#dc own up to your classism challenge

[shadesofredhood]

You know Jason should be the class conscious robin, but then dc would need to pull its head out of the rich's collective asshole and face up to their own classism so it will never be acknowledged in Canon.

[coldresolve]

boiling any discussion of media analysis down to "fiction isn't reality" or "depiction isnt endorsement" and treating it like that's the end of the discussion means that you can no longer criticise any piece of media for the ideas and arguments that are presented in it, implicit or explicit. i don't know if you realize that, but you should.

you know how the harry potter series had those hook-nosed greedy goblins controlling the banks that were, like, a little tiny bit antisimetic? but depiction isn't endorsement, so i guess we just leave it at that.

or how DC's batman has, among other things, a classism issue which it just vaguely gestures at sometimes but never actually engages with. or the torture apologia in 1984 - a book i love, by the way, but it does feature torture apologia. or the blatant racism that occasionally pops up when you're reading lovecraft - you just have to remember that fiction isn't real, so we don't have to talk about it.

and one thing that irks me about your argument isn't just that you're watering down media analysis to its absolute bare-bones zero-thought entry level point of discussion - it's that i don't even think that you yourself believe in this argument. i think you use it as a way to avoid engaging with media critically, but only when it's about media you like. media you created. you'd love to just like it without thinking about all the bad stuff it might contain, because that's more comforting. because it makes you not feel guilty.

i contend that there's a lot of value in digging a bit deeper than "fiction isn't reality". media criticism is a great tool to learn how to spot the arguments behind bigotry and apologia, even if those arguments aren't being made explicitly. you start to unlearn all the shit you've been fed by propaganda throughout your life. you learn how to spot bias. and that's just the big stuff - you learn how to think about interpersonal dynamics in a different way, too. what is the author trying to tell me about the choice this character made here, and do i think it's reasonable. its discussions like that which are very much applicable to the real world. you get to challenge your own worldview and ethics through fiction. you grow, you learn new things. that's what makes it so worthwhile, in my opinion. it's what makes fiction art instead of mere entertainment.

food for thought

[the-desolated-quill]

The Mandalorian Represents Everything I Hate About Disney - Quill’s Scribbles

This post contains spoilers for the first two episodes, if you care about that sort of thing.

Yes, after four months of wallowing in a depressive funk, your lord and saviour the Desolated Quill has returned to (hopefully) start posting semi-regularly again. And what better way to mark my return than by kicking my favourite dead horse Disney.

So what have you been doing since this coronavirus epidemic started? I for one have been spending most of the time trying and failing to persuade my mother not to get a Disney+ subscription. The rise of streaming TV services represent the very height of greed and stupidity within the film and television industry. See it’s not enough for these studios to share their profits with the likes of Netflix and Amazon. Rampant capitalism dictates that they must have every conceivable penny imaginable, hence why we’re seeing the slow gating off of content and the emergence of new streaming platforms like Disney+, Starzplay, DC Universe, HBO Max, Apple TV and YouTube. Yes, even Youtube has a subscription service now. It’s like that episode of Oprah Winfrey. You get a streaming service, you get a streaming service, you get a streaming service, EVERYBODY gets a streaming service! Except the problem is that the reason why Netflix and Amazon took off was because it was convenient to get all of our entertainment from one location. Now with content spread out across multiple platforms, customers are having to pick and choose who to subscribe to as only the very rich can afford to subscribe to everyone. It’s ostensibly a televisual arms race coupled with classism. Make no mistake, the motivation behind the rise of streaming services is not motivated by customer satisfaction nor artistic merit, but rather corporate greed. And Disney is by far the worst offender. There is literally not a single reason why they couldn’t have kept their stuff on Netflix. The only reason Disney+ exists is so that they can get their grubby mitts on even more money than they already have (which is quite a lot).

So my mum got a Disney+ subscription because she never fucking listens to a single word I say and we ended up sitting down to watch the first two episodes of The Mandalorian. The new Star Wars TV spinoff created by Iron Man director Jon Favreau set in-between Return of The Jedi and The Force Awakens.

As much as I have complaints about the way Disney have handled the Star Wars license, I confess I was curious and dare I say even excited about The Mandalorian when it was first announced. I’ve gone on record to say that I didn’t want nor care about a sequel trilogy because, as far as I was concerned, Return Of The Jedi was a perfect ending to the Skywalker saga and we didn’t need to see what happened next. That’s like wondering what happens after Cinderella married Prince Charming. We don’t need to see it. They lived happily ever after. The end. The spinoffs, on the other hand, including the Anthology films and The Mandalorian, I was much more excited for because it was an opportunity to tell different kinds of stories and explore areas of the Star Wars universe we wouldn’t normally get to see in the main films. If the Star Wars franchise has to be expanded upon, I’d rather it was like this. Lets move away from the Skywalkers and the Jedi and concentrate on other stuff. So a space western set after the original trilogy depicting a lone bounty hunter trying to make ends meet after the fall of the Empire was very appealing to me.

Sadly that’s not what I got.

I’ll just be blunt. I saw the first two episodes of The Mandalorian and I didn’t like it very much. It’s not bad as such. It’s competently made. I’ve seen some behind the scenes videos and there’s clearly a lot of talented people working hard on this show. That being said, the story of The Mandalorian is... well... kind of rubbish.

So lets talk about it, shall we?

As far as I’m concerned there are three reasons why The Mandalorian doesn’t work. The first is the complete lack of tension. It’s a problem that’s plagued Star Wars since The Phantom Menace. Despite all the challenges and obstacles that are thrown at the characters, it never seems to affect them or even pose much of a threat. We saw that with Anakin Skywalker in the prequels and Rey in the sequels, and it’s the same here. The Mandalorian is this amazing dude who’s skilled and awesome and the bestest fighter ever. He can take out all these bad guys single-handedly and can do all these cool things. Except none of that is interesting. It’s boring. People like to defend Rey saying she’s no worse than Luke Skywalker, but that’s not true because, unlike Rey, Luke isn’t perfect. He struggles, he makes mistakes, and he grows and evolves over time. Rey is just this perfect woman who can do no wrong and who can pull any random superpower out of her arse for the sake of plot convenience. It’s just bad writing. While The Mandalorian never gets quite as bad as that, there does seem to be this obsession with making this awesome, cool dude, but that ends up coming at the cost of any tension or threat the story could have. 

In the first episode, we see his bounty explore his ship. This could have been an opportunity to create some tension. Maybe he could try and sabotage the ship. Or try to escape. Complicate matters for the Mandalorian. But no. The Mandalorian knew what the guy was doing and instantly recaptures him. Same goes for a scene later on when the Mandalorian and some killer robot has to fight a whole army of mercenaries. How are they going to get out of this? Very easily it turns out. Not only do they beat them within a couple of minutes, the mercenaries are also clearly the worst shots ever. The robot is like seven foot tall and moving at the speed of frozen treacle, and yet they don’t manage to land a single hit on the guy. Where’s the suspense? Where’s the danger? By the end of the first episode, I was just bored senseless.

Which leads me to my second biggest problem. The total lack of originality. Is it really too much to ask for someone to actually come up with their own fucking ideas? Literally everything in The Mandalorian is basically nicked wholesale from other, better Star Wars films. The first two planets we visit in episode one are basically variations on Tatooine with the same architecture and everything. There’s even that eye thing that pops out of the door like in Jabba’s Palalce in Return Of The Jedi.  Then, to add insult to injury, we then end up on the actual Tatooine (or at least what I assume is the actual Tatooine. I mean there are Jawas). The Mandalorian is like this Frankenstein assembly of Star Wars memorabilia. Everything has been taken from other films when it makes no sense to do so. The Mandalorian freezes his bounties in carbonite, except that was a process specific to Cloud City. Darth Vader improvised a trap using what was at hand to try and catch Luke. He wasn’t even sure if Luke would survive the freezing process, hence why they tested it on Han Solo first. The only reason it’s here in The Mandalorian is for fanwank purposes. Same goes for the stormtroopers. Why the fuck are there stormtroopers?! Remember where we are in the Star Wars story. The Empire has fallen and the New Republic is taking over. Imperialists are going to be pretty unpopular, wouldn’t you say? So why the fuck would you have stormtroopers wandering around in full armour out in the open? It makes zero sense. Even the killer robot is copied whole sale from IG-88 from Empire Strikes Back. Why don’t you come up with your own killer robot design?

Then there’s this little shit:

Yeah, I kind of knew this was coming because I’ve seen the GIFs circulating on Tumblr beforehand, which kind of ruined the ending of the first episode somewhat. But even if I didn’t know this was coming, the ‘twist’ still wouldn’t work because it’s not really a twist if you think about it. What actually happens? The Mandalorian finds the Child and it’s an eighty year old gremlin. Okay. So what? The only reason it’s ‘shocking’ is because it vaguely looks like Yoda. Other than that, who gives a shit? It doesn’t really mean anything.

Which leads me to my third biggest problem. Why should I give a shit about anything that’s going on? What are the stakes? There aren’t any. We don’t know anything about the Mandalorian and we have no reason to care about him or his job. We don’t know anything about the Child or why he’s so important. The only reason people are interested is because it reminds them of the other films. As a story in and of itself, there’s simply nothing there. I don’t know who any of these people are, what they want, why they want it and what will happen if they fail. So why should I give a shit? And nowhere is this more apparent than in the second episode. The Jawas agree to give the Mandalorian’s ship parts back if he retrieves an egg from some monster. Why do they want the egg? I don’t know. I literally have no idea. They never say. And yet that’s what the entire episode revolves around. This isn’t a story. It’s just random stuff happening. And what’s more it has nothing to do with the overall plot. You can literally cut out the entirety of episode two and it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference. Same is true of that annoying fuckface that keeps insisting ‘he has spoken’ (I swear by the end I wanted to kick that old git in the face, he irritated me so much). We waste the second half of the first episode watching the Mandalorian piss about with some toad/horse thing only to then make his way back to the ship on foot in episode two. So what was the fucking point of that then? Why is anything fucking happening?

And this is what perfectly sums up the problems with Star Wars under Disney’s regime. If anything The Mandalorian acts as a microcosm for everything that’s wrong with the current movies and indeed Disney as a company. These movies aren’t movies. They’re products designed to pander to a gullible fanbase’s nostalgia. The entire sequel trilogy was basically the original trilogy repackaged and resold with nothing unique or original to offer. And the reason The Rise Of Skywalker felt so unsatisfying to everyone watching was because the story was never planned. They pivoted it to whatever the focus groups enjoyed about the previous film. That’s why the whole trilogy felt so uneven and directionless. And it’s not just Star Wars. Obviously there’s the live action remakes of the Renaissance movies, now with added nods and winks to meta commentary without actually addressing actual complaints people may have had. This also extends to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. How many of these fucking movies have we had where the bad guy tries to take over the world with an Infinity Stone? Thor: The Dark World and Guardians Of The Galaxy are pretty much the exact same movie. Spider-Man: Far From Home, a film co-produced with Sony, is ostensibly a rehash of Iron Man 3, which in turn had recycled a lot of its story from Pixar’s The Incredibles, another Disney product. Even Black Panther, a movie I absolutely adore, borrows its basic plot structure from Thor: Ragnarok. Disney are so unoriginal and so lazy that they have effectively started cannibalising themselves. The Mandalorian is just the latest example of this. At least with Black Panther you had a talented filmmaker like Ryan Coogler who was able to take these borrowed elements and spin it into something more meaningful and with more emotional impact. At least there was some actual passion put into that film.

People are no doubt going to have a go at me saying I’m being too harsh and that I haven’t given The Mandalorian a fair chance. Well I’m sorry, but I’ve given it two episodes and I’m bored out of my mind. It’s a cynically produced, uninspired load of waffle. I’m not going to waste my time sitting through more episodes in the hopes that it might get good later on. That’s not how good storytelling is supposed to work and it sickens me to think that this has pretty much become the new normal for this industry.

[sladvlactia]

The Division 2 and Dissonance

No one with a platform seems to be talking about the Division 2, other than a few more liberal or collegiate papers. And what can be said of it that wasn’t already said about the first Division? A fetishistic gun-porn cover based shooter. One that asks you to uphold all that ‘Makes America Great” but not in so many words. A strong game so far as mechanics goes, that has forced me to exist in a state of cognitive dissonance as I enjoy my way through multiple hours of the kind of violence so expertly mocked and denigrated by Spec Ops: The Line.  It has the potential of being a masterful story, if they only knew what it was they wanted to say.

But let’s start with the strengths the game has, which to be fair, are many. A tight cover based shooter that incentivizes creative tactics and strategies, a well-balanced progression system for your gear that makes you care more about what you use on a more complex level than whatever has the highest numbers. Excellent level design with environmental puzzles and storytelling that require you to look beyond your next place of cover and allows for a more expansive story as well as smaller, side-stories you can ferret out if your curious and determined enough. In fact, these side stories are generally more well thought out and nuanced than the main storyline is.

               With cover based shooters, there’s always the danger of having the game devolve into a stagnant hide and seek punctuated by grenade explosions. The mix of enemy types, various elevations of cover, and the myriad of different skills makes each battle feel unique, even if you are replaying a mission, you’ll need to adapt to the different enemies or the different paths they may take to flank you or catch you out in the open. The result is a fast paced challenge that requires you to constantly adapt to your surroundings. You have to keep an eye out for anyone with specific gear, do they have a grenade bag? Wait for them to be near someone else and shoot the bag, taking out them and those around them. Are they near a breaker box? Shoot the box and shock them, buying you time to line up a headshot, or to reposition if you’re being flanked.

That attention to detail, and the effort made obvious by the positioning of each element in the game world, leads to the first issue for the Division 2. Of the four different factions, each has specific strategies they use to combat you. Military tactics from the remnants of a battalion with the True-Son’s. Fast and Furious kamikaze and fire with the Outcasts, or the chaotic and “street-tough” style of the Hyena’s. To explore what I’m getting at, let’s start with the Hyena’s; a faction made up of either black people or, “inbred” white people. The “animals” of the Division world, specifically likened to “Black-Bloc” in the in-game descriptions. Whereas the other factions will rely on the cover given, or use their various tools to flush you out of cover, the Hyena’s will rush you, They’re designed to be chaotic, to be an embodiment of anarchy. A miss-step at best when they’re all brown or poor people in the game world, but outright racism/classism is more likely. The Outcasts are villains because of what they did in response to being rounded up and put into a concentration camp, because they want revenge and took it too far.  Is another uncomfortable portrayal; as a friend put it, “I can identify the most, with the outcasts…” They’ve become terrorists to be sure, but when the alternative is to trust in the same government agencies that left you to die in the first place, it’s hard to judge. Especially when the faction that is more or less responsible for their suffering, is the military remnant known as the True-Sons. A fascist proxy force clearly meant to be the more jingoist aspect of America, and those that just “Follow-Orders” a step in the right direction for acknowledging the dangers of power and following orders, one that seems to be mysteriously missing from the Division agents themselves. Perhaps portraying a faction of almost religious fanatics known for nursing a grudge from being forced into concentration camps by fascists wasn’t the best idea.

The gear itself is balanced and nuanced enough to allow for customizing your play style, and giving you the option of spending hours going through your stash of goods, trying to get the right amount of attack, vs, skill, vs, Defense boosts to make use of your various talents or skill modifications. Something that is enjoyable to a great number of people who appreciate such fine-tuning. (myself included) As I go through each armor piece, I find myself attempting to match my branding, as each brand has specific perks unlocked by stacking pieces together, modifying my weapons with various scopes, or larger magazines. It’s well designed, and each piece carries a benefit and a detriment to the stats of the gun. It’s easier for me to ignore that narrative behind it, the oh so blunt tagline in the beginning cinematic “Did you have a gun?...Did your neighbor?” A Jingoist, refrain that all but screams that all that keeps us from turning on each other is the threat of punishment. Of violence, Of Death and the end of a highly customized and lovingly crafted weapon. But it’s always there, in the back of your mind that everything in this world is solved by shooting it, even locked doors, in most instances. In fact, the only real interaction the player has comes via bullets. A sacrifice for streamlining the work put into gameplay, models and animation of course, but maybe I just want experience this world without destroying it.

Which leads into the beautiful level design, and the amazing work and the evident love that went into making DC.  During missions, you can generally tell where it is you need to go through clever use of extension cords, or discarded shell casings, or even blood smears. Letting you know that THIS door, of the many available, is the one you want to open to proceed.  Every alleyway, abandoned parking garage, or small nook in the sewers has sleeping bags or tents, discarded food wrappers or even torn pages from a notebook, telling someone to be strong, that the writer has gone to look for food. Taken together, the level designers have obviously put in a staggering amount of effort and thought into their work. You can find small treasures, hidden easter-eggs or simply little oasis of peace or an excuse to put something silly in. Searching the sewers, I found a small room full of plush animals, in front was a turtle with a miniature Hard Hat on it. Looking around you can see several plushy snakes wrapped around the pipes. There’s nothing else that’s important in this room, no reason to go through the effort of resizing a hard hat to fit on a plush turtle, just the knowledge that some players will find this room, feel a small bit of levity, and be encouraged to stop and explore before moving on. At one point, I came across an area enclosed in wood, a place that you cannot access as a player. And I hear a blues harmonica playing from somewhere inside. Again, no real reason that I’ve found, just something nice to put into the world, something to break up the unceasing “gritty-ness”. Which is, perhaps, the most damning bit of cognitive dissonance in the Division 2. Each faction has found footage style “intel” little cinematic clips that illustrate just how capitol “E” Evil they are. It quickly becomes absurd; the Hyena’s leave a child alive after murdering the adults because they think it would be “funnier to watch him starve”. The outcasts ritualistically murder the builder of their camp, by literally beating him to death with a hammer. The leader of the true sons, true to his 80’s villain trope, kills a doctor in cold blood when she dares tell him that they cannot just abandon the victims of the plague. Each video, or audio clip is entirely serious, each faction is irremediably evil. Only the heroes, the good guys are allowed to be morally grey.

Which, all told, is I think the largest issue I have with the Division 2, the narrative.  Helpign defend America, to rebuild it, restore what it once was. The settlements you are tasked with helping in the game are closed off areas within the city. Large walls, armed guards and patrolling squads of armed militia keep the area more or less “safe”.  Loudspeakers tell anyone nearby that they cannot simply take in more people, than only the worthy are allowed inside. ‘If you stay here, you have to pull your weight” is a literal quote from one settlement. As you help to strengthen each, more American Flags, and colors of red, white, and blue crop up. The sun shines brighter, the guns get bigger. The people inside are kept inside, safe with work rotas, physical training time, clear rules and regulations. A prison to be blunt, one that only allows in those they deem “desirables”.  You find recordings and messages from the leaders or residents of the settlements, hear the radio broadcasts from those inside. They struggle with the knowledge that they cannot allow everyone in, that they live the life of prisoners or impose that life on others. Each recording found reinforces that it is “necessary”, that they are simply doing what must be done for now for a brighter future. Commendable, but worryingly fascist in its execution. Especially when the difference between the good guys and bad guys, functionally, is non-existent. The Hyena’s control the drugs, The True-sons have the most guns and the best gear, the outcasts are weaponizing their own infection, ingeniously turning their outcast status into a weapon itself. Each group is attempting to restore control, or some semblance of a reason to continue to live, through demolishing the past, through exacting revenge, through imposing order, or by preserving what’s left of a lost empire. It’s difficult to feel any different from any other faction, when all you do, all you are capable of doing, is killing and destroying. Even the end game enemies, Black Tusk; a clear nod towards Blackwater, are ambiguously evil. The only thing you know about them is that they oppose you. Finding more of the hidden story pieces, through abandoned cell-phones, laptops, and found footage begins to show a clear breakdown of government. The almost saccharine portrayal of congress “putting aside their differences” to help the sick and wounded is shown in counterpoint to how they fled as soon as things got bad. The current president may or may not have seized control after the assassination of the previous administration.  

In all, maybe my issue with this game is that it gives me no choice but to accept that America is corrupt, broken, and racist. That we as a society are one bad day away from warring factions. That the “best” of us, people sworn to defend us and rebuild us, or little more than glorified trained killers. Who scavenge colorful sunglasses to snap selfies in front of their slaughter. Maybe that’s the whole point of the Division, America is great for a small group of people, who are only kept safe by murdering anyone and everyone who doesn’t fit. “Good-Job!” You’ll be told. “By recruiting this camps only doctor, you now have a barber!” Good thing you can look good while fighting people who revel in killing those weaker. To bring it full circle, your mission here was to re-activate your magic SHD network, one you managed to complete relatively early on, why are you here now? A question asked hauntingly in Spec-Ops. Not addressed or entertained in The Division.