Yeah but that would require them to pay attention to the story and reflect on it so they understand the consequences. For a lot of people, they never make those connections, and anything on the screen being depicted is also being encouraged and glorified in their minds.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ah. The Starship Troopers problem.

[–] c0mbatbag3l 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ironically also the same problem as the book.

People think Heinlein was 110% onboard with the society he was writing about, yet he wrote many other novels where the protagonists fought back against authoritarianism and/or were communist economically. Beyond this Horizon, for example. Or "If this goes on-"

Assuming one of a writer's works displays their exact like of thinking is reductionist and infantile unless they came out at some point and specifically stated that it's how they believed.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think that is exactly why that problem persists. Among a certain subset of the population, there is no need to look further. Why assume that there's a deeper message there?

Which is why it's always so frustrating when you see someone arguing that you should only be able to vote if you serve. (Yes, this really happened to me.)

[–] c0mbatbag3l 3 points 10 months ago

Unfortunately regardless of your political stance you most certainly acknowledge that there are dumbasses capable of voting purely on the merit that they were born here, even if they couldn't tell you a lick about how the system works.

While I don't know how I'd feel about my government attempting such a thing, if the service was just public sector (not exclusively the military like in the movie) and available to all regardless of ablement (as in the novel), and the only differences in rights being that you're now able to vote and run for elected office, then I could see the merits of reducing voting to the portion of the population that served the public in some capacity.

While you can't guarantee they'll be better off at the end, their experience would at least inform them of the greater picture on how things are done and why. Which might increase the voting/electoral population's ability to come up with new solutions or see the flaws they would have missed by just voting whatever they grew up with.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Funny, I thought Fight Club was about the good guys winning the war against credit card companies with the power of domestic terrorism.

[–] topinambour_rex 2 points 10 months ago

Or it was good guy trying to fight modern art and ending meeting God, and realizing his mistakes.

[–] GrammatonCleric 15 points 10 months ago

Could've sworn it was a 139 minute Lynchian carousel about the dangers of insomnia and consumerism.

[–] almar_quigley 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The book maybe but the movie definitely glorifies the violence without direct context for why it’s wrong. At least to a degree that can be easily understood by the target audience of teenage boys.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

So, the director hid a swastika in one of the shadows to indicate that he thought the society was evil, among a ton of other things. He talked about it in the director's commentary. But yeah, it's actually super easy to miss unless you know it's actually a warning (which, like you said, the teenage boys it's marketed to wouldn't understand)... Which is kind of the problem with a lot of media, like the entire genre of cyberpunk.

[–] c0mbatbag3l 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

He also didn't even bother to finish the book he was making a movie about, so it's clear how he thought the story went.

[–] CephaloPOTUS 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I mean he had read the recently released novel and started asking around for someone to pay for him to make it into a movie. So maybe you are making a "clever" quip about how he must not have read the ending to get it that wrong but that's not how your message sounded with that wording.

[–] topinambour_rex 1 points 10 months ago

Do you mean fight club 2 ?

[–] PopcornPrincess 1 points 10 months ago

I loved the movie which made me read the book and then I understood the message. The book is fantastic.