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Buhos_En_Pantelones t1_j6l7fjv wrote

Pretty interesting article. This is a weird fucking topic. This idea that 'we can't upset anybody' is leading to some very strange shifts in artistic expression. I wonder if there will be some sort of major push-back in the near future in regards to this... I guess you could call it censorship at this point.

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darkwizard42 t1_j6m22fy wrote

Self censorship is a thing. Fear of backlash leads to this outcome.

Creating non specific enemies like Top Gun Maverick or fictional enemies like Aliens, human invaders from another realm is another angle. Last you have some art where they make the bad guy just so bad emotionally/character wise and then bland their appearance/physical characteristics to make them inoffensive but often forgettable.

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MrrrrNiceGuy t1_j6mskjp wrote

Always Sunny in Philadelphia did this in one of their latest seasons with them making Lethal Weapon 7 and trying not to be offensive.

So in LW 7, the bad guy ends up being a tidal wave but not a tsunami because that implies Asian tidal waves are bad, so it’s just a generic tidal wave. And it’s not an act of God but some “act of the universe, or whatever.”

In the end the gang just watches their movie with stoic faces realizing how shitty it is due to the excessive censorship.

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Butch_Beth t1_j6mn434 wrote

The enemies in the original Top Gun are generic and non-specific.

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SutterCane t1_j6mov9y wrote

It was the Soviets in the original.

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Butch_Beth t1_j6mppvd wrote

They never say it's the USSR in Top Gun.

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SutterCane t1_j6mt2z0 wrote

Huh.

  1. takes place during the Cold War

  2. bad guys have MiGs

  3. everyone is following the rules of engagement between US and Soviet forces

But I guess you’re right. They don’t say it, which means it’s totally not the USSR.

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The_Sundial_Man t1_j6mvktw wrote

Just like the enemy in Maverick is totally not North Korea.

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kinglearthrowaway t1_j6n0qxi wrote

Lol it’s funny you say that bc I saw them as “totally not Iran”

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Epyr t1_j6ncbzt wrote

It's Iran, not North Korea. They are trying to stop them from getting nukes. NK already has nukes.

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PureLock33 t1_j6p9rst wrote

Plus Iran still fields F14 Tomcats. They literally make their own spare parts for them since the US stopped making replacement parts.

So much wink wink to the audience. Totally not Iran, guys.

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Streets-Ahead- t1_j6ng1sn wrote

Tiem for history lesson

  1. Lots of counties had MiGs, the Soviets exported them.

  2. The battle at the end of Top Gun is loosely inspired by a real life incident in 80s where American Tomcats engaged Libyan fighters.

  3. An earlier draft of the script actually specified North Korean enemies.

  4. The insignia on the enemy fighters is fictional.

  5. Nobody at the end seems concerned at all that World War III may have just started.

Whoever they're fighting can be assumed to be a Soviet-aligned country, but it wasn't Big Red itself.

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Butch_Beth t1_j6nfdy7 wrote

MIG's were sold to many communist nations and in the movie are actually repainted F5's, they don't say it's Iran in the new movie either, but everyone knows it's Operation Opera.

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SwingJugend t1_j6mpcl5 wrote

>Self censorship is a thing.

Yes. For example, the Hays Code was not a government thing, it was an internal industry self-censorship that the major film companies worked out by themselves, yet it still got enforced pretty much like a law for over 30 years.

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NeoNoireWerewolf t1_j6n7d03 wrote

That’s a bit different since it was a young, unregulated industry trying to avoid the government taking an interest in their hustle. The artists were not self-censoring out of fear of being deemed racist/sexist/insensitive/whatever, it was the studios saying you couldn’t have films be too violent/sexual/crass because then the government will come in and start telling them how they can run their business. Basically the same story for the Comics Code Authority. Today’s discussions about self-censorship are quite different, as they are linked more to things like representation and whether the content of the work is representative of who the creator is as a person. It is a fight about who has the right to tell what kind of stories and whether the art can actually be separated from the artist.

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reckoner23 t1_j6nhic6 wrote

And thankfully it was ignored starting in the late 60s. Its a shame we seem to have reverted.

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Butch_Beth t1_j6mon6w wrote

I think the problem we're facing is actually pretty simple, unlike TV or film or books, the internet isn't divided by age or isn't categorised by it. This means at any point you're at risk of reading the opinion of a 15 year old, or an 11 year old, or anywhere in between and younger. A lot of the terrible posts you see are from these people, children who don't have a lot of life experience and speak with the same apparent authority as you or I.

All of these twitter pile on's start this way, children have a lot of free time and they get hoovered up into discord groups and teach each other the most extreme opinions. Then they post about this stuff in those groups and come up with an insane puritanical ideology around it. Recently I saw someone on twitter say the first major news event they remembered was Trump getting elected, they had 10's of thousands of followers and they can't have been older than 12 or 13, they even framed it as 'their dad telling them'. This is a problem.

Regardless who said

>Why does your Latino lead have to bond with a white woman?

It was deeply influenced by that, film festivals are reading this stuff online and taking it to heart, but it's complete bullshit. You can have a transphobic subject in your documentary, I say that as a trans person. In The Lady and the Dale they have footage of jurors admitting they found the subject of the documentary guilty in part because she was trans, or it at least was a factor. Surely we have to want that out there? Not locked away because it's 'offensive'.

Everyone needs to stop listening to twitter and Facebook and social media in general. Have fun on it sure, but you have a bias, you assume that the person who wrote the post you're reading is about your age and about the same as you. That is rarely true.

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trillyntruly t1_j6n56kp wrote

these 11 year olds are not just propping up arguments that adults take seriously and listen to, they're propping up arguments that adults internalize and move forward with. i maintain, the democratization of speech is cool, but it's hardly the ideal we all pretend it is. there's a certain value in the gatekeeping of voices. it may sound needlessly discriminatory to some, and i totally understand why, but as a general rule, not listening to children is a good idea. some of them are wise beyond their years, brilliant, smarter than most adults, no doubt. but the majority of them are just less experienced, less learned, less developed adults. having said that, i have no opinion on this particular film being left out of this festival. i don't know enough about it to form an opinion. i generally oppose censorship as well as self-imposed censorship as a result of a toxic environment, but i don't want to speak about specifics without knowing more details

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reckoner23 t1_j6nj8fm wrote

If no one took anything on the internet/twitter seriously we probably wouldn't be in this mess.

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reckoner23 t1_j6nhshu wrote

It gets worse when you have journalists/bloggers arguing this nonsense. But I think your right that some people like journalists/bloggers seem to be influenced by random 11 year olds on twitter.

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Tacky-Terangreal t1_j6owix6 wrote

Couldn’t agree more. I believed in some really dumb shit when I was 16 simply because I was a kid and I didn’t know any better. It’s so easy for teenagers and children to get sucked into these mobs online

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Vic_Hedges t1_j6mzrmy wrote

It's not "we cant upset anybody". It's "We can't upset this particular group who is influential in our community."

There are plenty of people they would be happy to upset.

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Main_Tip112 t1_j6lcna3 wrote

I think censorship implies that a legal authority is determining what can or cannot be expressed. It's coming from above. This is way murkier, in that you have a wierd ass Twitter chorus expressing their anger (which ironically is probably a vocal minority and not necessarily representative of popular opinion) and artists/distributors are now learning to not to push boundaries for fear of the backlash.

Not thinking of any movie in particular when I say that, but yeah, it seems like a bummer. Then again, movies have always faced criticism and backlash, historically to the point of legal ramifications for creating smut and video nasties. So it sucks, but I wonder if it's a necessary part of the overall evolution of the industry. Racist and sexist shit was plenty pervasive in movies for a long time, so maybe the pendulum unfortunately needs to swing the other direction a bit before it settles into an ideal resting position.

Don't ask me. I'm stoned.

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Gyaru_Molester t1_j6m0p3l wrote

This idea that something can only be censorship if it's a legal/government authority doing it is very odd and runs completely counter to history. This stuff is absolutely censorship.

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Butch_Beth t1_j6n9fbn wrote

Relative to the Hays Code, or even the MPAA, we're in an era where organised concentrated media censorship is declining. If a film wouldn't be made a major studio it can happen elsewhere, if a film can't get a certificate, there's a chance you'll still get to see it somewhere. Also you can get films that have been banned or released with extensive edits, illegally or otherwise. As we've had more technology to copy and distribute media it's simply become harder and harder to restrict it, which is all that censorship is.

A few years ago I went to a festival where a film depicted the fictionalised murder of 3 real life police officers, it showed their crimes, then them getting off without consequence and then dramatisations of them being killed. That film was never going to show at Cannes, it was fantastic, but the subject matter was incompatible with their brand and the brands that pay for the festival. You can't play film with such a direct call to action at SXSW, they want to exist next year.

The sponsors associated with large film festivals will pull out if programmers get too controversial. It really sucks, but this is always what film festivals have been like. The answer is to go to more interesting smaller festivals, as when it comes down to it, none of this stuff is going on Netflix.

There's like a larger conversation to be had about how scared brands are of being abused or called out on twitter, but the reality of it is that while we have social media, people will continue to post stupid takes on it. And sometimes when someone posts 'TIL: Coke-a-cola supported this film where a dog is killed' you never get the context and coke never supports that festival again.

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reckoner23 t1_j6njj36 wrote

So if you have a boss that's threatening to fire you unless you pull your movie sounds like censorship to me.

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ACID_pixel t1_j6lmx7g wrote

I’m replying because I’m also stoned and it took me a minute to read this.

I agree.

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Embarrassed_Bat6101 t1_j6n54et wrote

> censorship

Yeah I think that’s exactly what it is. It’s self censorship or preemptive censorship. I recently watched Trading Places with Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd and realized a move like that would never be made today in a million years, which is a shame because it’s absolute comedy gold.

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justavault t1_j6nnl95 wrote

Woke cultures impact.

Everybody afraid to do something that hurts some snowflake.

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