#Phonepunk#
Banned
WARNING: This contains spoilers for Star Wars episodes 8, Rogue One, and both parts of Avengers: Infinity War.
There is a disturbing recent trend of glorifying suicide for an ideological cause in pop culture. What is up with this? Why is nobody talking about the actual themes these films are embracing? The twin dragon of Fan Wars & Representation Politics have diverted public discussion away from critically considering these themes. What do you think?
The Last Jedi was, for me, a film that took itself way too seriously and sold troubling imagery over and over again, glorifying battle and the larger narrative over the characters themselves. We start with Rose's sister, who was about to head back to safety according to Leia's orders, but following Poe's ignoring of those orders, he put her in mortal danger, leading to a dramatic slow motion shot, with close ups of her sad face, as she drops a comical number of bombs and dies in a fetishistically stylized death shot. The entire sequence is superfluous in a universe where robots exist to translate languages and run computers. Her physical sacrifice was in fact entirely unnecessary, and doubly so, through Poe's actions. He never pays for them, of course, ending the film as the main Resistance hero, still telling other people to die for his cause.
But more than the plot itself, the framing of this sequence is what I find most disturbing. It is stylized, and the valor she gains is repeatedly celebrated throughout the following film. Her sister, for instance, stopping Finn from going to help his friend, paralyzing him, and forcing him to come along a poorly thought out plan that ends with all of our heroes on a spaceship that Laura Dern lightspeeds into in the film's most fawned-over scene, the kamikaze sequence. Dern's character exists to be snotty and yell at people, contrary to all previous commanders in Star Wars films, which included female leads right from the first entry.
The kamikaze gambit, in an audience-pleasing spectacle of self destruction, is meant to glorify her. She becomes good because she killed so many people. Not our heroes, of course, who were standing on the main spaceship the whole time, and later escaped off camera. Only bad guys die and are humiliated here, when a good guy dies, it is glorious and at their decision: it is a decision of consent between them and death. Heroes have plot armor which is not just poor writing, it gives our heroes this false sense of immortality. These heroes are iconic, they are ubermench. What happens outside their reign is irrelevant. The films revolve entirely around them. There is no universe even depicted outside this film, no other planets outside the glorious deaths & murders of our heroes. Rose eventually crashes into Finn, again, a person who was TRYING TO ESCAPE THE WAR. This is good, because she teaches him a lesson, about how to fight for something you believe in. Caring for his friend Rey, who has helped him in the past, over some silly war, is shown to us to be not something he should believe in. The war is what is important. People openly think that these films celebrating war & glorifying personal sacrifice for The Greater Cause are socially beneficial and teaching good values. It would be laughable were it not so terrifying.
Luke famously dies, so that he can inflame the righteous anger of the mass murderer he is responsible for, and attempt to make him more pissed off, right before he leaves permanently. In all truth, the universe would have been better off if Luke had died in the second Death Star.
Rogue One, of course, has everyone famously dying at the end. It was pretty good I thought, but no less mindless, no less celebratory of death and descrution. Interestingly, the mission to get the Death Star was referenced in the first film, where Mon Mothma openly mourned the "many Bothans [who] died" in order to secure the subtitular "new hope". This was a noted and well known character moment about a female commander who apparently had feelings about people, or possibly a person, who died in this mission. Do we ever meet them? No. Do we learn of the human connection that this women is looking back on in that sad moment? No. This is a cold, curious omission, reinforcing the "sacrifice is good" aspect the series has embraced since the purchase. No Bothans in this movie.
Then there are the Infinity War films. Thanos famously sacrifices his daughter for the Soul Stone, which is taken to be a sad moment. Her death is a means to prove how much he loves her. Her death gives him character depth. How this fridging goes on nowadays without comment is beyond me, but I bet Brie Larson/"Look how representative we are" marketing and the concentrated targeting of MRA types in the media has a lot to do with it. The second film has Black Widow, a character denied her own solo film for so long, and treated rather shittily by her writers IMO, throw herself off a cliff for the Soul Stone. Self sacrifice for the greater good, once again. I guess she loved herself? Or she loved the arrow guy who went back to murdering people was nice to her in one or two of the 20 some odd movies. Two of our heroes fight over who gets to commit suicide in this highly celebrated billion dollar film. Luckily she did not explode into a million pieces so we still get that glory shot of her tight leather body draped sexy and dead on the ground. Heroic death is never messy or embarrassing or bad, it is glorious. Women can be heroes too!
Late in the second film, Iron Man kills himself, sacrificing himself to save the universe. But death is honestly meaningless at this point anyways, since there are an infinite amount of timelines, and time travel can be invented by two different people on this team, working separately, just because they are ubermench that are more Gods than Man. Immortality again. RDJ dies so that Iron Man can live, be repurposed, and become profitable once again. We see Captain America turn into an old man at the end of his life and pass the torch the way they pass the lighstaber in Star Wars. These characters exist as highly profitable IP solely because you can simply stamp the costume on a new actor. The actors themselves are expendable, it is the property that matters. The IP, the brand is a template, and like a factory, humans are shoved into it, and product comes out. It is this line of anti-human, pro-corporate thinking that is poisoning the minds of so many.
There is a disturbing recent trend of glorifying suicide for an ideological cause in pop culture. What is up with this? Why is nobody talking about the actual themes these films are embracing? The twin dragon of Fan Wars & Representation Politics have diverted public discussion away from critically considering these themes. What do you think?
The Last Jedi was, for me, a film that took itself way too seriously and sold troubling imagery over and over again, glorifying battle and the larger narrative over the characters themselves. We start with Rose's sister, who was about to head back to safety according to Leia's orders, but following Poe's ignoring of those orders, he put her in mortal danger, leading to a dramatic slow motion shot, with close ups of her sad face, as she drops a comical number of bombs and dies in a fetishistically stylized death shot. The entire sequence is superfluous in a universe where robots exist to translate languages and run computers. Her physical sacrifice was in fact entirely unnecessary, and doubly so, through Poe's actions. He never pays for them, of course, ending the film as the main Resistance hero, still telling other people to die for his cause.
But more than the plot itself, the framing of this sequence is what I find most disturbing. It is stylized, and the valor she gains is repeatedly celebrated throughout the following film. Her sister, for instance, stopping Finn from going to help his friend, paralyzing him, and forcing him to come along a poorly thought out plan that ends with all of our heroes on a spaceship that Laura Dern lightspeeds into in the film's most fawned-over scene, the kamikaze sequence. Dern's character exists to be snotty and yell at people, contrary to all previous commanders in Star Wars films, which included female leads right from the first entry.
The kamikaze gambit, in an audience-pleasing spectacle of self destruction, is meant to glorify her. She becomes good because she killed so many people. Not our heroes, of course, who were standing on the main spaceship the whole time, and later escaped off camera. Only bad guys die and are humiliated here, when a good guy dies, it is glorious and at their decision: it is a decision of consent between them and death. Heroes have plot armor which is not just poor writing, it gives our heroes this false sense of immortality. These heroes are iconic, they are ubermench. What happens outside their reign is irrelevant. The films revolve entirely around them. There is no universe even depicted outside this film, no other planets outside the glorious deaths & murders of our heroes. Rose eventually crashes into Finn, again, a person who was TRYING TO ESCAPE THE WAR. This is good, because she teaches him a lesson, about how to fight for something you believe in. Caring for his friend Rey, who has helped him in the past, over some silly war, is shown to us to be not something he should believe in. The war is what is important. People openly think that these films celebrating war & glorifying personal sacrifice for The Greater Cause are socially beneficial and teaching good values. It would be laughable were it not so terrifying.
Luke famously dies, so that he can inflame the righteous anger of the mass murderer he is responsible for, and attempt to make him more pissed off, right before he leaves permanently. In all truth, the universe would have been better off if Luke had died in the second Death Star.
Rogue One, of course, has everyone famously dying at the end. It was pretty good I thought, but no less mindless, no less celebratory of death and descrution. Interestingly, the mission to get the Death Star was referenced in the first film, where Mon Mothma openly mourned the "many Bothans [who] died" in order to secure the subtitular "new hope". This was a noted and well known character moment about a female commander who apparently had feelings about people, or possibly a person, who died in this mission. Do we ever meet them? No. Do we learn of the human connection that this women is looking back on in that sad moment? No. This is a cold, curious omission, reinforcing the "sacrifice is good" aspect the series has embraced since the purchase. No Bothans in this movie.
Then there are the Infinity War films. Thanos famously sacrifices his daughter for the Soul Stone, which is taken to be a sad moment. Her death is a means to prove how much he loves her. Her death gives him character depth. How this fridging goes on nowadays without comment is beyond me, but I bet Brie Larson/"Look how representative we are" marketing and the concentrated targeting of MRA types in the media has a lot to do with it. The second film has Black Widow, a character denied her own solo film for so long, and treated rather shittily by her writers IMO, throw herself off a cliff for the Soul Stone. Self sacrifice for the greater good, once again. I guess she loved herself? Or she loved the arrow guy who went back to murdering people was nice to her in one or two of the 20 some odd movies. Two of our heroes fight over who gets to commit suicide in this highly celebrated billion dollar film. Luckily she did not explode into a million pieces so we still get that glory shot of her tight leather body draped sexy and dead on the ground. Heroic death is never messy or embarrassing or bad, it is glorious. Women can be heroes too!
Late in the second film, Iron Man kills himself, sacrificing himself to save the universe. But death is honestly meaningless at this point anyways, since there are an infinite amount of timelines, and time travel can be invented by two different people on this team, working separately, just because they are ubermench that are more Gods than Man. Immortality again. RDJ dies so that Iron Man can live, be repurposed, and become profitable once again. We see Captain America turn into an old man at the end of his life and pass the torch the way they pass the lighstaber in Star Wars. These characters exist as highly profitable IP solely because you can simply stamp the costume on a new actor. The actors themselves are expendable, it is the property that matters. The IP, the brand is a template, and like a factory, humans are shoved into it, and product comes out. It is this line of anti-human, pro-corporate thinking that is poisoning the minds of so many.
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