[HN Gopher] Robin Williams, an acid trip, and moral panic: "Blam...
___________________________________________________________________
Robin Williams, an acid trip, and moral panic: "Blame Canada" at
the Oscars
Author : AndrewBissell
Score : 139 points
Date : 2020-07-02 16:32 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theringer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theringer.com)
| ksdale wrote:
| "Basically, for every stance they've gotten right--like this past
| season when they refused to back down to China--there's another
| one that's aged like a bowl of Cheesy Poofs left out in the
| rain."
|
| It's never felt to me like South Park was trying to be right
| about anything. I think of them more as a court jester, they play
| a role where they mock everything, all the time. The mocking is
| the point. Getting it right is irrelevant (my take, anyway).
|
| When you mock everything, though, you will naturally convince a
| lot of people that everything is equally worth mocking (which may
| necessitate, say, readdressing climate change).
| namdnay wrote:
| Somebody far more eloquent than I am summarized the problem
| with this attitude:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/circlebroke/comments/3tsd5o/comment...
|
| By poking fun at everyone who tries to do anything, you end up
| defending the status quo
| a1369209993 wrote:
| If you're doing it right, you should be mocking the status
| quo just as often and twice as bitterly.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| This is why I've always felt very uneasy with South Park.
| They seemed to me to ridicule the act of giving a damn at
| all. That's not being a court jester, that's being an
| extremely lazy and apathetic cynic.
| pugworthy wrote:
| It's not so much a matter of getting it right or getting it
| wrong. It's more a matter of "getting it", which often doesn't
| come without passage of time and some hindsight.
|
| As Parker himself says a bit further in the article,"We beat
| ourselves up pretty good. We could just do an entire season
| atoning. It's been fucking 22 years. We're pretty different
| people now."
| rhcom2 wrote:
| I think many adolescent men don't get that though.
| stormbrew wrote:
| A court jester plays to the appeal of the court. The things
| they poke fun at are the things the court will tolerate being
| made fun of.
|
| So you're right. South Park is like a court jester. It makes
| fun of everything _society deems acceptable to make fun of_ and
| gets away with some light ribbing at the expense of the
| "Middle American normal" that is its bread and butter.
|
| And they eat it up, thinking that the show poking light fun at
| them is the same as how the show treats actual minorites and
| other marginalized people (ie. very very very gross), and that
| makes it ok.
|
| The analogy is apt. It just doesn't say what you think it says.
| ksdale wrote:
| I don't know a ton about jesters historically, but in
| Shakespeare and in contemporary fiction (Robin Hobb's Fitz
| and the Fool comes to mind), the jester is one of the few
| characters who says the things that _aren 't_ socially
| acceptable, and since it's a "joke," the criticism isn't
| cause for offense.
| stormbrew wrote:
| This is a very romantic idea of it. There are always
| limits, and if you think those limits were the same
| strictness for the people the court loved as for those they
| hated or thought beneath them, I have a bridge to sell you.
| ksdale wrote:
| Naturally.
| rebuilder wrote:
| And yet, they went out of their way to show they changed their
| minds about Al Gore's climate change agenda. A jester doesn't
| do that.
| avs733 wrote:
| The inside joke of most Shakespearean plays was the the
| jester was the smartest person in the room, often because of
| the ability to take a perspective of external observation and
| self-awareness.
|
| Learning and change is part of intelligence...honestly the
| biggest part. Of course the jester would change their mind,
| and poke fun at themselves as they do, which South Park did.
|
| Not to mention I never really thought of it as poking fun at
| climate change as much as Al Gore's self-centered approach to
| climate change.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Well it sounds like the Jester acted like the Greek Chorus.
| I guess that's what good satire is, that fourth wall being
| broken by a character, or the chorus explaining the current
| state of affairs.
| avs733 wrote:
| to put it back in the context of the article...I have
| (personally, and there is certainly elements of my own
| projection in here) always interpreted Matt and Trey's
| perspective as 'we need to change grow and improve as a
| society but stop doing it in the the most self important
| and reactionary way possible. I place them as left-
| leaning libertarians in part based on their 'hate
| liberals even more'. They believe in people not
| performance. I look at the episodes post Obama being
| elected as the height of satire of both sides and quite
| profoundly insightful for what came next.
| coldtea wrote:
| Well, Al Gore's "climate change agenda" was hypocritical
| corporate crap, even if (or especially if) you believe in
| human-induced climate change and the need to stop it...
|
| Same with the "new green deal" which is mostly "business as
| usual with a green facade".
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Yeah, I think this is right on. And I feel like there's some
| value in that -- pointing out the hypocrisies and flaws in even
| the best causes can be useful. Nothing should be above
| criticism.
|
| There are some negative side effects of leaning too hard into
| that though, I think, like you mentioned in your last
| paragraph.
| Tiltowait-- wrote:
| Slaying sacred cows is all fun and games and everyone loves
| South Park for it.
|
| Right up until the point at which _your own_ sacred cows are
| slaughtered. Then suddenly it 's not funny any more.
| Blaspheming the sacred has long been grounds for jesters to
| be fired or beheaded, even though that is the jester's role
| in society.
|
| It's still funny, you just don't like being ridiculed. Which
| is proof positive that your sacred cows must be ridiculed as
| much as possible.
| sharadov wrote:
| But isn't that what comedy is all about - you make fun of
| everything, the truly great ones, Chapelle comes to mind,
| expose naked truths and come off with blinding insights.
| WJW wrote:
| You can't be _too_ great at it though, or you get beheaded.
| You have to carefully limit the societal critiques and
| "blinding insights" to something acceptable enough for your
| audience.
| _jal wrote:
| The ritual "I've learned something today..." bit is usually
| funny and meta, but there's clearly a consistent worldview
| behind the sentiments in the sum up. They aren't very subtle
| about it.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| I disagree. They believe in what they are saying. They mad fun
| of Al Gore about Global warming and eventually apologized to
| him for being wrong:
|
| https://youtu.be/Y-dvejuss6s
|
| Al gore on the apology: https://youtu.be/sG-Cp1y0UO8
| fenwick67 wrote:
| I wrote a paper about this in college but South Park does both.
| There are times where they are just poking turds at things and
| people they find funny, and there are times they try and be
| more poignant.
| oxymoran wrote:
| "Their nihilism and contrarianism have proved to be occasionally
| quite frustrating over the years, often serving as a twisted,
| reversed version of what we now might refer to as the "very fine
| people on both sides" philosophy. (One quote they will never
| escape came from Matt Stone in 2005: "I hate conservatives, but I
| really fucking hate liberals.")"
|
| So everyone has to pick one of these 2 idiotic and emotionally
| driven sides now? There is no room for a 3rd point of view?
| That's where we are at? Look, I know Trump is a racist, lying,
| dipshit but we need to recognize that both parties have nothing
| but their own interests at heart. I mean come on. Just look at
| policy from the Obama era and compare it to policy from the Bush
| era. Hard to see much of a difference. They are two wings from
| the same bird and the only way we can make America work for all
| people and close the income inequality gap is to overcome
| partisan politics.
| [deleted]
| verall wrote:
| I hate this kind of argument - of course the parties care
| mainly about their own power - they are literally political
| parties. Obama's policy was quite different from Bush's in many
| ways (domestically especially) and similar in other ways (say
| wrt the Middle East). The Democratic party also did not have
| control of both house and Senate for more than 2 years. During
| those 2 years the ACA was passed.
|
| What are you getting at? Do you believe that because both
| parties care first about power means they are equally bad? Or
| even close?
| snarf21 wrote:
| It isn't there isn't room, there isn't time. People don't want
| to spend time thinking critically. Everything is us vs them but
| it makes it easy. If you are liberal, you are automatically
| against the conservatives; not thought required. You don't even
| have to read the articles, just the headline. The headline
| _must_ be true. This is how we 've turned into a plutocracy.
| They fund the distraction and get rich while we hate our
| neighbor who is 99.999% the same as us but somehow we've
| convinced ourselves they are the devil.
| tsomctl wrote:
| If you think you know everything about South Park, I still
| recommend you read it. It's a really good article that analyzes
| old South Park from a modern perspective.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| I'd argue don't read any analysis on it. It's not ancient text,
| the source material is pretty available and relevant. Watch it,
| come to your own conclusions.
| scott_s wrote:
| There's a lot of pieces that go much further in analyzing South
| Park [1], but the best analysis I've read is actually a three-
| year-old Reddit comment:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/circlebroke2/comments/5li8i9/south_...
|
| The opening paragraph:
|
| > South Park has always been fundamentally reactionary; those
| pushing for change are wrong no matter what change they push
| for. Nothing is a bigger crime to Matt and Trey than Giving a
| Shit. Their ideology is apathetic-libertarian; whether you're
| on the left or the right, if you're asking me to change my
| behavior, you suck.
|
| [1] A Washington Post piece links to a bunch of them, "I
| criticized 'South Park' for spawning a generation of trolls.
| And so the trolls came for me.",
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/21/i-critici...
| duskwuff wrote:
| That comment wasn't even the original. It's a repost of a
| comment from 2012, and the discussion the original one
| sparked is worth reading.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/circlebroke/comments/3tsd5o/south_p.
| ..
| abledon wrote:
| haha that ending sentence "South Park is, if you'll excuse
| the expression...a "safe space.""
| watwut wrote:
| In a sense it really is. If you are certain type of person.
| I used to be that person and yeah it felt really good.
| jariel wrote:
| I think this analysis is completely off. They are not
| reactionary, they are antagonists towards those with power
| and who take themselves too seriously: Parents (esp. in the
| minds of children), Politicians, Celebrities.
|
| That's not 'apathetic' and not 'nihilist' (from the article).
|
| That they've done 20 years of such things and the only
| 'really wrong' thing they will have done is 'Man Bear Pig' is
| not bad - especially in the 00's when there was still a lot
| of popular debate about Climate Change. FYI Al Gore's wife,
| Tipper Gore, is why you see 'Parental Advisory Stickers' on
| music, which I don't care about but 'antagonists' will
| perceive that as a problem.
|
| The Washington Post article is wrong to suggest that 'South
| Park' created any kind of trolling attitude. The Author is
| part of the group of those who 'take themselves too
| seriously' and can't grasp that. That the author was
| 'trolled' is an artifact of anything popular these days.
| Sports Journalists are trolled by Ronaldo fans because they
| say 'Messi is good'.
|
| FYI: I should add they describe themselves as 'punk' in the
| article and that label fits well: it's not political, it's
| visceral, and if anything a shade anarchist, though their
| politics lean 'libertarian' as they have noted some time ago.
| Shoreleave wrote:
| I also think the analysis is completely off. South Park has
| always spent much more time making fun of the status quo
| than of those pushing for change.
|
| South Park is reactionary when rich white people have
| decided to take up a cause that they previously ignored. It
| makes fun of the self-serving, hypocritical actions of
| those in charge, not of the change itself.
| Tiltowait-- wrote:
| These are people who thought South Park was on "their" side,
| only to get ridiculed by South Park. Thus they feel bitter
| and have to lash out.
|
| They don't realize that they are the authoritarian jerks that
| South Park despises. "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
| grawprog wrote:
| https://youtu.be/ip5OWcoE6GE
|
| Here's the performace mentioned in the article. I'd never seen it
| before. It's pretty fantastic though. Robin Williams does a great
| show.
| HeXetic wrote:
| My friends & I watched the South Park movie on an almost
| monthly basis at the time and frankly I remember feeling like
| they'd completely butchered the song. The whole point is that
| blaming Canada is arbitrary and deflects from solving the real
| issues, hence why the song in the film barely says anything
| about Canada at all: the only two actual references are to
| hockey and Anne Murray because of course that's all the
| bumpkins of South Park are going to know about the place.
|
| Then the Oscar performance comes along and Robin Williams pads
| the song with a _lot_ more references to actual people from
| Canada and I think it ruins the point. The people of South Park
| don 't want details or to know anything about the problem, they
| want an easy target to blame and a rousing call to go kick ass.
|
| The joke's even continued when Sheila gives her morale-boosting
| speech to the troops, and can't even think of what the Canadian
| army would be attacking with: "Men, when you're out there in
| the battlefield, and you're looking into the beady eyes of a
| Canadian as he charges you with his hockey stick or whatever he
| has..."
| wodenokoto wrote:
| What did he add to the song that wasn't in the movie? I
| didn't catch anything "new", except that they left out the
| "it's not even a real country anyway"
|
| But I agree that the joke of almost every South Park joke is
| not what they say, but who says it.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Did :(
| asjw wrote:
| The documentary about South Park studios production process "6
| days to air" is pretty great
|
| I watch it regularly to not forget how to give everything you can
| in a short time span and still enjoy what you're doing
|
| I learned to work 6 months/year and make a full year salary
|
| I've been working at a more reasonable pace for the past few
| years, mostly because I'm not consulting anymore, but sprints
| have become more of a challenge that I still enjoy once or twice
| a year.
| randompwd wrote:
| > I learned to work 6 months/year and make a full year salary
|
| Just post the affiliate link to your vitamins already...
| [deleted]
| asjw wrote:
| In Italy we work approximately 220 days a year, 5 days a
| week, we have 52 weekends (as everybody else) 24 days of
| payed holidays and another 10 days of national holidays.
|
| six months, 6 days a week it's about 160 days.
|
| Working an hour and half more everyday day is like working
| 7/7, so about 185 working days.
|
| It's totally doable.
|
| But admittedly not for a long time and not if you're forced
| to do it
| th0ma5 wrote:
| "... the show that portrayed earnestness as the only sin and
| taught that mockery is the ultimate inoculation against all
| criticism." https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/14/south-park-tweet-
| leaves-fans-...
| vxNsr wrote:
| This article is riddled with false or misleading statements, it's
| got lots of interesting information but take basically anything
| it says about south park (negative or positive) with a giant
| grain of salt. Doubly so for any other topic.
|
| The whole article is filtered through the lens of a far-left
| extremist who just got off a 48 hour marxist bender.
| dang wrote:
| Maybe so, but please don't post ideological flamebait or call
| names in HN comments.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| aaron695 wrote:
| > On Wednesday, all 23 seasons of South Park come to HBO Max.
|
| HBO is censoring 5 episodes
|
| https://www.ign.com/articles/south-park-hbo-max-muhammad-cen...
| tux1968 wrote:
| Censoring foul language seems almost quaint now. We're busy
| taking it to the next level.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > We're busy taking it to the next level.
|
| Thankfully, 'tis but a phase, and we're almost through it.
| fullshark wrote:
| What evidence is there that this is a phase? Seems very clear
| that the majority of people are illiberal, and one subset of
| the country is salivating over the chance to wield cultural
| power for a generation at least.
| praveenperera wrote:
| I wish I still shared your optimism
| jaspax wrote:
| Censoring foul language is arguably the _main_ thing that we
| 're on about now---with a redefinition of what counts as
| "foul".
| jariel wrote:
| They used to censor language and 'ideas'. You could not
| attack Christianity, or present civil figures (ie the
| President, the Flag) in a bad light. Hollywood up to 1970's
| was very much about projecting morality in the classical
| sense. (Edit: Cohen Brother's 'Hail Caesar' depicts this
| hilariously with 1950's Hollywood execs in a funny meeting
| with various Priests and Rabbis trying to get approval for a
| big '10 Commandments'-like epic. Hilarity ensues as the
| various sects begin to argue about God ...)
|
| 1970 - 2010 it was mostly just language i.e. this or that
| word.
|
| We are now back to censoring 'ideas' but it's the other side
| of the fence. NYT called for banning 'Paw Patrol' (kids
| cartoon) for its 'normalisation' of the social roles of
| police, 'COPS' was dropped because of its ostensible
| 'glorification of police'. Which I can possibly understand in
| an intellectual sense, but pragmatically it's completely
| ridiculous. 30 Rock, one of the smartest and best comedies
| every madd - and it's not even 10 years old - is already
| getting episodes banned.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| George Washington was attacked heavily towards the end of
| his term, so I'm not sure that part is accurate.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| GP didn't place their comment in a time-period context,
| but I think it's safe to say they're referencing
| 1940s-1960 Hollywood censors.
| cavanasm wrote:
| Feels like you either missed the point of some of those
| specific recent examples, or you're oversimplifying them.
|
| With the show, Cops (Live PD as well), the overriding
| concern was that the film crew and the process had turned
| law enforcement work into voyeuristic spectacle, literally
| profiting off the pain of others (some may believe those
| people deserve that pain, but that's a separate issue), and
| possibly even influenced the officers being filmed to
| engage in their duties differently than they might have
| otherwise.
|
| Left out, also, is that 30 Rock's "censored" episodes
| featured blackface, which at this point, the issues with
| the practice have been covered exhaustively, and large
| corporations are only now deciding to care as they see
| public opinion shift, but it wasn't a great idea when they
| produced those episodes at the time, either.
| jariel wrote:
| I'm well aware of the nuance of 'COPS' but those issues
| don't remotely rise to the need for cancellation. There
| is quite a lot of 'reality' that comes through even the
| producers lens, and that's worth something. It's the
| original 'reality TV'.
|
| And as for 30 Rock: they were obviously not doing
| 'Blackface' - they were using the notion of Blackface as
| a comedic device.
|
| 'Blackface' is a vaudevillian concept of dressing up as
| Black people in order to mock them. In 30 Rock, the
| device was used only by idiotic characters doing stupid
| and embarrassing things. If anything, they were
| embellishing the obvious social principle that 'Blackface
| is bad'.
|
| That people misconstrue 'doing Blackface' with 'mocking
| Blackface' is quite literally at the heart of the problem
| of the 'mob mentality' - and that's not even getting into
| the more complicated issue of whether 'dressing up as
| someone of possibly another race' is even wrong or
| immoral in the first place.
|
| And of course, sometimes jokes are a little off - that's
| comedy and it's ok. In what world do we start banning
| gags for this reason?
|
| Blackface was obviously wrong 10 years ago and nothing
| has changed. It's still wrong.
|
| What has changed is the fascism and power of the Twitter
| mob's ability to deny any kind of context.
|
| Edit: I should add that 'Banning 30 Rock' is not
| 'catching up with popular interest' - this is
| misconstruing the opinion of the mob (or your opinion)
| with the opinion of 'most people'.
|
| Nobody cares about 30 Rocks antics but a few people on
| the fringes with outsized voices. Network and Ad execs
| are fearful of said voices - and that's mostly it.
|
| We all live in 'thought bubbles', it's worth walking down
| the street and looking around, because it's immediately
| clear that 'most people' are not 'like us'.
|
| If you were to show 100 random episodes of comedy, with a
| few 30 Rocks sprinkled in, to a 100 Americans, I don't
| believe a single person would initiate an objection to
| any of it, let alone 30 Rock.
|
| I'll go further: not even those people who even noticed
| the cheekiness of the comedy thought to themselves that
| they ought not to publish it. Not even most of the press
| writing about it - they're just following the themes and
| narratives of the hour because that's what they do. It's
| being pulled because some people (a very small group) are
| looking for reasons to be outraged and in a hyper-
| sensitive moment, nobody, but nobody wants to 'disagree'
| with said outraged person.
| ghaff wrote:
| >And of course, sometimes jokes are a little off - that's
| comedy and it's ok. In what world do we start banning
| gags for this reason?
|
| This one. To be honest, I'd be real careful right now to
| pick any hills to die on right now with respect to
| language, humor, and various other things unless you're
| really prepared to die on those hills.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > into voyeuristic spectacle, literally profiting off the
| pain of others (some may believe those people deserve
| that pain, but that's a separate issue),
|
| The entire news media is like that in a large sense. What
| purpose does interviewing a family whose home got
| destroyed in a tornado serve? Of course they feel bad. Of
| course they will cry. "If it bleeds it leads". Just like
| a car accident on the side of the road, people are drawn
| to watch. The news media profits off of that voyeuristic
| impulse to watch the misery of others.
| klyrs wrote:
| > What purpose does interviewing a family whose home got
| destroyed in a tornado serve?
|
| Fostering empathy, ginning up public support for
| emergency response. Whereas COPS etc were more effective
| at ginning up public support for brutal policing.
|
| Also there's a key difference: film crews don't influence
| tornadoes.
| jariel wrote:
| "Whereas COPS etc were more effective at ginning up
| public support for brutal policing."
|
| This is hugely speculative, in fact, I would argue just
| the opposite: if anything, it shows how ugly, grinding,
| boring and hugely 'social' policing is, as opposed to
| anything physical. It's literally about dealing with
| really weird and sketchy people in difficult situations
| all day every day.
| wnoise wrote:
| https://reason.com/2020/07/01/police-departments-asked-
| live-...
| cavanasm wrote:
| And that's a fully valid criticism of a certain style of
| mainstream news that I completely agree with, and that is
| also being discussed in some circles, and even by some
| journalists, although it hasn't hit mainstream media
| level consideration openly. All falls into the massive
| and fraught discussion around how news gets paid for.
| kbenson wrote:
| > All falls into the massive and fraught discussion
| around how news gets paid for.
|
| More appropriately I think (at least for TV), it falls
| into the discussion of how new doesn't see falling
| revenues. In the past, news was a payment back to the
| public major networks paid to get access to the spectrum
| they were using. when it became obvious there was a way
| to make the news divisions positive in cashflow instead
| of cash sinks, they were optimized for that.
|
| Now, where most news is probably delivered through an
| entirely different medium, even that minimal connection
| to the public good incentivized through the spectrum
| allocation is almost gone.
|
| In the distant past, NBC, CBS and ABC would probably have
| been happy to do away with their news divisions, because
| it cost them to run them. That they would now fight you
| tooth and nail to keep them for the opposite reason
| should put into stark contrast how the incentives have
| completely changed.
|
| Is it possible to completely disentangle money from news?
| Probably not, and it might not be a good idea. How do you
| fund investigative journalism if you do? Influence will
| flow from the money no matter what, but then again maybe
| that's not any different than it is now.
|
| I don't know the solution. I'm also aware I'm glossing
| over the fact that different parts of the news industry
| had perverse incentives long before this (newspapers...),
| and that news probably was _never_ as altruistic as I 'm
| making it out to be, but it does seem like it's gotten
| worse. I have to imagine if the Founding Fathers had the
| current status quo in mind when they wrote the
| constitution and initial amendments, they would have
| tried to put some restrictions on the ownership of the
| press to go along with those freedoms.
| nomdep wrote:
| You are forgetting about Paw Patrol, there is no excuse
| to try to cancel an innocent (and very popular) show for
| preschool kids just because one of the characters is a
| puppy dressed as a cop.
|
| That was the kind of article you would've expected from
| The Onion, not the New York Times.
|
| I get it, people are desperate to do something for the
| cause or to prove they belong to the "good side", but
| this is insane.
| MattSteelblade wrote:
| Paw Patrol has not been canceled
|
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-paw-patrol-get-
| cancele...
| Tiltowait-- wrote:
| Cancel culture cancelled. Good luck getting your next job
| if you have Paw Patrol on your resume.
|
| Magic: the Gathering banned the card "Stone-throwing
| Devils" because it reminds people of Antifa.
| morelisp wrote:
| It was banned because it's a racial slur. It was always
| near the top of the list for any permanent banning. Mark
| Rosewater has gone on record about not printing it
| further because of this more than 5 years ago.
| https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/106100301518/
|
| All seven recently banned cards are indefensible in both
| casual or competitive play.
| southparksaidit wrote:
| Janitor: Well, looks like thangs are gettin' all PC again.
|
| Friend: Well how long d'you think this will last?
|
| Janitor: Lasted about six years last time. We got at least
| [checks his watch] 5.9 years to go.
|
| https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/Stunning_and_Brave/Script
| [deleted]
| deleted_account wrote:
| In the United States, I think we're living in an era of
| remarkably _little_ censorship; compare Hays Code-era Hollywood
| to today
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code)
|
| Tim Wu's "The Master Switch" (https://www.amazon.com/Master-
| Switch-Rise-Information-Empire...) touches on censorship in the
| context of information systems.
|
| Almost nobody considers how much the "censorship" discussion
| lags behind what media conglomerates were willing to broadcast
| to begin with, see Wu's comparisons between media standards in
| the States vs. the British Broadcasting Company's.
| jraines wrote:
| Wu also conceptualizes information systems/paradigms as a
| cycle, in which radio developed a lot like the Internet:
|
| 1. wild west days; diversity of both content and quality.
|
| 2. Winners emerge by both ruthlessness, inside dealing, AND
| winning on quality.
|
| 3. Their "quality" becomes a standard and a cashcow, and
| begins to stagnate as the formula is milked. At the same
| time, they continue to starve and/or absorb competitors,
| which has two negative effects: first, innovation slows or is
| actively suppressed. Second, (the key point in this context)
| as the industry centralizes, the few players (or player)
| remaining becomes a target for pressure groups. And they are
| all too willing to comply, because at this point they are
| either monopolies or near-monopolies and are eager to show
| the government and public (read: advertisers) that they are
| "serving the public interest", and shouldn't be regulated,
| investigated, and broken up. (The Hays Code was adopted
| "voluntarily" by the studios)
| HeXetic wrote:
| > Marilyn Manson famously told Michael Moore in 2002's Bowling
| for Columbine that, rather than saying anything to Harris and
| Klebold, if given the chance, he would instead opt to listen to
| them, because "that's what no one did."
|
| Wrong. The quote wasn't about talking to the perpetrators. Moore
| was asking Manson what he would tell the victim's parents, the
| community, the other kids at the school, and he said he would
| listen instead.
|
| It then cuts to Moore interviewing two surviving kids from the
| school.
| seppin wrote:
| Also, what an amazing power to give to someone as a reward for
| their violence.
| jakkyboi wrote:
| I went back to the clip and while you are right, that was the
| question - im almost certain Manson heard "the kids at
| Columbine" and took it to mean Harris and Klebold and answered
| that question, not the one that was asked.
| HeXetic wrote:
| Maybe, but I don't think so. Before this interview, Moore
| shows a number of clips from news networks and other talking
| heads blaming the crime on all sorts of things -- video
| games, music, etc. Then later Moore interviews the very
| level-headed parent of a victim who says nobody from any news
| organization tried to talk to him or listen to what he had to
| say.
|
| The idea I believe Moore is trying to convey is that news
| people _told_ the community & survivors why this happened,
| placing blame according to their own biases (or those of
| their corporation), instead of asking and investigating and
| listening. This ties into the title of the film and the
| result of the next interview with the two survivors: the
| perpetrators were also heavily into bowling, so how come
| nobody was blaming that?
|
| Manson may still have misinterpreted the question but his
| answer does make sense in the context of what Moore shows --
| that nobody went and actually listened to the people in the
| community.
| Tiltowait-- wrote:
| Nobody was interested in what mass murderers have to say.
| It just inspires more mass murderers. Did anyone read the
| manifesto of the New Zealand mosque killer? It was censored
| for a reason.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It can actually be very important to know what they have
| to say because it can provide insight into their actions.
| Whether you agree with their views and actions or not
| (which likely you do not, in the case of mass murderers).
| But knowing what they're thinking creates the possibility
| for intervention in similar cases elsewhere before they
| go on to commit violent acts.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Yes, it definitely should be available for prevention
| research.
| msla wrote:
| > Did anyone read the manifesto of the New Zealand mosque
| killer?
|
| I did. Not very interesting.
| watwut wrote:
| Why would you assume that? It makes no sense.
|
| Definitely not considering history of that shooting
| interpretation.
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