Edgelord Movies and the Men who Love Them

As a follow up to the last vid, in this vid we step away slightly from action and look more at what we're gonna call edgelord movies. These are films like Joker, Falling Down, There Will be Blood, Network, basically any movie where a disgruntled unremarkable guy somehow changes the world... often through violence.
We're doing this with the hope that it will grant us some insight on why these movies are so appealing to their specific audience and what this audience is telling us through their love for these movies.
00:00 Intro/disclaimer
06:38 Why you can't blame the movies
12:06 Edgelords hate society
17:16 Edgelords think they're special/Joker is the quintessential Edgelord Movie
21:51 Falling Down is worse than Joker
28:27 Why Edgelords see the world the way they do
33:58 Closing...hope?

[@naelchowdhury1404]

You’re gonna be big in this platform

[@hrwise89]

Really good stuff. I really like your point of view when discussing these things. Like just the way that you discuss people who are in many cases totally deserving of derision, but without develolving into that, while at the same time not letting them off the hook in any way. I think in one of your other videos you said something about trying to come from a place of empathy and it shows. But you walk the line so well. Like not that anyone has to do that or anything. Anger and frustration at incel logic is like, yeah. Completely understandable and natural. I guess I just mean that your viewpoint feels unique and therefor refreshing.

[@Darth_Bateman]

You're gonna be big, kid. BIG.

[@thedestituteroofer7750]

Not if ewetewb has anything to say about it

[@happylindsay4475]

Huge. The content is just tooo good. I am blown away. My third video for the day- I just found this channel- today. Oh- and he references bell hooks. Win.

[@dongxx]

yeah he Is thanks to jlongbone lmao

[@smileyp4535]

I thought joker was cool when it came out because of its anti capitalist and pro Medicare for all message, then when I found out why most people liked it I kinda went quiet... 😅

[@FDSignifire]

THIS! But I knew immediately folks would miss a lot of that

[@youbasictoxicconch]

I really don't like how I let myself feel put off by people's response to the film. The actual message that it's conveying is absolutely something I can get behind, but as you said, the reason most people like it is just taking me further away from publicly appreciating it.

[@smileyp4535]

@@youbasictoxicconch yup, it's truly unfortunate. I think it's Important to have more people take it back from the public misunderstanding

[@j.martinez8767]

I never understood people who can't like something just because of the way others do. Like if a Fandom changes anything about the media itself. Is it becuase you fear to be perceived wrongly? I feel that's a weak mindset.

[@urapeenees340]

It’s a film about mistreated man who one day had enough. I don’t think capitalism has much to do with it

[@demetergrasseater]

It’s so bonkers to me that most edgelord movies these people attach themselves to are actually scathing critiques of the values they hold dear

[@LikeCarvingACake]

The irony brvh. Falling Down is obviously a critique of the edgelord, and mocks him throughout. The scene where the "not economically viable" Black man is arrested is the most telling, Dfens and him are dressed the exact same. That imagery was purposeful. Dfens is walking around, with a bag full of guns, getting away with literal murder, while the Black man is arrested for peacefully protesting.

[@larapohrsch9789]

@@LikeCarvingACake 📠

[@JohnSmith-ft4gc]

...because they are NOT edgelord movies, merely because edgelords selectively take away from them what they want anyway? Joker wasn't about entitlement. He was empathetic & trying to avoid negativity etc. He both tried to contribute, and he needed help. The offered help was mostly from black women. While the tipping point was the drunken yuppies that bullied him on the train - white rich dudes. Even after he goes beyond Self Defence & kills the last one, he continues to be otherwise empathetic until he reads his mother's file & what seems to be a misframing of her role in his own abuse. While none of his subsequent actions were good, especially murdering his mother, it's a contrived Origin Story. The only entitlement here is human rights. Yet because it is a film that zeroes in on an individual, people are imposing personal entitlement messaging upon it overall.

[@doctorx3]

@@LikeCarvingACake I feel that Falling Down is a terribly frustrating and blinkered movie. It gets so much right in situating white male terrorism within an ecosystem of right wing activism and its attendant revanchism and longing to restore the ancien regime. But it's also far too sympathetic to the framing of that activist right and treats its assertions as far too legitimate. It downplays the fact that Michael Douglas' character lived a very privileged life and snapped when his position of dominace and primacy was challenged even slightly. He wants to die not just because he's unemployed and his wife and children will get his life insurance money, but more because he lives in a world where white men's centrality is eroding. To men like D-Fens, that's a life not worth living.

[@tigerlilysoma588]

A society that is trained to buy shit buys shit. A society that is trained to think shit thinks shit. Or whatever

[@mikearchibald744]

You should inclued American Psycho in this. Because the main gist of them is that they are not understood by their audience, which likely ISNT the guys who gravitate to it. They're just nuts looking for pointers. In Christian Bales 'career breakdown' he says that he met a bunch of traders for The Big Short or whatever it was called and ALL the traders absolutely loved American Psycho. He said "loved its irony you mean" and they didn't get it. They LITERALLY were that psycho. I'd be afraid of doing anything satirical becaues you know there are going to be nuts out there who think its a blueprint.

[@iamjackspyramidshapedhelmet]

That’s stupid. Create what you want. Art does not force ordinary people to turn into psychopaths; if a guy sees your satirical work as a blueprint he already had big problems to begin with.

[@carlossaraiva8213]

​@@iamjackspyramidshapedhelmetrightwinger movies, songs and books are made TO BE BLUEPRINTS.

[@billbillings8635]

Why don't you go into the fakeness of much of these "issues," such as the Jussie Smollett case, or the Covington case, or the Rittenhouse case, or the fake "hijab grabbing Trump supporters," etc? Oh, wait, I answered my own question.

[@landoakechi9406]

No way man, this is exactly the same thing as people saying "Videogames create violence". Art is art, and shouldn't be taken away because the worst people take the worst interpretation

[@MammalianCreature]

The replies are missing that very important bit in your comment about Christian Bale trying to say, "oh, you mean that you loved the irony?" and the traders missing what he meant.

[@mandlerparr1]

The craziest thing about Falling Down is that the man's first action in the film is to become the thing he hates and he just never realizes it. He is mad at traffic, and makes traffic worse in retaliation. the entire movie is him showing how he is all these things that he is saying he hates.

[@streetpilot4098]

"I'm the bad guy?" "Yeah." "How'd that happen?"

[@ssoto5475]

yeah its actually pretty good if u get that. most dont

[@ssoto5475]

@Louis Kirkwood o thats for sure. mission tilt is common

[@kait-9939]

My favorite scene is when he meets the Nazi, and claims he's not like him. Meanwhile he's on a hate crime spree!

[@Avoidiac]

@@kait-9939 The neo-Nazi guy is the only person he actually kills, if I remember right. He's really not on a "hate crime spree". The only thing that could possibly count in that direction would be his initial attack on the Korean guy's store. And even that seemed to be mostly about the high prices. There's bigotry operating too, but it never seems to be much of a motivating factor in his acts of violence. His targets are minor and major systemic injustices, rude and obnoxious people, and whoever directly crosses him. But it could be that he kills the Nazi because he's the one person he comes across who really most resembles himself.

[@reneepogue2188]

The hilarity of edgelords loving Heath Ledger's Joker is that Joker in that movie is proven ~*~wrong~*~. "When the chips are down", people chose to NOT kill an entire ship of other people to save themselves. His plan failed, he was wrong about the basic humanity of people.

[@bradh5547]

That scenario was performed in fictional world and now obviously jokers thinking or philosophy will be shown as wrong because DC is a comic about superheroes and superheroes represents the bright side, morally good side. Thats why both of the ship didn't blow each other up.Now if we see such scenarios in real life I doubt whether things would come out the same as it did in the movies.

[@Mutantcy1992]

I think it's fallacious to make arguments based on fictional stories and apply them to real life. Jordan Peterson does this constantly and acts like renowned fiction is essentially as evidential as science. But fiction can be different. They could have written the movie where the Joker won. In fact, he has won in many instances in comics. That doesn't say anything about whether he's right.

[@hunpo1]

That was one of the few times--maybe the only time--he was wrong about people in the movie. Yes, his basic premise that people are innately corrupt was proven wrong. But it's understandable how he came to hold that view--many people even find it relatable. Ledger's Joker is such a great villain precisely because he knows how people work and how shitty they can be.

[@yautjacetanu]

@@Mutantcy1992 the theory isn't because it's fiction it's true in real life but because it's a successful fiction it says something true in real life. If we enjoy a film where the prisoners dilemma comes out in that direction then it says something about the class of people who enjoy it. Such as maybe they want that to be true.

[@Mutantcy1992]

@@yautjacetanu Okay, but that's not true. The popularity of a piece of fiction doesn't correlate to "that's how people really act," especially not when it comes to movies. And who says the popularity of movies is about the way people want things to be? Star Wars? Avengers? Do people want things to be like those movies? No, it's just entertaining fantasy.

[@Cobble01]

They did everything they could to portray Joker as somebody you’d never want to be around and people still idolized him.

[@Shh.ItsAllOkay.]

Isn't that why some people idolise him? Because they relate to him? The more you try to make a character shameful and unlikeable, the more people who feel the same way about themselves, and get treated the same way by others, will be drawn to that character.

[@Cobble01]

@@Shh.ItsAllOkay. some people relate to what he’s been through, yeah, but nobody should strive to be what he’s become. If you’re already like that, rip, but some people are idolizing what he became as a result of what he went through and try to follow in his footsteps.

[@Shh.ItsAllOkay.]

@@Cobble01 Ah, sorry, I think I misunderstood what you were getting at. I agree.

[@Cobble01]

@@Shh.ItsAllOkay. nah it’s ok it actually made me think about it more

[@Shh.ItsAllOkay.]

@@Cobble01 Same to you, actually. I was seeing it through a completely different lens. You learn to dismiss the actions of villains in films when they're the most relatable characters, because they're often minorities. ...Which I realise isn't that helpful in this context. :)

[@eljefe8149]

To me, Fight Club is about a man that is so jaded by what society says is important that he loses his mind trying to find meaning. In the end, all that is really important is love, which he had in front of him the whole time, but he just couldn't see it.

[@clatoski]

As always the book is better. Pahlaniuk is fairly obviously a leftist but a bit male centric. I have a hard time nailing down chuck pahlaniuk's worldview except that it's def dark. Also much of fight club the film was ripped out of his subsequent book. I also liked joker but it's also a toxic ass story

[@TheresaWheeler]

Fight Club the movie is an adaptation of the book that makes it about capitalism. Millennials didn't have the same opportunities as Gen-X so they don't see the existential dread. Whenever I watch videos like this I realize we watched these movies with different eyes.

[@kiaadams104]

It's about white boys whose feelings are hurt because they aren't as important as all the movies tell them they should be. When Luke Skywalker and James Bond, and Superman all look like you and the whole world tells you you're special because you are a "white man" .... well when you are pathetic or average white man, then there is rage. These guys become school shooters, edge lords, guys that randomly quote the joker at parties. The find a masculine leader in Tyler and find a father figure that tells them how to become a man, since they have failed to live up to the ideal media gave them.

[@Kamishi845]

I think saying it's purely a criticism of capitalism isn't quite right though. At a deeper level the film is more accurately about authenticity especially related to what it means to be a white male. Tyler Durden is very much the hypermasculine ideal that white men are told they'd become if they just do white masculinity right. The main source modern men have of this ideal comes from massmedia, which is intrinsically linked to the capitalist system. That's why Tyler Durden attacks societal institutions that he thinks are connected to capitalism, because it's how he believes men will finally be truly free to be themselves. He doesn't see the irony that as a product of capitalism, he also can't live without it. On essence, the influence of capitalism as a communicator of white masculinity can only be severed not through the destruction of society, but through the destruction of clinging to such ideals. This is why the narrator must shoot himself because by killing himself or rather his beliefs in white masculinity can he become his authentic self.

[@eljefe8149]

@@Kamishi845 interesting take. I don't think this is a critique of capitalism though. I think it's a critique of looking for meaning in material things. Capitalism has nothing to do with materialism imo. Capitalism is as old as trading and bartering and is based on the idea that indivifual humans own things and that they should be compensated when someone wishes to have what belongs to them. Life has always been about survival and it is survival and anger about not getting what we believe that we deserve that brings out the violent nature in men. This is not exclusive to white men. I do agree however that our idea of what constitutes masculinity often comes from the media and can be shaped by them to a large extent.

[@xdevantx5870]

I love Falling Down. It's one of my favorite movies. But the most important part of the movie is when he realizes, HE IS the bad guy. That's the whole point of the movie for me. His realization that his "righteous" anger isn't righteous and that he's been left holding the bag for a society that threw him overboard. He's the patsy. He did what they told him and then they sold him out.

[@Retrostar619]

Bingo!

[@Lindsay-Makes-Videos]

Exactly, I like FD in general, but it's sad and hurtful he thought so little of us here that he assumed the intended audience of Falling Down doesn't understand that he's a tragedy, a warning, to NOT let our white privileged egos run the show, because that identity was forced on us. He and Falling Down are on the same side, but he thinks so little of us he doesn't interpret the movie that way.

[@salmon_wine]

a subtle element of the movie, though, is how the main character has been "made an example of" in the past. This leads to the main character being cast to lower echelon of society, where he is left to maintain his station, with no hope to improve things in life. It's not right of him, but the main character (called D-FENS) is taking out his frustration on the world not allowing him to try to be a better person, because he already made mistakes in the past.

[@scooble]

The character and his situation is understandable, but it highlights a dysfunctional society if you are willing to look deeper.

[@1nONLY_DRock]

That and his dark side. It was verbally and mentally abusive towards his wife, even when life was good. His mother was afraid of him. He had that anger bubbling inside of him. He just had an excuse to let it out.

[@thebarbaryghostsf]

Feel like most of these directors would agree with you and never intended their main characters to be idolized. These movies are mostly tragedies.

[@WallKenshiro]

Tragedy, satire and blatant irony is far too often lost on the masses. Which is a shame really.

[@alechardcastle5247]

I find myself connecting to characters regardless of my awareness of them being tragedies. I think I just appreciate the representation of tragedies because they can feel more real, and I like seeing the story told well.

[@jkjkjkkjkjk]

This is literally what is happening with most of the people who critique the film. Its a tragedy about a villain and the triggers that turned them into a villain. Its ridiculous that people think the film idolised the main character. I feel a lot of people are projecting their own views onto the film, rather than see the film for what it is.

[@rotface6969]

Taxi Driver is the classic example

[@antieverything1]

the movies are good...the audiences are just morons.

[@oldlantern4754]

The Joker was real meaningful to me at first because it was relatable in a tragic way. I'm mentally ill, I experience psychosis and don't always have a stable grasp on the existence of other people, and the film spoke to a fear of never being able to escape that state of mind. I thing I understood pretty soon after watching it that a lot of people would see the joker character at the end as a win, rather than him not having any way of holding onto mental stability. The movie has a really sad ending to me, but people seeing it as good are getting a way different message.

[@OttoGrainer27]

Same. I notice most people here perceived their own strong messages from the movie; _"anti-capitalist", "white man warning", "mental health awareness" "social medicare";_ very political and no mention of any personal relation whatsoever, either as Joker to themselves or to Phoenix, the actor, and his history. To me it was profoundly significant that De Niro was the host, and the one shot, due to his own scandal in the industry. I thought I was going paranoid watching it. Nothing about the casting matters to me in the context of the plot. Anyone with any orientation could've been Joker so long as he danced, but nobody seems to think the condition or twisted expression of him was important, despite being integral to the film in my eyes. So that's kinda disappointing that everyone overlooks, but if it didn't strike them, it's not what they needed. I still think a divergent playout with his suicide is equally strong. The ending had nothing satisfying or happy about it; I just appreciate good acting.

[@moisesmontecillo7570]

I guess people forget joker gets his ass beat by batman after that 🤣

[@jonahnesmith7004]

Reminds me of people who think the midsommar ending was a win. Like, entirely missing the point Kinda funny because the predecessor, Hereditary, looks like a bad ending, but it's ironically a good ending lmao

[@OttoGrainer27]

@@jonahnesmith7004 Right, right. Hereditary left me quite cold, but Midsommar I genuinely loved and laughed the way through even though I knew it wasn't right; at least I related to Pugh's character. Not every movie's meant to be judged for it's morality.

[@jonahnesmith7004]

@@OttoGrainer27 very true, but it's important to understand the messages of movies and take the right things away from them

[@BlackyChan2.0]

27:26 I see a lot the same rhetoric when it comes to Homelander. People say that if we all had powers, we’d be just like him, but forget why he is the way he is. Homelander wasn’t raised with any real love or compassion, and especially never taught right from wrong. He even acknowledges this when talking to the mother of his child, saying that Ryan (His Son) is already at a better place then he was growing up because he had a mom, but still needs interaction with the outside world. I understand there would be bad people if we had superpowers, but there’s no fucking way we’d all be like Homelander.

[@Isthisjoebiden]

So true. I saw a guy talking about the comic when he SAs starlight along with two other supers and said we would all do that if we had powers with no repercussions. And everyone was like NO TF WE WOULDNT😂

[@cindys9491]

​@@Isthisjoebiden that's an admission/confession by that person. Exactly. Says more about him than about "everybody".

[@MCDreng]

Y'know when I was watching the boys that was how I was feeling but then that made me think "good God American society has just socialized a bunch of psychopaths, huh" because I wouldn't want to be that way, I just felt like I'd have to be that kind of person to get ahead.

[@shongueesha7875]

We couldnt all be homelander though. There can be only 1 strongest being.

[@roccaflocca4312]

I was a white kid in the suburbs. I remember always wanting to be that edgelord as a teenager. Largely because, looking back, you knew your life was actually pretty boring, that you weren't dealing with real struggles, you were probably gonna wanna get a job that someone just set you up with, and things were largely only ever going to be "pretty good" for you; no real highs or lows. I was really into gangster rap and the heaviest metal you could find because you wanted to feel like life mattered, because you're not going through the trials that people are really supposed to have to. The whole global economy is set up by your recent ancestors to work for you, and not for other people. I wanted to earn my own job, so I went into college and tried to do it on my own, and I haven't been the kind of affluent you need to be to be the kind of person you're talking about since. I'm all about society sharing everything, racial equality, gay rights... you name a leftist cause, I'm in on it. I have my own edge to deal with. I can still enjoy movies and TV shows like this, but it's not the core of my being like it used to be. What really codified everything at once was Melissa Villaseñor's "White Male Rage" song on SNL. You realize that white men are the only people allowed to be "angry" about things in society, without other white people trying to put these non-white people in check. It's a white privilege thing, sure, but I hope I can use my "White Male Rage" to help other people as best as I can from here on out. Just a rant, good video, I hope to not be one of the people you're talking about here.

[@miclowgunman1987]

I personally think there is a disconnect in ideology between white and colored spaces because there are actually two sides to the system: social and economic. People of color and a lot of time women have had both systems set up against them, while white men have only every really had one. So as the economic system starts to be strangled and wealth condensed upward, many of the lower economic class are starting to feel the starting of pressure that other classes have felt for decades. You see this in white liberal spaces like "Late Stage Capitalism", who seem to think capitalism is now failing at its late stages, when the realization is that it has always been failing minorities and is just starting to effect white people. You will always see a more aggressive push back when taking power away from a previously privileged group then you would with a disenfranchised one. White people are always shocked that slaves didnt fight back even when they massively outnumbered the slave owners. So we will see an increase in violence from white men in particular who are raised to think the system is going to provide for them, and then find out that it is increasingly being taken from them too in favor of the top 1%. Then they hear people say that they are the problem for being white, and that people of color want to take away their privilege, and an existential dread kicks in that make them fear that they will continue to fall further down. This leads them down the rabbit hole of white supremacy and disillusion instead of realizing that a more fair and balanced economic system would benefit everyone.

[@juddakooda9520]

As 26 year old black male. Man i salute you for keeping it real about the way things are. Not that i'm trying to be a victim but sometimes i feel like i don't have a voice, or it just isn't heard . Whenever we speak up on something it's always "why does it always have to be about race" or "those types of things don't happen anymore" or better yet they just try to shut us up altogether. Love you my guy

[@monarchdoge1330]

"as a white kid" so brave

[@nikolaitheundying]

Yeah man all my problems don't matter because children are starving in Africa! Like who cares about my stress, anxiety, depression? Black suffer 9001x that DAILY being called slurs and threatened by rampant lynch mobs across the USA. I am truly so privileged. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

[@Rotwold]

Defining real struggle as something only connected to your identity/ethnicity does not make sense to me. Because there is a lot of real struggles that any human can experience and cause material/psychological damage. I think there is little value to degrade your own problems, I think it will lead to people losing interest in changing society broadly, something the neo-liberal order actually prefer. It would love to only make incremental changes to please a small group of people while not dealing with the core issue.

[@ga9522]

"You can like even problematic art and still be critical." That was great, would've saved me so many arguments and lost relationships if I'd been at a place to understand that sooner.

[@RunBayou]

Always good to hear about someone's growth

[@nnnnnn496]

"If" not "and". It's ok if you're critical about it. "And" is when you look at somone with the same understanding.

[@tyrannosaurustheproudliber5619]

There is no such thing as problematic art.

[@hermitarcana3812]

Were you the one who liked "problematic art" or were you the one who didn't like it?

[@NefariousSpineLizard]

@@hermitarcana3812 Based on the language they used, they were the one cutting people out for it.

[@BittenHand19]

When I was 15 I worked at a McDonold's and a customer was mad about is order and he asked me if I had ever seen Falling Down. My manager asked him to leave.

[@DANtheMANofSIPA]

Just recently there was a lady who pulled out a gun at Chipotle for not getting her food

[@dorothymonroe]

And people are saying that people no longer want to work. There has been an extreme loss of civility in our society and on top of that it's low paying.

[@dorothymonroe]

@IntrepidTit You have a point in acquaintances, friendships, relationships, and business partnerships. But the waiter, fast food worker, or any service worker doesn't need to see it. You don't need to turn into a monster because you didn't get 3 ketchups.

[@coldengrey12]

"The whole movie is him trying to destroy or destabilize the things he has no power over" Damn, that encapsulates so much about the edgelord worldview

[@MachFiveFalcon]

If he focused solely on destabilizing institutions that were oppressive instead of harming people who caused him minor inconveniences along the way, you'd get a much more sympathetic revolutionary instead of an edgelord.

[@jakezoom178]

In part because of you, I have been opening up to my family and friends about the true causes of many social and economic issues. I always felt powerless to enact change in my community and in the world at large, but just having the conversations seems to wake people up out of their daze. The revolution will not be televised, but it will be streamed online. Ty for your work brother! I love you all.

[@0404chrisjz]

Lmfaooo what

[@davidhooker7449]

"It is much easier to attack feminism and minorities than it is to attack social systems." MESSAGE! It is extremely frustrating that the subject group you mention can recognize these social issues but seem to be incapable/unwilling of using their proximity to the gatekeepers of the society that they hate to positively impact society.

[@Simon-lg9kp]

that was my favorite quote in this

[@Setep2k]

proximity to gatekeepers of society? so wherever you are from minorities or women are not allowed to participate in elections? congratulations, you have exactly the same proximity as most of the rest of society.

[@sabiti5428]

The people smart enough to see the whole picture are not at all interested in fixing these systems. Not worth the effort

[@davidhooker7449]

@@Setep2k that is inaccurate.

[@RossPurdyDestroysComedy]

whether correct or not, they feel certain rhetoric from progressives seems to blame them personally for these plights whereas their own feelings of powerlessness contradicts being told they hold a lot of power

[@victorlannister5606]

When I was a kid I came home from school one day to tell my grandma what I’d learned in history class. My grandma loves history so it’s the way we bonded. I started going into great detail about how incredible Robert E. Lee was to fight for our country. My grandma was entirely confused and had to stop and tell me Robert E. Lee was a confederate soldier. Basically long story short my history text book hated Ulysses S Grant and Loved Robert E Lee and didn’t even mention what side of history either of them where on! I a little black kid had a history text book that idolized a lot of bad people. Having to unlearn that the “founding fathers” weren’t great and noble people is a struggle and it’s upsetting that we rewrite history so we can idolize horrible people.

[@Scruffy-qi3ik]

In don’t think it’s the sense of rewriting, it’s just giving the sense that they had at the time to us, other than that first bit. But of course we’re gonna find out people in the past weren’t great, but that’s inevitable because of the simplicity that their moral standards weren’t the same as ours today. Give us a few centuries and any person we consider good today might be considered abhorrent in the future. It’s not bad idolize the good that was done in the past as long as you’re able to realize that it’s the deeds your idolizing and not the person.

[@cristalido3640]

The Founding Fathers weren't horrible people, they were great for their time, specially in the context of the cause they fought for... As humans, we're all flawed, and if we pick people from a completely different time and put them there just like it, well, they will be filled with ideas and behaviors that we now deem bad.

[@moustik31]

In my case, an uncle was dismayed by the racism I was learning in literature class organised a Black classics intervention for me. He started me on a journey to deconstruct White supremacy and I'm so grateful. It did way more good than he ever knew.

[@baptizednblood6813]

It’s really astounding how much of American education is just propaganda

[@baptizednblood6813]

@@Scruffy-qi3ik I’m pretty sure it’s just propaganda

[@elliottcoleman8225]

I once read a book in the perspective of a character who was in a sort of Falling Down situation. His whole life he thought if he just did the right things, listened to the system and followed the rules, he would be rewarded. Everyone around him, including his family and loved ones, would be punished and oppressed, but he thought it was their own fault because he saw them as troublemakers. But he would be good and none of that stuff would happen to him. Inevitably, the system pulled the rug out from under him, ruining any chance he had at a good, normal life. Instead of taking this out on everyone around him, he joined those who were actively working against the system. It's quite... weird to read Falling Down as anything other than someone STILL not understanding who the true oppressor is.

[@dkupke]

The Simpson’s, Homer’s enemy

[@Avoidiac]

This will probably be taken as a defense of D-FENS, which is not my message -- but movies have to be taken in their historical context. I was just a teenager at the time, but my impression was and is that 30 years ago it was really the norm not to understand or bother to think much about systems of oppression. Especially if you were white and middle-class or above. This wasn't a common topic on local or cable shows, or in most newspapers and magazines, which is what we had then. Internet was still fledgling. Many people were exposed to these ideas in college, or outside of it, but many more got their degrees without bothering. It's impressive to me how much overall consciousness has grown, in general, in the last 20-30 years. This part will sound like a defense of D-FENS. His acts of half-random violence were deplorable and would be in any era. But put yourself in the shoes of this man as much as possible, meaning you have to be familiar with the socio-cultural climate of the time, and during the preceding time of his life. He's a baby boomer while they were on top of the world, was an engineer I believe, good job, loving family, good neighborhood, until he and his wife seperated and he lost the job. He'd always been clean-cut American dream boy, playing by the rules, which had apparently worked well for him until those downturns. At this point, if he's not engaged in serious self-reflection, he'd be prone to some bitter ruminations about society. And in the early 90s, and being the solitary, friendless person he is, he wouldn't be likely to stumble across any literature or anything else to point him in the right direction and keep him from going off the rails like he did. Unless he actively sought out such information. But he didn't. He AVOIDED seeking truth -- possibly out of frustrated hopelessness, and/or he was arrogant/unaware enough to believe he possessed it already. So, his initial transgression was buying into the system which implicitly said he'd have a good life as a white male U.S. citizen, provided he worked well and followed the rules. But the system has no real concern for him as an average individual, regardless of his generally privileged identity. In the end he's just another pawn who's a little higher up than some other pawns and a lot lower down than a rare few. And we're almost all pawns, whose chief characteristics are that they're expendable and nearly powerless to affect the game, or only incidentally affect it in tiny ways. Like prey.

[@catsmom129]

@@AvoidiacIn the 1970s, and to some extent the 1980s, there was a lot of attention on societal critique. People were exploring feminism, racial equality, gay rights, etc. But the 80s & 90s also saw a conservative backlash against those movements. And the 1990s began with the Rodney King video. Then the police who beat him were acquitted, leading to protests and riots around the country. My point is that for adults in the 1990s, if they chose to ignore systemic oppression, then they were deliberately turning their heads. It’s not like the information wasn’t available. Yes, it was harder to read books and magazines when you had to get a physical copy. Plenty of us did it anyway.

[@ideitbawxproductions1880]

The sad thing is, it's crazy how much of a slippery slope it can be. I was bullied relentlessly in school, and became really shy, not really wanting to associate with anyone. I thought about doing Columbine-style attacks. I became obsessed with heavy metal, and still listen to it constantly even though I'm almost 40 (though I hear the messages of those songs much differently today than I did then). When I finally had a real romantic relationship with someone, I became so infatuated with her that I pushed her away with my relentless negativity... and then tried to blame her for ruining my life. I messed around with drugs as both a coping mechanism and an excuse to "find answers" about myself & the world around me. I even took some time in the early PUA community, but I found better answers about myself & life from reading self-help books (so I guess I'm on George Carlin's list of people who oughta be killed lol). It was during this phase of my life that I started thinking about who i *really* was compared to who I *thought* I was. It took quite a few years, and I took a shit-ton of notes, but I'm happy with how things in my life are turning out. I quit the hard drugs long ago, stopped smoking weed almost 4 years ago, gave up heavy drinking around the same time but still enjoy the odd drink from time to time, have a decent job, live in my own place, had some rocky relationships but I enjoy the one I'm in now, and I still play music (though it's been a while since I posted anything on KZbin... I need to do something about that). Everyone's path in life is going to be different, but I'm going to share some things that helped me along the way: 1. Of all the bullshit PUA garbage out there (don't even get me started on the whole MGTOW/red pill "movement"), the only PUA I genuinely liked was David DeAngelo. He had a whole slew of programs, but his core philosophy was to work on bettering yourself as an individual, because that will make you more attractive than learning a bunch of "tricks" to try & manipulate a woman into bed. My two favourite programs of his were "Deep Inner Game" (which based around working out your personal trauma and learning to live without it), and "Cocky Comedy" (which is learning about being charismatic and flirtatious). David also introduced me to one of the best self-help books I ever read; 2. King Warrior Magician Lover by Robert Moore & Douglas Gillette. A book about psychologist Carl Jung's ideas of masculinity through the use of common archetypes, showing how they look when they're used in a positive way, warning of how they get used in a negative way (eg. many of the "edgelords" shown in FD's video were living through the active shadow of the Warrior archetype, the -Masochist- Sadist, swinging their emotional swords at anything they deemed to have wronged them; they were trying to mask their own insecurity by using extreme force to make them feel more like men, when in the end, it just exposes them as the wounded boys they really are), and how using these archetypes in the right balance can make a man more grounded and mentally strong; 3. How To Be A No-Limit Person by Wayne Dyer. Sure, the title itself is pretty unrealistic, there's always a limit somewhere, but it's a great look into using outside-the-box thinking and learning not to limit yourself; 4. If you've ever had to live with a narcissist, being able to let it go will give you a whole new perspective on life. When I first started getting sober, I got into a relationship way too soon, and I paid the price for it. It wasn't long before we hardly spoke, and any time I tried to start a normal conversation, she'd lose her mind on me. Well, one day, I was doing the dishes, when she came into the kitchen and screamed, "WHY DON'T YOU EVER TALK TO ME??!!" I stopped washing the dishes, and *calmly* (I can't emphasise this enough, *CALMLY* ) explained why talking to her was next to impossible, with her double binds and excuses for relating anything I say to her past trauma or some other unrelated part of her life that had nothing to do with the conversation. I ended with, "So why bother saying anything? It's just a waste of my fucking breath," and went back to washing dishes. She moved out a week later, and I couldn't have been happier about it. So while I do sympathise with the MGTOW/red pills to a certain extent, I can't buy into their rhetoric, because they view women as "the enemy" the same way extremist feminists view men as "the enemy". Good women do exist, ones that don't see you as an ATM with a dick, who actually care about you. I knew one in high school, but she left because I was an insecure dickhead who treated her like shit. I'm with one now who spoils me rotten with her love & affection. Dating can be tricky, but a lot of men will say yes to a bad woman just to get laid, and then wonder how they got stuck with such a bitch, just like I did when I first got sober. Sometimes, you need to say no

[@mikearchibald744]

Interesting comment. Some comments here have a similar feel, I'll just make a note that the interesting thing about america and americans is how many people talk about working on themselves 'as individuals' in order to 'be a better person'. A better person is a moral description, meaning it relates to other people. Thats like learning to drive without a car. Want to be a better person, BE a better person. Thats defined in your relationship to others. Find ways to make OTHER people happy and see the world through their eyes. Volunteer. Smile. Be friendly. Be helpful. Its odd how many people here talk about 'being a better person in isolation'. You learn from experience.

[@ideitbawxproductions1880]

@@mikearchibald744 And just as interesting a reply. I'm just curious about where exactly you're coming from with the "learning in isolation" thing. My biggest problem was dealing with others in the outside world. So of course I took what I was reading and applied it to anyone I interacted with. David DeAngelo made it clear in his programs that learning anything practical is equal parts research and application; if you're not using what you research, it's just information with no knowledge of how to use it. That's the "learning to drive without a car" for you. If you're actively taking what you learn and doing something with it, mistakes and all, it's more like "studying and practicing to get your driver's license." I can't speak for anyone else whose comments you've read here, but that's where I'm coming from. Hopefully this clears things up a bit

[@mikearchibald744]

@@ideitbawxproductions1880 I think it was Alan Bloom, who was a pretty lousy social critic, but he said americans were people who thought they were a society but turned out to just be people who live near one another. People like Chris Hedges points out that now we are literally at the point of 'every man for himself'. Without a community, people being social animals, tend to put ALL their social needs into the ONE form thats been socially accepted-romantic ones. So now suddenly its not just a partner, sex buddy, or pal, but a doctor, psychiatrist, 'soulmate'. Marriage USED to be a contractual agreement between families, women had NO real rights at all and they essentially cohabitated. NOW of course 'the two are to become one' and that horseshit, when a relationship, as you say, is tricky enough. But thats the same as reading about relationships and thinking thats going to prepare you. I don't really have a point, I just found it odd that so many people in america seem to talk about themselves in isolation, which can be a dangerous thing. I probably mostly commented on yours simply because yours was one of the better expressed and thought out. It just strikes me that thanks to mainstream media dictating so much about relationships, its only now with SOCIAL media that its coming out that people got WAY too many cues from Hollywood, and that it was a bunch of malarky. And largely america is almost singular in the world for not having decent access to healthcare and housing and food. In other words, its BARELY a society, so people are starting to figure out that when you don't live in an actual society where the institutions and goverment actually give a shit about YOU, then its hard to actually develop any kind of community awareness, and without that, personal relationships become very difficult at the best of times. I've sometimes thought that its the romantic relationships that DO work that are the problem, because people tend to build a world of two around themselves and shut out the world as much as possible. And thats dangerious in a democratic society. And DIO rules.

[@ideitbawxproductions1880]

@@mikearchibald744 I do agree with you there, isolation can be a very dangerous thing. I think there's a difference between isolation and solitude: solitude is taking time for yourself when you need it, and I like having that ability; isolation is shutting yourself off from the rest of the world entirely, which is what I used to do (and is another reason why I don't buy into the MGTOW rhetoric, to them that means you "achieved the highest level" 🙄). And while I'm actually Canadian, not American, we're not that different from a cultural standpoint. That is to say, as Lewis Black would put it, "The closest thing we have to culture is when we leave yoghurt in the refrigerator for too long." We're just as divided when it comes to politics and social norms, we just tend not pull guns on each other over our differences (though knives seem to be pretty common for some reason). I moved out of Toronto only a month before that incel ran over people in a rental van. The men of our society have this scary victim complex that is making them self-destruct, and many don't feel justified unless they bring others down with them. Just look at channels like Roma Army and Sarah Dawn Moore: channels run by women, trying to explain to both sexes what's going on with men & women and what we can do to make our relationships easier & more fulfilling, and the comments section is filled with bitter man-babies whining about how much women suck. Which, in itself, sucks, because I love their videos and they have a lot of great advice that just seems to fall on deaf ears. Not to say that every woman is a perfect flower (trust me, I've dated a few wilted roses with toxic thorns, those ones aren't worth my time), but isolation from the rest of the world is not going to fix any problems. It's only going to make them worse. Well, that was a tangent and a half lol. But it's good to talk about this stuff. The media in this continent only looks at the aftermath of these tragedies, and does nothing to bring any attention to a solution. It's like treating the symptoms of one disease, but the person really has another disease with related symptoms, but the doctor keeps giving the wrong medication wondering why the patient doesn't get better. You can't make the symptoms go away if you don't treat the disease and treat it properly

[@mikearchibald744]

@@ideitbawxproductions1880 Amen to that, but I"m canadian too, agree with you lots, I just call us ALL 'american' because Canada is usually just five to ten years behind the US, as you can see now. I'm going to check out those channels because often I find if and when people get challenged online, they become a little more thoughtful. Certainly not always, but sometimes.

[@patrickkelly1973]

I am a white man born in the late 70s. Gen X is the least parented generation. That was due to the breakdown of the nuclear family, which itself was an invention of post-WWII America. We went from tremendous wealth sufficient that a white men could potentially become the sole breadwinner of a small family property to full-time working and single parents treading the poverty line. This shift in wealth and demographic largely ignored non-whites, who have been dealing with the realities of hand-to-mouth living for literally thousands of years. I got to live the latchkey kid life, complete with abusive step-dads, welfare cheese, and peer violence in schools. That was Reagan's America. In my life up until my 30s, I never met another human being who actually lived the nuclear family life. Yet we are instructed by older white men that this is our inheritance and legacy. It is just a myth, a myth that lasted less than decade of American life. But damned if us white Americans don't pine for it.

[@celesteadeanes4478]

What makes u assume....that most non whites lived "hand -to- mouth" for thousands of years" ? Native Americans lived vastly comfortable lives that appealed to runaway indentured servants from Europe. Mexico aNd most of South America is actually more resource rich than the USA. Who coopt almost every bit of that. The richest man on earth was African. It was not unknown for an African to live 120 years + The invention of say the leisure concept of University came from West Africa, the What u are describing was typical of Europe. Prior to black Moorish influence. And your write off the bulk of civilization in favor of WS fantasy. Mythology the vlogger here indicates.

[@YourCapyBro_windows95_3DPipes]

@@celesteadeanes4478 I don't believe he's claiming to be W supremacist at all tho. He's indicating that he had a difficult childhood that didn't jive with the "leave it to beaver" facade that media liked to portray for middle class (Wht) america; and he would have liked to have had that, who wouldn't?? Everyone wants safety and stability in their life esp in their childhood and everyone deserves that.

[@YourCapyBro_windows95_3DPipes]

@@celesteadeanes4478 also he just meant that at least for the history of the US, minority communities have always gotten the short end of the stick. Now prior to Wht colonization, when these populations could live in their own indigenous ways, I'm sure that was different.

[@YourCapyBro_windows95_3DPipes]

I'm sorry you had a rough childhood. The Right-wing has done incalculable damage to this country I hope things are better for you now.

[@flyingmonkeys96]

@@celesteadeanes4478 lol. this is typical african revisionism. lay off the propaganda. and no, north africa isn't the same thing as sub saharan africa

[@kevinkobasic]

I love this quote from the actor who played Archie Bunker: “The American white man is trapped by his own cultural history. He doesn't know what to do about it. Archie's dilemma is coping with a world that is changing in front of him. He doesn't know what to do except to lose his temper, mouth his poisons, look elsewhere to fix the blame for his own discomfort. He isn't a totally evil man. He's shrewd. But he won't get to the root of his problem, because the root of his problem is himself, and he doesn't know it. That is the dilemma of Archie Bunker.” -Carrol O’Connor, 1972

[@shaunsteele8244]

Archie's real problem is that the wrong side won in 1945

[@jaymac493]

I love all the undisguised racism in this whole thing. we're really making progress thanks to all of this. back to war I guess.

[@dude9318]

@@jaymac493 what do you mean

[@amuroray9115]

@@dude9318 they’re talking about the “white man” portion. Even though nothing said was demeaning of the entire white race. They’re most likely another alt righter/white nationalist.

[@TheBiggestMoronYouKnow]

@@jaymac493 it's ok to be a bigot, as long as you're white, you're "not a bad guy"

[@raucous_bill]

always nuanced, insightful, enlightening videos. grateful for these essays, especially the ones discussing hip hop

[@megamaster7667]

I just found falling down an incredibly sad movie and an incredibly sad protagonist. I don't think it's problematic for a large majority of people and I do think we need more movies with unreliable narrators. Starting the movie I was like hell yeah, let's go defense! The amount of times I've just wanted to leave a traffic jam and just be free... And the first things he does are somewhat alright, but you slowly get a profile for the kinds of fallacies or emotions he's falling for. And it makes you reflect and see these things in yourself and others around you. It kind of makes you realize that you yourself may be an unreliable narrator and that the things you want may already cross some lines for some people. Just like he in the end was so suddenly surprised "Am I the bad guy?" "Yes!". I think way more people are the bad guys without realizing the consequences of our actions than they think. Probably me too... These kinds of movies are exploring and showing the extremes so that we can explore the same things on a smaller scale.

[@portmantologist]

I've always thought it would be an interesting sociological experiment to show Falling Down to a group of people and ask each of them at what point they thought he crossed the line.

[@felipew6716]

I think it’s interesting that they have to write in a scene with a Neo-Nazi asshole to distance Michael Douglas from accusations of racism despite the fact that all of his violence in the first part of the film is targeted at minorities even as he claims that it’s about economics. Pretty revealing.

[@user-fz3ip3ke8p]

When he killed the nazi

[@irresponsibledad]

You can do the same thing with Breaking Bad. The best part for me was reflecting on when I thought Walt crossed the line, and realising he'd actually crossed it a lot earlier, but I was too caught up in his story to recognise that

[@johnbehan1526]

@@irresponsibledad I was just thinking about that. We know Walter is the villain from the start. He is a villain in his own terms, who violates his own moral code very early on through transgressions that you or I might see as forgivable, if not acceptable and then spirals out of control. While you're supposed to empathise with him, he's not sympathetic. His actions are "evil" from a very early stage, except he goes from hapless and desperate, to deliberate and manipulative.

[@Samurai__-iq3zi]

Hé never actually killed anyone though

[@codygaisser]

Most of these movies are criticizing the angry white men they’re about, or at least satirizing the society that produces them. It’s astonishing that people walk away from Fight Club thinking Tyler Durden is a hero when he is a toxic manifestation of the protagonist’s delusions, or miss the irony of Travis Bickle being celebrated as a hero in Taxi Driver when he’s actually a lunatic who just narrowly happened to assassinate some pimps instead of a politician. As you pointed out, Falling Down literally contains a scene in which the protagonist realizes he is the villain of the story. (The Joker is a much lesser film than the rest, and The Matrix doesn’t quite fit the same mold as the rest as the hero isn’t toxic). But you are absolutely correct… white guys who feel cheated by society idolize these characters. Our culture lies to us, and some people cannot handle the dissonance and target their rage in all the wrong directions (women, minorities, etc.). Recognizing one lie doesn’t necessarily mean you recognize another. Lots of these angry white guys see the lie of the promises made to them, but they don’t see the bigger lies of white supremacy and patriarchy. I could’ve so easily been one of these guys. I was so close. I understand where they’re coming from, they’re just wrong-headed about a lot of things they’re not even conscious of. We have to stop teaching young white men to expect unreasonable things, and we have to stop expecting unreasonable things of them. It basically is going to take increased exposure to a broader more diverse range of perspectives, and it could take generations, but there’s reason for some optimism there. Great video!

[@messiah7344]

Love all these movies, but yeah I agree. People sympathize with injustice, and movies like Joker and Fight Club both have their main charecters be victims of injustice. So when the audience sees the main charecters dark side, they rationalize it as injustice. Validating a excuse, and lots of the time blinding the audience to the rest of the charecters immoral actions. Then they connect with these charecters and therefore create a neckbeard.

[@grapeshot]

@@messiah7344 it also helps that the characters are white guys. Because if a black man was running around causing this type of mayhem I doubt very seriously that he would get any type of sympathy.

[@messiah7344]

@@grapeshotWell sorta, Killmonger faced injustice, and people still loved him. But yeah I see what you mean.

[@grapeshot]

@@messiah7344 Killmonger represents to me the divide between Africans that are from the continent versus Africans that were dispersed because of the transatlantic slave trade.

[@dorcaswinter8296]

Your last paragraph made a really interesting point. I am a POC so white men is a group I’m naturally not a part of. But what you say did make me think. It’s kinda true, society does have this narrative that white men are the most privileged group of people at the moment. And when you are a white male and your “failing” at life - I could see how for some it will really mess with their world view. I’m sure more factors contribute but I could see this being a big one.

[@nanasapartment]

Saw the thumbnail, and I immediately thought "Oh lord." Your introduction to this video is so incredibly well spoken, tactful and well thought out. It's the perfect way to approach the volatility of this subject. Bravo.

[@ThatBlondeRecluse]

I’m just now being introduced to your content & I love what I’m learning. I will say, as a fossil old enough to have seen Falling Down in the theatre, it made such a huge impact on me exactly because the whole movie did build up to the scene where he interacted with then shot the neo-nazi and did exactly what you suggested: faced the fact that they were not only not that different but that he was, in fact, a less honest man bc of his unwillingness to see or admit his extreme entitlement based on all he was certain he was owed. In fact, every other character in the movie saw it except him & tried in various ways to show & tell him that he was not actually superior, but his determination to make others hurt bc he was angry overrode his ability to see and hear any better than he had ever been able to. I left that movie sad & very moved. As a young adult, I was certainly examining my own biases far more honestly afterwards (I hope).

[@jamisonking3613]

My young adult son and I recently discovered that we both independently started following your channel which I thought was pretty cool. Thank you!

[@ladama3201]

Good job dad!

[@vheataylorsyorkies7215]

Lol thats awesome

[@mowkikowski]

Wild. Same thing happened to me and my brother today. 🤔

[@MGLAMOREAUX]

That’s awesome! A lot of people can’t share these kind of things with their parents

[@RevengeOfThaNerd]

I felt bad for giving you a like because you had 444 and I thought that was cool. But not as cool as you and your son so my bad bruh.

[@cartilagehead6326]

Joel Schumacher absolutely meant the implication that Michael Douglas’ character is enraged by the suggestion that he’s just like the Nazi store owner. It’s not him being shown to be better than the Nazi, it’s him staring into the abyss and trying to shoot it away when it stares back. Schumacher is a gay man, and the subtext of a normie white dude standing quietly by while a gay couple are threatened, only to turn violent at what he perceives to be a personal insult and the implied questioning of his goodness wouldn’t have been lost on him. The film doesn’t really mince words: he’s an abusive dad and a war profiteer. He’s the bad guy. And he’s not just “the bad guy” now, he’s BEEN the bad guy. He started out as a bad guy and he became a WORSE guy. In some respects, it might even be a criticism of the Mrs. Doubtfires and divorced dad dramas of the day. I think the juxtaposition of violent entitled rage at perceived personal slights with quiet bystanderhood during moments of real systemic oppression is a deliberate choice that really lays bare the film’s thesis, to say nothing of the fact that most of the people whose lives are threatened or ended over the course of the film are people of color and service sector workers. I think the choice to make the protestor black (and somebody dealing with virtually the same situation of being laid off) was similarly deliberate. Falling Down was made after a decade of Reaganism, and during a period where there were multiple incidents of “sovereign citizen” and white stochastic terrorism and violence making the national media. It’s hard not to look at Falling Down both as a response to America’s hard lurch toward right wing traditionalism and neoliberalism and a response to the Wacos and the Ruby Ridges of the time, which themselves were arguably fueled by the same perception of status loss. The film understands that its main character is a monster and a villain in the same way that Starship Troopers understands that all of its (human) characters are fascists, to the point where-like you point out-it bluntly states it at the end in wonderfully Brechtian fashion. “I’M the bad guy?” “Yeah.”

[@michaellimbeck5671]

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[@innuendos7923]

Kinda reminds me of how you realize I’m Breaking Bad that Walter White was always not a good dude. Like he was always an asshole he just never acted on it but the only thing that changed was that he realized he had no reason not to behave poorly.

[@MegatronYES]

@@innuendos7923 the most potent lesson we learn from studying Walter White is that the presence of compassion absolutely says nothing about the potential toward insidiousness

[@imaginareality]

​@@innuendos7923 I remember people describing Breaking Bad to me as "a normal nice chemistry teacher turning into a homicidal drug lord" and talking about how shocking the change in his character was, which was definitely not what I took from the show when watching it.

[@MusicMissionary]

@@imaginareality I saw it as the evil is in all of us and once you go down a certain path you can't come back.

[@robbierobot9685]

Your heart comes across clear. This one hits me in one of my favorite movies. Keep it up, challenge the narrative, do your thing, if people can't handle a challenge to their identity they're not going to learn anyway and aren't your audience.

[@GespenstDesKommunismus]

I liked the Joker movie when I first saw it and I still like it. It portrays a man from the lower end of society, with a traumatic childhood and with poor education being treated so horribly by the system that he turns into a senseless murderous monster. To me it portrays a critique of capitalism, showing what it can turn fairly sympathetic people into. It's not my problem that some insane online Nazis somehow sympathise with the supervillain and monster of the movie.

[@PrimericanIdol]

I mean, you can argue that a significant chunk of the black community in America is going through what the joker did. Which is how hoodlums are created.

[@vingaxoc6543]

The killer who shot up the movie theater did not dye his hair to look like the joker. That was just a rumor that was floating around at that time. The only reason he shot up the dark knight movie showing was cause he had plotted out the layout of the theater and decided that theater would be the hardest to escape from. Apparently he dyed his hair because "orange symbolizes bravery" whatever that means.

[@briannawaldorf8485]

Apparently he has schizophrenia and that doesn’t excuse his actions at all but he justified it as the orange haired him was a separate individual than the natural hair him.. there’s some interesting interviews of him done years after the massacre where he is in a mental hospital and talks about this. Again I want to emphasise that doesn’t excuse his actions at all he still murdered innocent people, but i find his mental health pretexts interesting

[@mrrselfdestruction1077]

Don't add logic and truth here we have an agenda to push which is why we have to brand adult theme movie lovers as far right edgelords. That guy was obviously a bigoted edgelord that should be mocked not looked at as a symptom of an underlying problem unless you can use it to advance yourself or your political ideology like the maker of this video did.

[@SubliminaIMessages]

yep the Joker imitation shit was fabricated by the press.

[@RunBayou]

No one here cares about information that refutes their ideology

[@apricotcat1542]

@@briannawaldorf8485 he did not have schizophrenia I think but he's been chronically mentally ill since he was very young. Very tortured soul

[@theblakeney]

I'm a white southerner and there a lot of impoverished white men who feel pushed aside by society. They think, "Why are there people in the (seemingly) same position as me getting help for no other reason than their skin color, while I'm being left behind to struggle for myself?" There is a struggle to see the broader systemic issues because they view everything through the lens of the individual and merit.

[@FernandoTorrera]

Job stability is quickly becoming a fantasy and everyone is treated as expendable even what we’re once cushy jobs, but instead of looking at capitalism they blame women, poc ect

[@Akemaste]

@@FernandoTorrera Not only expendable unfortunately, Exploitable as well. We are being crushed for pennies all while politicians & media conglomerates get people to argue against their own best interests.

[@johnindigo5477]

Would you call it a skewed version of american individualism?

[@Alex_Barbosa]

@@johnindigo5477 Id just call it American Individualism

[@eme.261]

@@Alex_Barbosa -- Exactly. What's occurring now isn't a bug in the system. It's the core feature of the American Individualism system. As George Carlin stated, "The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it." European-Americans have been imparted the pacifying ideology of American Exceptionalism/Individualism to hold on to and they're waking to the truth that it was and has always been rubbish. Now, they're throwing hissy fits, essentially.

[@ddalton86ify]

I'm surprised you didn't bring up Marvin Heemeyer and his Killdozer, as it's a perfect real-life example of Falling Down and the way it was misunderstood. Especially the part where he's viewed as a noble martyr and is often paired with imagery and quotes from Falling Down. Would have been a pretty solid way to tie the movies you discussed into how the behaviors of the people who like them misunderstand the films.

[@makhnothecossack4948]

Though Heemeyer didn't kill anyone except himself, and if I remember correctly it was on purpose.

[@katocs]

@@makhnothecossack4948 He also didnt care that he couldve though. Him not killing anyone was rather circumstance than intention. He drove his bulldozer into random buildings, stores, while almost having no field of view. There couldve been people in the way so many times, yet he still chose to blindly ram through store walls etc.

[@pffpffovich2398]

@@katocs He deliberately attacked the properties of those who fucked his life up tho

[@katocs]

@@pffpffovich2398 kind of, but not really. One of the buildings he slammed into was a clothing store which, while owned by one of his adversaries, could've easily just had people inside. Similar things with other buildings. Also, he himself caused alot of his own "misfortune" wanting quick cash and selling land without properly reading the contract

[@username-yc3bd]

⁠​⁠@@pffpffovich2398 he nearly killed a bunch of children in the town hall library who barely escaped and tried to blow up propane tanks that would’ve caused a large explosion that could’ve injured or killed civilians

[@Me-xw6td]

I really don't understand why americans care about races as much as they do. I'm not white nor US citizen and I love this kind of movies, I mean, I loved Taxi driver. Now I understand the movie and love it more.

[@user-qm2li8zx2d]

Maybe because you aren't American and can't see or hear past your own experience.

[@GreenEyedDazzler]

We owned slaves…

[@countyfair74]

@@GreenEyedDazzler We still do in Africa.

[@coldfiresamurai6333]

​@@GreenEyedDazzler so did we in Brazil and we aren't like that, y'all care way too much about other people races it's kinda ridiculous to people from outside the US

[@JonahPleatherbooth]

Falling down actually helped me realize I was destroying myself when I saw it like a decade ago. Im confused as to how so many people miss the entire point of that movie

[@thomasprislacjr.4063]

Like. JOEL SCHUMACHER directed it. This is not supposed to be a white male power fantasy. You are supposed to see the dichotomy between D-Fens and our old cop fella.

[@ericfieldman]

It's literally called falling down. How does anybody read that name and be like "This is a success story!"

[@davidking4838]

You should tell us what you see as the point. I see it as a man who is mad at the world for both rudeness and injustice. He's gone off the edge......but I don't see the lead character as racist. Perhaps misanthrope is a better word?

[@ericfieldman]

@davidking4838 I don't think he's meant to be inherently racist, but he's representative of a demographic with a lot of crossover, right? From what I've heard, the biggest demographic for stochastic terrorism is lonely white men finding out life isn't as simple as the exchange they were promised and having trouble coping, which usually comes with hardcore conservative beliefs on gender roles, and occasionally some kind of expectation of white providence, programmed intentionally or not

[@commanderwyro4204]

@@davidking4838 ironically the only person he kills in the movie is the racist lol

[@GreyrainLife]

“You cannot blame art for behavior.” Gold star statement right there.

[@Jebcbeb]

*ignores the existence of propaganda in a video about propaganda arguing that propaganda changes behavior *

[@GreyrainLife]

@@Jebcbeb propaganda isn't art, and also propaganda is whatever information you don't agree with

[@Jebcbeb]

@@GreyrainLife maybe I'm wrong, but if art didn't change behaviour culutures wouldn't emphasize showing art to children. If art didn't change behaviour it wouldn't be censored in some way in every country on earth. The entire realm of religious iconography and heroic stories wouldn't exist. The Louvre wouldn't exist. I think the point of art is to place someone in a particular frame of mind, which is the prerequisite to action. If art didn't change bwhaviour, why would this video have been made in the first place?

[@Jebcbeb]

@@GreyrainLife also I think it logically follows that saying that propaganda isn't art and stuff you disagree with isn't propaganda, you disprove your own point since no one within a culture would consider their own propaganda as propaganda, they would call it art

[@Officialboss3000]

No, but some art definitely contributes to it or acts as a catalyst

[@LLS710]

"There will always be some who will hate what I am talking about, but that is the nature of opinion".

[@karlmay5306]

Joker was precisely as profound as I was expecting from the director of The Hangover

[@MachFiveFalcon]

It doesn't say anything new, but the basic message of "the system oppresses the working class" always needs to be heard by new audiences. If it's packaged in a way that more people listen, I can get behind it. The pitfall is obviously when edgelords distort the message into something it wasn't meant to be as he explained. Maybe the Joker wasn't the right character to use since he does so many horrible things.

[@karlmay5306]

@@MachFiveFalcon everyone who loved Joker should be forced to watch Bad Boy Bubby.

[@MachFiveFalcon]

@@karlmay5306 Thanks for introducing me to that film. Based on what I read, I'll have to give it a try if I can brace myself tight enough for the ride lol

[@ArturGlass.C]

@@MachFiveFalconYep and the message also has an overarching point about ableism and about the lack of support for people with disability specifically. For that, it does kinda add something new imo or at least something rare to see in mainstream movies. It really baffles me how the edgelords just skip over that part.

[@tonyrigatoni766]

I was always surprised by people who wanted to be like Tyler Durden. I actually thought Fight Club did a good job of demonstrating some of the flaws of being a hyper-masculine guy who wants to destroy society. Tyler Durden is a great character, but he's not someone I'd ever want to be.

[@Charlie_probably...]

to me it's like the nietzschean aspect of becoming your true self, despite the world around you. He essentially embraces the parts of his psyche that he formerly rejected in order to fulfill himself. also I wish there was a real fight club (as in the fighting aspect itself)

[@benschmitt7035]

@@Charlie_probably... you mean like a boxing gym or something ? What is a "real" fight club lol

[@Charlie_probably...]

@@benschmitt7035 underground bare knuckle mma

[@benschmitt7035]

@@Charlie_probably... so you WANT to do what tyler was doing in fight club? Did you watch the movie at all, or in fact the video above this comment section?

[@Charlie_probably...]

@@benschmitt7035 no I don't believe in returning to an anprim society. I phrased my first comment wrong. I was trying to play devil's advocate as to why people like the movie so much. I think it's an interesting story about a toxic relationship with oneself with an interesting gay subtext.

[@fibonacci8]

When the only acceptable level of nonconformity portrayed in media is "madness", you get people liking either conformity or "madness".

[@dsmith3112]

It is worth mentioning here that the role of Neo was originally offered to Will Smith, but he turned it down to do Wild Wild West.

[@usefulidiot21]

If that's true, then thank goodness.

[@UrAverageFR_Teen]

​@@usefulidiot21 it is true indeed, you can find vids where he talks about that. He even believes that turning down the role was a good thing for the movie

[@acrophobe]

I don't think D-Fens was ever intended to be or portrayed as the hero of Falling Down, and anyone trying to read the film as a defiant declaration of violent working class white triumph is on a fool's errand. In the scene in the neo-Nazi's storeroom, you'll notice that soon after hearing the Nazi tell him "we're the SAME, you and me!" and he shoots him, but the next shot D-Fens fires is actually at the mirror as he's looking at himself. Then he finishes off the Nazi. He has a painful moment of self-awareness that the Nazi was telling the truth and he can't stand to see what he is. At the end of the film he explicitly comes to the realization that he's the villain of his story. Over and over again he is seen as being an outcast abusive psychopath, a sad, unhinged and enraged manbaby with an explosive temper and a child's understanding of the world. The film doesn't glorify Bill Foster, but it doesn't entirely condemn or vilify him either. Robert Duvall's Detective Prendergast is a foil for D-Fens and you have to compare and contrast the two men's wildly differing responses to being obsolete white men in America to appreciate the nuance of the storytelling rather than assume D-Fens is the protagonist of the film simply because he's the lead character.

[@SilortheBlade]

And some people think Tyler Durden is the hero of Fight Club, or Starship troopers was a straight movie about patriotism, or Robocop was not pointing out the folly of capitalism. Lots of people can't see the subtext even when it's straight text.

[@ktb8332]

I recently watched all of the Matrix movies and honestly, it's incredibly surprising to me that edgy white men latched on to it so much. Granted, I went in knowing the directors are trans women. But generally speaking, aside from the white leads, the cast is incredibly diverse. Morpheus' character expands so much after the second movie, beyond just mystic teacher. The human city is depicted as sexually liberated. Most of the heroes are women. Even Neo and Trinity have a really tender relationship. The series ends with Neo not destroying the machines, but working with them and establishing peace, to destroy the real villain: Agent Smith, whose thirst for control consumed everything. I feel like it's really easy to see that the Matrix is about social boundaries. Concepts like gender, race, class, are only socially imposed and can be deconstructed with work. But then again most people probably only watched the first film.

[@Magus_Union]

Yeah, I felt the inclusion of the Matrix trilogy in this dialog was completely unfair because it ignores all the Eastern philosophy that is displayed as part of the story's narrative. I mean, they tried to get Will Smith to play the lead, and Keanu Reeves was the one who ended up accepting the part. So I don't see how the Matrix series qualifies for his video essay's argument.

[@ktb8332]

@@Magus_Union he does mention that, like fight club, the ideology of the movie doesn't align with the people who attach themselves to it.

[@ktb8332]

@@Magus_Union I mean the term "red-pilled" was entirely co-opted by the right. He's not far off with the people who claim to love this movie

[@galek75]

Using deconstruction against social categories is kinda dumb, cuz we still have them.

[@ktb8332]

@@galek75 what do you mean? Those who escaped the matrix still have to return to it, to live by its rules to continue their goal. Yet, they know those rules don't have to be real. The only one who is truly free of the false limits of the matrix is Neo. In real life, we have those social boundaries. But we don't /have/ to. Race and gender only exist because of the societal belief in them. Many people are currently working hard to demolish this societal barriers, through dismantling systemic racism, advocating for socialist principles, and getting rid of the false gender binary.

[@37jsully]

It always mystified me that people who loved the aggreivement revenge movies did not transfer any sympathy or empathy from fictional characters to the fight against institutional racism we see today. I know it's now a trite phrase, but Rage Against the Machine wasn't about your parents dude.

[@davidgoldman3236]

Word

[@sabiti5428]

That's because they have no interest in talking to you

[@37jsully]

@@sabiti5428 lol what?

[@TheBerkeleyBeauty]

Those fictional characters that they empathize and sympathize with are white.

[@amuroray9115]

Because they don’t care about anyone else. That’s where the self-entitlement comes in. They think those messages are for them “alone.”

[@SeasideDetective2]

"Racist" has got to be in the top five list of most misunderstood and misused words in the English language. Over the past century, it's switched from meaning "white person who believes that other races are innately inferior subspecies of human" to "white person who has trouble getting along with people of color for societal reasons." The connotation has gone from natural science to sociology, which is really bizarre if you think about it. It also makes no sense from a psychological point of view. If you're confident in your superiority over other people, why would you resent them? Wouldn't you not care about them? Wouldn't you just smugly ignore them? That's why the "resentful racist" trope has always seemed to be a double bind to me. The assumption is that white men are always the bad guys, whether they're on the top or the bottom. Bill "D-FENS" Foster bucks both those stereotypes in that he's middle-class; he's the "normal" and "neutral" type of white man. He doesn't possess a sneering elitist attitude, but he's not a self-loathing "victim," either. He believes in the middle-class value system - a core tenet of which is that social equality is possible if everyone in society "makes something of themselves." Foster knows (in theory, at least) what it takes to succeed in society, and he is - or, rather, was - confident in his ability to pursue that course of action, as well as willing to pursue it in actuality. Foster doesn't believe that his racial whiteness bestows on him innate superiority; he sees himself as DESERVEDLY superior because he's worked hard to get to that level. If he had been, say, a middle-class black man, he'd probably have possessed the very same attitude toward social hierarchies. As far as this type of person is concerned, every citizen of a democratic society has the opportunity to strive toward this state of "enlightened" superiority - and those who fail to make any progress at all have only their own laziness to blame. When Foster encounters other white characters whom he believes have failed to live up to his meritocratic ideal, such as the privileged golfers at the country club or the panhandler on the street, he views them with just as much contempt as he does the nonwhite criminals who tried to take his briefcase. In the worldview of men like Foster, they're all parasites.

[@JohnGardnerAlhadis]

You broke the film down better than the bloke in the review did. Kudos.

[@SeasideDetective2]

@@JohnGardnerAlhadis Why, thank you!

[@darthdank1993]

A point that might add to falling down at the time was the previous generation worked one job their whole life. Basically when a company hired you, you worked till retirement. That had changed overnight in the late 80s…companies started to fired older employees and replace them with younger cheaper labor…labor that now was competing with not just younger but females and minorities essentially doubling the labor pool to compete with….falling down addressed the anxieties around what do you do when your older and lose what you were promised upon hiring to a world you cant compete anymore yet need to provide. Themes common now but were new then to the typical american middle class with the 90s corporate restructuring of American economy. I often wonder if the focus between racial tensions should be seen as less natural and more corpatism scapegating groups against each other as the real provoking factor is corporate restructurings slowly squeezing national wealth upward more and more not just for wealth but undermining democratic power since these conflict strain a functioning democracy. Like back when in early ny irish groups and black groups clashed as the employers put ads out pitting the two groups against each other driving wages down and distracting labor from attacking the employers.

[@aidafuentesv]

Taxi Driver is such a great example of this, even Scorsese was outraged when some guy tried to replicate the behavior of Travis. He almost stopped making films because people weren't getting the message of the film and he thought it was his fault. You should do a Scorsese video because his whole career is about the dichotomy of violence and ambition of the American society. It would be interesting to see it analyzed by you.

[@sabsain2399]

The way I've seen 4chan white men idolize and glorify the suffering and edginess of these fictional men

[@yougetwhatyoufuckingdeseRVE77]

Yeah yeah because Travis who want God to send his rain to wash of his new York liberal city from the degeneration the veteran who don't believe in a young girl doing what the girl was doing under the name of women (lib) who want to take a stand against all of this who doesn't know his society anymore from the point it was to the way its moving a progressive way is obviously a liberal movie and this character is obviously on the side of the left and for sure anyone who watch this will take it wrong being a non conservative movie lol what is this do yall leftists think that movie on your side

[@Achrononmaster]

Two replies to your comment were invisible. But good comment. Travis = Conservative. Cannot even think of how to collectively and peacefully protect the innocent.

[@yougetwhatyoufuckingdeseRVE77]

@@Achrononmaster yeah yeah yall liberals be saying that right wingers don't get movies a man who pray that God will send his rain to wash off his new York city liberal city who is filled with degen and that is literally in front of yall eyes when Travis point out to the girls of the street and the gangs.. Etc but oh oh yeah Travis is a woke social justice warrior Travis stand for the lgbt and women rights Travis is definitely a women right advocate lol yall are not funny

[@yougetwhatyoufuckingdeseRVE77]

Yall liberals be funny sometimes do u know that u really think taxi driver is a liberal movie 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@RevPirateDan]

I re-watched "Falling Down" a few years ago with a a friend. We didn't have a term for it, but "Aggrieved Entitlement: The Movie" was definitely the term we were looking for.

[@tdns01]

I just choked on my drink lol

[@elustran]

I think a lot of people who go through "Aggrieved Entitlement" have a moment where they look in mirror and see some blatant version of themselves and then reject it just like Dfens did with that Nazi in the surplus store. There's this failure to see themselves as what they truly are. I think Falling Down is important because it highlights and humanizes some of the problems but needed a clearer lens so people finding themselves on that path could divert themselves from it.

[@RevPirateDan]

@@elustran Short reply: yes. Long reply: it's really hard. Even just looking at Falling Down, he is convinced he's the good guy. Heck, he shoots a nazi, which puts him in the same camp as Indiana Jones, Sgt. Nick Fury, and countless other pulp heroes. How could he possibly be the bad guy if he's killing nazis? And when people aren't willing to ask the question "Am I maybe acting like the bad guy here?" they're very unlikely to come to the conclusion "Yes, yes I am the bad guy". And, no, I don't know how to do better with stuff like this. I think maybe part of it is to deny these characters either a "winning" ending or a "blaze of glory" ending. Give them endings that cannot be mythologized or idolized. Have them go out with a whimper. I feel like the show "The Shield" did that pretty well. Unfortunately, those endings tend to not sell tickets, so... I dunno.

[@upperclassnoobs]

That movie fucking sucked. I was hoping for a 90s joker. I hated the main character the whole time. How can anyone like Michael Douglas in this?

[@eatersthemanfool]

@@upperclassnoobs you aren't supposed to like him. The whole point of the movie is that he's an entitled prick.

[@TyezEyez]

Misdirected anger coupled with changes in society, create a dangerous cocktail for everyone.

[@maryannlupus2187]

I cannot articulate how much I love this video. Extremely well said and very thought-provoking. Insta-subscribe like 4 minutes in… so glad to have found you!

[@DLYChicago]

Falling Down was pretty clear about showing that the Michael Douglas character was the villain. It was sympathetic to the character in explaining how his world was taken away from him but his flaw was his failure to adapt. He could not see how change could be for the better. His "bad day" did not have to be bad; it was his perception of his experience that made it bad. On a larger, social-political level, the movie is aimed at social conservatives who want to take us back to some supposed golden age (the 50's) when America still "worked".

[@mr.beaverchair3622]

Thank you. How so many people miss this point is beyond me. It's explicitly spelled out at the end when Prendergast confronts him at the end. "I'm the bad guy?"

[@Benjamin_Kraft]

I watched the movie some weeks ago, and was utterly surprised at what it was actually like. I had expected it to be some sort of parody film of like living out the power fantasy everyone has once in a while when confronted with the absurdities of the small and big struggles in our day-to-day lives. Instead, though Michael Douglas is shown some sympathy, he clearly is the bad guy and just makes things worse for him and everyone around him. The power fantasy is there, but he only makes things worse when acting out in the way he does. He's not filling the role of a hero in the movie, but a villian; he's not setting things in order and bringing happiness and relief, but causing disorder and suffering. The topics are serious as well, he can't accept the divorce he has had, and seems to suffer from some sort of mental illness as well. It's really strange to me now to see all the memes idolizing the movie and his character when in the actual movie he tries to forcibly visit his ex-wife and daughter whilst armed to the teeth. Occasionally it's a fun romp, and at times he does arguably good things (like the confrontation with the surplus store owner) but mostly it's tragic, and though we can feel sorry for Michael Douglas and wish he'd found help to relieve his suffering, he's definitely the villain.

[@transentient]

I don't think it was clear at all. The single most tender moment in the whole film is when he breaks into his ex-wife's house and watches videos of him being an abusive asshole to them. He is just blank about it, it's playing in the background. And the dog comes up and snuggles with him. The message in this scene is that we should feel sorry for him for his failings.

[@simoneidson21]

No the movie is pretty anti capitalist, there’s even a scene where a black guy in the same exact clothing as Bill is being discriminated against

[@mr.beaverchair3622]

@@transentient That's not the message I got from that scene at all. I wouldn't call it "tender" in the least. It's harrowing. It's showing that he's not just a normal guy having "a really bad day." It's showing that his tendency to lash out and be abusive whenever things don't go his way is a deeply embedded part of his personality and that maybe his intentions towards his family aren't as wholesome as he makes them sound. This is the film saying, "In case you were confused, this is not a good guy." I think you're just reading too much into the dog nuzzling up to him.

[@knsellout]

I was about 16 when I first saw Falling Down in the theater. I had a different take on it at the time. In the beginning of the movie, the main character was easy to sympathize with, and even cheer on as the Anti-Hero. I was blind to the idea that this was entitlement at the time. The Fast Food place represented inconveniences set forth by the system for completely arbitrary reasons, and here was a guy that wasn't going to just swallow it like Pavlov's dog when the bell rings. The scene with the gang I viewed as a chihuahua managing to chase off a pack of wolves. I didn't notice the racism to it at the time, because I was a teen that was really into Gangsta Rap at the time, and I saw LA Gangs as the modern mafia, or fearsome warlords, and here was this whimpy guy taking control of the situation. The scene in the convenience store represented a fad that would continue to grow, when instead of pricing items at a modest profit over cost, merchants started raising prices to the highest point the market would bear before loss of business would lose more money than could be gained by the price gouging. To put this in perspective, in 1993, I could get a 16oz bottle of pop from just about any gas station in my area for $0.75 or less, so the idea of paying more than that for a 12oz aluminum can seemed ridiculous, and would feel like taking advantage of you as a customer. But about halfway through the movie, the veil starts to lift... and we begin to see that our "Anti-Hero" who was bucking the status quo, was actually not a good guy at all.... he was a sick man, an abusive and demanding man.... and that everything we cheered up until this point, was not him bucking the system in order to right wrongs, but actually the product of his deep seated misanthropic anger. He was a man who would be fully willing to harm innocent people. And my stomach knotted up at the realization that I had been cheering him on in the beginning of the movie. As a teen, my biggest takeaway from the movie was this: "The Enemy of my enemy is not my friend." All that being said, Me, being an adult now, and having taken the time to learn about my privilege and the shadier histories of society as a whole in this country, I recognize the validity in most of your critiques. But I wanted to share how I saw the movie through the eyes of a 16 year old white boy.

[@dreamsprayanimation]

Do you consider the Irish or Armenian to be privileged due to their whiteness?

[@CanelaAguila]

@@dreamsprayanimation yeah, of course. Privilege is not binary. You can have white privilege while still being disadvantadged because of ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, etc. Even circumstance. Privilege isn't about having a perfect life within a society.

[@CanelaAguila]

@Oo. I'm very sorry for those things, but most (serious) essayists do touch on those topics. Those would equate to wealth/class privilege and the privilege of being able-bodied/minded. I never truly realized what privilege was till part of mine was taken away, and I still know I'm extremely privileged despite circumstances. I know that if you had faced the set of problems I've faced while living in extreme poverty with a ruined mental health, the exact same set of problems would have been infinitely worse for you. That people don't make that nuance, that teenagers on twitter don't even know what nuance is yet, all of that doesn't change privilige itself.

[@ruaoneill9050]

I have the same sorta reading of this film. By the time they're on the pier and Defense is like 'I'm the bad guy?' it seems so OBVIOUS that he's the bad guy and the fact that I'd been feeling sympathy towards him or even cheering him on initially suddenly made me feel REALLY uncomfortable. This film is great!

[@gungun5845]

🤓

[@lNoWayAroundItl]

I love your intro's. This one had such an instant depth.

[@seansanders5959]

The Joker was about class warfare. It wasn't a white incel treatment. It was an indictment of Reaganomics and neoliberalism in the face of a tone deaf establishment. It was brilliant.

[@77Creation]

People know what Joker is about. Doesn't mean incel's didn't try to ruin it.

[@davidking4838]

I am 100% in agreement with you. Also, the lead actor - Phoenix - is a brilliant actor who deserved his Academy Award.

[@marioncarbonell6047]

@@77Creationjust like they ruined American psycho, and ironically, the movie was directed by a gay man and the book was written by a transgender woman, same thing with the matrix, it was literally written by a woman.

[@jackieAZ]

⁠@@marioncarbonell6047 where are you seeing that American psychos author is trans? I don’t see that when googling

[@UrAverageFR_Teen]

​@@marioncarbonell6047 I think you got your infos mixed up

[@oldflowers1342]

Honestly, Joker was an incredibly important movie to me because of its message about mental health. As someone who relies on medication to remain functional, it was terrifying to watch a character face his own demise at the hands of predatory capitalism all because of a mental illness he could not control. In the end, I didn't view the Joker as a hero, I was terrified that he was something I could become. It illuminated my own fear of our mental health system in a way that was almost traumatic. It, to me, was unforgettable. I make sure to separate that from what edgelords tried to turn it into.

[@lancewalker2595]

I just hope we don't dismiss that capacity to relate on account of someone's race and sex; one can feel as you did about the Joker, for example, and be male and white without being an edgelord.

[@lancewalker2595]

@Rae Esterlina You don't believe human psychology has any role in the fact of violence? I understand what you're saying, mostly people suffering psychologically hurt themselves; but let's not deny the reality that there are no such things as monsters.... just suffering people who make decisions in-accordance with their experience and condition.

[@Gaff.]

@@lancewalker2595 Why do you think class society is not the prime factor in the making of most of these 'monsters'? In Falling Down, Joker, &c., and in real-world counterparts, class society is nearly always at the root.

[@herbg4866]

I love it played into everyone’s fears about mental illness

[@Tessitura9]

Just like Fight Club and The Matrix, I felt like Joker also had a lot of social commentary and undertones but were somehow overlooked by media. Late stage capitalism, mental health, wealth inequality, family dynamics. But all the media seemed to see was that it was a hyper edgelord film. To be honest it probably has a lot to do with the previous Dark Knight shooting. People were just scared and that's understandable.

[@dumfriesspearhead7398]

I don't think so. The media chooses NOT to address those issues because it's too dangerous and takes them down a rabbit hole they'd rather not go down. So they stick to the surface with a cultural, non political viewpoint. See it over and over again in so many dramas. For e.g., Breaking Bad is about a lot of things but what I don't see any US critic mention is that BB is partly a critique on the US health system.

[@marcantoinelab12321]

I came out of Joker surprised at the Marxist approach it seemed to take. Even tho the director denied it and said it wasnt? The class antagonism, the alienation, the environment and history that shaped the actions and reactions of the character showing that people aren't just "evil" and it's often material conditions and the such that actually influence them the most.

[@rl318]

The people who think Fight Club is some right-wing manifesto never read the book or know anything about the author. But there were people out there that did not realize Rage Against the Machine was politically radical, so a lack of comprehension is rampant in society.

[@ExeErdna]

@@marcantoinelab12321 Yeah it worked off the "Killing Joke's" "One bad day" concept and gave Joker A LOT of bad days. Yet you can see it isn't just him yet the city itself was rotting and the city itself just needed "one bad day" that's what it got. Then we still got the setup that it was ALL in his head the whole time so what is "real" and what is just him creating it?

[@ExeErdna]

@@clayjack9969 Eventhough in the big retrospective of The Watchmen, Rorschach was right. All those people died for nothing, he and the comedian died for nothing. The whole story is more bleek now that it's all meaningless. Unless you want to work off the "Doomsday Clock" storyline and Manhattan gave his world a true "Superman"

[@Cat3deye]

First video I watch on your channel. It will not be the last. Thank you for your great work!

[@erwane.106]

This was extremely interesting. We are always stronger when we understand things. Thank you for helping me understand those men.

[@dripshameless5605]

16:57 ironically Fight Club can be on that list too. That's one the problems with conservatives. Fight Club is literally about how bullsh!t the fight clubs are and how those men went from one dysfunctional place to another. Heck, conservatives legit think Carlin is on their side despite that man consistently talking about how much he despises them

[@darlalathan6143]

I guess conservatives misunderstood Fight Club and Carlin, because they're nostalgic for Victorian bare-knuckle boxing and like Carlin's "no rights" joke.

[@soaribb32]

I'd say it's not misunderstanding from some people but rather how some promote right leaning ideas to seem cooler.

[@immanuelcunt7296]

No, it's about how they went from weakness to strength, which, while not moral, and while not enough to sustain you, is the first step towards better. Because you can't be good without having some strength of character. They did go from one form of dysfunction to another, but that other form of dysfunction is a step in a direction that moves towards functionality. Carlin despised conservatives in his time, and he was a liberal back then, modern conservatives hold most of the same views as 90s liberals.

[@MorbidMindedManiac]

I seem to notice that internet conservatives like to do that to anything that seems “Tough” or “Rebellious”, for example, I see loads of people who take “Rebellious” music from back then, which usually criticized conservatism and capitalism, and they make it seem like they would be on their side today I see this happen with old punk bands like Dead Kennedies, and they think that “Right wing is the new punk rock”, or with the rap-metal band Rage Against The Machine, where I see many of them say “It’s such a shame RATM became the thing they swore to destroy”, despite the fact that all of their music had been far-left from day one, and the band members still stand by those views to this day, so they get mad that they can’t apply their own ideology to it

[@CrescentUmbreon]

@@MorbidMindedManiac "Right wing is the new punk rock" was the funniest thing I saw people say online, lmao. It's conservatism. It's literally the opposite of pushing the social envelope!

[@heatherlee2967]

“The sad thing is that these movies and the people that watch them never come to the realization that it IS white supremacist, capitalistic patriarchy that…chews them up, spits them out, and uses them as fodder for the machine”

[@Katya_Lastochka]

So how are you not an anti establishment edelord? Move to Cuba.

[@TheDarkblue57]

No way, its almost explicitly stated in the 'we live in a society' meme. That's exactly what that meme means and is probably the most obvious theme in joker Taxi driver etc.

[@Jose_Doe]

Woah almost like they dont actually subscribe to those beliefs in the first place and get mad and attack whatever IS doing that to them, including fuckers like this guy.

[@miketrotman9720]

I wonder if that's partly because no one except ideologues understands their experience in these high-outline terms-"white supremacist, capitalistic patriarchy"-or hackneyed political jargon. People seem to actually understand their experience in simpler value terms: fairness/unfairness, foremost. What seems to happen is that people manage to sideline or bury their feelings about living in an exploitative (unjust) system for the sake of their children. It's when you take away the hope/illusion that their children will have it better that you start to see these catastrophic cracks in the dam holding back their rage.

[@marocat4749]

You can say they dont know how to "rage against the maschine" who have altright fans somehow, or bladerunnr 204 that is entirely about a white cop reflecting who he is and deflecting and discovering the hard way he can decide some things that make him human, its about reflecting and that , has altright fans.. The kavernacle is about weird things because they aree openkly unashamed progressive and against capitalism and opression. , just to shout out

[@luckybear101]

Absolutely amazing video. By far probably my favorite of yours that I have seen to date.

[@doublestarships646]

As a Latino growing up in a Latino and Black environment then to be catapulted to a more white highschool during my last two years of school was a surreal experience. I grew up with the whole viewpoint that can be summed up with a messed up joke about white people. "You know a girl is dating a white guy when there's holes in the wall." I don't know if many white people understand where that fear of associating with them comes from. Some can say that they understand but they would have to experience how it feels to grow up in a racist area that slowly transition to a Latino and Black communities.

[@letsdothis9063]

Some guys put holes in walls. Some guys put holes in people. I would rather be around the one that takes out their anger on inanimate objects.

[@vice2versa]

Im more likely to get shot in a black neighborhood tbh. Im black and had several experiences of seeing gun violence and almost getting shot at myself so these type of jokes about white people really dont make much sense from my experience. Most white people are far less dangerous than people from hood type areas.

[@deepspacecow2644]

@@letsdothis9063Some do neither

[@atrain3441]

I'm black but I still find myself gravitating towards movies like Fight Club and Joker and whatnot. In a sense, it feels like they tell my story. I have no purpose, or I've lost my purpose, then something sparks up that gives my life a more... cynical... meaning. I've had depression and those movies helped me realize that the cure to depression is to find your purpose in life, and then spend every waking moment of your being attempting to complete that purpose. My purpose? To become a very highly skilled fighter. And that's what I've been doing for the past 11 years since I realized that was what I wanted to ever since I was 12. I'm 23 now and what would be called a heavyweight boxer, black belt in judo, karate and now practicing muy thai and krav maga. I don't really identify with right-leaning politics at all, but the movies of that nature helped me claw my way out of a dark time.

[@erikjohnson1684]

Stop, this doesn’t fit into the race based narrative we’re trying to tell here. 😂

[@thefuturist8864]

The great thing about films like Joker is that the represent society as it is, rather than as various political groups are claiming it to be. No-one is going to be so naive as to claim that a black person in modern America will face no prejudice whatsoever, but at the same time the idea that prejudice is a simple thing that flows in one direction from an objectively 'powerful' group to an objectively 'powerless' one is simplistic and nonsensical. There's a reason so many films about disillusioned white men exist; it's because the reality of being a white man in the US is shit, not because white people have it worse than black people but because the possibility of realising oneself as an individual has disappeared entirely. Joker, Falling Down, and other films like Fight Club are about people who try to make their own meaning in the world, and about how this almost always appears violent to everyone else because it disrupts the everyday order into which the individual disappears in the first place. I'm glad you found something meaningful in your life. Don't let anyone take it away from you (and don't let anyone tell you that they know better than you about your life).

[@saattlebrutaz]

"I Still Find Myself" - what does your being Black have anything to do with it? You're right, it doesn't ane the author is nuts.

[@futurestoryteller]

Unironically you should watch longform interviews with Michael Jai White, that guy is aspirationally introspective. A couple choice examples are him talking about how Martin Sheen would be on his Mt. Rushmore because of how much he respected other people when he met him, or that time he was dead set on having an intellectual conversation with a large group of white supremacists to non-combatively pick apart their beliefs. This dude, is fit, black Uncle Iroh irl.

[@gusiguess2974]

The thing is, the Joker wasn’t portrayed as actually improving the world, he was just frustrated with the world and took it out in all the wrong ways. The movie has a clear line between empathizing with him and the things he does wrong

[@ALotOfCancer]

Not at the end though. He should have lost something at the end like mentally ill people in real life. Instead he "wins" and everyone is happy.

[@wickedarctiinae4132]

It wasn't that clear to me. Nevertheless, I didn't have any inpulse to try to become like him, because the movie was rather as an interesting view, from a sociological perspective.

[@amdza]

Growing up all my cousins were boys, so I was really into a lot of these edgelord movies. It was only later in middle school and high school that I realized that what I saw and what these white boys at school saw were two different movies. It reached a point where I wouldn't fangirl over these things, even if I wanted to, because I knew the other kids in my class were making certain subconscious ideological inferences about who I was as a person. Before the Deadpool movie came out, the fandom was filled with incels and a lot (a lot) of white supremacists. I got detention once for getting in a fight that blew way out of proportion with a guy about how Deadpool was Queer & Disabled icon--all things outright shown in the comics, and a thing that constantly kept in him conflict with the mainstream heroes like the X-men and the Avengers. We read all the same comics, but were consuming entirely different fantasies.

[@MachFiveFalcon]

And it's a shame because a lot of guys who are drawn to power fantasies have been hurt or excluded in some way or another. Not marginalized on the same level as POC, women, and LGBT people - but still alienated all the same. And it's funny you contrast Deadpool with the more mainstream X-Men because the entire point of X-Men is to represent people who face oppression for being different.

[@bunsenn5064]

I feel like seeing other people’s reactions to these movies affirms my resigned views about the world more than the movies themselves. Seeing people misconstrue the societal commentary underlining these movies to reaffirm their beliefs is kind of harrowing, because it just goes to show that people will bend reality just so it agrees with them. I may seem dissonant, but the world around me seems a lot more willfully detached from reality the more I come to understand it.

[@artbybard]

i always love how nuanced your takes are. Critique out of empathy and understanding is where the real depth is.

[@artbybard]

@@horribleprogram i get you, however, gotta disagree. it's very naive to think that any human can write anything without bias. *acknowledging* one's biases and emotion in academic writing should be its future, imho

[@d.f.s.studios281]

The man’s really smart but this is by no means a nuanced take

[@wisconsieee]

I feel the same! The video has a great balance of this

[@itszaque5031]

You can like a Villain without agreeing with him. I enjoyed watching Joker because I felt for him and felt sad seeing him become the joker. It’s a tragedy, not a hero finding his true purpose.

[@SeSdesc]

that "white incel males" like a movie, doesn´t mean anything...

[@benhirsch2255]

@@SeSdesc a lot of non white people like the movie too though. People can take away different lessons or viewpoints from a movie. Not every single person thinks the same as you

[@SeSdesc]

@@benhirsch2255 Read my comment, *calmly* , slowly... And if you do it right, think how dumb you really are : )

[@benhirsch2255]

@@SeSdesc you still have made no point. This is a place of discussion, not to spew your anger

[@SeSdesc]

@@benhirsch2255 Wow you didn´t get it... Your reply makes no sense, because you are assuming that i have a certain point of view *that´s not there* Is really so hard to understand? Irony loves the company of dumb people... god...

[@TheAgore47]

What is so common to all of these movies that blows my mind about their absolute misinterpretation from edgelords is that they all comment that the reason they are in the situations they are in are as a result of allowing late stage capitalism to ruin society.

[@benjaminchartier6458]

When I saw the Joker, what I saw is a person that society categorically called a loser, a person who is definitely experiencing mental issues, not just coming to his mental problems, but that those mental problems resonated with a large number of people, making him into a toxic version of an antihero. I felt like the message of this movie was incredibly disturbing. That message was that we're just a couple of french fries short of a complete societal breakdown. American manhood needs to be given a positive direction. Stat ......

[@SoCaliana]

The Matrix lead was turned down by Will Smith. If he had accepted it, it would be interesting to see what the analysis would have been.

[@jayman5234]

@@jaxsonlee10 It probably would've worked anyway. People love Will Smith.

[@bartholen]

I would love to know how much casting Will Smith instead of Keanu would've changed the film. It's pretty hard for me to imagine Will Smith, a titan of charisma, playing an isolated, awkward, lonely computer hacker. Especially Will Smith ca 1999. IMO part of the reason for why Keanu works as Neo is that his acting suits the movie's tone and style: stilted, somewhat off balance, fairly cold emotionally. I can only see Will Smith being distracting in that kind of movie.

[@shenzhong2942]

@@jayman5234 I, Robot flopped completely

[@TheActualCathal]

The way the Wachowskis tell it, Will wanted the movie to be funnier. The way Will tells it, he just couldn't get his head around what the movie was actually about.

[@StoneCoolds]

And lets nor forget matrix its basically a copycat of a japanese anime lol, man you americans love to put everything o skin color Now even heroe tales and underdog bringing down a system fighting alongside the plebs its a withe american creation, he even says "the god old days nostalgia" its a racist america thing, when every society in human history expressed this "good old times" nostalgia Now 1 thing, will smith would definitely suck for matrix, but Denzel Washington would have been amazing

[@transentient]

Not going to lie, "Falling Down" really fucked me up for my teens and 20s. The movie was really meant to show D-FENS as a sympathetic character who set out on a righteous path, and as he made his way, it was *society and external forces* that twisted his path until at the end he realized he had to commit suicide by cop. Rather than him making a series of bad choices, in a grand effort to reject responsibility for his failures and project his anger at himself on those around him. I saw the movie when it came out as a teen with a big group of friends, we were talking about it afterward and I was like "his ex-wife did him so wrong, and he just wanted to get her back" and the girls in my circle were not having that one bit, referring to the scene where he breaks into his ex-wife's house and watches old videotapes of him being aggressive and abusive to his family. One of the things that has really scarred me about this movie is that scene, because the dog comes up to him and just completely accepts him, and this communicates to the audience that you know, we should feel sorry for him for having lost his temper and behaved in a threatening manner to his family repeatedly! What's your take on like, American History X? I think about whether it's possible to do this kind of movie and actually have a message of "this is NOT OKAY, Tyler" and I think one thing you need to do is show the antihero actually coming to realize he is the cause of his problems, that society never owed him anything, and he in fact took advantage of all of the privileges of being a white male. If not show the story from the perspective of the victims, I guess. That's another kind of movie there should be more of.

[@bigfootfound5301]

Bill (D-Fens) is the object of sympathy, but he is also seen as an insane threat and a danger. Prendergast is the actual "good guy" of the film. The film has some scenes that make Bill the "bad guy." He brings up to his ex wife how some nations allow men to murder their wives, if the offend them. WHOA. Then he has the creepy scene in his mind, how he and his family could be happy and "go asleep in the dark." Is this a metaphor for a secure home, or for them all dying together? Prendergast suggests that Bill wanted to pull the "murder-suicide" routine we oft see in the news, with estranged lovers.

[@birchwwolf]

12:15 context for the Mr. Robot scene, for those unaware: This speech is revealed to be what Elliot _wants_ to say to his therapist, but it ends up being his own thoughts instead (you can hear the reverberated voice of his therapist clicking him back into reality.) It's an early episode of the show but it succinctly explains why he basically wants to Hack The Planet and why he gets caught up with Mr. Robot. Elliot gets better later on in the show (a rarity for this genre) but this scene is a good illustration of what's being talked about in this essay. Also, Mr. Robot rules; check it out if you haven't yet! :)

[@andmicbro1]

I mean Mr Robot is a trip. That ending really upends what you think is really going on the whole time.

[@meatbot.404]

Glad to hear that it gets better, I’ve been interested in it, but clips like this always made it look a lil cringe

[@hunterb7549]

@@meatbot.404 it’s a pretty good show, I’d say pretty far from cringe, one of the only shows I think computer savvy folks can watch and not die inside when someone is talking about programming or hacking… handles this whole “societal angst” thing pretty well too, doesn’t go overboard trying to make him righteous for all this stuff, mostly just confused & misguided, like most guys that actually think like that.

[@jordi33]

@@meatbot.404 You can't judge any piece of art on a clip. It's a great show which delves into the human psyche through the perspective of mental health (social anxiety, depression, narcissistic personality disorder, dissociative personality disorder, addiction, psychosis...). Every single character is meaningful and adds a different perspective to the collective, yet completely individual human experience we all live. The show is also really current and manages to brilliantly capture our modern society and the social discontent post 2008 and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Sam Esmail is a really unique and creative director and some of the scene are pure magic. There's honestly very little wrong with the show, the concept, the cinematography, the acting, the characters, the music, and the pacing are all brilliant. Highly recommend if you're already interested in watching it.

[@OttoGrainer27]

@@meatbot.404 On the contrary, I thought it only got worse and ended on the stupidest note I could imagine, especially insulting those who know any reference to the hacking & thematic material.

[@NefariousSpineLizard]

I feel so dumb, I JUST noticed that you change your stack of books based on the topic at hand!!! I LOVEEEE THAT! Giving us immediate access to more information on each subject, yes! The ones in this video are so, so good. I read Angry White Men when it came out, and it completely changed who I was and my perspective on these issues as I could not understand it at all. It gave me an understanding as to MY contributions to this culture, and how I (a non-binary person) contributed to it during my "edgier" phase and put me in a greater position to reverse those wrongs.

[@ralphyetmore]

Great take, and one that I felt too. Especially about Falling Down. But as for the violence escalation, the thing you glossed over was a big point: access to guns. Maybe that's not in your wheelhouse, so I get it. Thank you for the post.

[@MotorcyclePhaedrus]

As a white south african male i would just throw in a comment on the mythology around percieved traditional masculinity (16:00) and the rewards that ostensibly go along with it. You say that some white males feel cheated when they dont achieve the status in society that they expected, and that they feel diminished and cheated by society. I would suggest, based partially on personal life experience, that these radicialized men feel like failures (for not living up to an unrealistic ideal), and that it is this dissapointment and perhaps even deep frustration and hatred toward self, that is primarily toxic. That all gets projected on one or other scapegoat in all to many cases, and of course that wreaks havoc on society. I just felt the need to stress that. Oh , and i havent lived in SA for some twenty years, but that is the society that shaped me in large part. Not to simplify the broader points you put across in a wonderfully concise and persuasive manner in this video though.

[@TheBigHerman007]

As a middle-class white man raised by Fox News watching parents, I know this feeling so well. Thankfully I was reached before I became an incel and have been working hard as hell to be a better member of my community. But this video is phenomenal and I look forward to more insight! Thank you for the hard work

[@brmbkl]

the way media and health care has been allowed to fall in the hands of rampant capitalists is the great tragedy of the american experiment. add to that the Military Industrial Complex, the Prison system and Policing to Budget and... it's enough for anyone to lose hope. speaking of which; I am absolutely astounded that the rage of underprivileged white men is always directed at minorities and "liberals", instead of the mechanisms that use them for profit. anyone want to shed a light on that? is it misguided patriottism?

[@crazyrr144]

you cant become an incel, you either are or you arent and you still didnt say if youre actually not anymore

[@MickeyMouse-lm6zj]

leftists are the opposite of working hard

[@MickeyMouse-lm6zj]

leftists think because they are working on a failed "revolution" no one asked for that it's enough and they shouldn't need a job to get paid

[@sabsain2399]

​@@crazyrr144 since the term incel gets very closely attributed to misogyny and misogynists- I think what they meant was that they didn't become a redpill/misogynistic incel. And no, a lot of beauty standards and criteria for what people find attractive is messed up and contorted

[@needbettername8583]

I think the quote at the end of falling down is overlooked and tragic. "I'm the bad guy?" Really felt like it hit hard when I watched it.

[@Killidoscope]

Great video! 45yr white male myself, Fight Club is my favorite movie and I read the book after because of it. I found myself in groups of people that also loved the movie but when the plot or message was discussed I found myself confused. I didn't understand if I was missing something, because the message I saw was a condemnation of fragile white masculinity with the narrator as a victim, while most of the fans I talked to saw it as a champion rising above nihilistic corporate capitalism. That was the obvious excuse for the character but didn't explain why he envisioned himself as a beautiful iconic male with a schoolyard recess mentality. The entirety of the "Fight Club" he creates in order to bond with other males who felt disenfranchised doesn't fit into the anti-corporate theme. I don't think I analyzed Falling Down as deeply but I do remember the scene at the end when he goes "I'm the bad guy" I remember telling the TV, "duh, yeah". The scene with the nazi I remember thinking that was him learning that he was on the wrong side, but it came across as "at least I'm not as bad as that guy" but never really considered that the nazi saw himself as a comrade to the main character, and how bad that was. Thanks for the vid!

[@unknownmortalphoenix]

Your videos are gold, never stop PLEASE!!!

[@Wuffskers]

The mention of white men feeling entitled to something that they've been conditioned to expect and then being angry when they don't get it is interesting to me, because as a white man I never felt that way but it's probably because I'm a gay man in the south and my high school experience was a pretty tense anxiety ridden part of my life and I can't say things got that much better even after the fact, so from a pretty early age I knew that whatever success white men had come to expect did not include white men like me, and their picture of success and happiness was very much not my picture of success and happiness

[@yuhyuh1471]

Ditto!

[@Scruffy-qi3ik]

Almost like trying to generalize a group to a point is kind of pointless

[@dude9318]

@@Scruffy-qi3ik exactly

[@SirSparrowHawk]

Same. Kinda glad I am not straight.

[@NoRockinMansLand]

@@Scruffy-qi3ik not really, if we add intersectionality then it's clear to see why this isn't a surprise. Most people want to continue seeing things from a one directional viewpoint as if people's identities are not multi layered

[@TNTales]

The hardest thing I've found to explain to other white men my age (early 40s) is that the term "toxic masculinity" doesn't mean that men or masculinity are inherently toxic. It's getting them to accept that certain things they were taught about "how to be a man" are actually toxic to THEM and the rest of society. I know when I was younger I definitely had an uncritical love of movies like Taxi Driver. I was a product of the era of the traditional patriarchy where men were stunted emotionally unless it was lust or rage and if one was unable to find a place in society the only way to establish yourself (or take revenge) was through acts of violence as a right of passage. It's a major theme in the works of Sam Peckinpah for example. It's only in the last 10 or 15 years that I've come to realize that society was never egalitarian or meritocratic and that these images were fantastical. I wasn't able to verbalize that though and your explanation helped with that especially reframing it in a healthy perspective. I do think the entitled aggression is a great descriptor. At the same time I'm able to understand why (erroneously) white men feel marginalized. They are in a position where their previous status has been destabilized and other groups are constantly reminding them of it and pushing to enshrine that destabilization. So they feel that violence (the traditional means of establishing power and identity) is what is required to reconcile the situation. They have yet to realize that the same elements that produce these toxic beliefs and behaviors in them effect others even more so and that the deconstruction of these idols should be a shared effort. Like you I hope that the future is better. Great video.

[@thefuturist8864]

White men don't just *feel* marginalised; they *are* marginalised. A narrow-minded, highly reductionist view has become fashionable, through which it has become popular to assume that any white man who doesn't appear to recognise his own privilege is mistaken and needs to be educated (usually they are expected to educate themselves, based on the idea that everyone else is supposedly tired of doing the 'emotional labour' required to help these men 'understand' the 'truth' of themselves; this is a useful convenience on the part of people whose entire worldview would fall apart at the slightest hint of a question). What this view doesn't understand is that, in reality, neither being white nor being male confers any specific advantage, and that the only way to pretend that it does is to invoke a similarly reductionist idea of what it is to be black and/or female, namely that the latter are oppressed merely by virtue of sharing a society with white men. This entire view has likely emerged, at least in part, from our propensity to prefer simplistic explanations and solutions (reality, of course, is a fundamentally complex phenomenon). The most interesting thing is that if we actually *listened* to white men, instead of assuming we already know enough about them, we would discover that reducing them to their skin colour and gender ignores the many varied problems they deal with on a day-to-day basis. One of these problems is that they have constantly been denied a voice; wealthy people tend to be more influential and have greater access to power and speech platforms, and while it might be more likely that wealthy people are white and male than black and/or female, it doesn't follow that a white male is likely to be wealthy, and most of them aren't; as such, they are at the mercy of a myriad of rules and expectations that they have no power to resist (and if they do they are highly likely to be marginalised and ostracised e.g. if they don't have a job, or a partner/family, or even decent physical or mental health). We should be looking at society and trying to see the problems we face, but we're not; instead, we're assuming we already know what they are and are then interpreting the world in ways that conform to our hypotheses. We claim that minorities should have a voice, but we're never willing to listen to them unless they parrot exactly what we expect them to say i.e. that they are victims of a white supremacist structural racism. Any black person who offers an alternative view is dismissed as having 'internalised whiteness', where 'whiteness' is nothing more than a god-of-the-gaps term meant to stand in for an utter lack of a credible explanation. TL;DR - pay attention to the world and the people in it, and resist the urge to see it through a lens. Masculinity may be harmful in some forms, but femininity should not be considered a wholly safe alternative. Sometimes we need strength, aggression and stoicism.

[@satyasyasatyasya5746]

I like to explain it like this: "Lets talk about toxic mushrooms and why you shoulnd't eat them." "Oh so now mushrooms are toxic???!!!" "No, just the toxic ones, so please stop eating them."

[@jakeisthedoctor2308]

@@satyasyasatyasya5746that is…. Not the best explanation I’ve heard

[@clatoski]

I only recently discovered your vids. I'm an academic historian, and I appreciate how honest, yet still academic you are.

[@wet-read]

Do you like Joker? I hated it.

[@spookyactionatadistance]

Mister Signifier , I don't know how it is that I just found your Channel today. I'm crazy about it and about you. You've got an instant fan4life and I've only seen three videos so far!

[@67nadin67]

"Karen got wild except it's a dude" , This dude summed this movie up in one simple and perfect sentence . Love it .

[@sono1951]

@Bären Television Z sorry it took so long king, here's your crown.

[@kkelseym]

I think black men did the same thing with Erik Kilmonger. A character who was trying to "help his people" but also admitted he's killed his own people to get to his goal, not to mention his unwarranted aggression towards that elderly black woman, and people were saying he was right and was the actual hero. Like they really couldn't tell they were cheering on essentially someone that would be their own downfall.

[@Ryan90red]

He made accurate criticisms of the established power. But then was comically villainous in how he dealt with people so the movie could end with him beaten and that be good. The movie is very liberal in its philosophy on power struggles. A truly great movie would have been if Eric had won and just straight up become the new Black panther.

[@celesteadeanes4478]

this moive is state influenced like "Birth of a Nation" in 1918. It is a an a assignment. U really think this stuff is organic?

[@mohq9573]

Kilmonger was correct but because Marvel is liberal propaganda they had to make him go overboard cartoon evil to delegitimize his views. It's common in liberal media to see a revolutionary figure whose heart is in the right place but they "go too far" by using violence and thus have to be rejected.

[@amuroray9115]

@@Ryan90red is this sarcasm?

[@Ryan90red]

@@amuroray9115 My comment is not sarcasm. The villain in the movie Black panther is great in so far as he makes accurate criticism, and weak in so far as he is then made exaggeratedly evil so that he can still be seen as the villain.

[@mikeskenne]

Very well conveyed. Great job! Thank you

[@SammiCPC79]

Falling down is a very sad movie. Great analysis, commenting mainly for the algorithm, I'm pretty new to this channel but glad to be here 🙂

[@spades498]

i really appreciate that your content discusses men and masculinity in a way that isnt just "men are bad yucky!!!" its so important that we educate men on this stuff without making them feel alienated or ostracized because if they do then theyre way less likely to actually pay attention to whats being said, so im really glad your videos exist!! thank you so much and i cant wait to see what you have to say next!!

[@williamthegunnut3839]

??? What. His whole video is ridiculing and talking shit about white men who are struggling really tough mentally. I don’t understand these people. It’s like if they pour gasoline on a fire and then gets surprised when it starts to fucking burn.

[@marvin2678]

You seem to have pretty low standards thanks to feminism lol

[@whynotanyting]

AKA constructive criticism; otherwise, it's just acrimony disguised as criticism.

[@payt00n]

@@marvin2678 you completely missed the point of this comment didn't u?

[@minodhij9056]

@@marvin2678 u guys always find a way to tie it back to feminism, don’t you?

[@ahmadhadi177]

If there's one thing I know for sure,this film,Joker, basically taught us that bullying people is not funny.It's painful and traumatic.

[@ssoto5475]

and when the inevitable happens its always someone elses fault of course...

[@vice2versa]

Exactly but fake intellectual like the video author ignore that part of the message.

[@paulwblair]

@@vice2versa The video author isn't ignoring anything. He's pointing out that a large cohort of mostly white men are completely missing the point of movies like this.

[@selty]

I can also say it has a pretty strong anti-medicine message which was super helpful to the already huge anti-meds discourse out there for mentally ill people

[@carlossaraiva8213]

​@@seltythe movie JOKER is not anti-meds, as the character gets progressively crazier and more insane and violent when he no longer can have his meds because the city closed his public hospital pdychiatric wing. How can anyone not see that?

[@dhun1979]

You kick ass, I feel like you and I could have hour long discussions over a breath of topics.

[@sizdimitri]

You are amazing! I really like all of your videos and you're so sweet while speaking about every matter that I just want to be your friend.

[@arkyung9549]

I'm not quite to the halfway point, so this may be moot, but I think people have a hard time digesting the concept of a main character you shouldn't identify or look up to. Which is to say that media literacy is just not at a great rate for the general populace.

[@mggardiner4066]

Or that you can identify with and still see how their outlook and behavior is problematic and ignore the critiques built in. The whole vigilante antihero as an outright hero even if the media they are in is critiquing it (the co-opting of the Punisher comes to mind, even if the different media interpretations have other issues)

[@brmbkl]

@@mggardiner4066 " you can identify with and still see how their outlook and behavior is problematic" that's the point of fight club in a way as well; understand the motivations, deplore the 'solutions' they come up with. if that's not ironic, given some of the misguided fans of these movies. it's almost like they are meant as manuals for a certain public as to what not to do. /jk i still think Falling Down is an exception, the protagonist is not the protagonist, it's about the fall-out (the wife and daughter) and the way the general public doesn't catch on to domestic toxic situations. the way the viewer only sees D-Fens for what he is until late in the game is analogous to how neighbours and friends mistake abuse for lovers quarrels and choose to look away from abuse until it's too late when the signs were always there.

[@bhkatzur]

You do terrific work, thank you!

[@lomtiptak9519]

From what I can see, the main issue with these edge-lord types is a major lack of perspective. Experience with cultures and communities different from your own is important to understanding the world we live in.

[@jeremymunene5304]

It's basic "because he does it on TV, I can do it too" even when the TV clearly says that it's wrong BoJack Horseman, The Joker, Rick are all people you should not idolise or look up to, and it's also the writers job to make sure that the audience knows and understands that, to avoid falsely justified bad behaviour in our world.

[@candicefrost4561]

And with Bojack and Rick, the curtain is pulled back in later seasons to reveal how they were gross and selfish all along and we were just blinded by the perspective of the narrative.

[@leviismyhusband5411]

AAAHHHH I COULD KISS YOU FOR MENTIONING BOJACK HORSEMAN! If you don’t mind I’m gonna rant about this for a little. The whole Philbert episode in bojack horseman was dedicated for people who find comfort and acceptance to relating too bojack. Bojack didn’t feel as bad when he was watching and playing the role of Philbert because Philbert understood him, Philbert was him, and Philbert did good things too so he’s not completely a bad guy he’s just a human who made mistakes or whatever bojack interpreted to be. Then when Diane realizes that bojack took the show in a way that made him feel less shittier about himself (like this video is talking about) she went off on bojack and told him it shouldn’t make him feel better about who he is, or that he deserve anything sympathy from people just cause he was down on his luck, that isn’t what he should’ve token away from this. And people though Diane was being too harsh on bojack (because secretly they feel like she’s being too harsh to them.) flash foward season six when everything came back to bojack, when the curtain unraveled and bojack had no where to hide his behaviour, people felt so much empathy for bojack. It’s crazy because the creator of the show has always been telling and warning us that bojack is not a good person. Bojack doesn’t truely truely want to change. Bojack purposely falls into these patterns with himself and people and him getting sober didn’t ultimately change who he was and what he did. He is not supposed to get away with this. He is not supposed to be the victim and they did an awesome job at showing how everything he did came back to him, cause he is not the good guy who did bad things. He was the bad guy in many peoples lives and just cause he was self aware of it to a certain extent did not give him a free pass.

[@marcoosorio3705]

@@leviismyhusband5411 thanks for yoyr breakdown, ive finally came to understand why i despised bojack so fXking much

[@leviismyhusband5411]

@@marcoosorio3705 yeah I say all this but could never say I despise him weirdly enough. I just feel sad when I think of bojack, In a way of"when did you cross the line and can you ever go back?

[@Coreykoon]

As a white male, this video made me feel so uncomfortable and exposed. But I liked it. It’s been days since I watched it and I can’t stop thinking about how true it is. You nailed it.

[@gungun5845]

🤢🤢🤢

[@wiseguy240Winston]

@@gungun5845 😋🤪😭

[@bigol9223]

Corey Koon

[@winstonmarlowe5254]

Good boy. Now sit.

[@feodiente9460]

You tasted a sand grain in a Universe we black folk live in.. I hope this mustard seed moves mountains for you..😉💯✊🏾