Self-defeating movies

I'll throw my hat in that I enjoyed all of Sunshine even the end.

Most ghost movies. I like the half an hour of creaking noises, but they lose me when chairs start flying.

Absolutely!

I’m often told I’m a bit too obsessed with language, and I probably am, but when I read “self-defeating”, I don’t think of a film where the ending is disappointing, I think of “circular” films which end on exactly the same note/exactly where they started without meaning to (without it being the actual purpose of said film). So not Family Man, but Premonition to me is still the best example.

Another example, actually, is Devil Wears Prada. I know exactly what they are getting at, obviously, but aside from the whole thing being an unsavoury, poor taste shade at Anna Wintour, I always found it annoying, disappointing and unconvincing that the protagonist ends up where she started, with a pizza-maker boyfriend, wasn’t it (not that it’s not an honourable profession, I worship people who can bake pizza, but it’s a distinctly non-aspirational lifestyle).

I know that’s exactly the idea, that she knowingly gives up the world of grind and glamour, but I find it unconvincing and extremely self-defeating on a narrative level: especially seeing as the inspiration for the protagonist went out of her way to defame Wintour and make money off her name, so no, not seeing much humble “going back to roots” there. So to me a self-defeating film attempts to convince the audience that something changed between the first and last shots, but fails to, I guess.

English isn't my main language, so I usually suspect I phrased a thing incorrectly. But here, I'd say it's less a language issue than an assumption on the meant purpose of a film ("what exactly is defeated ?"). I mean the movie's quality. You mean the movie's discourse.

Or at least, that's how I understand your post. Self-defeating like : anti-war movies with thrilling epic war scenes that everybody wishes to emulate, female emancipation movies that end up with the girl achieving her dream of being an obedient wife to a heroic prince, moralist movies where the hero claims that violence is not an answer while satisfyingly beating all the baddies to a pulp, virilist movies about "real men" that end up either suspiciously homoerotic or unwittingly self-parodic, etc... Not cyclic examples, but examples of movies defeating their own point.

It's a different level of self-inflicted failures (which could make a more interesting thread). But in this thread here, I only meant the film's attempt at being enjoyable.

Oh no, as I said in my previous post in this thread, I think “self-defeating” is a perfectly apt term and it’s describing exactly what you seem to want it to. I guess that use of the term just felt unfamiliar to me, though very refreshing. And again, for the record, I’m not being sarcastic.

Yeah, I do mean the film’s discourse, and I do think that, for the purposes of thus discussion, one can more or less surmise what the idea/message/purpose was intended to be, at least roughly.

I wasn’t exactly getting at the idea that the film necessarily defeats its own point; I don’t think Devil Wears Prada does, as it does communicate the anti-materialist message, that of the dangers of being swayed by glamour, and so on. It does show someone becoming disillusioned, coming to appreciate what she had, and blah, blah, blah.

My issue, as I said above, it just that it’s kind of disappointing (here is where I would normally use “self-defeating”) and not interesting (I’m deliberately avoiding the word “boring” as it’s about the distinct lack of the quality of “being interesting”.) So yeah, I’m definitely referring to the film’s discourse, as you said.

Even if the message was that she should give up the corrupt glamour of the fashion world, within the narrative we literally see her end up right where she started, having even given up her new designer clothes. That, to me, is disappointing, and makes me feel, exactly as you suggested in the OP, that the film is now “ruined” for me.

Yes, I imagine she has “grown” as a character (though I usually take issue with that idea anyway), but she’s still back where she started and that, to me, is self-defeating.

In terms of quality, that’s a bit harder, as I think it’s about emotions, one’s emotional response. @Takoma11 discussed this recently in relation to Love Witch, and I accept I’ve got a weird, “wrong” take on this stuff, but in many films implied/meant to be anti-something, I very often buy the very thing they are supposedly “against”.

I do that not out of any contrarian impulse, or because I don’t understand what the film is trying to do, or because I lack critical thinking, or even because said “bad, seductive” thing is made to look particularly appealing, but because that’s how my head works.

So, to use your definition, a great many films end up being self-defeating to my mind. When I watch Whiplash, I know Fletcher is a monster, but when I see Andrew’s final performance I think, “Yeah, Fletcher did that. As a mentor, he rocks.” And I know that wasn’t the point Chazelle was making, of course not.

Christ, I even root for Walter White all the way, though I’m not an obsessive superfan, or anything like that. I have read so many interviews with Gilligan where he says Skyler is the show’s moral compass and whatnot, as well as that you’re not meant to root for Walter, and I understand what he means, I am perfectly aware that it is intended that we slowly become horrified and turned off Walter, but I think pretty much every single decision he makes except makes perfect sense, in terms of pure rationality, and I would do the same thing. Moreover, every single person in my family (people with well-established corporate careers) and among my acquaintances feels the same. Which may mean we’re all psychopaths, like to like and whatnot, but I think this kind of hearsay evidence also exposes the limitations of what we even mean by an “anti-war” film, as you say above. If it looks like it glorifies war to me, if the military seems sexy and invincible and beautiful, is that my interpretation and am I way off mark, or is it the film that’s “self-defeating”? I don’t know.

So I guess I’m a bad person to “ask” and not well-placed to comment.

Yes, it seems to me that it's not about "self-defeating movies" but simply movies which discourses and values contradict yours. Which, normally, should be half the movies. All movies carry a worldview, a moral opinion, and humans disagree about these. There are a lot of movies that I just find ideologically creepy, or that express worldviews or beliefs that I strongly disagree with, but that's their point. Opposing my views. Can't blame them (well, I can, but, I mean, it's not a "failure" on their part).

I kinda see four categories, in regards to discourses :

1) The clumsy, self-defeating one. Like those Batman stories that insist on how killing is bad, but with absolutely irredeemable baddies (irredeemable because serials require permanence, yes) whose existence implicitly justify capital punishment. Stories that are simply not sufficiently well thought out to see their own contradictions or hypocrisies.

2) The accidentally self-defeating one. You could call it the Walter White syndrome : people taking as role models the Gordon Geckos and the Tony Montanas against whom the movie is written. I don't think that authors should always be deemed at fault for misinterpretations or misappropriation of their work (I don't think that Blazing Saddle should require a disclaimer about racists being the baddies). There will always be people with moral values opposed to the ones the author considers self-evident, asking him or her to take it in account is unfair and artistically forbids all sorts of subtleties, irony, etc.

3) The yin-in-yang one. I mean, a movie touching on a lot of themes, and feeling right on some and wrong on others. I love Million Dollars Baby, but the scene with Swank's parents made me cringe : I saw them as a conservative's boogeymen that don't (or hardly if I'm too naive) exist in real life, and that justify dangerous policies. But Eastwood is a complex person who makes clever movies, full of good points and bad points. It doesn't ruin a film. Just like the lovely UFO tv series, that tries so hard to be progressive on some aspects ("racism has been abolished two years ago") and is hilariously blindly conservative on others (women's functions are still to look pretty and to bring the coffee to the men discussing important stuff), it's just endearing.

4) The deliberately opposed view. The vigilante movies about all them foreigners invading our country and all them street minorities threatening the good citizens and where did I put my gun. The cowboy movies about savage indians that prevent the civilization of the West. The religious movies about the atheist threat on the world's divine order. But hey, many great movies have premises that make me facepalm. Buster Keaton's The General is awesome, but its message is that you're not a real man unless you don a military uniform and go murder your brother (in the name of slavery, no less). In fact I don't think there could be such a thing as a sane action movie, but action movies make for great spectacles. They can be appreciated for what they are. And sometimes they can't.

Anyway, willingly or not, all -good or bad- fictions are "propaganda" for the author's own interpretation of the world. Agreeing or disagreeing with it is most often independent from evaluating their qualities or even enjoying them. But that's again a different discussion : where one draws the line between tolerable and unbearable ideological disagreement in films.

True. I didn’t think “self-defeating” necessarily implied an act of failure, but fair enough. I would agree with your second category below in the sense what there’s always a degree of assumption about one’s (both the director’s and the audience’s) moral compass and whatnot.

I think as we get deeper into this discussion, I find myself doubling down on my original instinct that it’s about what one means by “self-defeating”. Your number 1) - but how do you know, to paraphrase Yoda’s old post I just read (spoiler, you don’t know), that the director didn’t mean to highlight exactly this contradiction? Killing is bad, but killing Nazis before they can kill millions of people (see Inglorious Bastards) is laudable. It might just be an act of heroics.

I mean, I really can’t comment on Batman, but more serious films, like Joker, which, yes, I like it, suggest that if you don’t want guys like Arthur going wacko/spastic, as my boss says, stop judging them for disliking women, not espousing progressive values, or for their self-pitying attitude. Like or dislike the film, I feel it’s a leap to assume there’s a contradiction in the director’s mind. As you say in 2), maybe that’s just what makes sense in their value system. It can go the other way, right?

Also, I always find talk of morals and values a bit dangerous. Part of why Breaking Bad is so successful is that it shows a man will do anything not to die, and can we blame him? When it comes to these things, to me, there’s no value system as such, it’s more like Sophie’s Choice. Like, show me one guy who’d rather die than become an “““immoral””” (triple quotes intended) person.

And the people who argue that as he gets treatment the imminent reality of death recedes, maybe, but I think the most brilliant part of this is is the bit where he starts to tell himself, “I’m not just doing it for my family to make sure they’re provided for, but because I don’t want to die just yet.” Hence the shift between when he doesn’t want chemo and then suddenly does.

So again, there’s definitely something off about me there, and I must be a truly peculiar person to converse with on this.

Where did you get that from? I’m arguing for exactly the opposite, that, once the film/book/product is out, it’s out, including out of the author’s hands (nothing extreme like Barthes’ The Death of the Author).

Now, I’m not saying that no interpretation is wrong, of course people misunderstand things. But you and I are talking about subtler stuff. I think seeing who is in the right differently than the author is inherently not the same as getting confused and thinking, I don’t know, that . The author is not at fault, why would they be, but they also shouldn’t ideally be complaining that, oh, all those stupid rednecks or whoever may find themselves firmly on Walter’s side have misread my intention, they are WRONG! Nope, sorry, mate, you don’t own the thing and it’s not your call.

I see what you mean very well indeed, I do. But how do you know? The psychotic office environment I just left boasted a senior partner with very conservative views, both big and small “c”. Now, in case it ain’t evident, I’m quite conservative myself. Yet I also love sarcasm. So once he made a phenomenally, laugh-out-loud in shock kind of bigoted “joke” (honestly can’t remember the detail), and I snorted, seeing as I appreciate and like sarcasm. He turns around and asks me what I’m laughing at, rather hostile. And it’s that moment when you can’t know if they meant it or if they’re making fun of you, but I think people can and do mean it.

Parents like these do very much exist, yes, it seems like a caricature, fine, it might have her handled better, but is it a “failure”? On the other hand, I remember the discussion around Hereditary and whether whatever we mean by “real human behaviour” even has a place in discussions of fictional narratives. To me, it certainly does, regardless of the complexities and paradoxes around that, but I appreciate narrative Joseph Campbell-loving purists disagree, and that’s fine.

Yeah, I mostly agree with your point, I do. I usually still try to find something to appreciate even in truly bizarre films championing communism. But I agree there’s a limit to that.

This is a pretty confusing but fascinating topic.

1) Ok, I get who you mean, BUT, still, I first expected a star wars quote and now super frustrated I am.

2) For me it's the same question as "how do you know that racist sentence was/wasn't meant ironically". You know, because things don't come in isolation. There's a context. There's a whole movie to analyse, where everything is a hint of intent, and there's a whole artistic work beyond it, plus there's all the interviews and biographical data outside these works. We are not powerless, or devoid of tools, to interpolate an intent in a given work. It just requires a bit of work, honesty, and curiosity. There are interpretations to build, and to argue and to defend, with arguments from various sources, in-universe and out-universe.

The last internet space where I've cyber-socialized a bit was a community of leftists of the smug "this element could be interpreted that way therefore burn the author to death right now" sort. We live in a cultural moment of zero tolerance for any ambiguity or any representational shortcoming. And while I understand where it comes from (very legitimate cultural critiques hijacked by militant idiots in search for causes to justify violence), I think the way it's handled is as toxic, or almost as toxic, as what it's supposed to denounce. Essentially : idiots gonna idiot, whether the cause they wrap themselves in is noble or evil.

Of course, in front of them are mostly denialists who will simply, out of principle, shield any of their traditional icons from any kind of cultural analysis, critical reflexivity or retrospective detachment. Thus, the so-called culture war, which is actually an inculture war between horrible people exacerbating each others, with the decent ones caught in the crossfire (but that's a bit the definition of war anyway).

So, while I think that variety of intents should be generally respected in artistic expression, and that intents can actually be determined by honest and rigorous analyses, I also think that there's in isolated art, just as in most modes of expression, an inherent ambivalence that has to be acknowledged and accepted. The context allows us to realize that "could you pass me the salt" means "please pass me the salt" and not "i am curious about the extent of your motor abilities", and it's not the speaker's fault if someone interprets it as the latter. But we live in an era of suspicion and bad faith where "could you pass me the salt" easily becomes a matter of internet outrage, mostly due to amateurs who just stumbled upon a honest linguistic analysis of the phrasing and ran with it.

Anyway, I'm just ranting about a current social phenomenon. Let's just say that intents are, to me, the most important thing, and tend to be lazily ignored or obfuscated both by those who seek targets for the sake of having targets, and by those who'd be legitimate targets but try the deniability card. In both cases, I argue that actual intents matter and can be determined before forming an opinion.

At the risk of sounding extremely condescending, I do wonder if a lot of people straight up don't know how to read movies.*Scarface, Wall Street, Goodfellas understand that you can't criticize something without depicting its allure, and as such very much speak the languages of their subjects.*An inability to discern between depiction and endorsement leads a lot if people to embrace the movies through misguided idolizing of their protagonists or rejecting the movies through misinterpreting the filmmakers' messages.*I think Scorsese has tried to counter this by making his later gangster movies more obvious, but you can only hold the audience's hand so much.


It's one of the reasons I think prestige television has been so popular.*These shows have an aesthetic that suggests complexity, so viewers are more likely to accept that something deeper might be going on when they wouldn't with a movie.*(Might also explain how people can stick with a show where nothing happens for most of a season when they wouldn't give a long or slow movie the same benefit of the doubt.)

I feel like I’m beginning to lose the plot here. Racism is an extreme example which I never find helpful. Let’s also leave good and evil. Say, you can have a film with a wife and a mistress where the director “intends” for the audience to empathise with the wife, likely because she’s being cheated on - a cheap trick.

But then you have the mistress who, say, has a successful career, is financially independent and evidently smarter than the wife. Films like The Body (2012) play into that, knowing the audience will be expecting to empathise with the wife who was being cheated on.

Then this is subverted . Well, I sympathised with Carla from the get go, exactly because she was hotter, smarter, and more capable and resourceful. There’s no “intent” here, ill or otherwise, but my sympathies don’t lie where the director expects them to.

This is ALL I was getting at - that no directorial intent can ascertain, or ensure, who the audience will root for. When Skyfall hit the cinemas, I was late seeing it, didn’t go to the premiere. Remember being in a cab at 6 am, as per usual for me, and a radio show host said gleefully: “This is the first Bond film where the villain (“All hail Bardem!”) is unquestionably cooler than Bond.”

Now, you go and convince me Broccoli and co. intended that.

This is where I’m very postmodern in my attitudes, so not sure this will continue to be fruitful.

What I will say is that the issue I see with discussions such as this is that, whilst the debate could have easily been abstract, it is seen as necessary to bring it to divisive specifics. “A racist sentence” to me can be ambiguous, oh, boy, yes. This statement is not immune to being misinterpreted. Remember the football scandal where someone referred to a player as “the black one”? He wasn’t being racist, he described the quality that distinguishes this player from the rest. They’re all wearing the same clothes, you know, and that guy wasn’t in the middle or in any convenient position for it to be pointed out (eg the player on the very left). If he’d been wearing a green shirt and the rest of them blue ones, he could have been referred to as “the guy in a green shirt”, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If he’d been blond and the rest of the players ginger, he’d have been “the blond one”.

No ill intent there, but the people go nuts. Not helpful in my view.

When I was reading back around the archive here I saw a thread where someone was arguing, in a rather militant manner, that if you don’t enjoy the wildly graphic homosexual sex in films like the contemporary Freier Fall, or in the past, My Own Private Idaho, then you are somehow homophobic.

To me, that’s a bizarre and extreme stance. Maybe you’re repressed (heh), or asexual, or dislike the idea of having homosexual sex yourself, so when you watch these scenes, you imagine yourself in them and it hits too close to home, or whatever. How is it different to someone saying they dislike extreme horror films with severed limbs and guts hanging out?

For the record, I very often find homosexual scenes immeasurably sexier than straight ones.

Similarly, I believe that if a person says he/she does not feel sexual attraction for people of a particular phenotype, the person is not being bigoted. They just don’t get a biological reaction at the prospect of sex with someone of that phenotype. This already shows it’s a question of interpretation. People have fetishes, you can have emphatic preference for blondes over redheads and that’s in no way disrespectful to redheads.

I think this has moved very far away from the original topic, which I’m sure is my fault, but something inside me finds it very prescriptive to assume, or ever attempt to read into what someone was thinking and how that affects the work they create.

I also feel the need to remark I still don’t quite get how we’ve moved on from rooting for bad guys to racism.

Yeah. We're talking about two different things, and it seems to uncontrollably hop between both.

a) Determining the author's intent ¹.
b) Following the author's intent.

-> a) I argue that the author's intent can be determined. Even when it's to make us empathize with a baddie (to break our heart, or to humanize us, or to make a point about life complexities), there are telling pointers in narration and framing that are meant to guide our emotions. They fail or succeed at an emotional level, but at an information level, we know that we are supposed to to find Steven Seagal or Tommy Wiseau super awesome and super cool. An upwards travelling on long legs with a trombone sound tells us that the lady is strikingly beautiful in-universe, even if we dislike her or if she's a rabbit (with lipsticks). More discreet narrative or directory cues can be collected to tell us what emotional responses are expected, even if deliberately contradictory. Unless a film plays it neutral, or is too amateurish to

-> b) But whether this intent is followed by the public(s) is a different matter, which depends either on the author's clumsiness (unintended ambiguity as an artistic shortcoming that can be legitimately reproached) or on a spectator's own values (in which case the author is not at fault, even though nowadays the author is often unfairly reproached to have allowed the possibility of this interpretation).

For instance, I'm not on board with movies or series glamorizing serial killers (Lecter, Dexter, etc), and, along with their character, any author trying to depict them as cool super geniuses we're supposed to root for just gets my middle finger. I can get whether the visual grammar asks me to admire them, identify to them or root for them, but I'm really not the target public. Same goes for drug dealers, I guess. Mass murder for pleasure or profit may be a tad too far from my moral values, or maybe some studies (for serial killers) or events (for drug traffic) made this glamour a bit too concretely obscene in my eyes. That's a bit of an extreme case. A more mundane one is, well, a Seagal character, or the Taxi protagonists. The cinematography fails to muster sympathy on my part, and its heavy attempts just make my eyes roll.

But an author doesn't necessarily express a judgement on the characters and situations. Eastwood, for instance, is quite good at crafting situations where judgments are hard to pass, acknowledging it and leaving that judgment to the spectators. Good authors often enjoy murky stories where different characters struggle with impossible dilemmas in a flawed, human, understandable way. Lose intent. Other times, an author has a strongly negative opinion on certain people, that s/he wishes to illustrate through different narrative devices. But even if s/he tells a story about a sort of person s/he dislikes, s/he won't necessarily prevent that same sort of person in the public to side with this incarnation.

The Mars Attacks scene where the militarist son gets ridiculed in front of the martians (with his rifle's magazine dropping off, and his instant "i surrender" solution) made me laugh to tears, like most of the movie. But I know people who felt very upset and disoriented by this scene, because they pictured him as the story's hero. It's not Tim Burton's fault. It's unavoidable. It's an effect of addressing with one same message people with very different backgrounds and sensibilities, and movies shouldn't be "dumbed down" to be readable through people's common denominators.

But one strength of Jaws, in my eyes, is that it makes you root for the humans, whereas the clumsy sequels accidentally make you root for the shark (by failing to make you relate to or empathize with their cookie-cut human fodders). For me, this shows Spielberg's superiority over his successors.

Movies function like rorschach bolts (what doesn't, actually), so of course different people will identify to different characters and read the story differently - sometimes even remember the story differently. The author has only so much control over her/his public's emotions (the better s/he is the more s/he has, unless the point is precisely to let people decide). That's why the author's intent is its own thing, and has its own interest.

Anyway, I meant this post as a short clarification of the subject. But many interruptions made it a bit more bloated and chaotic than planned. Post or scrap ? At this point, too tired to rewrite, rephrase or restructure it. Beh, let's see what I'll think of this post tomorrow.


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¹ That's where I made the racism analogy, because it's a clear-cut high-stakes context where the ability to determine (or to care for) intents is often debated (with tremendous bad faith on the side of both the racist and antiracist proponents of "it cannot be determined and it doesn't matter").