For an example of how shame can be useful in discouraging bad choices, look at cigarettes. They're legal, but society and government have successfully campaigned to publicize their negative effects, to shame smokers and to praise quitters.
You're so close. Tobacco companies used to be allowed to actively advertise their product as healthy and employed statisticians and doctors to publish fake science in order to do so. Cracking down on Tobacco advertising has nothing to do with shame. On the other hand, people with a nicotine addiction are encouraged to seek treatment in order to quit. Again, this is the exact opposite of using shame to discourage "bad choices".
Perhaps if you thought about it just a little bit more you'd understand that treating addiction and substance abuse as a normal medical problem as opposed to a shameful sin to be hidden actually results in positive outcomes.
Hell, look at Indonesia, a nation which has a huge amount of shame-based societal pressures including the death penalty for drug smuggling and in some places corporal punishment for sex out of wedlock. They have one of the highest rates of smoking. Want to guess why? Thats right, Tobacco companies have practically zero restrictions in terms of who and how they market, including to children.
How about instead of shaming people we treat public health issues as health issues and stop allowing corporations to subject millions of people to catastrophic addictions.
I agree that addiction should be treated like a medical issue, but I also think shame plays a role. We're social creatures, after all. Sometimes, the fear of being shamed can deter bad behavior. It's not about using shame to punish addicts, but about recognizing its part in our social dynamics.
Also, I'd suggest a friendlier tone in your discussions. Being condescending can push people away, even if you have great insights. Respectful communication can make a big difference.
There is nothing friendly or respectful about suggesting that people are becoming slaves to addiction and dying destitute in the streets of the richest goddamn nation on earth because of a lack of shame. I'm simply returning the courtesy and it happens to be one of the most well-received sentiments in this miserable thread. If you don't like it, well shame on you I guess.
I understand you're passionate about this issue and rightfully so. But the point isn't to shame addicts—it's to acknowledge that social factors like shame can influence behavior. It's a piece of the puzzle, not the entire solution.
I also want to emphasize that we're all here to discuss and learn. Just because a view is well-received doesn't mean it's the only valid one. Everyone's perspective adds to the conversation. This isn't about who's the center of the universe—it's about discussing solutions to a complex problem together. No need to take it personally.
I don't think it's been empirically demonstrated that shame-based public information campaigns contributed to the drop in smoking as much as tax increases, bans in restaurants and other semi-public spaces, and changing preferences (eg, adoption of ecigs and marijuana products). At least for personal health risks like drug addiction or obesity, pretty big mounds of evidence do exist that shame is mostly ineffective for changing behavior. Here's one analysis for example: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027273581...
What? You're telling me that you're denying the overwhelming evidence of the success of Nancy Regan's Dare program!? It's overwhelmingly uncommon to see anyone smoking weed, which we know is just a gateway drug to harder things like crack and heroin. Gen Xers and Millennials, who grew up under this program, are overwhelmingly known to be anti-pot and similarly just last week HN cheered about MasterCard's decision to deny service to dispensaries, which are also uncommon and no state would legally allow them. Similarly, you don't see the overwhelming evidence of abstinence based contraception? I mean how many Catholic girls get pregnant? Who needs a coat hanger abortion when you have Jesus? There is undeniable evidence that shame, fear based education, and harsh punishments stop these kinds of immoral behavior. (If for one moment anyone thinks I needed to add a sarcasm tag, please reevaluate your perception of the world. This is as obvious as it gets)
It wasn't shame. It was age restrictions, banning smoking in most public spaces, addiction acknowledgement and smoking cessation resources, public health awareness campaigns, and increased taxation. "Shaming" smokers was just the cultural byproduct in the change in smoking, and arguably a negative one.
In Australia at least there's been a government sponsored advertisement campaign "Every cigarette is doing you damage" that rather obviously conveys smoking as an unpleasant "shameful" habit, while graphically describing the health impacts. I very much doubt the "shaming" part of the campaign would work on its own, but whoever made the ads were obviously attempting to make cigarette smoking look as unappealing as possible.
More importantly, given the article this thread is supposed to be discussing, I'd be wary of assuming what works in helping reduce the usage of a "soft" drug like nicotine by a significant percentage of the population would work with hard drugs used (and abused) primarily by marginalised individuals. In fact we have had similar advertising campaigns against heroin/ice
etc. (*) but I'm not aware of convincing evidence that they've really done all that much to help reduce problem usage.
> They’re legal, but society and government have successfully campaigned to publicize their negative effects, to shame smokers and to praise quitters.
I dunno, seems to me the effective thing wasn’t “shame”, but:
(1) Making it progressively more difficult for tobacco companies to recruit new customers by prohibiting many forms of advertising/marketing and forcing countermarketing about harms to be included in what marketing (including product packaging) is allowed, and
(2) Driving up costs with targeted taxes, and
(3) Prohibiting smoking in most workplaces and other public places, limiting environmental exposure to the addictive substances for people not actively choosing to participate and narrowing the contexts where people who do choose to partake are permitted to do so.
I agree with you, and have the same problem. Even though staying anonymous is not too difficult, it's frustrating that it's required. It feels alienating to learn that others are hostile to your thoughts and ideas, to learn that under the freedom of anonymity others still disagree with you, more harshly than they might in person. And it's frustrating to see that some other people are able to fit into the social zeitgeist using their real names, seemingly with no socially unpalatable opinions. (I suppose they probably have their own secret accounts, as well as thick skins.)
I don't think of myself as having particularly offensive or niche opinions, but I probably have a contrarian or confrontational style of communication which causes offense. Certain people (such as INTPs, which we probably both are) tend to pride themselves on being smart and logical. It hurts our self-image when someone disagrees with us.
We also like to discuss things in purely logical and theoretical terms without regard for the context or connotations of the logic. For example, when discussing incest like you did, most people would use a bunch of disclaimers, like "I'm not actually into incest at all, and definitely not a pedophile, but...". You and I would tend to leave out those disclaimers as a matter of pride, because they aren't relevant to the logical idea that you're proposing, and are only useful at defending against ad-hominem attacks. We expect the reader to discuss the topic on purely theoretical grounds in pursuit of the truth. I dislike having to use those disclaimers and often leave them out on purpose because I want to "win" the discussion with my ideas, not my character. This tends to make me unpopular on Reddit. In real life, of course, I would use disclaimers because I care about my reputation beyond the realm of ideas. It's just disappointing that even ostensibly-anonymous social media isn't free of those constraints.
Honestly, I like 4chan for this reason. People don't shy away from uncomfortable opinions there; instead, they run towards them. I strongly disagree with most of the 4chan zeitgeist, and hate a lot of the people there, but its unfiltered nature is refreshing sometimes.
Most incest happening in the world is not done between consenting adults. It is done through rape of children. Leaving that out may be construed as a way to shift of the overton window on incest.
You can, of course, point to reliable statistics on that, collected and analyzed using defensible methods. Right?
I suspect that you are wrong, and that most incest happens between same-age adolescent or young adult siblings (and even more between cousins if you count cousins). But I don't have any actual data to back that up either, and would be amazed if any worthwhile data even exist.
Let me make sure I got this right... I make a statement about how a lot of incest is due to rape. You cannot fathom that and ask for stats. I provide them from a child abuse organization that also links to the underlying government statistics. You respond with it's irrelevant. You are not arguing in good faith.
Even "a lot" could reasonably be treated as having been a statement about the proportion, but it would not have been a precise enough statement to argue about. And "a lot" could also be treated as talking about an absolute number, in which case the question of whether something was "a lot" would be a total matter of personal opinion.
"Most", on the other hand, has a very clear meaning in terms of relative numbers... which that RAINN link does nothing to support.
"Arguing in good faith" includes not trying to quietly rewrite your position in the middle.
Even now you refuse to engage on my original position. My original position was that leaving out the very real issue of rape when it comes to incest could be construed as trying to move the overton window. Maybe I shouldn't have used the word most, but instead, at least 1/3 of all reported child abuse is done by family. This stat should easily backup my original position that incest and rape are intrinsically linked. You cannot ignore this when discussing incest on the internet.
At least some percentage of all sex is rape, so by your, um, logic, the two are "intrinsically linked", and mentioning sex without bringing up rape is trying to move the Overton window.
AND the original post explicitly limited the field to adults. So even that had already been dealt with.
You are operating in the proud rhetorical tradition that calls all LGBT people "groomers"... and I'm done with you.
Apologies if you find my rhetoric to be like that and I will attempt to speak with more clarity in the future. I would never assume that LGBT people are groomers. My reading of the OP's statement didn't explicitly limit the field to adults. Maybe on this topic, I am skewed by my personal experience. I have several friends who were raped by family members and that trauma has seriously scarred them. The number is high enough for me not to trust others engaging in pro-incest rhetoric as I know exactly zero people engaged in consensual incest. One might say that is because it is taboo to talk about... I don't have a good response to that. I imagine that our actual views on this topic are more in line than what is appearing in this thread. I do not have any issue with consenting adults of sound mind engaging in victimless activities of their choosing. This does get muddied by issue of pregnancy though.
You missed that it's a totally different statistic. Even if it was 100% of reported sexual assault on children is by family members, it could still be that incest between consenting adults is more common.
Pardon my ignorance, but does "housing-first" come with an expiration date, or is it indefinite? Obviously, if you pay for someone's home, you cure their homelessness, but the goal is to have them pay for their own home eventually, right?
I'd expect something like: You get 1 year of "housing-first"-style free housing with no requirements, then you get 1 year of "tough love" free housing with sobriety and job-search requirements, then you get kicked out.
I imagine it depends on the cost differential between the externalities of them being homeless like crime, health and surrounding business impact vs just providing basic housing indefinitely with some resources to get out when ready.
People with complex issues have variable amount of time to resolve it. Can't put a time on it. But you can figure what cost you more and how much you value human dignity within that cost framework.
So an arbitrary time limit in this case does not make sense as a government public welfare policy.
Good idea. Not sure why YouTube/Google doesn't do it. As you would think there is good money in it and better user relations. Possibly they like the authoritarian algorithm approach, and feel they are making enough money, so don't need to bother with alternatives or "lowly user" issues.
The style and presentation method of the article is great.
I hate this style of "art", though. If modern art should exist at all, it should be only at the fringes of the art world, as an occasional novelty, rather than the main attraction.
For some reason, I feel unusually, viscerally, strongly about this topic. My first instinct was to just declare that this art is absolute fucking garbage (which feels like an indisputable fact to me, not just an opinion). But I thought I should try to analyze why I feel that way.
I have a fine-arts education and passion. I spent several years attending art schools, and working at art schools and galleries. I've been exposed to plenty of modern art and the artists who make it. But I absolutely loathe it. And, in surveys, the public agrees: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/lifestyle/articles-reports/2016/...
I think art should have to pass a test: If you saw it in an alleyway, would you think it was art or trash? Or: Could a child have made it by accidentally smearing paint on a canvas?
Art should generally display technical skill and years of practice. Viewers should think "I would never be able to make something as precise and beautiful as this", not "I could make five of these in an hour."
If not technically demanding, art should at least be somehow clever, expressive, or interesting... And in a self-evident manner that doesn't require a backstory on a placard.
The talent required for modern art is not in creating it, but in describing it. I consider modern artists (and critics) frauds, whose main skill is writing snooty descriptions of garbage, convincing people that it's valuable, like the tailor in "the emperor has no clothes".
Finding something that no one has ever called art, and being the first to call it art, is not making art; it's just calling shit art.
I understand modern artists are trying to be creative and unique, to push the limits of what can be called art, and maybe to show us beauty in where we haven't looked before... But most of their experiments fail.
Modern art tries so hard to be original that it forgets to be appealing to viewers. Many traits can make a work of art appealing; originality is only one of them (other traits include technical skill, composition, realism, and subject matter.) Modern art sacrifices (or purposely sabotages) all other possibly-appealing traits in pursuit of originality, forgetting that appeal--not originality--is the ultimate goal. This generally results in an ugly piece of junk that anyone COULD have made, but no one else DID make yet... And that's if the artist is lucky.
Art is capable of being naturally appealing to viewers. This documentary lays out a case for beauty in art, and how the intentional ugliness of modern art is demoralizing: https://vimeo.com/128428182
I'm high in openness, and usually lean left, but not in this regard, somehow.
A big part of the reason "realistic", "traditional", or "classical" artwork is traditional or classic is that those styles are naturally appealing; that's why they survived so long. I think modern artists tend to consciously and intentionally reject anything related to traditional values. Of course classical art can be boring, has all been done before, was replaced by photography, etc., but it's still intrinsically appealing in a way modern art isn't.
I guess a big part of why I dislike modern art is its success. If the music world was the same as the art world, Brian Eno would be the most popular musician of all time. It just feels wrong. I like Brian Eno and other minimalist/expressionist/experimental music, but only because it's so different compared to the norm. It shouldn't be the norm.
> Art should have to pass a test: If you saw it in an alleyway, would you think it was art or trash?
It's really strange to me that you've allegedly spent so much time in the art world and still think this is a valid dichotomy. Part of art is context, which should be clear given that's exclusively what you're responding to here. It's also strange that you correlate popularity with some kind of moral authority about the right of a particular art to exist. What does it matter whether it's popular or not, as if that's a ruling on its alleged correctness to some imagined standard? I hope one day you can open yourself to having a genuine experience with a work of art and worry less about whether too many people like it or not.
I know what I suggested is a common complaint, seen as an uncultured take by the art world; I just disagree with the art world. I don't think context should be important for art. I think art should stand entirely on its own merits without explanation. No placard with a description. No article explaining how it represents a feud with his boyfriend. Just the artwork itself.
Of course, it's impossible to entirely decontextualize an artwork, because every viewer will bring their own backstory and interpretation... But the art should be able to appeal to viewers despite the context. Maybe that's the point: Art which is universally appealing to all humans, despite their backgrounds, would be the most magical type.
I once read a book which discussed how humans are universally attracted to landscapes which would be good for human habitation: Trees, a river, a temperate climate, hills and mountains to shelter in, flora and fauna... The average human from any time, any place, any religion, any language will appreciate such a painting. The same applies to nudes, still life of flowers and fruit, and other universally-understood and appealing (but kitsch) subjects. The same could not be said about the grey flag in this article.
And, of course, no artwork will completely meet that universal Platonic ideal, but the attempt to meet it is what creates the intrinsic beauty which modern art abhors.
I left the art world and went into STEM because of my opinions :)
A world of perfectly inoffensive, universally appealing art sounds… pretty horrible to me. You’re describing Budweiser and hotel art. Boring.
When I go to a modern art museum, I consider it a success if 90% of what I see is forgettable and 10% of it, or even 2%, is really powerful/sticks with me somehow. I’d much prefer this to 100% bland pictures of flowers and trees of which 0% will be memorable.
IMHO, modern art tends to be less popular with the public because it primarily references other art. In other words, it's art made by artists, for artists. You have to have a deep understanding of the theories of art, the history of art, and the specific works the particular piece you are contemplating references in order to understand it.
Art did not used to be made primarily for other artists. It was made for everyone. And that art, today, still tends to be widely popular.
This does not mean that it is in any meaningful sense lesser art. Rembrandt cannot be said to be a lesser artist than Johns. But his paintings are definitely more accessible.
Architecture is much the same. Brutalist and modern architecture tends to be very popular with other architects. But a brutalist home usually sucks to actually live in. Whereas more traditional forms -- southern farmhouses, traditional German cottages, etc. -- non-architects find to be charming and comfortable.
The parent post here is getting at something real, which is whether nearly all high art should be self-referential. The art world, today, is pretty insular. That doesn't seem healthy to me.
Well said. I like that weird and experimental art and architecture exist and are pushing boundaries; I just don't like that they have all but replaced more appealing styles as the default.
People disagree about this stuff. Whether context matters, whether art should be beautiful, whether skill should be involved in making art, it's uncalled for to include a sentence like:
> I hope one day you can open yourself to having a genuine experience with a work of art and worry less about whether too many people like it or not.
I like plenty of abstract art but I find plenty irritating and I agree with the parent poster that it shouldn't be the norm.
>I think art should have to pass a test: If you saw it in an alleyway, would you think it was art or trash?
It would only be fair to force traditional art to pass a similar test - if you saw it being sold by a street painter, would you think it was art or kitsch?
I think other replies to your comment have already pointed out the biggest flaw in this argument - the experience of art leans heavily on things outside the artwork. The Mona Lisa might be sublime, but copies of it are essentially worthless, no matter if they required the same level of technical talent.
Lots of people feel that art is decided by aesthetics, but not in a logically consistent way. Art is purely aesthetic, until they consider forgeries or copies. Art is decided by realism, except that some of the most popular and well-known art in the modern world comes from post-realist movements like cubism or surrealism (which have become mainstream despite setting out to challenge conservative views of aesthetics). Art is decided by technical skill, except that the technical skills responsible for classical artworks have never been more prolific than they are right now (as evidenced by the number of street hawkers), yet classically-styled artworks don't really interest people anymore.
Street painters sell kitsch art instead of modern art because the average street buyer prefers kitsch :)
Conversely, I guess museums showcase modern art instead of kitsch art because the average museum buyer prefers modern art. I don't know whether the average museum goer prefers modern art, although that's a chicken-and-egg situation; maybe more people would go if the art was more kitsch.
It's understandable that laypeople would enjoy kitsch, while enthusiasts might become bored of it, want something new, and seek out experimental modern art. There's a place for each type; I just feel that their places have flipped, and the art world focuses on what only a minority actually enjoy. This unfortunately spills out into public spaces (architecture, public parks, etc.)
Regarding forgeries, I guess we can separate artistic value into historical value and aesthetic value. The original Mona Lisa has more historical value than its copies, but equal aesthetic value.
>Street painters sell kitsch art instead of modern art because the average street buyer prefers kitsch :)
But does that mean that the average street buyer considers street-vendor kitsch art? Not necessarily, since street vendors don't have to produce art in order to sell paintings - they just have to make things people will buy. I would say that consumerist, mass-produced products like street-hawked paintings can't really be art in the commonly-understood sense.
The issue I have with what you're saying is that you seem to consider "enjoyment" and "appeal" the be-all and end-all of the definition of art. I sincerely doubt that most people would agree with you; most people can probably distinguish between media they enjoy and media they consider art. I would bet that most people would define art as needing to contain something of the sublime (even if they don't use that word.) It seems unlikely to me that you could successfully fill museums with kitsch.
>Regarding forgeries, I guess we can separate artistic value into historical value and aesthetic value. The original Mona Lisa has more historical value than its copies, but equal aesthetic value.
But do they have equal artistic value? Or does the historical value of the original somehow factor in to its artistic value - hence explaining why people don't flock to see copies of the Mona Lisa in other museums?
Do you think that art - not in the sense of "something artistic", but in the sense of "a piece of art" i.e. something that belongs in a museum - can be mass produced? I think most people would answer no, since mass production loses some of what people value in art - which is that it's unique (or limited) and purposefully made.
I don't mean that kitsch is the best thing ever, but that art should generally incorporate technical skill, craft, precision, meaning, intention, composition, realism...
Maybe art is undefinable, like pornography ("I know it when I see it"). Any limits on what is and isn't art will be immediately and intentionally explored by modern artists. But those explorations are likely to be unappealing. It's fine to have some artists exploring new ideas, but not in the mainstream.
To put it in context: I live in Houston, and I have relatives staying from China. I took them to one of the few outdoor activities here: The Cullen Sculpture Garden, which is next to the art museums. I've been there a bunch of times, but not since it was renovated a few years back. The whole museum, in fact, was renovated in your standard minimalist modern architecture style.
And, well, they were unimpressed. Most of the sculptures are just simple abstract shapes; you can see what I mean on a Google Image Search. My least favorite are what I call the "trash bags" (https://www.schindlermetalworks.com/mfah-fontana-sculpture.h...). There are some decent humanoid bronze statues, but overall, my relatives found it boring, as did I, and I noticed it was mostly empty of people. I felt like my relatives were thinking: "This is it? A bronze triangle nailed to the wall? This is the best sculpture in town? You think this is cool enough to put on display over here? I traveled around the planet for this?"
There's only one place in Texas they've actually said was beautiful, and it's the State Capitol building in Austin. I noticed it was crowded with people hanging out and appreciating it. It's just a typical neoclassical structure, nothing special if you're used to Europe, but it's actually a nice-looking building.
I just felt like the museum renovation and sculpture garden were such a waste. They could have gotten classical marble statues and put gargoyles all over the building like in Prague, Venice, Vienna, etc., which looks really cool. People visit those cities for their architecture, sculptures, and gardens. Houston had a chance to make something similar, but instead we got more modern crap. We don't have to copy those old styles verbatim, but we shouldn't throw them away, either. We could have done something syncretic that drew from traditional European, Asian, African, and American art traditions, but instead, we got more bland modernist abstract geometric stuff.
At the very least, I think people like to see realism, precision, intricacy, and skill in artwork and architecture. The worst part of modern art is the lack of effort it conveys.
Guess I'm just ranting by now, and should get back to work.
It is certainly pretty goddamn depressing to look at the price on these sorts of things and compare it to how much time and money you've spent acquiring your art skills, and how much money you're likely to make off of them in your entire life.
I've probably had a lot more fun drawing furry porn for money than Johns has had producing turgid masses of grey noodling, though. I regularly giggle with delight at the things people pay me to draw. If I was more stoned I'd consider extemporizing furry porn as a fascinating proletarian genre that is aggressively ignored by the art world. And then consider putting together a portfolio of nothing but to throw at some of the local galleries. But instead I think I'll just turn off the internet and get some work done.
I would think that the antidote to turgid masses of grey noodling would be something more like Marc Chagall--blasts of color everywhere, biblical characters, newlyweds floating in space, farm animals playing violins, childlike hope. But hey, I guess furry porn works too.
Don't fall into this trap. Art does not need any objective, universal tests or categorizations. It is by its nature subjective and impossible to precisely define or measure. Yes, it is this subjectivity that modern art abuses, stretches far beyond the point of breaking, saying "if you can't precisely define it, then anything can be art!", so it's tempting to try and find a test that would exclude modern art, and validate the art we hold dear.
But this is a misguided effort. Like being told by film critics that the Minions movie is just as good or better than the Godfather, and then trying to find some objective, mathematical test to prove them wrong. That such a test doesn't exist doesn't make the two films equal, or their claim any less absurd.
Thank you. Thank you for your views. Thank you for the link to the documentary. Thank you for taking the time to find the words and sharing them with us. I feel we need beauty in our increasingly desolate world.
Here's the rub: that's your individual opinion. Others genuinely see skill and attractiveness in much modern art, and see much of classical art as unimaginative and uninspired.
This is true, and citing what's popular doesn't make it less true.
My point isn't to be hostile, it's just to point out that even as you strongly feel something, others can just as strongly feel something else. There is nothing "naturally" appealing, except with reference to a specific person at a specific moment.
"The talent required for modern art is not in creating it, but in describing it."
There's a short, funny book called The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe that goes into this quite nicely, that it's not about art at all in today's contemporary art world.
I don't hate outsider art. Morally, I like that someone can aspire to make art despite being untrained, and that a good concept can be valuable despite a poor execution. In practice, though, I don't usually find it appealing.
I love some abstract art, but hate others. I like Kandinsky and Picasso, but dislike the scribblers and color-field painters who cross the line into "my kid could have done that". One of my favorite artists is Xul Solar, but I like him for his surrealism rather than his cubism. I tend to like realism, surrealism, and symbolism.
I like tonalism a lot. It combines a realistic image (landscape) with an emotion (distance, calm), which is great. I understand tonalism is exploring the emotions in simple colors and shapes, in the same way a fully-abstract artist like Rothko or Twombly would, but it's also exploring landscapes and realism. It also looks like it took effort and care instead of random scribbles.
I guess I have a lot of interest in precise brush strokes, shading, etc. If I see a painting or drawing which looks sloppily-made, I get the urge to go in there and fix it.
I know art doesn't have to all be super complex and precise, and sometimes there is meditative beauty in simplicity. But there's usually more beauty in complexity. I always hated places like the Rothko Chapel, which just feel to me like zero effort was put in... I guess that counts as "muted abstract", sorry. I can kind of see the appeal, but it just feels like "not art" to me.
Even Rothko tries to be aesthetic, though. The worst is stuff like post-conceptualism and performance art. I'm sure there's somebody out there farting on a canvas and trying to charge $500k for it.
My wife is Chinese, and my son is half-Chinese, born in the USA. I want my son to grow up feeling American, not like an outsider. I don't want movies depicting China invading the USA, teaching his young and impressionable classmates that "Asian = evil invader". I don't want guys that look like him getting gunned down on TV by guys that look like Chris Hemsworth. As you said, the stories we tell shape our national psyche.
I agree the jingoistic CCP-controlled Chinese media does not depict Americans or whites with respect and tact. That's a problem. But it doesn't make it OK for the American media to do the same.
At the very end of this sentiment is the fact that all movies depicting invasion should only be made if it's Alien invasion. In that way, no one's sentiment would be hurt and no one would be portrayed evil. At some point you have to ask yourself, do you want to remember history, it's atrocities, invasions, war-crimes etc and learn from it or do you want to forget all of that and be happy always?
There's huge a difference between a WW2 documentary accurately depicting the axis and allies, and the US films of the 1980's that were all anti middle-eastern / north african propaganda of wars that never happened.
I believe the comment you are replying to is addressing the latter.
"Any kid can conquer Libya just give him a fighter plane." - Dead Kennedys, "Rambozo the Clown"
I think that the point I'm trying to make is a bit different. If you do make a movie that's not a documentary and follows the traditional recipe of good vs evil, then there must be some evil that has to be portrayed. You make movies about "Mafia", then it might be the Italians, you make movies about "Cartels", might be Mexicans, make movies about "Jihadists", Afghans and so on.
At some point, a realization and acceptance that yeah, something along the lines of what's being shown happened but it's probably a bit spiced up cause it's a movie is needed. Either that or my original point i.e. make movies about Aliens exclusively. (Until their existence is proven anyways).
I agree many movies are offensive to one group or another, but maybe that means we should be more careful of offending people instead of less. Other common bad-guy groups like Muslims and Russians probably don't like being used as villains in movies; their voices just go unheard because they don't have the economic clout that the Chinese do.
And every group of "bad guys" is a little different. The enemy governments of Nazis, Japanese, Soviets, and British Imperialists are gone, those conflicts are over, and those countries are now American allies; the mafia and cartel movies tend to glorify those lifestyles; the European bad guys never faced as much racism in the USA as the Asian ones; etc.
I don't want to be the fun police... But the USA (unlike most countries) advertised itself as a multiracial immigrant country in the past 50 years, and a lot of multiracial immigrants signed on, so I guess we should be tasteful when making movies about shooting their relatives.
In that case I would argue that one shouldn't use North Koreans either. Though I honestly do feel this way. Sci-fi and fantasy give you this escape mechanism where you can talk about these issues without making it about race (well at least race in humans). We know Ender's Game and Starship Troopers are Cold War era books about Russians without them saying Russians or depicting them. There's a requisite maturity needed to read between the lines that hopefully one is able to distinguish between countries and races, despite correlations, by that point.
Your son or his children might actually have to decide what side to be on eventually. IMO the US will go to war with China outside of economic and cyber warfare we have going on already.
> I agree the jingoistic CCP-controlled Chinese media does not depict Americans or whites with respect and tact. That's a problem. But it doesn't make it OK for the American media to do the same.
The problem is that it's a zero sum game and who wins is just as important as moral correctness. If China is able to turn the narrative against the US and enable authoritarian regimes and censor US companies and tech, what does it matter if we're the "good guys"? If we lose a war of culture, will our children see ourselves as doing the "right thing"? History books are are written by the winners, after all.
Contemporary Chinese ideas would see your point of view as weak, just to put that in perspective.
International relations is a dirty world and the power struggle is real.
What you say is understandable, for your son and family, but under no circumstances should it be used as a justification of or argument in favor of self-censorship of free expression against an honestly repulsive state power in media and elsewhere. Movies have been made for decades with all kinds of nations and their agents being portrayed as the "bad guys", and without hysterias about violent demonization of regular people in real life from these countries coming true. Why should China be an exception?
(1) Hopefully part of raising your son to feel American involves instilling a sense of "Americanness" that is orthogonal to one's racial identity. And conversely, hopefully he could distinguish between "Chinese people in general" and "soldiers of the chinese communist party". Not that I'm defending cheesy, overly simplistic good-guys-vs-bad-guys type media, but I hope the objection is about something more than just skin deep for you.
(2) There is certainly a middle ground between avoiding cliche bad-guy-china-vs-good-guy-america and, say, Intel removing any references to Xinjiang from its shareholder report. Or all of Hollywood carrying water for the CCP, perhaps most humorously (in a depressing way) illustrated in how they will edit movies to display the south china sea / other disputed territories in precisely the way China wants
The same companies have no problem making 100s of Nazi movies or Japan Pearl Harbor movies. Yet they are afraid to touch any Chinese topic. That is the problem.
