#mass appeal for the lowest common denominator

[fandom-blahs]

What happened to CrazyTom is crazy and going through the twitter comments is insane, people justifying it so weird.

You can look up very old threads on the ASOIAF forum or reddit where people talk about how bad the Jaehaera’s ending is and how it’s one of the weaker, if not the weakest parts, of the dance (or post dance? Idk how to classify it) and F&B in general (not the weakest in that case)

Daenaera just pops up as the realm’s hottest 6 year old and you’re just like yup hahaha there goes GRRM again with his quirky writing.

I promise you just look up pre-HOTD threads about Jaehaera it has nothing to do with Daenaera being black in the HOTD!verse.

The way people defend it has me going crazy because with the arguments they’re putting forth it’s clear none of them …ever tried giving GRRM’s writing a go, it’s just so sensitive “why would your ant Aegon III to be sad and be….” huh??

It’s so obvious that the twitter fight is just a dumb extension for the TB/TG shit fight when in the past it was more of “why did GRRM forsake a perfect ending for the dance to encapsulate how useless this civil war is”

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

some people who try to "rehabilitate" the dark ages are doing too much. it's one thing to say it wasn't as bad as popularly imagined in the past.

but it's another thing to say it wasn't bad at all or that it wasn't obviously a downgrade from the ages that preceded or even that it was actually equal or even /better/ than the ages that preceded it (actually thing i've seen people say).

like look at this "medievalist":

he basically acknowledges that there was a decline by several metrics -- even says this isn't disputed -- but then he still insists we stop using the term "dark age" because of "emotional baggage". lmao.

has the same energy as this:

[knightochan-official]

agree in general with the post about character design but Genshin Impact is not just "avoiding friction" with its samey thin character designs but rather is also constrained by its medium and materials cost.

the characters in dungeon meshi don't have to move*, so they can have more distinct facial features, body types, etc. that would normally require much more effort to animate in a dynamic gameplay environment. the moment your guys start moving, especially in 3d environments, flat colors and simple shapes take the day:

*"but dungeon meshi has an anime!" - yeah, more on that later

now obviously, this still allows you diversity in body type (I mean I literally put Monsters, Inc. in this example, just look at Sully, the big blue guy,) but the closer you get to human the less creative liberties you are going to get to take with physics and anatomy.

The Incredibles isn't just a landmark film because Brad Bird managed to sneak an Ayn Rand novel into a 1 hour, 55 minute runtime, but because the art team managed a distinctive cast of human characters who aren't uncanny valley monsters, which was a first for Pixar. I don't think it's a coincidence that the most dynamic action scenes still feature the characters' limbs in largely flat, one-or-two tone uniforms:

(Note that they still kinda cheated by making everyone a tubular homunculus. The Incredibles is a damn good looking film but it's also a good example of how style lets you get away with a lot.)

Even Dungeon Meshi's own anime favors a cleaner, flatter style to accommodate motion (although note that it's still fucking gorgeous and I think most would agree it still captures the spirit of Ryoko Kui's work):

add in that 3d environments with free movement are inherently more complex, and a desire to reuse assets as much as humanly possible to save effort (because sadly artists in games are still treated as loss leaders) and it's no surprise that Genshin Impact has the same 3 body types and faces with different pieces on them

I actually think it's very rare that most commercial character artists are avoiding character design diversity out of fear but rather due to the unreasonable constraints on their work.

My proof? Hoyoverse, the creators of Genshin Impact, wouldn't have given Ben Bigger a bespoke model in ZZZ if there wasn't a character artist in there who wanted more than the bare minimum mass appeal designs:

My takeaway here is not that we should let lowest common denominator design teams get away with a lack of character diversity scot-free, but that we also have to systemically understand the material conditions and medium constraints the works are made under. el problema es el capitalsmo and all that. (assuming you agree with me that it's a flaw, anyway)

[algolagniaa]

it has been brought to my attention that whenever I have a problem in my personal life I tend to make too many connections and blow it up into a problem with society so take this post with a grain of salt. but I think a big problem with society today is we don’t have a sense of fun anymore, like, as a culture. we don’t have art we have mass produced corporate shit appealing to the lowest common denominator. we don’t strive for beauty, everything is just grey. we’re all supposed to look the same, act the same, follow the same general life path until we die. we’re supposed to follow all the rules and be good but never ever ever like anything too much or feel real passion. kids don’t even play anymore and most adults have 100% lost their sense of fun and whimsy. everything is practical, nothing is ritualized. in many cases having fun is either illegal or expensive. everything requires paperwork. I don’t think anyone is supposed to live like this, and I for one never will.

[anachrosims]

I'm so tired of this "baby-proofing" of the internet and pop culture. And no, I don't consider warning for sensitive topics/words to be baby-proofing.

(Warning: Mentions of common trigger words below.)

Can't say words like death or sex or suicide-- can't say swear words-- can't post even tasteful nudity or sexual content, much less all your niche fetishistic things-- without worrying about the banhammer or being censored or having your content removed. And yet, we do need content moderation-- within reason. A balance needs to be struck between legitimately harmful content and everything else.

There is no easy answer to this. Bots do not solve the problem of weeding out things that are uploaded with ill/harmful/illegal intent and there are horror stories out there (feel free to look up what human filters go through on YouTube) of actual people gettiing rapidly burned out because of having to weed out the millions of GB of absolute shit being dumped online every hour. This is nothing to say of content that helps spread inflammatory rhetoric and misinformation but is not outright graphic--and where the line on that is drawn varies from person to person. A robot cannot make a call on all these perfectly and neither can a team of people due to the sheer volume.

The last ten years, I've seen this spread into online culture where people are increasingly unable, unequipped, unwilling (or all of the above) to address more tough/sensitive topics in a productive manner.

What it comes down to, in my opinion, is corporatization of western culture (speaking for the hemisphere I live in and am most familiar with). The "corporatization" of culture has been going on for a long, long time, it's true. But at least for a time, the internet was a "wild west", a pocket of culture and subcultures that wasn't monetized, commodified, sanitized, and whitewashed for mass marketing appeal--it's easier to reach the widest audience if your content is bland enough to be palettable to the lowest common denominator.

It's been upsetting, to say the least, to watch the rapid sandblasting of so many things I love--including, but not limited to: Video games, social media, online spaces in general.

The only way I can think to effectively fight this can be summed up in one word: Education.

Read books. Take free/cheap courses on media literacy from reputable sources. Look up effective ways to communicate with other people. Learn how to debate and present arguments and how to listen, in turn. Try to learn how to stop yourself when you're getting emotional about anything and ask yourself: Why am I upset about this? What will flying off the handle do? Am I justified in speaking out? If I'm justified, is this really the time/place to speak out? Learn how to hold your tongue--not because of other people but to protect yourself and your mental health from overextending and from bringing eyes on you when you aren't ready for those consequences. Learn to read and speak in good faith.

All of these things take consistent practice. Culture can't be changed overnight and neither can you, but how those changes start to stick is by all of us practicing and changing over time.

We don't need to put up with the sanitization of our world by people who will be dead in a few decades. Gen Z and Millennials and even Gen X have already had so much stolen from us; I don't want to see them take it all. We have to build our own world brick by brick in the crumbling remnants of the past and that vibrant and good place starts with educating ourselves and each other.

[warningsine]

When The Lumière brothers made their first film, they were creating and not selling. An art that started as a form of expression was so magical that it was widely accepted by the audience. The film itself was the hero then but soon came the villain. After the arrival of Studios, Films were treated as a commodity to sell to the masses. The era of Sergei Eisenstein went down the drain, and we stopped experimenting and started selling films based on mass opinion. However, the utility of anything repetitive diminishes. The abundance of cliche films in the market ignited the need for the New Wave of Cinema, where films went back to the basics, the art of expression thrived again. This basic knowledge about films and the evolution of Cinema will be lost forever until we cherish the works of masters, or as Martin Scorsese wrote in his Essay, “Il Maestro”, curate the dying breed of Cinema.

“Curating Isn’t Undemocratic Or “Elitist,” A Term That Is Now Used So Often That It’s Become Meaningless. It’s An Act Of Generosity—You’re Sharing What You Love And What Has Inspired You.”

David Fincher once said, “A movie is made for an audience and a film is made for both the audience and the film-makers.” These words can’t be more reasonable and accurate in our generation. A similar argumentative point laid down by Martin Scorsese in “Il Maestro” says, “the art of cinema is being systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned, and reduced to its lowest common denominator, content.”

These two points hold the utmost importance relative to Cinema today because we have literally forgotten what Cinema is. A form of expression is long lost and has become a mass pleasing commodity.

Deterioration Of Cinematic Arts

There was an era in films when studious were making only musicals and comedies because those were films that the audience wanted. War-stricken nations weren’t ready for realism but few makers still had the courage to fight against the popular notion. Cinema, like literature or music, isn’t all about entertainment and should never be. Today, we have deteriorated the art so much that it has become the latter part, the horrifying truth, a scary reality. Cinema is counted as content, and its subordinates are Youtube Videos, Super Bowl Commercials, Streaming Garbage Films, and Theme Park Movies, a repetition of sequels because the audience loved the first installment. The art of self-expression is lost forever.

The culprit of this degradation is the kind of films (called content) we are making today. They are nothing but the spoon-fed subject matter, robbing the audience, their ability to think. The meaning and layer of subtext are gone and forgotten. This is the reason, curating cinema by old masters is so important, not to feel elite about it, but to remind us that we were much more visually literate than we are today.

In Il Maestro, Martin Scorsese quotes the same thought.

“The Cinema Has Always Been Much More Than Content, And It Always Will Be, And The Years When Those Films Were Coming Out From All Over The World, Talking To Each Other And Redefining The Art Form On A Weekly Basis, Are The Proof.”

Cinema Is Not Content

Content basically meant subject matter. Content in cinema meant laying emphasis on the subject matter.

In 1996 Bill Gates used a phrase called “content is king.” He referred to the word “content” being something that makes real money. This changed the meaning of the word “content” in the Oxford dictionary forever. Strong content now meant whatever that could bring back opulent results. The problem arose when the same thing started getting applied in cinema too. Stripped of its real meaning the word was likely to cause havoc in the sensibilities and trends.

Cinema was more about appealing to the sensibilities of the masses. To feed them what they liked even if it meant compromising with the overall health.

There was a tried and tested business model that was giving the best results. Everybody wanted to follow that model itself. Nobody cared about the art and the innovative process. Money was given priority over everything. It was the reverse economics of supply and demand. The films, the writings knew how by applying minimum effort they could create an audience for cringe content. They knew they could overpower the mere need for “sensibility in entertainment.” They could entertain without being logical or cerebral. The term “senseless entertainment” was created and creators or I should say marketeers took pride in the fact that the cinema they made wouldn’t require any sort of understanding and that you could leave your brains at home before coming to the theatres. I hate to criticize anyone but that was not cinema. They were delusional. That was a good business model that gave returns, that’s it.

Streams were separated. There was a mainstream cinema and there was parallel cinema. Well, it was hilarious as the parallel cinema was about the general masses, the majority and the mainstream showcased a breed of people that were elitist of the elite. Cinema of film auteurs like Federico Fellini, Godard, Satyajit Ray, Akira Kurosawa, and many others is labeled as art films, which in fact, in their time, was mainstream cinema.

What’s The Use Of Being Innovative?

With mobile phones in our hands and everyone getting famous and viral, we have skipped the part of being innovative. Today, a TikTok star or even a Youtube star considers himself an artist and filmmaker but is it the cat video we see today that can be called Cinema or Films in general? It is sure labeled as Content and if you call Cinema, content too then you just erased the boundaries between art and commodity.

Now imagine what would have happened if we would have followed the same model throughout the world. We would have never broken the fourth wall as we did in Breathless, we wouldn’t have known what jump cuts are, we wouldn’t have known why in Casino there was a single tone narrative voice, we wouldn’t have known how to pan the camera over the tables as done in Citizen Kane.

Cinema reduced to content operates in a two-dimensional space. But films stood for something so immersive and absorbing that it cannot be described in words. It is like that wind that sometimes reminds you of a memory and fills you with nostalgia. Unpopular opinions are as important as “massy” ones. It is necessary to voice them. It is necessary to show weird characters who do not fit the definitions. It is necessary to go beyond a linear relationship and explore the depths of the same. It is important to cater to diverse thoughts and sensibilities.

Imagine a world without the perspective of Marla Singer, without the loyalty of Douglas Stamper, without the practical jokes of Tommy Devito, and without the rage of Jake LaMotta.

It would be a dull and uninteresting one indeed!

The Art Of Cinema

Models and patterns don’t allow you to submerge yourself in the process. It maintains a practical approach where you are different from your product. Your product does not encumber your ideals and values. Instead, it has all the attributes that make it marketable. And that is where real cinema separates itself from this mad drive. The best cinema, writings, music composition, painting, etc are always created when you add a bit of yourself to the concoction. It hits the most when it is personal.

I understand that commerce has to be given importance. I am not so idealistic that I become impractical. And neither we aim to educate you about the basics of cinema. It is not our intention to sing you a lullaby. We operate at the fine line between the educational and commercial.

Cinema is meant for entertainment without compromising on sensibilities or curbing the urge to be innovative. Cinema is created when the filmmaker puts a piece of himself in it. It is personal, it is critical, it is brutal, it is unconventional, it builds, it demolishes but most of all it is an art form that entertains.

Il Maestro By Martin Scorsese

In his detailed essay, “Il Maestro,” Martin Scorsese pens down his eternal admiration for films and filmmakers. He writes about the magical films of Federico Fellini, and why they are so appalling to the audience. A studio head of today might tell you that Fellini’s film is an Art Film, which I literally fail to understand because Fellini made neo-realist films, meaning – films about the masses. His films were accepted by Masses but today our visual literacy is so bleak that we can’t stand art, for entertainment is only what we are fed. Now, the audience is not at the witness box, never will be. When Jobs launched the iPhone, the audience had no idea what an iPhone was. Cinema, similarly, has always thrived on its capability of innovation and experimentation. With studio projects, all films look-alike, a kind of formula that is being repeated over and over again. Have we lost track of ART? Or just making better detergents in a new packing with new actors?

When you watch a Fellini film or a Kurosawa film, you recognize the style instantly. These makers had a certain attitude towards the world and their world of art which wasn’t dictated by any heads. For example, with Fellini’s style of Filmmaking, Scorsese uses the world, “Felliniesque” a kind of magical madness in a surrealistic atmosphere.

Martin Scorsese also writes how 8½ was Fellini’s most personal film but indeed his greatest masterpiece. It was an artistic piece of self-expression that portrayed the director himself in a dilemma, and that is why it was so real and so mesmerizing. In 2019, when Bong-Joon-Ho won an Oscar for Parasite, he quoted the same exact thing in Martin Scorsese’s words, “The most personal is the most creative.”

However, when you are making a film for the studio or the audience, you have lost all concepts of self-expression because your motive is to please rather than to express and that is the reason why all films of today look-alike, like the content. I guess we have forgotten what Cinema was like. It is the only dying breed of artists like Alfonso Curran, Bong-Joon, David Fincher, and many other auteurs of today who are struggling hard to keep the art in films alive.

At the end of the essay, Martin Scorsese urges the viewers of today to keep curating Cinema because it is through history that we preserve our culture.

“Those Of Us Who Know The Cinema And Its History Have To Share Our Love And Our Knowledge With As Many People As Possible. And We Have To Make It Crystal Clear To The Current Legal Owners Of These Films That They Amount To Much, Much More Than A Mere Property To Be Exploited And Then Locked Away. They Are Among The Greatest Treasures Of Our Culture, And They Must Be Treated Accordingly.”

[xalatath]

Whoever is behind these 2 blogs and other gimmick blogs of their ilk have my full, undying wrath. You are not funny. You will never be funny. You serve as a content aggregator, a living "for you" page for the masses, a machination appealing to the lowest common denominator. That's all you are. Pointless comments that force me to take the extra 5 seconds to find the last reblog without them, the blood boiling behind my eyes and frothing at the mouth like a rabid animal

To log on every day just to contribute nothing of value, just benign mediocrity, must leave a gaping hole in your soul. It's poison, but it's so harmless that it would give you a bit of a tummyache instead of killing you. Something put into food to taint it not beyond recognition but just enough to make you wonder what is causing it to taste like shit

But anyway, I'd say this is going pretty well for a first date, wouldn't you agree ?

[willfrominternet]

There's a @staff post going around talking about "Product Strategy" and yes, we love that Tumblr Staff continues to be transparent about their ideas with the user base, but lemme tell you it smacks of the verbiage a service/platform/company uses when they're about to launch an initiative which will end with them going tits up.

Essentially the strategy boils down to "How do we convert Tumblr viewers to new users?" and "How do we make Tumblr easier to use?" To the average looker, these two questions seem harmless and even beneficial for the purpose of growing Tumblr and making it a better platform. However the doomers and long-time users read this as "How do we help the horde from Twitter adapt and give them an experience familiar to the Big Blue Bird?"

I won't expand further on the strategy because it would take forever, but you can read the staff post for yourself. Tumblr doesn't need to do much to improve this platform; it's worked because it's essentially everything Twitter/Facebook aren't. They could improve the post editor, which for writers or long-posters would make the content creation experience less clunky. They could loosen the limits on what's considered "adult content." They could build their staff and create tools and resources for new Tumblr users to learn how to best use the site.

They don't need an algorithm. They don't need to appeal to the masses coming over from Twitter. In fact, this horde will probably go crawling back to Twitter or use Threads like fools. Then all the changes will have been in vain. Tumblr has survived (for better or worse) because it's been the weird blue sheep of social media for well over a decade. Any attempt to make it mainstream has either had only modest success (brand and celebrity tie-ins) or failed miserably (selling out to Yahoo and Verizon, and - although I know it wasn't officially sanctioned by the company - Dashcon.)

Tumblr has never needed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Why start now?

[abla-soso]

It’s obv not as important as other terrible things the writers have done, but the way we barely see the greens’ dragons and the bond with their riders is just… not shown?

we don’t get vhagar roaring as aemond was in pain (there’s the “he stole vhagar” claim though that not one character corrected), but we get a scene of syrax sensing rhaenyra’s pain. we don’t get aegon riding sunfyre after his coronation, but we get rhaenyra riding syrax, and meleys almost burning the greens. sunfyre isn’t only the most beautiful dragon that george himself was looking forward to seeing, but also his bond with aegon was special and far superior and it’s just not there. obviously daeron is entirely absent, and we got a tiny look at dreamfyre. not anywhere near helaena though.

it’s a lot of things like this that make it obvious the show is about the blacks and for team black.

I think the show writers are trying to have their cake and eat it too. They want the "prestige" of having a complex narrative with morally grey characters, but they also want to cater to the lowest common denominator and have a story with clear good guys and bad guys to give the show mass appeal and huge ratings. They couldn't make up their minds as a collective team of writers, and that's why we got this contradictory mess.

They want to pat themselves on the back for making the Team Green characters more complex and deep than how GRRM originally wrote them, but they also can't give Team Green too much of their canon cool moments, or else there won't be a "team" for the audience to root for and the show's ratings wouldn't be as huge.

[skeppsbrott]

I do think it matters if people's only intake of music is TikTok. Not because it's uncool, or even because it has a "negative" effect on the form and sound of music because while I personally dislike the shorter form with fewer verses and parts, the 3-ish minute format of the pop single is just a remnant from the technical limitations of early music recordings. Recording tech and delivery platforms is always always always going to make a mark on pop music. The medium is the message.

It's not even that people aren't actively seeking out music because most people NEVER did that. Most people have always just sort of listened to what's on the radio or what's happening in their local scene and hung on to what appealed to them. Even if you're a Cool Music Fan your taste is probably curated for you by, like, Anthony Fantano or Pitchfork or whatever friend you have who trawls through bandcamp.

That all being said - the difference here is that algorithmic music curation seems to smooth off all the sharp edges. Mass media has always worked to appeal to the lowest common denominator but when a human is curating that they're likely to still slip through something that's just their personal taste. Roxette famously only got their break internationally because a superfan pestered his local label about them. How many bands haven't lived or died by enthusiastic radio DJs slipping their demos or under the radar singles in between the hits? Bohemian Rhapsody was a gamble of a single at the time and it paid off because the band had the credibility and enthusiasm to push it (and because it's a baller tune).

Now I don't think people are going to stop listening to music in clubs and pubs, in movies or from reviews, in favour of getting it all from this one social media platform. That said I do think that there's reason to be concerned if a large chunk of popular music is entirely optimised for maximum engagement in a minimal amount of runtime with a minimized impact from individual human biases. But please prove me wrong, I don't know enough about TikTok to actually make a definitive statement on any of this, lol.

[eizneckam]

also i think one of the biggest problems with the later fate entries is how they focus on the servants rather than the masters

if you look at the og fsn the only servants who really had any true characterization were saber, archer, and rider. the other servants had their times to shine, but they weren't really the focus. it was about the human characters and their journeys. note that fate is the only route where there's a servant vs. servant final battle (saber vs rider is the second to last fight in heaven's feel, and in fact in ubw the last servant vs servant fight is... saber and assassin, which is rather short and sweet), and even then saber vs. gilgamesh shares the spotlight with shirou vs. kotomine. i think the thing is, cool servant fights appeal to the lowest common denominator (note that i'm not saying i hate those fights, because they are awesome), and the later entries super play into the "smashing action figures together" appeal of that, but it's also how you get shit like apocrypha where the human characters don't matter at all, or fgo which is just blatantly about how cool and marketable the servants are. it's basically turned fate into a mon series of sorts if that makes sense.

kinda lost steam here as usual but basically i think a lot of the annoying things about the later fate series is related to how the series has played into the least common denominator aspects of it for mass appeal.

[psychmerchant]

thinking about the rise in ai ‘art’ in relation to my job is a strange feeling.

i ghostwrite for a publishing company. i write books that get published on amazon as e-books with pen names. i know a couple of the pen names used by this specific company, and all of them have hundreds of books attributed to them, like you look at this for five minutes and it becomes obvious that none of these people are real because no one can churn out an ~80k book every week.

and it’s a little annoying because the demographic the company works towards is (straight) young adult men, so it’s a lot of big-breasted women who think Main Character Man is the best thing ever, some elements of the power fantasy are a little cringe and eye-rolling, but it’s also a really fun job. i get to think up plots that are a bit goofy and a bit over-the-top and i write those books and they get read and reviewed and i get paid to write them.

there is a lot wrong with this way of writing, of treating a book like something to be churned out on a tight schedule with little-to-no chance for revision and refinement. if i had full creative control, i would change a lot about the series i am currently writing, even though i created it and i do have a decent amount of creative control already! it’s far from perfect, but i’m also just starting out in this sector and the pay is pretty decent. i’m lucky to even be working in a job in my desired sector.

but the key thing for me is, i’m employed. i’m being paid to write this stuff because even though i’m on a tight schedule that means my first idea is generally what gets done, that i don’t have a chance to let things mull over and get really good, that i’m required to include X and Y and Z to appeal to this very specific demographic i’m writing for, i am in a job i like in the industry i want to work in. a creative industry no less, in a company that, on the outside, would seem like it would jump at the chance to fully automate the process and just shove in some prompts to a text generator and get a full-length book in a fraction of the time without having to pay writers and editors. but they haven’t. even the company i’m working at, which does treat books as very commercial, need-to-be-churned-out-quick-to-make-a-profit piece of content to be consumed, they’re not using ai. they understand human creativity, even on this compressed schedule, is incomparable, and irreplicable.

so i am very confident ai will die. the death might be slow, but it will be embarrassing. and hopefully, people will realise why using ai generators is bad. it’s not just stealing from real creatives (because how else do they train the algorithms without masses of pre-existing data) but because it lacks creativity. all an ai can do is predict, based off a prompt, where something is most likely to go, which word is most likely to come next. you get the lowest common denominator of any potential creative output. and even when my work is rushed, when i can’t let ideas sit for weeks, months, or even longer, i know it’s far, far better than that. and so is every writer’s. so is every artist’s.

[transmissionsfromthebattlefield]

Lately I really like going on Discogs and examining all of the album art across the years for whatever musical artist my brain reminds myself of. It’s a fascinating journey, going through the evolution (sometimes devolution) of an artist’s publicly purchasable portrayal (there’s Power in that). The Disney pop stars going from clandestine pop to clandestine pop that happens to have somewhat Blink 182 adjacent guitar and some skinshowing. The punkers who somehow kept on truckin’ into the digital age and their beautifully clunky transitions from cut-and-paste analog collage to top-tier digital vomit. And all the bands where it’s obvious that the deal they struck with their label sold away their license to have an album cover that isn’t genetically engineered to appeal to whatever hip graphix trends are sweeping the nation. From nineties wannabe grunge intentionally-shit photography and questionable font choices to double-0’s vector awesomeness to pseudo-vaporwave hipsterdom for the early tens, maybe an awful eyesore 80s Memphis throwback to show how quirky you are. Nowadays, it’s…well, I’m not quite sure what the dominant style is nowadays. Anachronism? In politics, it’s surely anachronism.

Image is all over the news lately. I mentioned The Wall earlier, and now I’m Germany they’re trying to “probe” Roger Waters for doing the same fascist satire that Pink Floyd’s been doing since the seventies. He’s 79—you’re never too old to have the official Twitter account for ISRAEL call you out because they didn’t like that you called out their awful occupation on your video screen. I don’t agree with everything Roger says; you can’t agree with EVERYTHING someone famous says. (Too many people make the mistake of forgetting this.) But his dedication to calling out that authority is pretty inspiring. Sometimes, being a cranky old man with production values can lead to some good in the world. Respect.

I’m still reeling of that rewatch of The Wall, so much so that I watched it again. I felt like I had to to provide some closure and healing for my hammer-traumatized brain. But it was a numb watch. I was itching for more, more than just consumption, even if it was active. Two-ish weeks ago, rewatching Bob Geldof strut his stuff with no eyebrows and leather boots made me know that I couldn’t just sit idle while stupidity continues to be prescribed to insufferable teenagers and close minded geriatrics alike. While the lowest common denominator continues to be served on a golden platter to the masses. While I’m supposed to care about who’s dating who and who’s having a baby. While politicians and companies regurgitate and pander to humanity’s most base, primal impulses. While dehumanization and stereotype drive sales of dumpster-ready sweatshop shirts emblazoned with empty messages of empowerment and printed denim, and sales are going up, up, up. I was scared. Scared for my agency as a freethinking young woman.

Nothing that $200 worth of FL Studio can’t fix.

[revisesociology]

Mass Culture

Mass culture refers to standardised, formulaic, mass produced cultural products designed to be entertaining and simplistic so that it will be consumed by a mass audience. Mass culture is produced by companies in order to make a profit and is deliberately designed to be simplistic so that it appeals to the lowest common denominator. Examples of mass culture include any mass produced cultural…

[kata4a]

very popular art is necessarily very shallow: as each person has their own sense of disgust and personal distastes which a work in pursuit of mass appeal must avoid, and in doing so constrain itself to the bland and the banal

and likewise for longevity: a piece of art whose appeal is so universal as to span generations and survive cultural shifts, is, in other words, a piece of lowest common denominator garbage

[rainhadaenerys]

Today I saw a post in Dany's tag saying that "Daenerys is a perfect example of a demagogue".

So that's one more idiocy from Sansa stans. Now they claim Dany is a demagogue. Well, let's look at the definition of the words demagogue and demagogy. From Cambridge Dictionary:

Demagogy - the action or fact of winning support by exciting the emotions of ordinary people rather than by having good or morally right ideas

From Wikipedia:

A demagogue /ˈdɛməɡɒɡ/ (from Greek δημαγωγός, a popular leader, a leader of a mob, from δῆμος, people, populace, the commons + ἀγωγός leading, leader) or rabble-rouser is a leader who gains popularity in a democracy by exploiting emotions, prejudice, and ignorance to arouse the common people against elites, whipping up the passions of the crowd and shutting down reasoned deliberation. Demagogues overturn established norms of political conduct, or promise or threaten to do so.

Historian Reinhard Luthin defined demagogue thus: "What is a demagogue? He is a politician skilled in oratory, flattery and invective; evasive in discussing vital issues; promising everything to everybody; appealing to the passions rather than the reason of the public; and arousing racial, religious, and class prejudices—a man whose lust for power without recourse to principle leads him to seek to become a master of the masses. He has for centuries practiced his profession of 'man of the people'. He is a product of a political tradition nearly as old as western civilization itself."

Demagogues have appeared in democracies since ancient Athens. They exploit a fundamental weakness in democracy: because ultimate power is held by the people, it is possible for the people to give that power to someone who appeals to the lowest common denominator of a large segment of the population. Demagogues usually advocate immediate, forceful action to address a crisis while accusing moderate and thoughtful opponents of weakness or disloyalty. If elected to high executive office, demagogues typically unravel constitutional limits on executive power and attempt to convert their democracy to dictatorship.

Well, first, let's talk about book Dany: when the hell does she "excite ordinary people's emotions rather than having good or morally right ideas"? Unlike the show, Daenerys doesn't do speeches in the books. So she really isn't exciting people's emotions. Dany gains people's loyalty by her actions: she frees people, and they follow her because of this. The only speech she does in the books is at the end of the first book, when she promises that those who stay with her will be free and treated equally as brothers and sisters, husbands and wives. And she fulfills that promise: her people are indeed free and they are indeed treated with equality. Daenerys didn't lie about her intentions to get support from the common people. She didn't lie about freeing people to make them follow her, she actually freed them. Finally, none of Dany's ideas are bad or morally wrong, so she doesn't really fit the definition. She does have good and morally right ideas.

A demagogue /ˈdɛməɡɒɡ/ (from Greek δημαγωγός, a popular leader, a leader of a mob, from δῆμος, people, populace, the commons + ἀγωγός leading, leader) or rabble-rouser is a leader who gains popularity in a democracy by exploiting emotions, prejudice, and ignorance to arouse the common people against elites, whipping up the passions of the crowd and shutting down reasoned deliberation. Demagogues overturn established norms of political conduct, or promise or threaten to do so.

The very definition here excludes Daenerys (and all other rulers of ASOIAF) from being demagogues. Demagogues gain power in democracies, because it's only in democracies that power comes from the people. Inspiring people's passions in non-democratic societies means nothing, because the power does not come from them. Dany gains power not by inspiring people's passions, but because she has armies and wins battles, because the world of ASOIAF doesn't have any democracies.

Daenerys also doesn't exploit people's prejudices, ignorance or emotions. Quite the opposite: book Dany, throughout the entirety of ADWD, tries to reconcile freedmen and former slavers, she tries to make peace. She doesn't arouse common people against the elites beyond helping those people to free themselves. And there's literally nothing wrong with that, unless you are actually arguing that Dany arming slaves to fight to free themselves is wrong and that said slaves should have continued being slaves.

Demagogues overturn established norms of political conduct, or promise or threaten to do so.

Sure, Dany does that. But notice the context here: demagogues take power in democracies, and threaten to overturn THOSE norms and political conducts. That is, demagogues threaten democracy. Dany doesn't do that. Nowhere in ASOIAF is a democracy, the cities of Slaver's Bay aren't democracies. The political/economic structure that Dany destroys is slavery, and there's really nothing wrong with that.

Historian Reinhard Luthin defined demagogue thus: "What is a demagogue? He is a politician skilled in oratory, flattery and invective; evasive in discussing vital issues; promising everything to everybody; appealing to the passions rather than the reason of the public; and arousing racial, religious, and class prejudices—a man whose lust for power without recourse to principle leads him to seek to become a master of the masses. He has for centuries practiced his profession of 'man of the people'. He is a product of a political tradition nearly as old as western civilization itself."

Dany doesn't fit this. First, the books make it very clear that Daenerys is not an eloquent person. She is not really that skilled in oratory:

"We curse the rain when it falls upon our heads, yet without it we should starve. The world needs rain … and slaves. You make a face, but it is true. Consider Qarth. In art, music, magic, trade, all that makes us more than beasts, Qarth sits above the rest of mankind as you sit at the summit of this pyramid … but below, in place of bricks, the magnificence that is the Queen of Cities rests upon the backs of slaves. Ask yourself, if all men must grub in the dirt for food, how shall any man lift his eyes to contemplate the stars? If each of us must break his back to build a hovel, who shall raise the temples to glorify the gods? For some men to be great, others must be enslaved."

He was too eloquent for her. Dany had no answer for him, only the raw feeling in her belly. "Slavery is not the same as rain," she insisted. "I have been rained on and I have been sold. It is not the same. No man wants to be owned." - Daenerys III ADWD

In fact, if we were going to call anyone in ASOIAF a demagogue (which would still not be truly adequate, given that nowhere in ASOIAF is a democracy), it would be people like Hizdahr and Xaro. They are the ones who use their eloquence and power of persuasion as a way to justify bad and morally wrong ideas, like slavery and the reopening the fighting pits.

Second, Dany doesn't arouse any prejudices. In fact, GRRM comments on how egalitarian Dany is, and the books also show how Dany is egalitarian.

Demagogues have appeared in democracies since ancient Athens. They exploit a fundamental weakness in democracy: because ultimate power is held by the people, it is possible for the people to give that power to someone who appeals to the lowest common denominator of a large segment of the population. Demagogues usually advocate immediate, forceful action to address a crisis while accusing moderate and thoughtful opponents of weakness or disloyalty. If elected to high executive office, demagogues typically unravel constitutional limits on executive power and attempt to convert their democracy to dictatorship.

Again, it's impossible for Dany to apply: the slaver cities are not democracies. Dany is not turning anything into a dictatorship, because democracies don't exist, and Dany does not derive her power from the people, but from military force (and before anyone says that Dany not deriving her power from the people is "tyrannical", remember that this is an accusation that makes no sense to make in a world where democracies and power from the people don't exist). Dany is also quite moderate: she advocates for peace with the slavers, while her advisors are the ones who want more forceful action. And actually, Dany should take more forceful action, and no, taking more forceful action would not make her into a demagogue, because once again, she can't be a demagogue or "convert democracy into dictatorship" in a world where democracy doesn't exist.

Now let's talk about show!Dany: she is indeed better in oratory. She makes grand speeches and promises great things like ending slavery and breaking the wheel. But the thing is: as far as we know, Dany was genuine in what she said. She did end slavery, and not only that, she allowed the Meereenese to vote for their own leaders once she left. And another thing is: show!Dany is not exploiting emotions and prejudices in order to push bad and morally wrong ideas. Nothing that Dany is pushing for is morally wrong: ending slavery is not wrong; ending the exploitation of the lower classes by the nobles is not wrong.

I know that some Dany antis will say that show!Dany is a demagogue because everything is a lie, that she just says things like "Break the Wheel" to get people's support but that in reality she just wants power and never helps people unless it gives her some advantage. However, this is not true. We've seen Dany help people for no personal gain plenty of times (X, X). And using the ending of the show as proof that Daenerys "only cared about power" doesn't work, because everyone knows that was wildly out of character (I'm just going to link to my masterpost that contains plenty of analyses of the plethora of things that were wrong with show!Dany's characterization in season 8).

Finally, in my experience, when I see people calling certain politicians demagogues, It's usually right wing politicians saying this about left wing politicians, saying that oppressed groups that support said left wing politician only support them because the masses are ignorant and uneducated, that only the elites know what's good and only the elites are educated enough to choose correctly, etc. So honestly, I highly suspect when I see people calling people with revolutionary ideals demagogues. It's just a way to dismiss the concerns of oppressed groups and advocate that only the elites have the intellectual capacity to form educated and valid opinions about their leaders.