Why are you talking as if their argument is completely nonsensical or novel? It’s kind of a known thing that even if you portray something as “bad” as possible, there will be a number of people that look past/ don’t see the criticism of the subject and take the creation of work as a sign that the subject is to be praised. Look at the music industry with gang violence, misogyny and drug use; lots of more modern artists make music that shows how these things harm society, yet casual listeners will put on a song about alcohol abuse to get drunk at a party.
It isn’t necessarily that the artist is advocating for it, so much as they’ve produced a work that can be misinterpreted (unintentionally or otherwise) to do so.
Sunsofold@lemmings.world 3 days ago
The idea of there being no anti-war films is older than Lemmy. The problem is Poe’s Law related. You can make a movie or a game that shows the horror of war or the tyranny of distopian totalitarian regimes, but regardless of the intended message, your creation is filtered through your audience’s lenses of perception, and some of that audience has been raised to be white supremacists, some have been through schooling that acts more as indoctrination than education, and some of that audience are just seriously fucking stupid.
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yeah, I think I’ve heard of the ‘no anti-war films’ sentiment before, and vaguely heard that army recruiting increased after ‘Full Metal Jacket’, of all films. However, I don’t agree that idiocy of some part of the public is a reason to write off army, mafia, or any such quasi-satire media wholesale, as the aforementioned commenter did. That position essentially says that it’s not allowed to do critique of institutions and practices as part of ‘entertainment’ art.
Sunsofold@lemmings.world 3 days ago
The whole point of Poe’s Law is that you can’t get away from it even if you ham it to eleven, or even 38.7 gigahams/second. Unless you explicitly state ‘This is satire. That stuff is bad,’ there is little to no way to tell if it’s satire or extremism, and even if you do make it explicit, there are always the idiots who won’t notice that part and assume it’s sincere, (see naive interpretations of Starship Troopers) and those who willfully block out that part because they sincerely hold an opposing view. (See white nationalists opinions on American History X)
No one is saying it’s ‘not allowed’ for people to make those things. They’re saying it’s literally impossible because of how the media work. The kind of people who are saying ‘you can’t’ would love it to be possible. If we could movie our way to a utopia, it’d be awesome, but it seems we can’t.
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 3 days ago
You seem to agree with my position in the first paragraph.
It’s remarkable how you apparently listened in on my comment exchange with the aforementioned other person. Truly impressive capability. Could you please cite the exact argument they presented, since you know it so dearly?