No. 23449Anonymous 16th December 2020 Wednesday 11:00 pm23449What are you watching right now?
I suppose we need a /v/ equivalent of the /e/ and /beat/ threads.
I've started watching Life on Mars again, but this time in HD on Netflix, and have only just realised it was filmed on... film. That or transferred to film and re-digitised for Netflix. The version Netflix has is absolutely covered in dust marks.
On recommendation by some guy in the street, I bought a 6 series box set of [i]Trailer Park Boys[i]. It's awful; bad acting, bad scripting and the characters are loathesome.
The only redeeming feature is it doesn't take itself seriously, but i can't tell if that's intended or simply the cast acting like it's being filmed at the back of someones garden.
The film quality noticably improves over the couse of the entire series and later there are some geuinely funny slapstick humours, but it's watered down by the empty scenes and disconnected dialog.
I have no idea how this was, apparently, so popular.
>>24020 I binged the first nine seasons a few years ago and loved it. Just easy watching, and a generally likeable cast. Reminds me a lot of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, degenerate dickheads doing dumb things, but it's probably a bit less intelligent. I have tried to watch the later series (I think they're animated nowadays), but I don't know if the jokes just stopped being funny.
Probably has a lot to do with your real life experiences, either you've grown up around dickheads just like that, or you're a posho who doesn't understand what "the joke" really is.
Same reason I can't relate at all to stuff like The Office. Other people insist it's the funniest thing since farts were invented, but I've never had a boss like David Brent or colleagues like those other twats, and all I see in it is shite cringe humour.
I think the most successful sitcoms are the ones that have the most relatable everyman character, and a novel premise, that doesn't tie it to people's personal experiences. Everyone can get into Father Ted, for example.
>>24022 >I've never had a boss like David Brent or colleagues like those other twat
Plenty of us have though, and the shit cringe humour is literally the point of the show; most of the time you're laughing at Brent because of how uncomfortable he makes you.
Also, as a manager, early on in my career, I probably said or did some very Brent things. It's very well observed, but I accept that if you haven't seen those people/types in the workplace, it's all a bit mystifying.
My flatmate at the time watched this a lot - I didn't get it at first, but it quite quickly grew on me, I can't really quantify why other than that I started to like the characters.
It was the same with Always Sunny - season 1 was pretty rough and I was taken aback that they were just sort of shouting at each other. But now it's one of my favourite yank shows.
Peep Show does a good job because the setting is mundane, but the two main characters are opposite ends of the spectrum, and it focused more on absurd and unlikely situations they'd get into than just "Oh you know what it's like working in an office, right? Haha!"
It is still very cringe humour based, so I can only really watch small doses of it, not binge on it, but I do like it.
The film Office Space is an example of one that manages to be pretty much universally relatable too I think. It's about office drudgery on the surface, but the main theme isn't specifically about offices. It's just about having a job you hate and don't want to go to, which everybody, everybody, has had experience of. In a way that film changed my life, actually. I just saw it before I'd ever got to the stage of the main character.
>>24029 Never got into Father Ted. The performances of the actors were all good, but it just felt a bit artificial to me, whereas I could see the event of a lot of Peep Show episodes actually happening. Same thing as The IT Crowd, I felt like I was watching a sitcom rather than connecting with the events of the story on a deeper level. Also as a terminally online Twitter wank I have the notorious TERF Graham Linehan.
I've always thought it's a bit absurd not to like something because of knowledge you have, with the benefit of hindsight, about its creator. Nobody even knew what a TERF was in the early 90s when that show first aired, and I'd argue the guy himself wasn't even one until the worms wriggled in through his ear holes and started munching on his grey matter.
I'd understand why you might not want to watch a new show that he came out with today, but as far as I can tell he's probably never going to work in telly in any serious capacity ever again.
I know what you mean, but I don't think that people suddenly decide the work is bad, just that some people can't tune out the part of their brain that whispers "the bloke who wrote this is a proper cunt now" which probably dampens the fun.
Lostprophets first album is still an absolute banger, but when I listen to it, it's quite hard not to associate it with baby fucking, regardless of whether or not he had fucked any babies at the time of recording.
>>24033 Art is always subjective, even novels, even screeds, even tweets and the great thing about art is that the interpretation will matter more than the intention.
It's weird because it's only really seemingly an issue if the artist/creator in question is alive today and subject to today's moral standards.
We probably don't know what Michealangelo or Da Vinci's politics were but I doubt they were exactly politically correct by today's standards, yet that's not stopping anyone flocking to see their works as great monuments of man's achievements. We can simply wave our hands and say "Well, it doesn't matter, those were different times, they were bound to have beleived things we'd find absurd today."
So I don't see why it's so much different to say "Ah, Father Ted. One of the best sitcoms ever made. Shame the writer eventually succumbed to crippling mindworms, but what can you do."
>>24036 I can overlook Chevy Chase being a horrible piece of shit, I can overlook Bowie potentially being a nonce, I can overlook Woody Allen dating his stepdaughter etc. I don't know if it's because Linehan is particularly vocal about his dodgy beliefs, but it really sours me on his work.
>>24036 People are toppling statues because they don't match today's social standards. Moan ticked because I can separate art and artist.
>>24037 >I can overlook Bowie potentially being a nonce
I thought this was pretty open knowledge? Honestly for a rockstar of the era I think the game of pretend he used to put on about being a Nazi aristocrat is more odd.
>>24036 >So I don't see why it's so much different to say "Ah, Father Ted. One of the best sitcoms ever made. Shame the writer eventually succumbed to crippling mindworms, but what can you do."
This is the grown-up view. I never really liked Glinner from his postings and views on various things - the trans stuff has just kind of washed over me a bit (and I'm probably more of a TERF than I want to admit). I don't expect anyone, let alone artists, to be perfect people.
Another great example of this is Eric Gill, creator of the font Gill Sans among other things. He was a proper, actual wrong'un, abusing his daughters, sisters, and dog. Should we cancel everyone who uses that font?
I can overlook Glinner being Glinner when I watch Father Ted but not when I watch the IT Crowd because it hasn't stood the test of time and I don't think it's very good.
>>24040 Never saw the appeal of The IT Crowd. Even as a cynical "geek" myself, it all felt kind of shit. The equivalent of one of those t-shirts that say "I'm fluent in sarcasm".
>>24041 >>24040 >>24042 For me it's incredibly hit or miss. Some episodes are genuinely fantastic and have me laughing from start to finish, others are bizarrely awful. I was dumbfounded by how bad the grand finale was. It felt dated by the time of broadcast and on reflection maybe it was an early sign that Linehan was about to become a fullscale social media weirdo.
>>24038 >People are toppling statues because they don't match today's social standards.
This isn't really the thread for it, but I think a more charitable reading is that the statues are being topples because we don't think these people are to be honoured or emulated. I don't think anyone is wanting the people on the statues and their accomplishments to be erased from history, just that they shouldn't be celebrated. Sure it was a different time, but if there is a statue of someone who owned slaves, I can name one group of people who knew slavery was bad and wrong -- the slaves.
On a completely unrelated note, the Trailer Park Boys conversation. The first few seasons are great, because it's so rough and ready, and there are some truly fucking hilarious slapstick bits in there. As the seasons went on, it really did come off the rails a bit and the Netflix seasons are just a bit ridiculous. I watched their newest series called "Jail", which they entirely self-made and is funded by going to their own Swearnet site. IMO it's the closest to capturing the stupidity of the original few series as they've come in a while simply because they have no money but still have to make it work.
>I don't think anyone is wanting the people on the statues and their accomplishments to be erased from history
Those people certainly do exist.
But that's really a different thing. The statues are active declarations that this was a great person, someone worthy of respect and remembrance- And, of course, a testament to the fact they were wealthy and influential enough in life to secure that kind of legacy for themselves. Removing the statues is simply saying "Nah, we've changed our minds about the level of renown this person should have."
Of course there's another conversation about whom the statue was of, and what, exactly, their historical wrongdoings were; during last year's statue-topple fever there were one or two instances of people jumping the gun a bit and going for otherwise pretty respectable people on the basis that durr muh white patriarchy bla bla bla, but like anything you're going to have a bit of stupidity bleed in around the edges.
Okay I'm being a bit more lenient than how I really feel here, in complete honesty I think most of it was stupid, but I do want to believe there was a decent and earnestly respectable idea behind some of it, at least.
Who knows though, the important thing to keep in mind to me is that values are relative, morals are social consensus, there is no true right or wrong. Some people thing that's hogwash but in my view those people are mentally deficient. It's plainly and obviously true. Some day in five hundred years after the climate apocalypse, humanity might think slavery is great again because it's the only way we can power our post-post-industrial survival economy, and put all those statues back up.
I think the intent and the outcomes are at odds with each other. A statue of a slave trader is an opportunity to discuss, learn and teach in a way that an empty plinth isn't.
I've said this before, but of all the cities in Britain, Liverpool has by far the most visible legacy of slavery and by far the greatest understanding of slavery.
Many of the most prominent streets in Liverpool are named after slave traders and most of the locals know at least a few of them. After the summer of statue toppling, the City Council decided not to rename those streets, but to erect plaques explaining who those people are and what they did. Notably, that decision was made in close collaboration with both the Liverpool black community and the International Slavery Museum; the plaques will be named in honour of Eric Lynch, a local historian who for decades provided slavery walking tours.
Whether the people responsible realise it or not, toppling statues just serves to brush history under the carpet and perpetuate a false and simplistic understanding of the transatlantic slave trade. I'm reminded of how poppywashing has gradually replaced the horrors of the First World War with trite cliches about valour and sacrifice; denouncing slavery is just empty rhetoric if we don't actually understand and engage with the history.
>>24048 >But that's really a different thing. The statues are active declarations that this was a great person, someone worthy of respect and remembrance- And, of course, a testament to the fact they were wealthy and influential enough in life to secure that kind of legacy for themselves. Removing the statues is simply saying "Nah, we've changed our minds about the level of renown this person should have."
I'm not sure about that, I don't think there's an overt link to worship and I think people perceiving ones are simple. The monuments of a culture are reflective of the values of that culture, and these things change over time. They're not active worship, they're incidental references. It's kind of you to give the benefit of the doubt, but the people tearing these things down can't conceive of the idea that someone can look at this and go "I wonder what this piece of history is about" rather than "Wow, that person must have been good and I should emulate them". Fuck, I hate those people.
>>24049 Right so the thing here is, has Bridgerton got it right? I'd really prefer it if it hadn't, but it's only fair to consider the idea that pretending everyone got along and Nothing Ever Happened might actually lead to more harmony?
>>24050 >the people tearing these things down can't conceive of the idea that someone can look at this and go "I wonder what this piece of history is about" rather than "Wow, that person must have been good and I should emulate them".
I don't think many people think either of those things when they look at statues, 99% of the time they're just objects in the landscape, street furniture. But they're still going to make the place feel actively hostile to the people whose family and ancestors were raped, murdered, enslaved or generally exploited by them. How many statues of Thatcher are there up north? Pretending statues are there for educational purposes is just pretending.
>>24050 What's Bridgerton got to do with anything? Its alternate universe where racism faded out amongst the Regency gentry is not to pretend it didn't exist in reality, but to open the casting of gentry characters to people of colour. It's fiction. There was no Bridgerton family or Lady Whistledown either, y'know, but that doesn't seem to be as important when suspending your disbelief?
I don't think it has, no. The real history is just too interesting and too enlightening.
The facile "slavery is bad" narrative imagines that Africa was a place of peace and harmony until the Bad Awful Europeans showed up and tricked the naive natives onto boats with beads and trinkets. This is, on reflection, quite obviously based on racist tropes.
The truth is that long before the Europeans turned up, most of Africa was ruled by an assortment of powerful African empires. By some accounts, Mansa Musa (ruler of the Mali Empire from 1312 to 1337) was the wealthiest man ever to have lived. These empires had an established trade in slaves, mainly of people captured in war. When European explorers arrived in Africa, they found existing slave markets. African empires traded slaves with the Europeans for useful and valuable goods - primarily steel, guns, cloth and rum.
There was a significant slave trade in the opposite direction, led by the Berbers of North Africa. They used their powerful navies to raid coastal cities and capture slaves from as far north as Scandinavia and as far west as America. This trade led to the Barbary Wars of 1801 and 1815, fought between America and the Ottoman Empire in an effort to end attacks by Berber pirates.
Africa hasn't existed in a permanent state of victimhood, it was a competitive global power until African empires were undermined by European military and naval technology in the latter part of the industrial revolution. European empires that colonised Africa were brutal and exploitative, but that was pretty much par for the course. Africa suffered a humiliating couple of centuries, but it is rapidly catching up and the European-American dominance of the current global order is being rapidly brought to an end by a resurgent China.
In short: we're all bastards, all of our forefathers have got someone's blood on their hands, nobody stays at the top for long and every dog has his day.
My point is that we should be adding rather than subtracting, learning rather than forgetting. Nobody learns anything from an empty plinth, but people can learn from a plaque or a memorial or a museum.
I don't think any of the people who want to take the statues down have objected to them being relocated to museums. They've even been suggesting it. Putting up plaques that explain who the person was and why they're no longer celebrated has also been accepted as a compromise in some places.
>>24051 Rome isn't taking down its statues to appease the Jews. At some point you need to write these things off and move on. America has a huge problem with this as it's basically unique, being a 400 year old nation and a 250 year old state, almost exclusively built off slave labour of a specific ethnicity (forgetting the Irish and the Ities for the moment). Its entire context has been based on exploitation and segregation of race, whereas we can all look back a few thousand years and see everyone murdering and enslaving everyone else in an equal opportunity conquest.
>>24052 Because it's /v/, and let's consider why someone might have raised a show which presents a sanitised version of history where everyone was chummy regardless of race. Considering the damage that Baz Luhrmann did with his masterpiece R+J, it's quite clear that for the average punter, the most popular adaptation of something (regardless of whether or not it's real) is basically how it happened.
>>24055 I second this, it's the Mein Kampf approach. Don't censor it from circulation or make it a black market thing, flood the market with annotated copies that break down the content and turn it into a learning tool *against* the views espoused, so the content exists entwined with a rebuttal. Then you just need a good enough education system so people can understand the rebuttals.
We could go the Roman route instead, and pretend these people never existed by recarving statues and repurposing monuments, but then the rebuttal is lost with the content.
If people are uncomfortable with the fact that modern society was built on thousands of years of bloody conquest and enslavement, to the extent that they try to deny it happened by pretending we never held these figures up, then their opinion isn't worth much. While there are a sizeable amount who want to put these things in museums, as we've seen with Edward Colston, there's also a sizeable contingent who simply want to erase this stuff.
Surprised we've not had a cunt-off over this yet. Why did you do it, lads, Gordon was good boy who just wanted to tear down Blair's legacy and paralyse government with indecision.
>>24047 I hate how this conversation automatically goes to the slavery issue. Like >>24050 statues have a permeance that often leads to them being pulled down by changing circumstances - with the former Soviet Bloc being instead probably the biggest example in history. I've seen it theorised that statues are one of the key things that has led to permeance of groups and with the printing press propped up the formation of nationalism, in Europe we went from tribal confederations that lasted a generation or two at the fall of Rome to nation states that are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Obviously that didn't work for communism but the pyramids are a focal point of Egyptian identity even if they were periodically robbed and restored across dynasties much as we will bury and unearth old VHS tapes of Father Ted in future.
Anyway, unlike stories, statues can't just be changed when they clash with our modern circumstances which infuriates people. Media is like this as well as it's a permanent narrative but unlike statues we can care more about the sculptor behind it. And for Star Wars, the sculptor tore all the statues down and replaced them with slightly worse versions.
Father Ted in my mind does feel artificial but also a bit uncanny in it's surreal reflection of rural life, which is why I find to so funny. Just a lot of characters you could imagine finding in a rural community cranked up to 11.
Probably helps that I live in Ireland too.
>>24059 The documentary hasn't bothered me as much as I expected (I suspect because it omits rather than misrepresents most of what I care deeply about), but I suddenly noticed why Labour is completely and utterly doomed while watching it: It's mostly old men reminiscing about when they were young and thought they were cool, or how cool they thought other people were. The bulk of the media landscape is set up in a way that supports them in doing this, plenty of publications are full of people who are themselves sad old nostalgists or who were brought up under the tutelage of sad old nostalgists and wish they could've been there and felt the buzz to see scary grin man point out that dawn had broken. Even those who don't tend to be incurious politics knowers who've never bothered to look much before 1992 when skimreading the Wikipedia articles about general elections. So we're trapped going back over Blair/Brown again and again and again. It's like if Labour were still obsessing over learning the lessons of Wilson c. 1974 in 1990. Worse, it's like if Marcia Williams and Bernard Donoughue were still regularly giving advice to the leadership in 1990. Advice with a quality like: What is Labour's way out of the crisis? the last time we won an election, it was because we offered a better way out of the crisis...
I'm going to watch The Man Who Wasn't There in a bit. A friend recommended it, supposed to be some kind of film noir thriller. And it's by the Coen Brothers, so it should be good.
I'm about halfway in now, and I'm kind of struggling to like the movie. I'm a fan of classic film noir and of the Coen brothers as well, but this feels more like a pastiche of the genre where someone has ticked off a list of the usual elements but missed the mark and essentially created a colour-desaturated period piece instead of a kind of film that is on par with some of classic noir's legendary films.
>>24061 I have really been fascinated by the parallels drawn to the current situation. Everyone thought Labour would win in 1992, then somehow they didn't. Then, the party had internal battles that seem to have been identical to the ones currently being had. All in all, this series seems to be very pro-Keir Starmer, explaining how plenty of people didn't want Tony Blair to do what Keir Starmer's doing now, but he was totally right and it worked. I've said a few times that Keir Starmer is going to win the next election, and I really can't see how he is going to do that from his current position, but the New Labour BBC documentary feels like it agrees with me.
>>24066 I think the documentary has that sort of slant as well, but the parallels seem tenuous to me. Starmer feels closer to Kinnock in 1987-92 than to Blair in 94. Blair made a big show of "taking on" the party in the 1990s, but it was more showmanship than serious. (For example, the "Clause IV" moment. Very stylish, but what substance? It's not like Blair and Brown would've been committed nationalisers had it not gone through.) The real fighting was in the 1980s and by the 1988 leadership election the left was well and truly cowed. Little things like that tend to be omitted, or in the case of Black Wednesday be glossed over, but they make all the analogies quite confusing when you throw them back into the mix.
If you haven't seen it, I'd recommend "Labour - the Wilderness Years", which is up on YouTube. It's from the mid 1990s when it was reasonably clear Blair was going to win the next election and gives the pretty standard story on Labour in the 1980s and early 1990s, but because the 1997 landslide hadn't happened yet a lot was still in contention and you get dissenting voices and hints of the long forgotten paths Labour could've taken beyond Bennism and Blairism.
