Has Culture Gotten Worse Lately? w/ Catherine Liu & Eileen Jones

[@The.Ghost.of.Tom.Joad.]

My problem with culture now is that it's become a caricature of meritocracy. Which is why you have so many superhero movies. These are people born with gifts, like the X-Man, or people with access to cool tech, like many heroes in the Marvel Universe. So you have an extraordinary individual in an often unappreciative, and frequently outwardly hostile, society. However, since their power grants them privilege, the superheroes don't fight the system. instead, they fight to keep the system. Instead, they fight to make the system accept and reward them. The best individual versus society myths seemed to come out of the '60s and '70s. Consider *Taxi Driver,* and compare that to one of *Batman's* hundreds of Hollywood iterations. Wow. *Taxi Driver* examines how a small shift in the external world can create either a monster or a hero. While *Batman* tells the story of an uber-rich dude-complete with a butler-who dabbles in vigilante justice using cool tech. Also, notice that Batman (Bruce Wayne) will never relinquish his empire, any more than Tony Star would in *Ironman.* While a true anti-establishment hero, like Jack Nicholson's Randal Patric McMurphy in *One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest* sacrifices himself. And the focus is not on McMurphy, but on the men in the insane asylum who are liberated from fear by his actions. Even the best alternative to this, TV shows like *Ozark* and *Breaking Bad,* suffer from this meritocratic fallacy. For instance, Walter White from *Breaking Bad* has real "merit" because he "single-handedly* creates a brand of meth so superior that he commands millions. Or how the cartel allows Marty from *Ozark* to live, despite his partner embezzling millions in cartel money... because he's "so good at his job." This all rings false. Meth cooks and money launderers are a dime a dozen. Sure, one may earn a criminal enterprise a slightly higher return on investment than their replacement, but that advantage would be nullified by a cost-benefit analysis. So all the druglord Gus would have needed to do in *Breaking Bad* is video Walter making a batch once or twice, show it to a competent chemical engineer, and snuff Walter. Not to mention the real-world truth that t would probably take a team of chemists to create the chemical process that Walter somehow "figures out" on his own. I'm not saying that today's movies and shows aren't fun, by the way. It's just that they're escapists. And since they are controlled by top-down enterprises operating in a capitalist "meritocracy," will usually only show movies that celebrate the status-quo and meritocracy. While the movies in the late-'60s through the mid-'80s had a refreshing anti-establishment depth that today's shows lack. Even the era's best comedies, from *Monty Python And The Holy Grail,* *Blazing Saddles,* and *Airplane!* all share this wacky, ant-establishment sentiment. But they weren't out to be "transgressive." Just to ape the system and point to its flaws. Interesting point (for another post): Seems to me that *The Hunger Games* series actually comes closest to an honest critique of the system we have today. How the system that allows a handful to claw themselves up from the streets to the penthouse end up hollowed out and killed inside by the process. It also examines how and why people from wealthier districts than Katniss's poor, rural Appalachian district tend to win. Because instead of scrapping after food and lodging, those youths were trained to win the Hunger Games. That said, I thought the series pretty silly, and I read the books and watched the movies... but that's just me.

[@zaloo]

"so all the drug lord Gus would have to do is videotape Walter making his batch once or twice.." ...stick with it a couple more seasons, the whole thing begins to revolve around that. dividing and conquering especially vis Jesse, the young partner. not my -favorite- show, but dammit it's crack. i dig your critique. 🥂

[@The.Ghost.of.Tom.Joad.]

@@zaloo I've watched the whole thing several times. Entertaining but not realistic. The instant when Walter showed himself to be a loose cannon who posed a threat to his and the cartel's profits, the ruthless Gus would have killed him. He would either have gotten Walter's recipe or not. It wouldn't matter. Regardless, Walter would be dead. Why? Walter was not Picasso producing one-of-a-kind masterpieces, as the showrunners want you to believe. He was a run-of-the-mill chemist mass-producing something that people make in their backyards. A commodity. A meth head or clubber would smoke up ANYTHING with a hint of meth in it. They wouldn't care. Sure, maybe a handful of elite addicts might develop a tooth for the blue, but they'd smoke Jesse's original brew in a punch, and probably pay well for it. Earning Gus money with little drama and zero hassles. In the cold, calculating, libertarian free market of the underworld, Walter just wasn't that valuable. Any more than Jesse. Or even Gus, for that matter. Take out one, another will pop up in their place. Meritocracy has no meaning in this world. Only brutality and naked power. And to wield that power, you needed an organization and contacts... things which Walter lacked. So in reality, his skills wouldn't matter, but the writers make you THINK they do. I'm still not sure if they believe this or are out to critique meritocracy and capitalism, but it is central to the narrative.

[@zaloo]

@@The.Ghost.of.Tom.Joad. oh, you left out a couple of seasons where indeed the whole issue was supplanting Walter. actually Gus did that and enslaved Jesse.. so i assumed you hadn't gotten to them.. realistic? oh god no. there are dashes of realism to lubricate the fantasy. your argument is basically one side of the argument inside the show. while i agree with you on the perniciousness of meritocracy in a SOCIETAL context, the mechanism of "the best" is hard to avoid the siren-song of. i think you underestimate the brutality of branding. there's a mystical but also a practical side to it. while people famously can't tell certain cheap wines from $1000 bottles, i would absolutely advise you to purchase a QSC powered speaker and avoid Behringer. especially if you're going for the long haul, but sonically as well.. so in the case of sound reenforcement, it pays to heed the logo. i'd have to try Walter's (fictional) blue meth and get back to you :)

[@The.Ghost.of.Tom.Joad.]

@@zaloo Precisely. In the real world, Walter would be dead the instant he stepped out of line and threatened Gus's finely tuned machine. His "magic process" is just bull. It's chemistry. He was NOT unique, any more than a McDonald's fry cook is unique. He was creating a commodity,

[@RapidBlindfolds]

really insightful analysis, you should be a guest on the show

[@jpinnacle]

I think Catherine got it right when she discussed how both France and Taiwan subsidizing their filmmakers led to superior films being made. Left to the hands of the private sector, cinema becomes utilitarian in nature; it's meant to satisfy the greatest amount of people in a way that ironically satisfies nobody. You see it everywhere these days-- music, architecture, literature, etc.

[@patricialongo5870]

There's a government responsibility to fund news media and the arts.

[@antiquityart]

Ever heard of German state film funding? It's massive, movies are heavily subsidized. Basically you can't make a movie in Germany without state funding . So, when was the last time you've seen a true artwork made in Germany that was not a 1960ies Porsche? 95% of the movies are still crap. It's just he same 10 old guys making the same braindead comedy over and over again. So state funding alone is not the solution. Shoveling massive amounts of money down the drain to serve long lasting cultural definitions of 'subsidizable' doesn't guarantee quality 😋

[@ultramovier]

I think you and antiquity both make good points here. What is the best way to make great art? The problem with this supposition is that opinions will vary. This problem will continue to vex us all for many years to come. It will be interesting to see how "great art" evolves as film continues to get cheaper to make.

[@DjinnandTonik]

The market is also why you have HBO

[@rawalshadab3812]

Honestly, nobody has mentioned that nobody has time to go to the cinema anymore + the cost of tickets now. I have a cinema pass for my local theatres and watch everything I can if time allows (which it rarely does)..

[@jp2503]

Tickets aren't expensive. I hate when people say that. It's only expensive if you buy concessions, and usually that's mostly an American problem.

[@corindeans]

"The vast majority of stuff produced is dreck" is such a statement. I have to say I enjoy most of the movies I see, and maybe I have a different a valuable perspective on this. I recently went to see that DC League of Super Pets movie with a couple of my nephews, and unbeknownst to me it was "National Cinema Day" (a thing I had never heard of). The tickets were $3 and it was a theater full of poor kids who see a couple of movies a year. The theater was full of popcorn throwing, cheering and laughter. It was some of the most fun I have had at a cultural event for a long time. I can't help but love stories that touch peoples lives even if they are made by DisneyTM, A24TM and WarrnerBrothersTM. You ask the question "why is cooperate are critically bad?" But I would ask, "what do we do when cooperate art touches peoples lives?" What do we do if the cooperate art helps people connect to each other?

[@dudeonthasopha]

The best stuff on Netflix comes from other countries that aren't as dependent on the new models of financing to get through the door. Taiwan and Thailand are making some great stuff with their biggest actors.

[@BGcam]

Art is entertainment that moves. We are a generation of workers who, after another day of work, don’t even have the energy to move. So why would we seek entertainment that moves us? We just need a distraction from the exhaustion and the banal evils we face every day.

[@Muaahaa]

This was interesting, but more narrow a discussion than I had hoped coming in. Art is obviously a part of culture, but only one part, and then it was largely focused on cinema (and a bit of tv and streaming). Notably leaving out: music, video games, literature, architecture, traditional arts (many to list). Now it is fine and reasonable to not get into all those different aspects of art, but I guess the naming of the video suggests this is about something else.

[@df3575]

Eileen Jones is retired in her, what....40s?!!? (She claimed to be too young to appreciably recall films from the late 70s)...Early 50s at the latest. 🤔 Or is she simply out of the academy?

[@pitchforkparty]

Good show, Jen! Catherine and Eileen should do a show together. I want to see more of them go back and forth on the topic of film.

[@catherineliu9256]

Allison Miller's Growth is the horror short I was talking about

[@1789balzac]

I think social media has a role here. It is almost too complex to explain here in a few lines but actors have more than one camera on them nowadays is the simplest way to say. I am surprised you don't mention all the remakes. The real issue to me that films can no longer imagine a world beyond capitalism.

[@grodesby3422]

Counter-culture used to be a fairly small set of ideological attractors that defined themselves as against the humdrum mainstream. With the internet, there are a huge number of mutually incompatible "counter cultures", but no coherent singular concept thereof.

[@ryri51]

No, too many people just conflate being a joyless bore with being smart. Criticism for the sake of criticism is enormously tedious.

[@aylbdrmadison1051]

How is "culture" alone automatically a bad thing? That's a silly position, imo. I personally prefer less popular culture myself, but why imply that culture itself is a problem?

[@patriciadavies5651]

It's the conservative position and we live without government support because of it. It's hard for me to look around and not be cheered off about it.

[@rickb3650]

Agreed across the board. I'd add Frank Zappa's commentary on why music got so shitty and has only become worse. There used to be thousands of radio stations owned by thousands of people and an uncountable number of people who wanted to make their music. There were also hundreds of labels each of which spent lots of time and money seeking out talented music makers to sign and record. The guys who owned the radio stations didn't know anything about music and didn't care, they just wanted to broadcast music that got lots of people to listen to the ads. The labels inundated the radio stations with all kinds of music all the time. Nobody knew the formula because there was no formula. We got to hear great music of all kinds for decades simply because there was so much of it and the cream rose to the top. What corporations did to music, they did to film. The American film industry released ~1,000 films per year every year from the '30s - '80s. Since the '80s that number has declined constantly and in correlation with the consolidation of studios. In 2021 the remaining studios released 93 films.

[@elihan9]

I would love it if one of these women played "Disco Elysium", "Undertale", any Fromsoftware game, any game from Supergiant, and "Papers Please"

[@DeadInside-ct6dl]

Actually though. Disco Elysium is SO GOOD

[@elihan9]

@@DeadInside-ct6dl I know. The story is wonderful, the asthetics leave me in awe, and the music is somberly beautiful

[@AloisWeimar]

Cuno doesn’t care

[@thorinbane]

Disco is unbelievable. So much going on and has a 70s feel they may appreciate.

[@desigrrl08]

@@thorinbane as a critical theory cinephile person who lived in the 70s, these simulacra of the 70s are skin-crawlingly bad. for me it is an uncanny valley feeling. it's trying to be something it can never be - this is hilariously irritating.

[@arh7303]

I think you guys are right on, but I must say I think the counter culture is thriving. I agree with Loren White's comment below. I live in the Cleveland area, and I have friends in Detroit and Akron, and I feel the counter culture is growing--people are making harsh abstract sound in the same spaces where they are growing and sharing their own food, and writing, too! I've lived in post-industrial northeast Ohio my whole life among poor artists, and like Loren White said, there are "always working class people making good authentic art in the underground." (PS--I love Jen's summation: "There is a material basis in things sucking." That was great! And as the mainstream has gotten more consolidated in recent decades, the underground is more hidden. But it never dies.)

[@josephyoung6749]

Also, I can say from spending YEARS in architecture school that this discussion mirrors 1-to-1 all the discussions there, as well as the general sense of an absence of intellectual direction in the face of mass-commodification, cheapification and monopolization... in a few words: nihilism

[@willknowsright9615]

cool. where did you go to architecture school?

[@connorhalleck2895]

please do more pop culture videos jacobin, even though culture war is annoying and a distraction when it comes to politics, these are the kinds of things i can send my liberal friends

[@apocalypsetedium]

Great conversation! The lack of interest in history sounds like we're entering a new Dark Ages. (End of empire?) And having been away from formal education for over twenty years, I'm horrified at the declining standards in film school. Not that they were particularly stringent when I was there. Apparently, like everything else, standards are dropping across the board.

[@ultravioletiris6241]

Matt Damon conveniently ignores the inflation of the pay going to top actors.

[@vipermad358]

Who cares about her?! Not me!

[@ultravioletiris6241]

@@vipermad358 wat

[@alanrosenthal3978]

this video surprised me how good it was... thanx Jen

[@raiga98]

This is such a random conversation lol. Literally everyone can say that movies/TV were better "back in their day." There is definitely a lot more content being created now which makes it seem like a lot of it is bad b/c not everything is made for everyone. But with that being the case, most people can find at least somethings that they like.

[@episdosas9949]

culture is what you make it. quit being an armchair critic and make a movie yourself. it doesnt have to be the same standard as the industry. thats one of the reasons youtube started. and even this show was created to express their own views. creative energy. active living.

[@hsitz]

Parts of this talk reminded me of Roger Ebert and one of the things he liked to say: "A movie is not about what it's about, but about *how* it's about it."

[@DscntnuousMgntic]

that last point by Catherine was very provocative, the space streamers occupy in culture is fascinating and it is one of the only potentially commercial and ad-free spaces online (yes there are many streamers with corporate sponsorships and merch, true but not the majority). its weird as a 40 y.o. i put on 10- hour streams of someone playing nostalgiac PS1 games while I do monotonous indoor work but it has this other layer of being a document of a creators life, a lot of them spend 60 hours a week gaming and streaming, it is their livlihood and you can pretty much see all of it... total subsistence art.

[@sprymonkey]

"Everything Everywhere All of the Time" gave me faith that brilliant new films can still be made.

[@desigrrl08]

couldn't get through even 10 minutes. horrible waste of michelle yeoh. what a boring, tedious, loud American film.

[@kylegreen2768]

Movies have been horrible for a while. Reboots, remakes, comic book stuff none of which appeal to me. You can only recycle the same plot over and over. But also All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.

[@DJarry394]

I am that video store guy, lol! I have been obsessed with film history, and took a few classes, but came into it out of a fanatical love of film. Transformers was that GenZ students first film, and I remember watching the original Godzilla at age 5 on tv

[@trioofone8911]

Given the critique of KZbin (implicit and explicit) in this video, is it ironic that I watched/listened to it on KZbin? 😆 Also, I am of two minds regarding the basic subject here: on the one hand, sure there's loads of pop culture crap available these days, some that is truly astounding in its reductive narcissism (The Apprentice with, uh, Donald Trump, or The Kardashians). On the other hand, as someone that really dug Marvel Comics back in the 80s and 90s, I have been loving the product coming out of the "MCU" for the last few decades. I remember how pathetic the attempts at putting super hero stories on screen were before the era of special fx. All you have to say is '60s Batman, and Lou Ferrigno's Hulk. And I love Stranger Things... and DnD. Incidentally, one of these days I'm going to ask some female DnD nerds I know what they think of the idea that DnD is male-centric...

[@trioofone8911]

And yes, after thinking about it for 5 seconds, I realize that both Apprentice and Kardashians are probably considered to be relics of old media these days. But then again, what am I?... 😆

[@alexanderbuchanan3552]

Didn’t David Graeber make a similar point about punk music, maybe something similar could be said for garage rock, in the times before neoliberalism, there was sort of the ability for working class youth to like sit around and reflect on life, possibly start a band, and then you get an explosion of very similar stuff, but also it’s like a primordial soup out of which some truly cultural or culturally defining works can emerge. It would be kind of an interesting social experiment. Make it socialism for a little while then see if it was rugged meritocratic individualism or basic socialism that produced more culturally satisfying pieces for everyone.

[@patrickholt2270]

I mainly watch KZbin for things like this. I mostly listen, rather than watch, lectures and sermons and educational videos like this that keep me up to date with socialist politics and ideas. Everything is on KZbin now, so I don't think you can pan KZbin as this low brow, low budget medium. Having said that, KZbin did used to be alot more fun and largely uncensored, so that actually there was more leftist freedom of expression and independent short film making. The independent fan film genre on KZbin was a legitimate artform that adpocalypse and the demonetisation of small channels mostly killed off. Back around 2012 was a real hayday for independent, young, interactive content creation, which was somewhere in between a social media form, where people would make videos to talk to each other and arrange events, and talk to their fans, and YouthTV irreverent fun entertainment shows. Old KZbin was better, especially for the generosity of funding to new creators and the absence of censorship, and that's my Old Man Shouts at Cloud.

[@rorylynch1203]

I see movie theatres becoming mini theme parks sort of like bass pro shops

[@krisxxn4756]

One point to add, because I just disagree with this assessment that Marvel is all about plots: it isn’t. Most of the movies follow the same plot beats and inch the overarching narrative forward like a soap opera. It’s all about character. Even her example of someone rabidly describing the MCU is that someone is still mad about something from Civil War. That’s a sign of character investment. The issue with newer marvel “content” is they haven’t established new characters as popular as the originals that they’re replacing. I was super into the MCU for a time. So I saw the fandom firsthand, and I know for a fact that hundreds of thousands of them just wanted Captain America and Bucky Barnes to kiss. I’m not defending Marvel, because they suck. FYI. A huge problem I have with modern movies is digital cameras. The picture just looks uglier. I was watching some weird old softcore 60s movie (directed by a woman! Doris Wishman!) and even though it was pretty clumsy, it was more beautiful than any modern film I’ve seen recently (excluding modern movies shot on film). The lack of film grain gives modern movies a cheap look, and the practically infinite amount of digital recording you can do makes the medium feel more disposable. Like the thing mentioned about the long take… so many of the early limitations of filmmaking caused people to have to think creatively, sometimes abstractly, and it often created more striking scenes or images than a modern movie, which can just figure it out in post.

[@josephyoung6749]

I'm curious about this discussion in light of Upton Sinclair's "Mammonart" part of his dissection of american institutions.

[@scottheathco7323]

80s movies were great

[@patriciadavies5651]

In 1971 a fourth and fifth grade class learned film making and made a film. They had to see some silent movies and old talkies, and the kids were able to focus on how film makes an impression. Maybe children can still do it if you straight up tell them it's not about the stories you worship as fans, like Mr Forte did in 1971.

[@goatofdeath]

Absolutely awesome discussion. I loved the discussion of too much plot being part of the thing as any long running narrative or set of connected narratives seems to develop that issue. I do have disagreement on the 80s being a bad era of filmmaking as there were fabulous films there that were a part of my formative years: Platoon, Aliens, Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop, Full Metal Jacket, and while a decendent of the 70s, two of the Star Wars films came out in the 80s. Though I agree the 90s felt more interesting with the rise of Miramax and New Line. I find it interesting the discussion went to streaming as I think the video gaming space and especially independent gaming has become where a lot of that media art has gone. Gaming by market share is now the biggest form of media. And there are wonderfully atmospheric games that feel rooted on both the cinematic and the literary. Bloodbourne is the first game that comes to mind with its deep Lovecraftian influences and amazing visuals. Last of Us was as impactful for me as any cinema I have watched, same with the Witcher 3 out of Poland. The fascinating bit about video game narratives, for better or worse, is the focus on participant agency and choice. On one hand it can make it hard to tell a cohesive narrative. But, on the other, that sense of agency can often make us feel much more invested in the art. We are literally a part of creating the art experience in how we play the game and engage with the experience. In any case, I've rambled enough. I loved the discussion!

[@Joeyjojoshabbadoo]

The 80s were a golden age of regular Hollywood movies. So many beloved films that were just normal, regular releases, not hifalutin art films. And were expertly made for what they were. Take a movie like Footloose, which I guess is considered something of a classic, but I think is also pooh poohed as cheesy 80s cinema by film snobs, is like this masterpiece, and for kind of a goofy premise on a fairly low budget and basically a studio afterthought, is just masterfully made and acted, and is so totally emblematic of the 80s Hollywood aesthetic. It's an incredibly compelling and moving and memorable film, if you let it affect you. But it's definitely pure 80s. And there are plenty of others like that. And lots of people feel that way, that weren't alive then, Gen-Z age people. And the early 80s musically, as far as new wave, and top 40 fare, was such a golden age, when MTV was just getting started, and lots of artists got a chance they wouldn't have and now there's so many classic hits and singles from those years. And it's never been good like that again, and top 40 radio has been totally corporate ever since.... So this cool, condescending take that the 80s suck and was a cultural wasteland is so lame. It's embarrassing....

[@targetfootball7807]

Art takes time, time takes money, and money takes time.

[@lumpenproletarier9584]

For people who are interested in film analysis from a Marxist ideology critical perspective I highly recommend the channel "the filmanalysis"!

[@BlueRockBill]

Streaming not having any artistic form is interesting. To me, t's "Form" (small scale journalism, or reality TV) is dictated by the platform's algorithm. To be a KZbinr you need to keep up a stream of content: so it's writing short ideas (no scripts, just talking points), easily repeatable shots, editing a day of shooting into multiple short episodes, etc. etc. etc. Which is VERY "democratic" but doesn't have a lot of space for deep writing, cinematography, or sound design. Imagine what the content of streamers might be like if the algorithm depended on the budget per episode. The more you spend on production the more widely it's distributed. Or the more the KZbinr makes from advertising. Then you're incentivized to write longer, more involved dramas, and pursue a real artistic vision. It really shows how deeply imeshed into huge corporations our underground really has become. Regardless of its subject matter, Its form is completely depended on how the corporate platform rewards the producer. KZbin can never accidently yield an original dramatic series of any scale from its content suppliers, except by unhinged, wealthy masochists.

[@mjleger]

This was very interesting as it provided some insight into Eileen Jones' take on cinema. The reference to Thomas Frank is relevant to the subject of counterculture but something that he doesn't discuss and you would miss it if you jump-cut to Angela Nagle is the phenomenon that is depicted in films like The Big Chill and Reality Bites, which is the cooptation of the idea of counterculture in the 1980s, where the yuppie becomes the new signifier of cool, which was also seen in the TV series Family Ties, which then became Different Strokes and Cosby Show . Before that you the counterculture worried about selling out. By the 80s selling out became something that cool art people do, with this anti-Frankfurt School attitude taking off with New Times Cultural Studies and postmodernism more generally, where someone like Barbara Kruger Shopped and Therefore Was and someone like Andreas Huyssen could challenge the critique of the commodity as sexist. The 80s also launched the Ivory Merchant historicism fantasy film that made the career of people like H.B. Carter and the fashion fortunes of Laura Ashley. The 90s tried to get back to basics but it turned out very macho and nihilistic, and feminists wanted to prove they could be just as bad as anyone else, etc. (Ask me about Visual & Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester in the late 1990s.) Well into the neoliberal era, as Catherine Liu mentions, artists could no longer benefit from either the golden age of postwar prosperity or from government grants, and got drop-kicked ( a line from Robert Downey Sr's Chafed Elbows ) into youtube. Milos Forman, who participated in the Czech New Wave of the early to mid-60s, said that that moment was the best for a filmmaker because, a) you had no commercial pressure, and b) they let you do what you wanted. The latter is only relatively true because you had to first learn your craft or demonstrate some talent to stay in the artist unions. Polanski, in contrast, had so many problems he emigrated from Poland. On that score, some of the best political cinema came from Russia before WWII, and from Eastern Europe after WWII. The idea that "tendency" (political messaging) ruins the aesthetic quality of art is so huge a topic that it's not worth mentioning here. The opposition is false, when the work is great. It's true when the work is bad. The recent hubub about the biopic Minamata raised some of these issues regarding W. Eugene Smith. Lane Relyea's "Your Everyday Art World" has food for thought about the contemporary condition of art. Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt's book on Cuban cultural policy is definitely worth a read as well. The shift towards activism makes more sense for socially engaged art than it does for forms like cinema. On the other hand, the shift from aesthetics to the linguistic turn as a way to understand culture makes post-structuralism a bête noire since its attack on the canon - now for being Eurocentric etc - is not as radical as it seems. The fact that these two scholars think so makes sense since they're on the socialist left, and not so much on the postmodern left, where the petty-bourgeois activist class and creative class tend to agree on identity politics. Even Hardt & Negri shifted from criticizing identitarian "capture devices" to promoting dual and kinda dual systems theory. What we have is a "repressive desublimation" of art and politics: post-politics and decaffeinated culture. It's all very puritanical and this woke business is not progressive and has much in common with anti-Enlightenment conservatism and reaction. It's difficult to criticize it because like counterculture, which is a product of Romanticism and not the Beat generation, it's subtextual and subcultural.

[@raiga98]

What are the parameters of "wokeness?" Moreover, who gets to define them?

[@zaloo]

i just want to note that "yuppie" was just as much of a slur in the 80s as any time after that.. i'm not sure if "yippie" was an all around slur. compare it all and contrast to "hipster" over a cocktail.

[@BlakeJortles]

And he was right What were the great movies of the '40s? The Golden ages were 30s and '70s and you can find good movies scattered across the decades but we're living in a time of pure propaganda

[@hinnahinna-j9y]

No, the Taiwanese New Wave did not happen because it was incorporated into the global economy. Movies were used as government propaganda. The president of the film association Ming Ji said the goal was to "strengthen policy propaganda and promote cooperation with both domestic and overseas filmmakers." In the 80s, Hong Kong dominated the box office for Chinese language films, Taiwanese movies survived by making indies. The US sanctioned the Republic of China (Taiwan) for the massacre of Vietnamese refugees in 1987. It's the most important year for China-Taiwanese history. Taiwanese are finally allowed to visit families in China after 38 years, and they are allowed to do business in mainland China. Movies went big budget to please the greater Chinese community around the world, and that's how indies die.

[@thorinbane]

80s was a great decade for movies. Lots of hilarious slasher and action movies. 70s had a lot of slow moving movies way too dialogue heavy. We have gone to far from that, but I love B movies and hate the Coen brothers'.

[@krisxxn4756]

Just a few minutes in so I’m sorry if you talk about this in the video, but in the mid-30s a censorship code was enacted in Hollywood, so the cultural critic complaining about movies in the 40s is not far off from where we are now. For him, 8 years ago movies had been the Wild West, with few rules compared to after the Hays code. This is why I love pre-1935 Hollywood talkies so much. They can get dark and twisted. Later filmmakers had to figure out how to sneak in any unapproved subject matter.

[@ConanDuke]

"Lately"?! It's been 💩 since 1983.

[@bayleyasher]

13:56 she says it's more important that artists are able to make a living than that they make good art? 🤨 if they're not making good art that challenges us, expands our minds and sensibilities etc, it's not important they exist as artists at all; they could just as well do something else

[@desigrrl08]

well if all sorts of toxic fuks exist on trading floors, financial corps., defence companies making a living off of sucking blood, what is the problem with the existence of bad artists who are only trying to express their humanity not murder someone directly/indirectly, thus creating communities for better and good art to exist? why shouldn't they exist?

[@Irisceresjuno]

I dare you to critique Sandman.

[@BlakeJortles]

I don't agree with all her reviews, but definitely the '80s was the big turning point for commercial plastic transition from humanity to our March towards cyborg world. But it was last 15 years where it's all about propaganda now the control over all the media is complete

[@liennnamenhab3631]

The USA has never been known to produce or have anything approximating culture.

[@connorhalleck2895]

dont hate me but.... idgaf about french new wave. i love socialism and my union and i think big studios would be better as co ops, but peak cinema is night on bald mountain from fantasia and german expressionism is more interesting if you really wanna look at movements

[@jonasfringe2793]

In light of Sturgeon's law, new media to play with, and overall increased output, I guess more great art (and crud) than ever? Patterns of creation, commodification, reception sure changed, but read some author-publisher correspondence, or deservedly forgotten prose, from the 1800s...

[@richardburt9812]

Have these people never heard of the casting couch? Weinsteins were the horrific norm, not new.

[@frankeleasing8645]

Surprised by the use of the word "culture" here, when what is generally discussed is film! Obviously what goes on in film is a prism for cultural forces, but this is NOT a conversation of the living/deadness of culture at large, as these "cultural critics" admit they are out of touch with subculture.

[@joseluisaguilaralonzo6374]

Great Labor journalist.!!!!!

[@BlakeJortles]

And there were plenty of great movies in the '80s even though overall the period was terrible there was an underground there was punk there was postponk there was the last great period in rock. And I'm feeling we had David Lynch and lots of good movies though the production did become TV-like. The soundtrack became a little corny. But say a soldier story one of the best movies ever

[@alcosmic]

This is amazing

[@walkerstark4564]

Footloose sucks.

[@ConanDuke]

7:40 WtF?! Why does Jen Pan completely undermine the whole convo here? She comes off like a milquetoast 'both-sides-have-a-point' liberal pundit.

[@BlakeJortles]

How is rain Man a terrible movie lol some of her we dude reviews are just ridiculous

[@Gulfstreams]

The 80s sucked because a lot of the creatives died of AIDS: writers, dancers, painters, thinkers.