I dare you to anticipate Joaquin Phoenix in Todd Phillips's JOKER (now with something that may or may not be a SPOILER)

not surprised that joaquin would be involved with a bad idea like this. he's the guy who spent 2 years pretending to be retarded because ben affleck's brother asked him to.

Aren't all the criticisms that are being leveled at this equally true of Taxi Driver? I mean maybe Taxi Driver deserves the same criticisms, IDK.

I'm p sure Taxi Driver at least has a better score/soundtrack

they should reuse the version of "Mad World" from Donnie Darko in this movie, ideally in every scene

there are like 8 donnie darko threads, I don't know which one to bump to shitpost in

Aren't all the criticisms that are being leveled at this equally true of Taxi Driver? I mean maybe Taxi Driver deserves the same criticisms, IDK.

I haven't seen Taxi Driver so I don't know. I just know what the Joker is like as a character and this version of him is fundamentally flawed in a way that a story about an original character wouldn't necessarily be.

Travis iirc is lauded as a hero at the end of the movie, but that's couched in some degree of irony. In this one, as I understand that, he becomes a hero to other like-mindeds, or so all the people with joker costumes and signs and stuff in the trailer will have me believe.

Travis iirc is lauded as a hero at the end of the movie

eh common reading is that the post-shootout scenes are all delusions/in Travis' head

I'm less concerned with fealty to the Joker character and more just with not starting to label art "irresponsible" when it may have ambiguities that could be perceived as feeding into some current problematic narrative, especially based on a trailer.

tbf most art is irresponsible

I think as far as moral seriousness is concerned the guy who made Road Trip should be given the benefit of the doubt

it is an interesting exercise to try and compile a list of films (altho I suppose other media could be included as well) that contain both an explicit political agenda and the potential to incite political or violent action. I don't think it's a super long list but there are various obvious candidates - Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind spring to mind. I don't think Taxi Driver qualifies. No idea about this movie, since it looks so unbelievably fucking stupid I have no interest in seeing it.

trailer gave me kind of a "what if the main character of red dragon was the red dragon" vibe

xp: I don't know, when we watched Gone With The Wind in high school it mostly incited extreme belly laughs

oh it looks dumb as shit now but the political context of its original release was p similar to Birth of a Nation: rehabilitate the reputation of the South and its "peculiar institution", its basically an ode to white supremacy.

it is an interesting exercise to try and compile a list of films (altho I suppose other media could be included as well) that contain both an explicit political agenda and the potential to incite political or violent action. I don't think it's a super long list but there are various obvious candidates - Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind spring to mind. I don't think Taxi Driver qualifies. No idea about this movie, since it looks so unbelievably fucking stupid I have no interest in seeing it.

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 4 September 2019 17:56 (twelve minutes ago) link

I kind of feel this way about Death Wish, which just strikes me as pure racial revenge porn. That said, I think the actual "danger" posed by such movies is pretty limited.

as recently noted in a WaPo article about the recent lynching memorial/monument in DC:

“Gone with the Wind” repeated the story about carpetbagger misrule and black insubordination during the Reconstruction era, directing viewers to sympathize with Southern white “victims” like Scarlett O’Hara and Ashley Wilkes. Even in its Hollywood form, the story had political consequences. “Whatever sentiment there was in the South for a federal anti-lynch law,” NAACP leader Walter White supposedly said, “evaporated during the ‘Gone with the Wind’ vogue.”

As long as Americans remained enamored with a “Gone with the Wind” version of history, the real history of racial brutality, including any awareness of the true extent of racial terror lynchings, will be buried beneath a myth about the “shackles of Reconstruction.”

White really hated the movie, went after Hattie McDaniel (not very successfully afaict) as well.

ooh Death Wish is def a good candidate imo. It doesn't have any of the ambiguity or discomfort of Taxi Driver.

xp

Inspired by JOKER, here is a complete list of movies that have actually caused tangible societal harm:

✓ Birth of a Nation (revived the KKK)
✓ A Better Tomorrow (inspired Hong Kong teenagers to wear trenchcoats in the sweltering heat)
✓ Avengers (led to the Disney monopoly)

— Will Sloan, the 6ix Dad (@WillSloanEsq) September 3, 2019

xpost Would the same go for any revenge exploitation movie? Or is the target of vengeance a key distinction?

Deer Hunter reportedly inspired a spate of copycat Russian Roulette (which the movie invented?).

idk if the need to play stupid suicidal games was really a broader social trend that one could accuse Deer Hunter of exploiting and perpetuating

you could maybe argue that about Jackass tho lol

Oh, you're looking for movies that exacerbate existing conditions?

I guess? seems like irresponsibility requires there to be something already extant to be irresponsible about.

like, exploiting a developing or already existing political trend/strain

idk I'm just spitballing here

Falling Down is pretty bad

I mean, did Bernie Goetz inspire copycats?

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/2005/joe_blu-ray_/poster_joe_blu-ray01.jpg

Surely many pearls were clutched upon the release of A Clockwork Orange?

Gone With the Wind also purports to be somewhat historical, so the harm it did seems to have been in distorting history.

Joe (1970)
R | 1h 47min | Drama, Thriller | 15 July 1970 (USA)

Two men, Bill, a wealthy conservative, and Joe, a far-right factory worker, form a dangerous bond after Bill confesses to murdering his daughter's drug dealer boyfriend to Joe.

Jesus, this is literally right wing ideology in one sentence.

I haven't seen it in forever and can't remember if it's intended satirically but my instinct is no.

I don't think so. It came up a lot in Nixonland.

it sort of sounds satirical from this, but maybe just done so hamfistedly that it doesn't read satirically? I mean the fact that he accidentally kills his own daughter at the end sounds like a trite sort of moral

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_(1970_film)

Surely many pearls were clutched upon the release of A Clockwork Orange?

Wot a ninny

until recently the movies i most frequently heard condemned as irresponsible were jfk and do the right thing

Caligula

JFK *is* pretty irresponsible but idk if it really had any impact on audience actions or politics. It is also hilariously awesome, obviously.

hard disagree on DTRT tho

p sure Stone's Ukraine/Putin movie is def going to qualify

Caligula led to a spate of Emperor on Emperor violence iirc

I'm just going to take a wild guess re: the demographics of those who've deemed Do the Right Thing to be irresponsible...

common thread with Birth of a Nation, Gone With the Wind, and JFK is that they are all revisionist histories that play hard and loose with facts in service to a broader ideological agenda.

do the right thing is obviously great and lee made the same correct observation re: demographics in public at the time, but it is an example of when media conversation around a movie was cast in these terms.

hard disagree on DTRT tho

Do the Right Thing was totally (and racistly) branded irresponsible.

right, I meant I disagreed with that branding

Gotcha.

the argument at the time was that there was going to be riots because of Do The Right Thing which is just so laughable on the face of it. The thinking there was that this *film* would convince black people to get irrationally angry about racism? As opposed to, like, all the actual racism?

think of all the innocent pizza parlors throughout the nation