuff in their films and thus actually or seemingly champion it.
Let's just disagree and move on. I see people all the time in real life who can't accept reality and I wouldn't compare them in any way to someone who just isn't interested in art by terrible people. They could overlap but they could also very much be widely exclusive. I don't think the two are hardly even related and I really don't wanna have a three-page argument about it either cuz I ain't gonna convince you and you ain't gonna convince me so it would just be an exhausting and pointless exercise and take up a lot of space in the thread.



Trouble with a capitial 'T'
Hm, that depends on the circumstances.
This thread invites us to tell about our controversial opinions, and it kind of implies that whatever we say it should be free of criticism...
Agreed with the above.

In a perfect world people would listen and then ask questions of others with different viewpoints, without the tiresome internet posturing and endless attention getting debating that permeates discussions like this. So much of what we could learn here is lost as someone always has to stroke their own ego. Unadversarial discussion is the way to go.



Hm, that depends on the circumstances.
This thread invites us to tell about our controversial opinions, and it kind of implies that whatever we say it should be free of criticism. Otherwise, don't ask what you don't want to know.
But I do want to know. I want to expose myself and see if I can catch the disease of an idea or spread one of my own.

I suppose we could have a sort of "confessional" thread where we just drop our takes and leave?

I see a thread like this, however, as an invitation to "play the dozens" a bit, give a thumbs up to anyone who agrees with me that T1 > T2 (search your heart, you know it to be true), and maybe even change my mind about one of my hot takes when someone challenges me to look at it from another angle. In short, I see it as a conversation starter. "State your hot take here."

I guess we had a bit of a pile on emerging for a moment there, but Yoda did the moderator-thing, so I think we're good.



I really like Picard but I don't think he ever challenged Kirk in my mind. When they were on-screen together in whatever that one was, Kirk won yet again. And I really like Patrick Stewart a lot.
Kirk is a boiler-plate leading man-type of his time. Kirk's faults are the faults of EVERY leading man of the time. What William Shatner brought to the role was charm. Pike was not one to smile (in the pilot). Kirk, however, was always self-composed and reassuring, charming and grinning. He was open, but authoritative. He might yell under stress (i.e., everyone is about to literally die), but he would also apologize and conversationally correct after that stressful moment.

Picard is a template for leadership for the 80s (leadership as therapy). Picard is a bit of a converse, he was closed-off, but collaborative. He was more uptight than Kirk, but also more of a listener. When Picard let you have it, he wasn't just having a bad moment under stress--you had crossed a line with him.

The Picard of the movies morphs into a sort of action-hero and the Picard of the later series is kind of all over the place. But the Picard of the show was an attempt at a slightly more evolved man than Kirk.



Kirk is a boiler-plate leading man-type of his time. Kirk's faults are the faults of EVERY leading man of the time. What William Shatner brought to the role was charm. Pike was not one to smile (in the pilot). Kirk, however, was always self-composed and reassuring, charming and grinning. He was open, but authoritative. He might yell under stress (i.e., everyone is about to literally die), but he would also apologize and conversationally correct after that stressful moment.

Picard is a template for leadership for the 80s (leadership as therapy). Picard is a bit of a converse, he was closed-off, but collaborative. He was more uptight than Kirk, but also more of a listener. When Picard let you have it, he wasn't just having a bad moment under stress--you had crossed a line with him.

The Picard of the movies morphs into a sort of action-hero and the Picard of the later series is kind of all over the place. But the Picard of the show was an attempt at a slightly more evolved man than Kirk.


I see the core of the story of the original Star Trek to be Kirk and Spock's friendship. Their tight bond gives Kirk's leadership a counterbalance that I think Picard lacks.


Also, Kirk and Spock fall in love and smooch. You will not convince me otherwise.



Trouble with a capitial 'T'
I see the core of the story of the original Star Trek to be Kirk and Spock's friendship. Their tight bond gives Kirk's leadership a counterbalance that I think Picard lacks.


Also, Kirk and Spock fall in love and smooch. You will not convince me otherwise.
Can I ask which Kirk and Spock you're talking about? The Kirk and Spock from the original series and first set of movies or the reboots? I think it would make a difference to ST fans as I image the later reboot movies portray the characters differently than they did originally.



Can I ask which Kirk and Spock you're talking about? The Kirk and Spock from the original series and first set of movies or the reboots? I think it would make a difference to ST fans as I image the later reboot movies portray the characters differently than they did originally.

I definitely mean the original series and movies.


The reboot.... didn't work out so well.



I see the core of the story of the original Star Trek to be Kirk and Spock's friendship. Their tight bond gives Kirk's leadership a counterbalance that I think Picard lacks.


Also, Kirk and Spock fall in love and smooch. You will not convince me otherwise.
I think it's the triad of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Kirk relies on both of them to keep steady. Picard is more of "a boss" so he keeps everyone at arm's length most of the time. He doesn't even play cards with the crew until the last episode of the series.

WARNING: "Trigger Warning: Hot Vulcan Passion" spoilers below



i know everyone hates cancel culture (even though it's kind of a myth) but if a filmmaker does some stuff i personally find reprehensible i just completely lose interest in their work. like i don't really care about the artistic vision of racists, pedos, rapists, etc. and something like 40-50 thousand movies come out every year, there are so many movies competing for my attention that i don't really feel like i'm missing anything of value by skipping over Polanski or Griffith or whoever.
Same.

And obviously everyone can make the art they want to make, and everyone can watch the art they want to watch. I think that it's hard to state your above opinion (that StillMellow and I both share) without it sounding like an implicit moral critique of people who don't take the artist into consideration that way.



And obviously everyone can make the art they want to make, and everyone can watch the art they want to watch. I think that it's hard to state your above opinion (that StillMellow and I both share) without it sounding like an implicit moral critique of people who don't take the artist into consideration that way.
I think this is true, and good to point out. It's impossible to say you don't consume art from X because of Y without it reading as potentially aggressive, unless you go out of your way to say otherwise or something. It carries an implied criticism whether the person means to be critical or not.

I also think there's a distinction between just describing a reaction, and justifying it on a philosophical level. I used to be very scared of flying, and that fear was a real thing that I had to take into account even though I knew it wasn't rational. I just didn't defend the fear as a reasonable thing or suggest others should be more afraid. Similarly, I think it's totally reasonable for someone to say that the intellectual case for consuming art from <insert anyone personally problematic here> holds water, but that they just feel bad anyway, and it's not worth the trouble to push through that discomfort.

In short: it's possible to say this stuff as description, rather than prescription.



Victim of The Night
I definitely mean the original series and movies.


The reboot.... didn't work out so well.
Yeah, I think tMP, WoK, and SfS all lean hard into that and TMP almost reframes their relationship in that more interesting light. They're a great yin and yang with Kirk being the Passion for Spock and Spock being the Reason for Kirk. The way that Kirk seems to feel about Spock having kinda purged all of his humanity when he arrives in TMP kinda sets the stage.



I think this is true, and good to point out. It's impossible to say you don't consume art from X because of Y without it reading as potentially aggressive, unless you go out of your way to say otherwise or something. It carries an implied criticism whether the person means to be critical or not.
Right. "I don't watch movies from people I know have sexually abused children" inevitably sounds like the silent part is but I guess you're a big fan of child abuse and/or don't care about child victims?.

My only conflicted feelings around other people consuming movies from people who have victimized others is that money, fame, and attention are all things that give people power, and the more power someone has the more leverage they have to abuse others and get away with it. But this is, like, a huge problem in society generally (the giving of resources to those who use those resources to harm others) and probably not a make-or-break moment for someone deciding to watch Rosemary's Baby.