/lit/ - Literature

>>6812630

Let me explain Simon Pegg to you, silly anon;

Simon Pegg's bachelor's thesis was an examination of the marxist themes in Star Wars.

>>6812687
So he's a massive wanker?

>>6812691

Well he's english, so yeah...

>>6812687

based Simon

>>6812687
so he's pseudo-intellectual? good to know

>>6812630
>not even the people in Hollywood can stand the wasteland of culture that is America anymore
I remember the days when crap fantasy writers wanted to be the next Tolkien; nowadays they want to be the next GRRM.

>>6812687
I always thought Star Wars was deeply fashist in nature, with all the Leni Riefenstahl Cinematography and the Space Nazi Empire.

>>6812687
>an examination of the marxist themes in Star Wars.
tbh just as stupid as any academic text

How can one man be so based? I mean hypocritical.

>>6812766
You are as stupid as SW itself.

>>6812767
Remember when Frankenstein realized what he had done?

He can write.

He can suck dick.

>>6812630
>the wasteland of culture that is America
We deliver the most and the BEST entertainment in the world right now. So if we're a cultural wasteland, god damn, the rest of the world is completely irredeemable and might as well not exist.

seems a bit full of himself tbqh

>>6812790
>the BEST entertainment in the world
Nah, your industry died in the 20th century.

>Hollywood
>Simon Pegg

>>6812790
>entertainment

Yeah there's your problem mate

>>6812794
The fuck? It's only expanded since then. What was once a giant is now an unstoppable colossus. We're the fucking artistic juggernauts of the planet, and the titan Atlas at the same time.

>>6812630
>that is America anymore,
You mean the West? Topkek, you act as if coffehouse "philsophers" in Paris are conducive to cultural prosperity

>>6812759
No seriously nice try though. You'll get the hang of trolling sooner or later, just keep at it.

>>6812630
>wasteland of culture that is America
The reason why you think this is the American culture is so prolific and far-reaching, that it appears like it's the "standard" culture and thereby empty in comparison to other cultures.

>>6812790
Fun is overrated.
No, I mean it. I'm not joking. I'm completely serious about this. Fun is a word we use to justify that which we know that we are doing, but continue to do.

>>6812843
Sure but this doesn't change the fact that the quality of the entertainment your culture outputs is indicative of the quality of your culture.

>>6812630
>not even knowing that simon pegg wrote a dissertation on gramsci before he ever got into film

>>6812855
>the quality of the entertainment your culture outputs is indicative of the quality of your culture.

And how do you measure quality? Are you to suggest that the popularity of Honey Boo Boo and Dance Moms as an entertainment source is evidence of cultural superiority?

>>6812855
Entertainment =/= art. Learn the difference, it'll change your life.

>>6812866
However, Should art entertain?

>>6812855
I dunno about that. Define 'entertainment.'

>>6812808
You've latched onto his poor word choice, but you know damn well there's no good reason to believe that the USA is anymore a "wasteland" than any other Western country. The whole conversation is indicative of a sort of "progressive" view of history which seems to suggest that the West must always be moving in either "good direction" or a "bad direction."

>>6812871
Not necessarily. There's neither a necessary connection nor a contradiction between the two terms. That doesn't mean you can equate then willy-nilly.

>>6812810
b8

>>6812866
Even if you separate the two, America still wins. We produce the best entertainment AND art today. Why? Because the best art today entertains.

>>6812873
Are you implying that societies remain in static qualitative states all the time? No one's talking about teleology and this is actually a thread about American culture, not Western culture.

>>6812881
Care to demonstrate that, my fellow Burgerman?

>>6812630
>Recent developments in popular culture were arguably predicted by the French philosopher and cultural theorist, Jean Baudrillard in his book, ‘America’, in which he talks about the infantilzation of society. Put simply, this is the idea that as a society, we are kept in a state of arrested development by dominant forces in order to keep us more pliant. We are made passionate about the things that occupied us as children as a means of drawing our attentions away from the things we really should be invested in, inequality, corruption, economic injustice etc. It makes sense that when faced with the awfulness of the world, the harsh realities that surround us, our instinct is to seek comfort, and where else were the majority of us most comfortable than our youth? A time when we were shielded from painful truths by our recreational passions, the toys we played with, the games we played, the comics we read. There was probably more discussion on Twitter about the The Force Awakens and the Batman vs Superman trailers than there was about the Nepalese earthquake or the British general election.

Damn I gotta read this Baudrillard guy, he sounds spot on

>>6812882
>Are you implying that societies remain in static qualitative states all the time?
No.

>this is actually a thread about American culture
It's really a thread about nothing. Again, these spooks really apply to the entire West, but it seems OP has it out for a certain burger consuming nation.

>The ‘dumbing down’ comment came off as a huge generalisation by an A-grade asshorn. I did not mean that science fiction or fantasy are dumb, far from it. How could I say that? In the words of Han Solo, “Hey, it’s me!” In the last two weeks, I have seen two brilliant exponents of the genre. Ex Machina and Mad Max: Fury Road, both of which had my head spinning in different and wonderful ways and are both very grown up films (although Max has a youthful exuberance which is nothing’s short of joyous, thanks George Miller, 70) I’ve yet to see Tomorrowland but with Brad Bird at the helm, it cannot be anything but a hugely entertaining think piece.


false alarm people, it's still fucking retarded consumerism.

>>6812890
I mean, the article he linked is about Hollywood and focuses on American culture. OP explicitly mentions America in his post.

>>6812898
>implying I'm a good enough person to actually read the article and not just take shots at OP

>>6812881
>Because the best art today entertains.
What's the best art today?

>>6812903
I didn't read it, either. You don't seem to have even read the OP or the rest of the thread, which is about American culture.

>>6812906
Obviously Ant Man

>>6812908
>You don't seem to have even read the OP or the rest of the thread, which is about American culture.
you're finally catching on, my friend

>>6812913
Ho ho!

>>6812886
>There was probably more discussion on Twitter about the The Force Awakens and the Batman vs Superman trailers than there was about the Nepalese earthquake or the British general election.

Well, to be fair with a lot of world problems there isn't actually a lot to say.

What are you supposed to actually discuss about the Nepalese earthquake? How bad earthquakes are?

>>6812908
>which is about American culture.
Also I'm drunk and I missed the stupidity of your posts. My point was exactly that- why is it solely about American culture?

>>6812922
Not solely but probably primarily.
I'm also drunk soooo

>>6812922
>yfw The Commonwealth imports American Media and it infects their culture

>>6812897
Anyone else hate the way British people talk/write? It's like they try to sound as pompous as possible

>>6812957
The French are worse. There's no French equivalent to a cockney accent, not in writing, anyway, as far as I can tell.

>>6812921
bikeshedding

>>6812790

>entertainment equals culture

just fuck my shit up

>>6812886
When I consider /fit/'s never broken love with all things Dragonball, I have to agree.

>>6812886
I don't think this is necessarily true anymore. It was definitely true throughout the 90s and early-aughts but it feels like, wherever you stand on the issue of police use of force, the recent events across the country illustrate a period of, not necessarily leaving infantility entirely but perhaps it moving more towards a new adolescence. Of course a lot of it was mere posturing to seem like people cared, but there were also tons of people who turned out in droves to try and either change something or keep something the way it is, in a manner I don't remember having seen since the early days of Occupy before it devolved into a mess.

>>6812871

>should art

fuck off

>>6812866
the difference largely becomes obselete, and at this point functions more or less as a class marker rather than any indication of depth

at most it can distinguish between films created with different intentions or aimed at different audiences, but to continue to insist upon this opposition as indicating anything fundamentally true in the twenty first century is reactionary in the extreme

>>6813075
I think it's more true now than ever; the 'recontextualizing' of children's cartoons under an adult face, like Regular Show or Adventure Time, the rise of 'poptimism' and its literary equivalent, are all forms of infantilization.

>>6812881

>art
>best
>art is supposed to entertain

I want to vomit.

>>6813109
Yeah man, Skrillex is on par with Da Vinci

>>6812790
it's not the best, you problem is that the heart of your culture is "go for the most common denominator shit"

>>6813063

enjoyable read

>>6813126
yeah i mean i'm not a huge fan of skrillex but i care more about ag cook's music than i ever will about da vinci's art so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>>6813160
>ag cook
Holy fucking lol, ironic art school freshman please get some taste.

>>6813160
What's your point and how does that post prove it?

>>6812630
Most people in America live fairly comfortable lives so it's no surprise that their culture reflects this.

The fellow burger is obviously trolling, entertainment does not equal culture, but America still has the most vibrant film output in spite of most of the retarded tentpole films that come out. The problem is that Hollywood is rapidly changing to produce films to make money off of the rising middle class in Asian countries who have never had access to cinema before and want escapism and mindless spectacle that doesn't get lost in translation. (Not that a lot of Americans don't still go to these) But Simon Pegg doesn't mind the millions of dollars he's made off these so called retards, and I don't see him taking part in any of the daring low budget productions that are still being made here all the time.

>>6813182
i mean it doesn't prove anything really, except that sarcastically asserting the equivalence of classic masterworks and contemporary edm doesn't count as a counterargument to me?

thus far i have yet to see a counter argument, and honestly i'm not going to make a huge negative argument when no one has as of yet argued in any substantive way for the utility of art/entertainment as an opposition beyond marking audience and authorial intent

>>6813169
ok

>>6813126
>all art is equal

>>6813075
There is a possibility that you were growing up through the 90s and the 2000s, and if that is the case I'm going to propose it only seems like the world is more focused on adult problems because you yourself are more aware of them. Occasionally there are brilliant moments where the media goes up in arms about solving a particular problem, yes. But this usually serves just to make people feel as if something is being done, while overall distractions become a larger part of our lives every day.

>>6813122
art can do a whole bunch of shit. it doesn't suddenly become not art if it entertains

>>6813148
>and that's a bad thing

Hypocritical thing of him to say but he's correct, we're slowly heading into Huxley's envisioned nightmarish utopia depicted in BNW. Making anti-intellectualism uncool in the public eye is one of the first steps, this is how they managed to "ban", the Confederate flag so easily and pretend that part of history never happened in the US, mostly because people were unwillingly to learn and just hopped on bandwagon to get rid of the thing. People in the mainstream party now are just too busy to even pick up a book, let alone read one yet they'll happily brag about how they spend all day watching trash like Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead on streaming services such as Netflix.

The main problem and the scary thing in all this is that there is a good chunk of the population who realise SOMETHING is wrong with how everything is, that percentage of the population may be us anons but it gives me slight hope that others who don't use 4chan notice this too. The dumbing down of citizens everywhere so that they can't appreciate artistic cinema or prose books and have no other choice but to resort to crap like Capeshit is entirely the fault of social media, celebrity culture, etc. As soon as the Jews in Hollywood realised how big something like Twitter could be they took full advantage of how stupid the public is to subliminally subdue them just so that they can get a couple extra cash.

>>6812886
What does the art you consume have to do with politics? I don't buy the idea that if only people didn't watch superhero movies they would care more about the world around them. Most Americans (myself included) don't give a fuck about politics because it doesn't affect them in a direct way most of the time and we find it tedious and boring and don't see ourselves as having a lot of agency in it.

>>6813301
>Most Americans (myself included) don't give a fuck about politics because it doesn't affect them in a direct way most of the time and we find it tedious and boring and don't see ourselves as having a lot of agency in it.

Just one more reason Americans are an absolute cancer on society.

>>6813200
Capitalize, you moron. No one has mentioned authorial intent. The implication that all art should entertain and that everything that entertains is artistic needs a lot more support than its contrary does.

>>6812906
Is your brain in the 21st century or not? Then you shouldn't have to fucking ask. The best art today is, in fact, what is the most popular.

>>6813301

The problem is terribly uninformed people who do give a shit about politics...

>>6813216
It is.

>>6813307

He said as he posted on 4chan.org.

>>6813317
can you do more to explain?

>>6813322
No, not to you. Enjoy the next Kung Fu Panda movie or 80's blockbuster remake.

>>6813301
>What does the art you consume have to do with politics?

art constructs the human subject

>not wanting to live as a child your entire life

Sounds to me like we are entering a golden age

>>6813307
yeah I should be like you, a pseudo-intellectual spouting off about politics/economics I have no real clue about

>>6813330
oh i get it, you haven't read a single text on art

>>6813331
so you really subscribe to the idea that: hurr Joss Whedon's movies are the reason people don't vote more.

>>6813340
is that how you choose to understand what baudrillard is saying?

>>6813339
I don't need to read books to know that things that pander to as many people as possible have to water themselves down.

Are you b8ing?

>>6813309
i don't propose that everything that entertains is art, but the division in cultural production between art and entertainment is untenable

you're the one proposing an artificial division

you haven't even defined what art is, so if you'd be so kind, please do so now, and recall that we exclude authorial intent and intended audience

(also sperg about grammar all you want)

>>6813345
Yeah
> Put simply, this is the idea that as a society, we are kept in a state of arrested development by dominant forces in order to keep us more pliant. We are made passionate about the things that occupied us as children as a means of drawing our attentions away from the things we really should be invested in, inequality, corruption, economic injustice etc.
the 'things that occupied us as children', since you're bringing it up in this context what else could it mean but dumb ass superhero movies, which I agree are retarded, I've never paid for a ticket to see one, but I think you're overestimating the effect of this particular kind of media on people. Americans are just fucking lazy and too drained from their shitty jobs to go out and protest in the streets or whatever. It's human laziness.

>>6813348
>Are you b8ing?

i think you are. you can't even follow a simple conversation

>I don't need to read books to know that things that pander to as many people as possible have to water themselves down.

i'm not disagreeing with this. what i asked was why this was a bad thing, which is something that is apparently beyond your level of understanding. maybe if you had more experience actually reading anything we may have a different conversation on our hands

>>6813355
i mean i agree that superhero movies aren't directly preventing mass organization, but the fact is that a lot of these films, particularly nolan's batman trilogy, do work to naturalize a state of affairs where corrective violence is the only solution we can imagine to our problems, and a better future becomes impossible

>>6813307
ayy lmao

>>6813355
>It's human laziness.

childishness

>>6813350
>but the division in cultural production between art and entertainment is untenable
I'm not so sure of that, I wouldn't call all video games works of art.
>and recall that we exclude authorial intent and intended audience
Who is this imaginary 'we?' I define art as the act of producing a beautiful thing, and a work of art as a thing that expresses the beautiful.

>>6813359
It reduces the overall quality of the art produced by a body of people, obviously. This seems so intuitive that I didn't even think I had to point it out to you. What do they teach at art school?

>>6813377
So before superhero movies and comic books, everyone was politically motivated? Don't throw the fucking 60s at me, bunch of hippies taking drugs and fucking.

>>6812630
The people in Hollywood are just trying to make money. People like Pegg are cutting the branch they're sitting on.

>>6813384
'quality' is an arbitrary signifier. what's the real reason you think it's bad?

>>6813394
No, quality isn't an arbitrary signifier. Things aren't all equally good. There are good movies and bad movies, good books and bad books, good paintings and bad paintings. This is the real reason.

>>6813252
>they banned the Confederate flag because they were ignorant of its history
no they banned it because they knew the history all too well
go back to >>>/pol/

>>6813382
>hey can you define art for me
>yeah it's beautiful shit

(what is beauty)

au revoir young dunce

>>6813387
before mass media, yes

>>6813333
winget speaks truth

>>6813412
Beauty is that which leads the Spirit to contemplation of the Absolute.

Yes, I'm sure you'll mock this definition, but you've written off the idea that works of art aren't all created equal, so you don't seem particularly reasonable.

>>6813405
>There are good movies and bad movies

yes, and if a movie is specifically designed to reach the most amount of people literally does this, how can it be said to have a 'watered down quality'? do you think that kung fu panda has the potential to be some all-time great work of art that unfortunately got watered down so it could appeal to a wider audience? do you think that art which appeals to the least amount of people retains its 'quality'?

>Things aren't all equally good

according to you they are, until they start appealing to more and more people

you don't know what 'quality' is

>>6813449
>if a movie is specifically designed to reach the most amount of people literally does this, how can it be said to have a 'watered down quality'?
The only way you could make this objection is by equating quality and popularity. Are you trying to do that?

Explain what quality is.

>>6813458
no i'm equating quality and function

>>6813465
Explain what function is and how it can be equated with quality.

>>6813488
never mind, I'm wrong, I'm a fag. I'm off to suck a dick now

>>6813493
Enjoy

>>6813333
According to Nietzsche, the best damn philosopher in history, the child is the final stage of spiritual maturity. In this sense this makes America the most mature country in the world right now, Japan ranking second place. No surprise really when these two countries are right now making the majority of today's greatest art.

>>6813384
You don't understand art. Art is an ideal. Whatever your preferred ideal is, it is the opposite of what you personally are. Opposites attract; we are attracted to what fills in us feelings we are not accustomed to. If complex, "intellectual" things are your preferred ideal, and the only things you consider to be art, you know what that says about you? It says you yourself are not complex or intellectual. Meanwhile I'm an American who grew up on the outskirts of NYC living a comfortable, yet exciting and socially demanding life and who fucking loves a good big budget superhero movie, playing video games with friends, reading the occasional manga and the like. Reading on politics and philosophy is not my idea of a relaxing evening, it is what I do naturally when I am in a serious mood and eager to learn. So in short, fuck you, you shallow prick.

>>6812790
You are not japan, bitch.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173712

This seems relevant here.

>>6813740
A piece of Art may embody an ideal, but art is not in and of itself an ideal. This idea is ridiculous. You are just dragging down people who wish to improve themselves to justify your plebian tastes.

>>6813791
It is of the ideal. The more idealistic a thing is, the more artistic it is. Art is the proper task of life, as Nietzsche said — are we all not trying to attain our own ideal in life? And so, art is the ideal.

>>6813740
>Whatever your preferred ideal is, it is the opposite of what you personally are.
This conforming pseudopsychological bullshit.

>>6813210

can you read?

>>6813799
You are conflating the practice of Art and Idealism. Not all Art is created with the idea of advancing an intellectual agenda. Art is, for like of a better term, a verb, a desire implanted in human nature. The desire to create things. This can be in the service of an ideal, but it is separate.

>>6813824
> George Orwell was a Stalinist.

>>6812630
Joke's on him, I didn't read comics as a child but now I love 'em.
Walking Dead and almost everything batman etc. are garbage and I have no idea how people pay outrageous comic book prices for consumer pap rather than auteur shit

>>6812855
I'm pretty sure bread and circuses was proportional to the Empire's decay.

>>6813824
So you're denying this?

>Opposites attract; we are attracted to what fills in us feelings we are not accustomed to.

Any fucking heterosexual would agree with this. But beyond that, it goes for anyone healthy and normal. We love most what brings us the unusual. This is not to say that anyone is absolute and can ONLY like a specific kind of thing at all times, but for most of the time, there will definitely be a type of thing you are attracted to. The same applies to our interests and tastes.

>>6813863
>Not all Art is created with the idea of advancing an intellectual agenda.
I don't think I ever asserted this. If I did, it wasn't intended. What a person considers to be art, however, will be congruent with their ideals in the sense that it shares with them the quality of a place in life they are not yet at, but wish to be.

>>6813872
No, Orwell wanted to be a socialist but he was actually a liberal imperialist. And that actually IS true.

>>6813936
opposites is not the same as novelty, and there's strong support for similarity being some part of romantic/sexual attraction

>>6813973
Democratic socialist.
Died too soon.

>>6814009
It's called homosexuality, anon. But this is different from feelings of kinship; you can feel that about something you share something with and support it. But I wouldn't say these are things that ATTRACT us, and you'd be weird to make anything other than what attracts you your art.

>>6813902

You reading Fantagraphics and Drawn and Quarterly?

>>6814137
there's a place for making art that repulses you

>>6814187
It's only art if you find repulsion attractive, in which case, it is still just attractive to you.

>>6814205
this seems tautological

>>6814224
Tautology in response to tautology is all it is; you know, fire against fire. "art that repulses" is a misuse of language. Art cannot repulse you, in the same way that what you dislike cannot be what you like. It is not the purpose of these words to be used interchangeably in this way. Art is something that attracts by definition.

>>6813973
>he was actually a liberal imperialist
because you say so.

>>6814229
art isn't likes, it's feels

>>6814276
Feels you like.

>>6812790
>Burgers = kulture

"no"

>>6812630
>the wasteland of culture that is America

This reminds me of 16 year olds who watch Fight Club for the first time and say "fuck society".

>>6814424
A burger is a type of food, and cuisine is a part of culture. Just because it's mass produced "low culture" doesn't mean it's not culture at all.

>>6812790
this is what burgers believe

>>6812630
>the united states gives the world "talkies," jazz, blues, rock and roll, numerous forms of electronic music, and all kinds of other shit

b-b-but america has no culture!!!!!!

if it weren't for the united states, you european pigfuckers would still be watching silent films and listening to irish jigs or some shit.

>>6812866
>implying the word 'art' means anything

>>6813126
isnt he?

>>6814761
Both Japan and France have a better cinema tbh.

>>6814771
and both of them wouldn't even exist if not for the US

>>6814762
>>>/v/

>>6814788
past culture is not present culture

This is really one of the worst threads on /lit for a while, and it's not even lit related.

I really need to put in my application to become a janitor for this fucking wasteland.

>>6814788
yeah, and the wheel wouldn't exist if it wasn't for some neanderthals living in dirt huts

what's your point? doesn't mean that neanderthals didn't make garbage wheels

>>6814762
>OMG guys, I'm going to contribute so hard by pointing out that the definition of art is subjective.

Fucking teenagers. I really don't know why I hang out here with the retard undergrads.

>>6814798
>OMG guys im going to contribute so hard by acting like I'm correcting someone when really I'm just stating my own worthless opinion.

>>6814790
he's right. general terms such as 'art' really mean nothing.

>>6814820
>>>/v/
>>>/b/

>>6814821
>arguing semantics
>>>/youtube's commentsection/

>>6814798
there isn't a singular definition of art. what's important is your own subjective idea of what it is.

>>6814827
>anyone who doesnt agree with me belongs in a containment board

>>6814830
Man, that's like, so deep dude
what a revolutionary way of thought, wow im just wow never read that level of depth before in my entire life

>>6813740
>According to Nietzsche, the best damn philosopher in history
Heidegger, the best damn philosopher to have been in time, didn't even consider him a philosopher. Neither do many others.

>>6814869
Why? Because they didn't like him?

>>6814928
Heidegger didn't dislike Nietzsche. Nietzsche is such a departure from the philosophical tradition, and he engages with it on such a purely rhetorical and philological level, that it really does seem like a valid position.

>>6814229
art isn't subjective

>>6814869
>Heidegger [...] to have been in time [...]
did you do this on purpose?

>>6814948
Obviously. I felt lame doing it, though.

>>6814181
Basically everything but Image, DC, and Marvel, except a lot of Vertigo and a few mainline stuff, not being an auteur comic doesn't automatically mean it's shit, it just means it definitely won't be god tier

>>6814788
So now our achievements in war play a role in the quality of our film?

>>6814852
>v
>b
>containment
You do know that all the boards but /a/ and /b/ are containment boards, right?

>>6814966
>We have always been at war with Eurasia

>>6814970
>When he first created the website, it had only two boards: "/a/ – Anime/General" and "/b/ – Anime/Random"; over time more boards were created, and /b/ was eventually renamed to simply "/b/ – Random".[12][13]

>>6814975
>We have always been at war with Eurasia

>>6814977
I don't get what you're saying.

>>6814931
This. People really don't get that Nietzsche was just Gorgias.

>>6812855
g2bSid Meier

>>6814982
maybe

>>6812921
How can we help, how could the damage have been mitigated, if there is a way then why were they not sufficiently prepared. Putting aside concrete questions, it could inspire all sorts of tangential observations and ruminations, the sort you now see devoted to the sexualities, philosophies and hypocrisies of fictional characters in movies about cartoon bats beating up CGI treepeople. I would certainly prefer tumblr post after tumblr post about the fluid sexuality of Nepalese earthquakes and broken embankments than those about Cat Lord and the Darkwalker and their (headcanon) gay relationship.

>>6813063
>considers people who have actual jobs and responsibilities

Considers them WHAT? Why is the grand finale of this riveting tale not revealed to us? What did the OP say?! What did he say?!

Superheros are the new mythical heroes of our age.

Just like they had the highly fictional Achilles, Hercules, Odysseus, Jason etc. in antiquity,
and Arthur, Tristan, Roland, Cid in the middle ages.

We have the highly fictional Superman, Batman and Spider-man.

>>6815056
The Trojan War actually happened, though.

>>6815065
A war similar to what was recorded as the Trojan War may have taken place.

>>6815070
Enjoy your sophistry. No matter how many times you watch Age of Ultron or Antman, the Iliad will still be more lifelike than superhero films, simply because the characters are more complex and more at home in Greek culture than superheroes are in American culture.

>>6815065
>>6815070
Really depends on if you consider the Myceneans Greeks, might as well call Celts, Frenchmen.

>>6815074
>implying i'm not correcting you out of autism rather than any support for the opposing argumen

>>6812886
>Recent developments in popular culture were arguably predicted by the French philosopher and cultural theorist, Jean Baudrillard in his book, ‘America’, in which he talks about the infantilzation of society. Put simply, this is the idea that as a society, we are kept in a state of arrested development by dominant forces in order to keep us more pliant.

i read America not more than 5-6 months ago and i don't remember a word of that stuff being in it. he spends like a third of the book jerking off about the desert for christs sake, and how the americans are so miserable now that they've got it so good, how exercise is awful etc, etc. baudrillard was tsundere for america

>We are made passionate about the things that occupied us as children as a means of drawing our attentions away from the things we really should be invested in, inequality, corruption, economic injustice etc.

> things we really should be invested in, inequality, corruption, economic injustice etc.
that's....not baudrillard

>>6815078
Fair enough.

>>6815083
>Deep&Edgy
I don't know why I thought you left, or that you had ever left.

>>6815087
i'm a bodhisattva anon, I have to stay on the board until everyone else achieves enlightenment and is liberated from the great wheel of shitposting

>>6814869
lol this faggot

>>6814934
Yes it is.

he's always been a middlebrow loser. that explains the success of his shit movies.

>>6815056
This.

And they're no worse than those old heroes either. It's just a different time period, that had different values. The quality or depth remains the same otherwise. If you can't see that you're one of those backwards-thinking types who studied too much history and now can't function properly in the time you were fucking born in.

Besides, if you don't love Batman or Spider-man you really are faggot tier. Who the fuck doesn't love them or the archetypes they play deep down?

>>6812843
people dont justify an opiate/opioid habit with "its Fun to do"

>>6815563
No, they don't, but my point was about entertainment and art, not opiate addiction.

>>6813348
pandering to everyone at once leaves you with no voice, just communicate the same thing in different way
message: Shit just is
packages=
-Shit just is on a plain black notebook
-Stuff just is for faggots who throw a fit over fucking curse words when people have to walk 10 miles for clean water in this world
-shit just is on the side of a coca cola bottle for french people to scoff at
-Shit just is the top 40 pop song
-Shit just is on a Lisa Frank notebook for faggots

>>6813330
>kung fu panda is bad
go fuck yourself.
not even murican.

>>6812866
/thread

>>6815610
Why the fuck are you even here bro

>>6813850
The faggot he responded to is the one that couldn't read, no one said art is SUPPOSED to read, just that the art of today does so.

>>6812687
i mean, that is okay, but there are way better analyses one could make. postmodern, jesus, etc

>>6813850
The faggot he responded to is the one that couldn't read, no one said art is SUPPOSED to entertain, just that the art of today does so.

>>6812790
>We deliver the most and the BEST hamburgers in the world right now. So if we're a culinairy wasteland, god damn, the rest of the world is completely irredeemable and might as well not exist.

>>6815679
Truth:

http://www.cheeseandburger.com/

>>6812866

Yeah, entainment is sometimes shit, while art is always shit.

>>6815693
>We believe that cheese is the Grand Poo-bah of every cheeseburger grilled at a backyard barbecue or flame-broiled at a roadside diner. But not just any slice of cheese, Wisconsin Cheese.
>Wisconsin Cheese
>American Cheese

>>6815738
>art is always shit
It's like I'm literally on /TV/, er, I mean Reddit
Get the hell out of here you philistine

>>6815738
This.

>art
>le look at how le ironic i am
>I painted a shitty dick isn't ironic how i'm a good artist but i paint like le shitty artist?

>>6812687
>it's fucking true
My sides. Well, probably it's because it's really hard for professors to shit you because of your thesis, but still, that's really stupid.

>>6812790
Hi Anthony :)

>>6813197
>that picture
Please don't trigger me, that was terrifying

>>6814966
>/a/ isn't a containment board

Keep telling yourself that, weeb.

>>6816132
you don't understand his point or you're not aware of the history of this site

/lit/ is a containment board

>>6813197
>entertainment does not equal culture
Yes it fucking does, dude. It's the epitome of a culture. What it takes pleasure in, what it finds taboo, what it desires, and what technological and economic advancements it has achieved can all be found in its entertainment/art. It is completely fucking absurd to disregard a culture's output in the arts in your understanding of the culture itself.

>>6813063
A recent census was done on fit, in fact it's done quite regularly which disproves most of those wild accusations.
Clearly whoever wrote that was just a butt mad autist who made huge generalisations and because someone scree capped it with a funny reaction image, you believed it. And are now making new generalisations about things you don't know about.
Good to know the shitposting here is just as bad as all the other boards though

>>6816143
Define 'containment board'

>>6812886
>the arts exist and are sustained to keep the rabble pliant
Quite possibly the pinnacle of pseudo intellectual thought.

>>6816143
>4-4chan was founded as an anime imageboard!!
Fuck off.

>>6812630
I read this as "Greek culture was a mistake".

Now that would start some some /lit/fights.

>>6816306
It was. The Persians should have won at Thermopylae.

>>6812790
>We deliver the most and the BEST entertainment in the world right now
>americans

>>6816475
>We deliver NOTHING to the world
>Europeans

Sounds accurate tbh

>>6816527
Not really. European film is, on average, better than American film. But then again I'm a self-hating American.

>>6812759
All I ever got was a deep sense anti-Nazi outrage. It would be easy to say Jews = Jedi, but it might be truer to say that the persecution of the Jedi is meant to stand for a deep distrust of spiritual power, of Truth. In some sense this is saying that the Jews stood for that, but in another sense it is saying "this is what was really at stake". Star Wars is, of course, about vulgar power trying to stamp out spiritual power, and—probably from intense Jewish sympathy and anti-Nazi sentiment—it takes as its model the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people. It is extremely reductive, but also very useful for making into a story. And it still ends up being somewhat believable when mixed with anxiety about the dangers of progress (robots, clones, intergalactic capitalism, etc. are what make the evil empire possible).

It is also a more moving story because WW2 is modified so that the resolution is more David-and-Goliath, less saved-by-a-different-empire; and the son vs father element evokes the sense, very real ever since WW1, moreso by the 70s, of the evils of older generations and thus the danger of becoming evil ourselves; it eliminates the group/race element of the WW2 narrative, so that the bad guys, and the good guys, are not decided by accident of birth, but by morality, and free will.

The most unfortunate part of the formula is the uncomplicated support of righteous revolution against evil empire. Whether this is more rooted in his opinions about the decline of the British empire, or the French revolution, or the American revolution, or the Communist revolutions, I don't know. But it shares with all of them the sense that revolutionaries are freedom fighters.

>>6816731
I wouldn't say that it's about vulgar power stamping out spiritual power. The Emperor and Vader are far more in touch with the Force than Luke is. I know the light side is supposed to be superior to the dark, but I'm not convinced that the ontology of SW allows for this to even be possible. The Force has to be balanced; it balances itself; the Jedi and the Sith are agents of the Force more than anything. Jedi submission and withdrawal is as stupid as Sith powermongering and gluttony.

Star Wars should be read as a pagan tragedy, not as a Passion play. Zizek is essentially correct about it.

>>6816731
Are you American? As an American I've always felt like the rebels were supposed to be ideal Americans fighting for human rights, religious freedom, and pluralist democracy.

>>6814857
>Strawmanning this hard

>>6816761
>The Force has to be balanced; it balances itself; the Jedi and the Sith are agents of the Force more than anything.
Lucas said that the Sith are an imbalance and the Jedi aren't, while the expanded universe has it that both are an imbalance and Luke ultimately failed by re-establishing the Jedi order.

>>6814771
japan had a few great directors but french cinema is shit. godard is shit.

>>6817376

>>6814761
>all kinds of other shit

With the emphasis on shit

>>6814771

>>6816231
it's not just-as-bad, it's better-than, or worse-than, depending on your point of view.

>>6814761
>still be watching silent films and listening to irish jigs

This sounds much better, honestly.

>>6817208
Lucas doesn't matter anymore and the EU isn't canon anymore. At this point, the director and all the authors are dead. Reason can rule the galaxy, now that the critics have taken power.