was the hays code good for movies?

[@epicninjafork2866]

This is very applicable to my life at the moment. A bunch of white moms are trying to get my high school's musical cancelled and the director fired because it has a trans character and it says the word "ass" a few times. What a great world we live in rn

[@Radiodragonofdoom]

Everything old is new again...

[@carolinpurayidom4570]

Thats too much but some decency in films would be nice it qould be nice not to have every movie have so much vulgarity in it.

[@chlo_3]

You tellin' me a Hays coded this movie?

[@wehpudicabok6598]

Ah yes, Francis Ford Kafka, the creator of that classic movie where Vito Corleone wakes up one morning to find he'd become a gargantuan pest.

[@GALL0WSHUM0R]

Honestly I would watch a version of Apocalypse Now where the protagonist begins to metamorphosize as they travel up the river.

[@glouderglens]

Hearing this articulated so passionately was very cathartic. Thank you

[@Geospasmic]

I wonder where film would be now if it hadn't been for that long period of restriction.

[@lewsmith9708]

At the risk of sounding snobbish, the random shots in this video are more cinematic than anything Marvel has produced in the last....well, ever.

[@letstalkaboutstuff]

thank you! i tried to have fun with it

[@torsegundo637]

@@letstalkaboutstuff I think that's why people liked the Gunn movies more than the others bc it seemed like it was made out of sense of fun. Sad it didn't last.

[@FerretinSocks]

it's so funny to suggest to people they can just watch what they're comfortable with and watching their brains explode

[@seraaron]

You know I kinda liked how the ending of this video was just random footage of stuff around your house and the weather. maybe worth doing that again some time, but like, deliberately

[@letstalkaboutstuff]

that is absolutely what i am already doing :)

[@EtchJetty]

fantastic video and i agree with everything in it. i already posted this on a discord but im gonna repost it for EnGaGeMeNt so. that executive auteur line - i am going to have to read that essay. literalism in movies, ending explained videos - not to like. place the entirety of Film onto one a24 film but my parents' reaction to everything everywhere all at once is... it kind of encapsulates that refusal to like grapple with the material. why Were there all sorts of silly things flying around? because its art and thats all there really is to say on the matter (there is a lot more. but this is a comment for the Algo Rithm) and finally everything from minute, like, 15 and onwards is absolutely completely correct. honestly i find it shocking how little we just... as a society, talk about the role of capital in film and art, like. who is it sanitized For tax disney to hell and beyond ✊

[@TheNostalgiafan88]

I needed a video like this to be made at this time. I’ve been making short films for almost 16 years now, but the truth is I haven’t made one in 9 years because I had a mental breakdown from making all of them with no money, with a camera that was a Christmas gift. Even after 12 years of film school, I’ve still been denied a opportunity in Hollywood because every script I write and film that I’ve done, none of it is “Hollywood material” or worth a grant. I’ve almost given up time and time again on my career because I feel nothing is going to change in this capitalist hellscape. Though reading this almost comes across as being validated for my cynicism, the truth is I’m genuinely grateful that I’m not alone that there is a systemic problem that needs to change and the solutions are there, that nothing is impossible, we just need collective action to occur for that change to happen.

[@letstalkaboutstuff]

i've been thinking a lot a lot a lot about how many artists have been utterly denied the opportunity to make things because we traded direct arts funding for tax rebates, which presume you *already* have the money to make a thing. the grants programs that do exist are so competitive they're functionally a closed ecosystem for nepotism that demands you waste a lot of your life on unpaid internships to make connections etc etc etc. it's hard not to feel cheated sometimes that so much of what i was raised to believe turned out to be a total lie! but as you say, the solutions ARE there and none of us is alone in feeling robbed of an artful life. it's reassuring to be one drop in an ocean of anger

[@irisjay9948]

KILLIN' it out here, Sarah!! a lot of this discussion can also unfortunately apply to the comics world, especially with publishers getting consolidated under a few megacorp umbrellas and YA work becoming the overwhelming focus of those corps' marketing and distribution efforts. comics should be *the* most egalitarian and accessible form of visual storytelling, and yet we still have to squeeze ourselves into a few narrow, mass-market palatable categories if we want to do business on a national or international level. no matter the medium, it all really does come back to the simple fact that we can't build a system that accepts and showcases a truly broad range of voices until we destroy the murder machine we all live inside of, and give people back the freedom to do what they want with their lives. also yo FUCK disney

[@faenattack1564]

Thanks for another vid, Sarah! ~☆

[@TheAaronShine]

Seems to be a problem throughout history though. Referring to who could commission art and why most of it was secular/censored in the beginning.

[@theMoporter]

I'm a 100% irreligious and a spiritual person, but I don't see what you mean about art being "secular in the beginning". Most of art throughout and prior to history in religious societies has been based around religiousity (as broad as that can be), from Islamic patterning to Mycenaean frescos to (depending on the definition) Rapa Nuian ancestral sculptures. Some of the most scandalous art in European history were acts of worship towards Christian figures, such as during the Baroque period. Secularism is comparatively modern.

[@zennistrad]

Bettridge's Law of Headlines also applies to KZbin video titles I see

[@PixelHead777]

Like. It's not helpful for me to say the truthful statement "I don't like when there's sex in movies and tv shows" because for me it's 10% 'complicated nuanced discussions about fetishization and representation and capitalism that the statement does not imply' and 90% 'real life naked bodies make me uncomfortable and that has nothing to do with the merits of the scene in the art and media, it's just my personal preferences'

[@irrisorie7]

this is beside your point, but i personally hate sex scenes in movies. and, being a 31 year old adult, i am capable of pressing the skip forward button. anyway, i agree that the root of the problem is that rich assholes are the ones controlling media and that we should change that.

[@letstalkaboutstuff]

right, the unspoken thing here is that you can just skip the parts of a thing you don't like lmao

[@chromaperipheral]

Resonated super hard with the whole video--you do a really good job articulating the dread & unease I can sense engaging with popular (especially direct-to-streaming) media but can never quite _place_

[@ThatOneIrishFurry]

Feels like im back in film school except its more based

[@betweenthepanels9145]

The sex scene discourse made me go mad briefly. Very upside down sort of feeling.

[@KatieAngelWitch]

You know how much it fucks me up, thinking about the Hayes Code in Hollywood? You already know I'm Czech, Sarah, I've shared the brainworms of my nationality with you, and I know you saw one of Jan Švankmajer's movies because you namedropped it in the second list of movies you watched at the end of the year, so you *know* about the kind of shit that was made here in the Czech Republic, and before that in Communist Czechoslovakia. Normalization in 1969 after the Warsaw Pact Invasion was nowhere near as hellish as the Hayes Code sounds towards movie productions. And movies here were funded by the *state* up until 1989, not private studios. Which definitely resulted in people taking creative risks they couldn't or wouldn't take now! All that to say Nationalise The Entire Movie Industry

[@dimitriid]

I wonder if in 80 years people would look back and discuss 'The Marvel code' to describe our era as effectively, the hays code 2.0 this time enforced by unimaginable amounts of money used to stiffle anything and everything that isn't a teen or even kid friendly superhero movie and all the tropes we've come to just view as natural due to being exposed to what, 8 to 10 really high budget superhero related movies and shows each year with an equally overwhelmingly inescapable marketing budget to promote them. It's even to the point that even being *critical* of superhero movies is basically a career for say, breadtuber essayists because well is so emblematic of late capitalism yet at the same time still within the gravitational pull of the Marvel-Disney groovy train so how can anyone escape?

[@juanig4198]

thanks for this video

[@colonelweird]

If I had the money to fund movie productions, one thing I'd love to pay for is a series of artistically interesting, character-driven, sexually explicit movies, with a strong emphasis on queer perspectives. It's honestly kind of shocking that there are so few movies like this - only a handful, as far as I know. It's as if filmmakers have yet to notice that there's a close connection between sex and human personality.

[@letstalkaboutstuff]

i think there are quite a lot of filmmakers who have noticed this and wanted to break the trend, for decades upon decades. the problem is that filmmakers can't just make whatever they want to make, they have to sell a production to studios and investors, which means giving up a measure of authorial control to corporations whose only real priority is making movies they can show in every global market imaginable. which naturally means censorship, because The Gays won't play well in china. and then there's just the fact that sex in movies has been radioactive since the medium of cinema existed, and there are countless barriers between the kind of film you're imagining and actually getting it seen by anyone. there are actually quite a lot of movies that fit into the mold you've described, they just don't get wide distribution beyond niche film fests. in any case, there are plenty of bogeymen to blame for this trend that aren't the filmmakers

[@sereminar4]

Your absolutely 1million% right

[@mollynoise]

❤

[@Lobotomobillionaire]

I just wish I could watch a new movie (That isn't from A24) and not get absolutely fucking bored immediately.

[@syllvia1]

Great vid, very much reminded of how much selection bias colors our impression of eras. Serious question though, how do you actual learn to recognize metaphor in film and general storytelling and get something out of that? I have problems connecting with alot of media largely cuz i just assume that the thing i'm being shown is what the story is about, even though that's often not strictly true, so I leave alot of stories feeling kinda hollow, or knowing i'm not connecting some dots. I tend to like when stories flat-out tell me what they're about because i probably am not going to pick up on it otherwise. Not for a lack of interest or curiosity or a desire for pure literalism/realism, i'm just not great at picking up on themes as i never got trained on that. Is it a cultural education thing? Something that comes from studying art more broadly? Pure familiarity with an art form? I've spent a great deal of time studying how art is made for school and work, but I'm realizing that i've rarely given any thought to why any of it's made in the first place, and that's something I'm trying to change.

[@GALL0WSHUM0R]

Personally, I watched a ton of video essays on more "out there" movies I liked; that is to say, you're probably not going to get much out of analysis of blockbuster Marvel type movies. Pick a sort of slow simmering movie that you like and watch some videos talking about the themes in it. If you do this a lot, you'll start to learn to thematically analyze films as you watch them instead of needing it explained. TL;DR have other people explain films to you until you don't need their help anymore

[@robodress4051]

I really relate to that feeling of feeling "hollow" after finishing something. One thing I've come to understand is that your relationship with a movie lasts longer than its runtime. Lots of movies I didn't really get at all the first time around are now some of my favorites thanks to watching video essays about them, learning about their production, the people who made them, etc. Context matters. If something inside you really feels a connection to a move, just go down a rabbit hole with it. It's fun!

[@GALL0WSHUM0R]

@@robodress4051 That's a great point too. I don't feel like I'm really experiencing a movie until the third time through. The first time I'm just along for the ride. The second time I know where the movie is headed and can watch for foreshadowing and character arcs. The third time I go in knowing where we're going and how we get there, and I can sort of enjoy the movie as a whole and take in the themes.

[@syllvia1]

​@@GALL0WSHUM0R Yeah, once someone is able to help me get my head around a story's themes or point out what to look for, i can run with it and get something out of it. I do worry about relying too much on other people's reads, but at least knowing the shape of the conversation can help me form my thoughts on it. Which i guess is alot of words for "arts education is important".

[@syllvia1]

@@robodress4051 Very true, though sometimes i just feel like i'm accumulating facts about productions than anything. That's fun, but i often feel like i'm still missing something. I think it's just that people the way people who Get It often describe this stuff makes it feel like t's something i'm supposed to be feeling or understanding innately but i very clearly don't. Sometimes it's hard to parse what's a simple difference in perspective and education, and what's a sign of some unexamined cultural value i may have or legit just a fundamental difference in how two people's brains process information. I'm glad you found a way to overcome some of that feeling, and ngl i'm probably just overthinking all of this. I legit just do not watch many tv shows or films due to working alot, and i prob just need to take time to do that. Thanks for the info!

[@ConvincingPeople]

Regarding the death of low-budget speculative fiction: Maybe this is an odd perspective to take, but I see this as more of an issue with live-action cinema in North America than a more universal issue? While standalone films in that vein have, particularly in the Anglosphere, been largely devoured wholesale by superhero blockbusters, and that definitely sucks, I think acting as if this sort of storytelling has disappeared in visual media is pretty myopic. Part of this is, I'm an anime fan, and in the realm of stylish animated series exploring interesting science fiction, fantasy or supernatural horror concepts, one is frankly spoiled for choice on a quarterly basis; another is that, in terms of live-action serial media across television and streaming, the likes of space operas, dark fantasies and post-apocalyptic tales have all been wildly successful. In the latter case, of course, you've already laid out some of the problems some of these series run into in terms of production, and in the former case, the anime industry in Japan has a whole host of problems surrounding its current production bubble and fundamental issues with the "Tezuka pipeline" system which it's been relying on since the '60s (not to mention its own glut of increasingly low-effort cookie-cutter otherworld power fantasies), and all of this feeds into the fundamental point that capitalism is destructive to the creation of meaningful art, but I think the framing could be less narrowly focused on one specific part of film as a greater medium.

[@mahmudmurad4655]

The Terminator 1984 is indeed the best film James Cameron ever made.

[@letstalkaboutstuff]

IT'S SO GOOD

[@wren3164]

habibi, i don't want more disney\hollywood nonsense!!! I become so unimaginative and tired by the system just no time to be creative anymore, sad...

[@erraticonteuse]

My initial reaction to the title is "It was a net negative, however restrictions (of any sort, even politically neutral ones like word count or rhyme/meter) can be creatively stimulating, and sometimes we forget that to our detriment."

[@djmannik]

Really dislike this puritanical streak asserting itself!

[@letstalkaboutstuff]

it's not good!

[@scottkeen1014]

Oh geez. Couldn't make it past :06

[@letstalkaboutstuff]

do you think that you are entitled to me looking my best

[@Jiroxys25]

Video is perfectly good, but damn the title and thumbnail are the worst clickbait I've seen in years

[@letstalkaboutstuff]

who care

[@Jiroxys25]

@@letstalkaboutstuff Me, sadly 😔

[@letstalkaboutstuff]

@@Jiroxys25 take it up with the algorithm