[ENG] La nostra società è davvero così luminosa...

[elevul]

... da portarci a cercare l'oscurità nei media di intrattenimento?
Articolo:

Some men just want to watch the world burn

Alfred Pennyworth: When I was in Burma, a long time ago, my friends and I were working for the local Government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders, bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. We were asked to take care of the problem, so we started looking for the stones. But after six months, we couldn't find anyone who had traded with him. One day I found a child playing with a ruby as big as a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing the stones away.
Bruce Wayne: Then why steal them?
Alfred Pennyworth: Because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

...

Bruce Wayne: That man in Burma, did you ever catch him?
Alfred Pennyworth: Oh yes.
Bruce Wayne: How?
Alfred Pennyworth: We burned the forest down.

So I went to watch the new Batman movie. It's the awesomest action film I've seen in a very long time, and they had a trailer for a new Terminator movie called "Terminator Salvation", which also stars Christian Bale as the grown up John Connor. I was all giddy with nerdy excitement the whole afternoon.

Anyways, onward to more serious talk.

It turns out that the butler dude from Batman spent his younger days as a mercenary type in that dark exotic creepy place that has recently crept slowly into the general American consciousness... that's right, Burma!

I'll probably proceed on a long winded rant which might or might not interest you, but the take home message is that the world is becoming a much better place, and Hollywood doesn't know how to deal with it.

Gone are the days when simple storylines could fulfill the summer blockbuster audience's imagination and creative appetite. Hollywood people can no longer make "serious movies" out of real world political struggles because their country no longer has clean cut enemies, only the rough hewn guy that looks back at them from the mirror. A generation that lived half-imagined lives has grown up and want to find "the real world" in the pages of their old comic books. The actual real world has become too boring and the old comic worlds too clean cut. So, two things happen. One, people search deeper into the actual real world to find things worth doing with their lives, to find struggles that are above and beyond the ones that they have been groomed for by default. Two, popular media catches up with the audience's evolved consciousness and give these people the complexity and grittiness of "the real world" that they so desire in comic book mythologies that have been rebuilt from the ground up.

Let me give a concrete example... remember this Batman?





WTF happened in the span of 40 years? No, don't even look that far back. Even the nineties were way different than this.

It's a bloody superhero movie! Kids will watch it! Whatever happened to Captain Freeze or the Ninja Turtles dancing to Vanilla Ice? You expect 9 year old kids to contemplate Hobbes and Rousseau? Well... yeah, probably. The same kids who in their college applications in 2015 will be scared that they won't even make the waitlist because they only play 4 instruments and only won 3 national swimming championships and only managed to get a 3.91 GPA.

I just can't help but notice a trend. Chuck Norris won't make a dime in today's world, except in a mockery of his own former glory in a trippy movie made for potheads. The only action movies are comic book superhero movies. Comic book movies fill a void that I mentioned earlier, their worlds are already familiar to the current generation of grown-ups. More importantly, gun totting and explosion filled action has lost that heroic element in the real world. The real world no longer needs heroes, people have become more acquainted with an increasingly tame world that will only spit out any loser who is ignorant enough to claim to be the heroic gun totting savior to all the world's problems. Today's heroes are explicitly fantastical, complete with cape, costume and lame catchy name.

The argument that we live in a gritty and dark post-911 world is full of shit. We actually live in a one-wikipedia-search-away-from-all-human-knowledge and a one-phonecall-away-from-getting-nice-Chinese-people-to-build-a-new-iphone-type-gadget-product-line world. The world has gradually gotten less gritty and dark, and we've become more and more aware of what little darkness there is left. The world of the 9 year olds who will be discussing Hobbes and Rousseau after watching the Dark Knight will be even less gritty, and they will be searching even more vigorously for the diminishing pool of darkness so that they can put their overqualified selves into good use and do something they will feel important with their lives.

And so, we get to the topic of Burma. Even five years ago, can you imagine lead characters in a summer blockbuster revealing a major plot point by referencing this unknown backwater country that nobody would have heard of? I mean half the country can't identify the Indian subcontinent on a world map *LINK*, what makes you think they've even heard of Burma? I mean sure, my country has grabbed the world headlines twice in past year, but this movie was shot before all of that stuff. What were the scriptwriters thinking?

Well, I bet the answer has something to do with the fact that the world is becoming a tamer place.

Some men just want to watch the world burn...

Where on earth outside of a comic book can you still find a place where there are men who just want to watch the world burn? Well, in a country that might as well just exist in a comic book, of course. Not in a fifties style comic book with literally clean cut/shaven characters either. We're talking about a dark, gritty 2000's comic book that tries to squeeze in every fantasy that we secretly yearn for in the quest to escape the boredom of our increasingly safe and complacent lives.

In the Batman movie, Alfred tries to conjure up a vision that even battle hardened and ninjutsu trained Bruce Wayne cannot picture. The fact that there exists people in the world who are possessed with pure evil, that destroys our old notions of what is good and evil and forces us to reconsider the ways of the world.

What a perfect niche for my country to fill. Again, we are looking at a two pronged mechanism. First, the fact that places like Burma have become increasingly rare in today's world. Second, the general movie watching American populace has come to demand a certain "realistic" and "mature" portrayal of their favorite childhood heroes, who ironically inhabit a world that has a real life counterpart only in the tropical jungles of dictator ruled backwaters.

Source: all-i-see-is-grey.xanga.com (18/06/2009)

L'ho letto mesi fa, ma fin da allora mi è sempre rimasto in mente, e ha continuato a far pensare. Uno degli articoli più interessanti che abbia letto sulla società attuale.
Dal mio punto di vista la società è davvero diventata meno oscura e più "umana" dalla seconda guerra mondiale in poi, ed il comportamento degli esseri umani si è adeguato, ma resta comunque il fatto che di azioni riprovevoli compiute da esseri umani ne sentiamo parlare ogni singolo giorno, cosa che rovina parecchio la teoria...
Quindi francamente non so. Voi cosa ne pensate?

[elevul]

Up...

[lowenz]

Che la natura umana del Sapiens è sempre la stessa da qualche milione di anni (io la ritengo tutt'altro che pacifica ) ma si presta molto alle condizioni ambientali in cui si estrinseca, per cui in guerra abbiamo barbari omicidi come cosa comune e non c'è bisogno di inventarsi altro, senza guerra invece c'è spazio alla fantasia

Personalmente ritengo più "semplice da vivere" (più che "umana", dato che tutto è umano) una società dove la violenza (che è ineliminabile) si esplica in modo più animalesco e meno "raffinato", proprio perchè permette di costruire facilmente caselline dove categorizzare eventi e fenomeni.
Con violenze "raffinate" invece è tutt'altro che semplice conviverci: ecco allora la pop-culture che cerca di affrontare l'argomento con gli strumenti dei romanzi e dei film che una volta erano per ragazzi ed ora sono per adulti (nel senso che ci vuole un certo bagaglio culturale per capirlo).

Come detto il problema saranno gli "overqualified children" che usciranno da questi anni.....preferisco non pensarci perchè quella si che è una visione tetra (e alla quale i "meritocrati" non pensano mai, probabilmente non sanno cosa sia la parola "controintuitivo" ), almeno per come concepisco io desiderabile una vita.

[elevul]

Originariamente inviato da lowenz

Che la natura umana del Sapiens è sempre la stessa da qualche milione di anni (io la ritengo tutt'altro che pacifica ) ma si presta molto alle condizioni ambientali in cui si estrinseca, per cui in guerra abbiamo barbari omicidi come cosa comune e non c'è bisogno di inventarsi altro, senza guerra invece c'è spazio alla fantasia

E fin qui ci siamo.

Originariamente inviato da lowenz

Personalmente ritengo più "semplice da vivere" (più che "umana", dato che tutto è umano) una società dove la violenza (che è ineliminabile) si esplica in modo più animalesco e meno "raffinato", proprio perchè permette di costruire facilmente caselline dove categorizzare eventi e fenomeni.
Con violenze "raffinate" invece è tutt'altro che semplice conviverci: ecco allora la pop-culture che cerca di affrontare l'argomento con gli strumenti dei romanzi e dei film che una volta erano per ragazzi ed ora sono per adulti (nel senso che ci vuole un certo bagaglio culturale per capirlo).

Qui mi hai lasciato indietro, però.
Cosa intendi con violenza raffinata?

Originariamente inviato da lowenz

Come detto il problema saranno gli "overqualified children" che usciranno da questi anni.....preferisco non pensarci perchè quella si che è una visione tetra (e alla quale i "meritocrati" non pensano mai, probabilmente non sanno cosa sia la parola "controintuitivo" ), almeno per come concepisco io desiderabile una vita.

Qui mi hai proprio perso totalmente...
Chi sono gli overqualified children? E per quale motivo sarebbero un problema della meritocrazia?