Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:
- Just how smart is Richard Sherman?
- David Pogue remains a really terrif tech writer. His stuff is for dummies without being dumb.
- You’d need half a ’90s-era Radio Shack just to replace your iPhone.
- If Millennials are so open and carefree about sexual matters, why are they so damn prissy about things like “creep shots“?
- I laughed at this faux trailer for a clichéd Indie movie.
- Is it accurate to call this an “anorexic doll”? If a doll that puts up a fuss about eating promotes anorexia, does a doll that spits up its faux carrot goop promote bulimia? Does a doll that wets itself promote golden showers?
- It’s funny how Bill Gates — a guy who made a lot of money peddling fairly crummy, quasi-monopolistic computer software, and who, as far as I know, has never said anything interesting or worth remembering — has become an Important Voice. No offense intended, Bill — I’m not interested in Sam Walton’s advice either.
- Related: Gates is predicting that there will soon be no poor countries.
- Are these the greatest uses of punctuation in literature?
- Steve McIntyre takes a close look at the chronology of that recent episode in which a bunch of climate researchers got stuck in Antarctic ice. Sure looks like the expedition’s leader is lying.
- Dennis Mangan asks a question that always inspires a lot of discussion: Why is that contemporary men need to be so involved in the process of their wives giving birth? Personally, while I can see being present when she’s pushing that thing out, I wouldn’t want to be down there watching it, let alone video recording it, sketching it on my iPad, etc.
- Sailer says the idea that Russians were go-to bad guys in Cold War-era American movies is bunk. I think he’s right. Along similar lines, movie buffs have long known that American Indians have mostly been portrayed in movies as either neutral adversaries or noble exemplars. Yet the common perception is that Hollywood was irredeemably racist towards the Indians.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
I can hardly think of a movie made between 1955 and 1980 where the Russians were the bad guys. There were a few Communist Chinese baddies during this period, after the Sino-Soviet split (to give us and the Russkies a chance to be allies), and some faceless Viet Cong baddies in “Green Berets”, but almost no Russians. In even in the 1980’s when a (very) few Soviets were the bad guys, they were cool bad guys. I mean, what 12 year old kid wouldn’t have wanted to be Ivan Drago from “Rocky Four”. Even “Red Dawn” had some sympathetic Commie characters in it. Interesting.
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I haven’t seen that many Westerns, and the ones I have seen have been mostly John Ford, but the Indians are certainly baddies in the Searchers and Stagecoach.
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I said they were “neutral combatants.” I believe they’re scary figures in “Stagecoach,” but that’s hardly what most people would consider a racist depiction. I mean, it’s a historical fact that white settlers and Indians often came into violent conflict.
“The Searchers” is example numero uno of a Western in which the white guy (Ethan Edwards) is scarier than the Indians.
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I might argue with you about “The Searchers” – certainly there are bad Indians in it, but as John Kerry might put it, I’d say that it was a little more “nuanced” than just bad Indians and good Whites. Agreed on “Stagecoach” – but that was a long time ago.
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Liberals love “The Searchers” because it is, among other things, a commentary on white racism.
Though of course lots of non-liberals love it as well.
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“neutral adversaries”?
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Neutral in terms of good/evil.
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I think there is a clear difference between middle-of-the-road adversary figures in movies and figures who are depicted as evil, degenerate, etc. You will have to look long and hard to find a demeaning “Birth of a Nation” style caricature of American Indians in American movies. But that’s true of most elements of American culture — Indians have nearly always been treated as noble and dignified, even when they were playing the adversary role.
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When one person or group is clearly defined as “the good guy(s)”, then their adversaries are clearly the bad guys. One can come up with all types of complex relationships, of course, but the black-and-white westerns I saw on TV as a kid did not. It was obvious that the Indians were the baddies in very many cases. As evidenced by the fact that in role-play everyone wanted to play the cowboy and no one wanted to be the Indian.
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I didn’t say they weren’t the bad guys. In the sense that they oppose the characters we identify with, they fall into that category. I said their depictions weren’t racist/evil.
You’re mixing Sailer’s point with mine.
I’m saying that Sailer’s point — that the general impression that the Russians were “go-to bad guys” in movies, even though they weren’t — is similar to the general impression that the depiction of Indians in Westerns was irredeemably racist, even though it generally wasn’t.
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Well, if they’re the bad guys, they’re not neutral. That was my point. I never mentioned racist stereotypes.
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When I said they were neutral, I meant that they were neither good nor evil. I wasn’t using “neutral” in the way that a country that was staying out of a war would use it.
In movie terms, “bad guys” is a pretty generic term for the opposition. I think many people use it to indicate “those guys over there who are opposing us.” But I don’t think that all opposition groups in movies are portrayed as evil. That’s quite a different thing, IMO.
Erich von Stroheim, during WWI when he was “the man you love to hate,” was playing a pretty demeaning and crude caricature of a German. On the other hand, the WWI-era German flyers in a movie like “The Dawn Patrol” were portrayed in a fairly neutral light. A kid would likely view both as “bad guys.”
My point is that there are precious few Stroheim-like caricatures of Indians in movies.
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“In movie terms, “bad guys” is a pretty generic term for the opposition.”
I think the model you have in mind is sports or business, where you might recognize that the guys on the other team are just as likeable, perhaps more likeable than the guys on your team. But movies, at least typically, don’t work that way. Even if not equipped with nefarious characteristics, they are bad because they oppose the good guys. Hence the term “bad guys”, rather than “other guys”, or what have you.
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As if hipster racism wasn’t stupid enough, now the Millennials have their panties in a bunch over “hipster sexism”: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11120601
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Millennials are a generation of pseudo-sluts and masturbating wannabes. The cold hard facts (from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey) show that young people have gotten steadily *less* sexually active since the early ’90s. Especially for the more extreme thresholds of behavior, like having sex before 13 or having had 4+ partners by high school.
Let’s have a look at the various signs proving their awkward, flaccid, overly inhibited, OCD, micro-regulating, shame-frozen mindset regarding the birds and the bees…
– Panic over creepshots.
– Icky, creeped-out feeling when they hear the words “dick,” “pussy,” and “panties.” NB: not laughing at outmoded slang, but feeling their skin crawl when corporeal rather than sterilized or kiddie slang is used (“vagina,” “undies”).
– Girls shaking their ass at a party / dance club, then running off when a boy tries to dance with them. If he’s allowed in but then places his hands on her hips, she throws them off disrespectfully rather than go with it or escalate.
– Herpes having been self-eradicated by abstinence, when people used to joke about how they might as well put it in the water since everyone would get it anyways. When was the last time you saw people under 25 with a “cold sore” or “cold blister”?
– Napalming their crotch hair. NB: not for sexual pleasure, but because in its natural state it feels “icky,” “gross,” “unclean,” etc. rather than “fresh” etc.
– All bras have a thin layer of foam padding so that the chick’s nipple never shows (“um, awkward!”). Ditto thong / boy shorts to remove visible panty lines (“ew gross, just the name — PANTY lines!”). And for that matter, no girls ever ditching the bra altogether as a pointless hassle.
– Girls do experiment more with girls (though thankfully not boys with boys), but that’s at the cost of heterosexual activity. Kissing a close girl friend as a comfortable substitute for the awkward mess of interacting with yucky boys. See also: girl-on-girl grinding or kissing at a party or dance club, meant to get maximum attention from the boys present without having to give them anything, indeed denying them from the get-go.
– They don’t make eye-contact in public, or flirt, talk, or otherwise interact with each other. Even a “couple” will be staring down at separate devices, with their back-to-back laptop screens touching more than they are.
– No expression of libido in public more broadly. Scoping others out, making cat calls, flirtatious touching, etc. (“rape-y!”). No more public make-outs, getting it on in the back seat of a car, on the hood of the car, going for a romp in the woods, and so on.
– Working out in order to “look good naked,” i.e. while looking at themselves in the mirror to assuage their crippling body dysmorphia. Flirting at the gym = rape.
– Guys no longer proudly name their dick.
– Sexual slang in general has been erased by Puritanical speakers. Particularly in using body parts to stand for people or activities. “Check out all the hot snatch here tonight!” “Nothing better than a little pussy in the morning.” “How’s it going there, legs?”
Etc….. smug articles like the one linked to are pathetic attempts to prop up the damaged self-esteem of a generation of socially isolated virgins.
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Definitely a lot of self-esteem issues among the younger set these days…
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“Millennials are a generation of pseudo-sluts and masturbating wannabes.”
I’ve disagreed with you on lots of stuff, Agnostic, but when you’re right, you’re REALLY right.
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