/hobby/ - Hobby

that's pretty disappointing. where are you hearing or reading these interpretations? can you link something?

Well, that's Americans for you.

Now, I thought the film was too crude and the ending was really disappointing. You don't fucking destroy the only remaining technology/civilization you know of on Earth by reifying it as "capitalism", but you change the social relations to production, you idiot. Didn't he see a polar bear or something at the end too? What was the lesson? Take a page from anprims and "just rewild bro"? "Fuck society/civilization maaan"? If the ending wasn't so awful I'd probably like the movie a lot more in retrospect, even though the characters had much more of a satiric/comic-book level over-the-top:ness to them.
Parasite was a qualitative leap unlike anything I've seen in such a short while from the same director.

>>4442
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Snowpiercer
Also Youtube

>>4443
>Parasite was a qualitative leap unlike anything I've seen in such a short while from the same director.
As in, it's basically the same movie, but re-done in a better way with an extremely poignant analysis (taking finance and intellectual property into account) as well as a real ending (the implication of the son repeating his dad's mistake by buying into the bourgeois ideology symbolized by the plastic stone, hard-cutting his idealist consumerist fantasies to the grim reality of his dark room at the end. The sole 'protagonist' of Parasite was the old woman maid, while the other lumpen/proles all displayed various levels of false consciousnesses).

>>4443
>What was the lesson?
Fiat justitia ruat caelum.
>change the social relations to production
Just change the social relations of child labor, maaaaaan. Just call it the people's lithium mine, bro.

You cannot separate the ending from the rest of the movie. That the train was falling apart and most of the people on it were going to be sacrificed is a recurring thing throughout the story. In time, the whole system would fail as the increasing need for child labor ran up against the train's inability to sustain a child population due to purges, and the train is just the final stage of capital's response to climate change through fascism and attempting to engineer a solution to a problem created by engineering.
The polar bear at the end is a symbol that there is life and possibilities outside of this fascist response to ecological collapse. There's also comments about snow melting which indicate that the situation outside might be improving, but Wilford's Cult will never stop demanding sacrifices for the engine because this rigid class system is what they've invested their whole lives and minds into.

>>4447
I also took the train as a general metaphor for Capitalism itself; the entire time Curtis thought he could get to the front and finally make the train better for everyone, this is what Gilliam (who was in one it the whole time and basically a socdem) trained him to believe. In the end, only those that wanted to escape the train could show Curtis that there is NO way to make the train better for everyone, the train will always be run by dead children and Wilfred himself admitted this. Curtis realizes that the only real solution is to simply destroy the train; the train is even a prison for Wilfred; it’s a prison for everyone and not even actually necessary. When it’s destroyed the survivors are given a new, wider world filled with possibilities.
It’s almost an anti-Parasite, Parasite ends with the workers being unable to see through the myths and ideology of capitalism despite everything they’ve witnessed; Snowpiercer ends with them seeing the truth and being liberated.

>>4441
>It's about authoritarianism"
It is though. Chris Evans wants to do an ML revolution (seize the state) but the Korean guy wants to do anarchy (leaving the state). The ending of the film is about the fact that if you seize state power you must reproduce the injustices that keep the state running. It's extremely blatant what the point of the movie is supposed to be, so far that it makes the ML stand-in a literal baby-eater.

>>4450
I didn’t interpret the train as the state though, I interpreted the train as capitalism
Curtis’s fucked up past isn’t about MLs, it’s about the horrors the train society put the proles and lumpen through

>>4451
Capitalism is the train itself. The state is the human society in the train. Curtis wants to seize control of the state (the social organization) but the revelation is that it is subservient to the machine of capitalism. They function as one system, and you can't take over society without replicating its functions. Curtis is aiming to reach the front of the train and impose a new order a la DotP. This is an attempt to ascend and take over the hierarchy of society, using the political system to change the underlying machines. Which won't work of course. The state is part of the superstructure, supported by the base that consists of the "production" process, i.e. the train continuing to function.

The alternative is to abandon the hierarchy entirely and move horizontally, orthogonal to the systems of authority and the direction of the machine of the train/capitalism. Leaving the train behind contrasts with Curtis's original plan in that no class is imposing its will on another. This distinction isn't even metaphorical or allegorical. The alternative methods of revolution are completely literal in the text of the story. It's only allegorical in that the situation represents wider society.

>Curtis’s fucked up past isn’t about MLs, it’s about the horrors the train society put the proles and lumpen through
It's specifically about how he has been made into a monster, and in the context of the story (before the reveal about how the train works or they meet Wilford), it's meant to make you question his fitness for the role he's trying to obtain. It's the first in the one-two punch. The second is finding out that the game was rigged from the start. It's not just him sharing how bad things are. Everyone knows how bad things are. He's trying to get his conscience right before the moment of truth. Also, the whole eating babies thing is immediately paralleled by the reveal about how the train's machinery works.

>>4458
Cool analysis.

>>4458
But this is exactly my issue (>>4443).
>Curtis is aiming to reach the front of the train and impose a new order a la DotP. This is an attempt to ascend and take over the hierarchy of society, using the political system to change the underlying machines. [b]Which won't work of course.[/b]
So you're admitting that the movie takes the anarchist conclusion instead of a Marxist one. Of course a dictatorship [b]of the train's proletariat[/b] could [b]take advantage of the material conditions of the technology developed by capitalism[/b] and re-organize it towards communism. They have an entire ecosystem on-board. This is important. They do not have to fucking eat children, that's a product of capitalism. They have access to potential nutritional abundance via the constructed ecosystem on-board. Also the child labor of the little kid in the machine at the end could be taught to others and he could be supplied protective gear as they gradually re-design the small compartment to fit adults, solving the moral problem by not risking to literally kill everybody for fraternizing with goddamn polarbears in the middle of Antartica or whereverthefuck.
>The alternative is to abandon the hierarchy entirely and move horizontally, orthogonal to the systems of authority and the direction of the machine of the train/capitalism. Leaving the train behind contrasts with Curtis's original plan in that no class is imposing its will on another.
So basically they take an anti-civ conclusion. Even an-synds would take over the tools developed by capital like I described above over risking genocide by attacking the very industrial foundations that's holding this population alive in the middle of an uninhabitable wasteland, in a post-apocalyptic context. Sure, it seems the director went for a critique of ML strategy (Curtis being quite 'lone-warrior' in his final confrontation, what, did he plan to become the new lone conductor for the "DotP"?), but that would falsely imply that there's not a whole lot of more reasonable middle-ground between the most vulgar of ML and anti-organizational, anti-civ anarchism.

Ive never actually seen the movie you're talking about i feel like the same could be said about other movies like starship trooper's

The Movie is basically turning the themes of the book it's based onto their heads and using it to paint a picture of what propaganda looks like in a fascist society

Many people (usually right-winger's) i know straight up either mistake this for a support of right-wing ideal's or believe that the society depicted in starship trooper's is the "ideal liberal world goverment" missing the point that you're only viewing this already obviously bleak society through whatever system controls its own propaganda

>>4464
>So you're admitting that the movie takes the anarchist conclusion instead of a Marxist one.
That was always my point.

>Of course a dictatorship of the train's proletariat could take advantage of the material conditions of the technology developed by capitalism and re-organize it towards communism. They have an entire ecosystem on-board. This is important. They do not have to fucking eat children, that's a product of capitalism.
The whole point of the ending is that the train is unable to reproduce itself and is degrading, that children have to be sacrificed just to keep it running. This is a metaphor for how capitalism eats itself and intrinsically will destroy itself. All the systems on board the train are built into the train. In theory the revolutionaries could simply stop the train and preserve the bounty of capitalism. But in practice they don't have the power to stop the train, only to derail it. And while this is massively destructive to the treasures on board (including human life), it's preferable to allowing the train to keep running. Eventually the train will have to either derail or eventually stop. The longer it takes before the train derails, the more the contents will degrade. By the time the engine ultimately fails, how much more will be lost? And how much more suffering must the inhabitants endure?

By derailing the train the cycle is stopped, and even though the survivors leave the train for a moment in the end, the train is still right there and open to scavenging. All is not lost. The ending merely focused on the outside of the train rather than trying to recover its contents.

>So basically they take an anti-civ conclusion.
Tankiddies literally can not imagine society without daddy telling people what to do.

>Even an-synds would take over the tools developed by capital like I described above over risking genocide by attacking the very industrial foundations that's holding this population alive in the middle of an uninhabitable wasteland, in a post-apocalyptic context.
The whole point of the movie is that this is an illusion. The world is only supposedly uninhabitable, yet we see life outside the train. The appearance of a polar bear at then end of the film is evidence of a much richer ecosystem, since an apex predator requires an entire food web to sustain it, unlike the plant life we see earlier. And you put way too much stock in maintaining current productive forces. Reminder that the USSR was a feudal shithole in 1917, devastated by 2 world wars and they still managed to industrialize and go into space. The legacy of productive labor is much more about accumulated knowledge/technology than the physical means of production. If our material wealth was reduced to scratch overnight but we still had the knowledge of how to farm and build factories, we could rebuild society before very long.

Part of capitalist realism is the idea that if we interrupt the mode of production we will just regress toward hunter gatherers. This is an idea reinforced constantly by apocalyptic media, which ideologically functions as a kind of threat to the proletariat to submit to power. Why does nobody in an apocalypse start farming? Why do they not build walls or fences to keep zombies out? Why does nobody in the post-apocalypse occupy a machine shop or factory and seek out skilled workers? There are examples where you do see this, like The Walking Dead, but for some contrived reason it generally fails and everyone is reduced to scavenging again. But generally it's more like Mad Max where the productive forces are just abandoned for some reason and people simply elect to rebuild from scraps instead of take over the existing MoP. This has no bearing whatsoever on reality but gets pushed constantly to shape people's imagination of what an alternative world would look like. Porky media moguls are not going to allow popular media to depict normies taking over and running a factory, because of the implications it has for them.

The general assumption of post-apocalyptic media is not just that society is fragile, but that the social order is fragile. The world doesn't end just because a lot of people die. It ends because the bourgeois class either dies or loses its power. Post-apocalypse stories are one of the most uniformly reactionary genres there is, because they reinforce the idea that you need someone running the productive forces in order for anything to get done, that the common people, the workers, cannot do it themselves. They are secret morality plays teaching the lesson that if left to their own devices humans will degenerate into primitivism, and that you need "civilization" (which in context is just code for "rulers") in order to maintain industry and technology.

Reposting my take on the film from a previous thread:
I am conflicted about it. If I was being perfectly honest, I'd probably even say it's bad, however it being leftypilled saves it somewhat at least. My big issue is that it sacrifices good plot for political / ideological analysis that is supposed to relate to the current day. I don't mind a film doing that, however I'd say it fucks up with the ideology as well. So I will go in to these separate problems in 2 paragraphs.
First is the movie if we take it at face value as a sci-fi story detached from our own cultural reality. Well, it's pretty shit and basically Divergent / Maze-Runner (or whatever the fuck it was called where they run away from a robo-maze into a post apocalypse scenario) sci-fi dystopia plot. Villains are comically evil, there is a random betrayal moment at the end that leads to nothing and the ending feels like shit, since right before it was established that the snow will pass, so it feels like the main character totally fucked up and killed everyone instead of waiting a year more. Oh and add in the stupid shit too like how the train structure is dysfunctional or the fucking glass shooting scene.
However, most of that can be forgiven, especially when you consider most of it is symbolism to reflect to the real world. However, and this can be just me, the ideology falls flat for me, especially since at first I thought it was actually going the right way. Basically it all comes together with the final confrontation with Elon Musk stand-in. Up to that point all we saw were a) scenes of total contrast in the train and b) a few lines about "keeping the balance". Musk explains his view for why things should be as they are. It is 1 to 1 Holism. (I think there are different definitions of what Holism is, but I am specifically referring to the one pioneered by Jan Smuts, an anglo imperialist governor of South Africa. He, abusing the theory of ecosystems, came up to the conclusion that viewing humanity as an eco-system there are ways of insuring that it maintains total stability, with the "stability" of course being the insured imperialist hegemony of Britain. Almost the same ideas where started being promoted in second half of 20th century for ecology, saying that austerity and degrowth need to be ensured to maintain the current system, aka capitalism, completely ignoring the possibility of the system itself restructuring). This is clearly the same situation in Snowpiercer. The underclasses need to suffer in order to maintain the eco-system of the train, while the upper-class lives in luxury as a "necessity" for provocation. Now all of this is pretty good and draws attention to a great evil in modern ecologist ideology, however after this exposition the main character drops the ball, or more importantly, the story does. It falls pray to the very ideology it tried to attack, as the main character concedes to Musk stand-in, that indeed this is the only way. The largest flaw of Holism, that there is another way if you dare to restructure and change society it self instead of maintaining status quo, is never revealed. Instead the film subscribes to idealist bullshit like pic related (originally the picrel in the post I am copying was a pi of Zizek saying "the opperation will be successful but we will all die"), doomerism that no longer has any faith in the future as it is, choosing instead to let everything burn, including yourself, only leaving behind tiny hope for the future instead of fighting for it yourself as hard as you can with what is offered, no longer do you try to change the world.

>>4482
I agree the movie kind of sucks. The sci-fi setup is pretty much a bait and switch for a political allegory. Sci-fi usually has elements of this, but also actual science fiction. The movie could have been basically the same but better if it didn't portray itself as sci-fi. It would have been better if it was retrofuturist and set after nuclear exchange during the cold war causing nuclear winter.

>Almost the same ideas where started being promoted in second half of 20th century for ecology, saying that austerity and degrowth need to be ensured to maintain the current system, aka capitalism, completely ignoring the possibility of the system itself restructuring). This is clearly the same situation in Snowpiercer.
It is but not in the way you say. In both cases we should be abandoning the mode of production because it's inherently destructive, not merely "restructuring" it. The idea that we have to preserve some aspect of the system is another form of capitalist realism. Putting ecology aside (since it's really not relevant to the core argument) fully replacing capitalism would be better for the people by virtue of not subordinating them to the system. "Austerity" and degrowth are inevitable either in abandoning capitalism or in reforming it because capitalism drives toward maximal growth, even when that's not ideal. Fearmongering about how degrowth (i.e. producing less because we reduce wasteful consumption like single-use products and planned obsolescence) is a failure to see beyond capitalism's need for the circuit of profit to continue.

The whole point of the movie is that you need to see beyond the current system - the train representing capitalism. The point is that the world outside is not so barren and hostile as you have been led to believe, and that abandoning the current system is less damaging than continuing it.

>Instead the film subscribes to idealist bullshit like pic related (originally the picrel in the post I am copying was a pi of Zizek saying "the opperation will be successful but we will all die")
The only people (we see) alive at the end is just symbolism. It's not meant to reflect almost everyone dying. The two survivors are Adam and Eve figures.

>>4464
>They have an entire ecosystem on-board
A jury rigged "ecosystem" that has been in state of total collapse since its creation. Only by resorting to cannibalism, brutal violence, a brainwashed cult, routine purges of the population, and child slavery have a small portion of the train's inhabitants been able to ward off entropy for 17 years of constant crisis.

This is something that takes Snowpiercer from a criticism of capitalism to a criticism of all existing and previously existing social systems. Whether the current neo-liberal capitalism or European style feudalism or the corvee system throughout much of Chinese history or whatever, all these relations emerge in response to a crisis but, instead of actually fixing the crisis, they just keep perpetuating it.

>>4484
I really have to contest the interpretation that the train it self is capitalism / the state. There is already, in my opinion, better stand in for capitalism - Wilford. He is the creator of the train - just like capitalism created the machines which form the material basis of the modern world. Also, unlike just a simple porky, his motivations are not to maintain his own power or that of the other 1st class passengers, but to maintain the system, with no qualms with fucking over both the proles and capitalists. Personally, I believe that what the train actually represents is the material base of the society - electrified machine industry if we are talking about capitalism. Just as human society along with most of humanity would surely perish at this moment in time if all our material base vanished, so would the passengers all die without the train. Also, as you note that both an "ML" ran train and the former Wilford train would both have to deal with the same issues, same applies to our world. Soviet economic base was the exact same as it was for capitalist countries, and came with very similar issues, however, and this is my criticism of your idea that "ML DotP" would just be the exact same, the methods for solving the common issues can be drastically different. Alright, no matter what both systems would require child labour to sustain them, but it can be done more humanely. Why make one part of the train starve and the other live in plenty? Conditions can be equalized, and the excess glut for decadence removed (which is far more in line with your described version of regrowth, with which I agree). Not realizing this possibility is falling to the trap that I had described earlier of conceding to holistic capitalist realism that the system can never be changed. Meanwhile, wanting to destroying the social system that you don't like can't really be done under the current material conditions, since an idealist vision of the world will simply won't work in the real world, hence the only way I see something like it being achieved is through a genocidal destruction of the existing base in vain hope that this will allow for the utopian vision to finally come true (see Pol Pot). And another reason why I personally doubt your interpretation - even if Curtis had become the strawman red fascist, in the end he would only have been proven right, as it was established that the snow was melting away, meaning that in the end, it would all have been sort of justified, and eventually would allow to move away from the ruthless system.

>>4497
I don't think we disagree much on interpreting the movie. It's more that I agree with the conclusions and you don't.
>Not realizing this possibility is falling to the trap that I had described earlier of conceding to holistic capitalist realism that the system can never be changed.
Certain aspects of the train can never be changed, and there's really no need to change them when you could alternatively leave the train. Ideally this would mean stopping the train peacefully and in a location that's as habitable as possible, but that's just not an option because the whole point of capital is that you don't control it. It controls you. So the only thing they can do is derail it.
>Meanwhile, wanting to destroying the social system that you don't like can't really be done under the current material conditions, since an idealist vision of the world will simply won't work in the real world, hence the only way I see something like it being achieved is through a genocidal destruction of the existing base in vain hope that this will allow for the utopian vision to finally come true (see Pol Pot).
Nothing so dramatic as that. The IRL equivalent is to leave capitalism behind and build socialism. We may or may not seize the MoP, but the point is to abandon the social relations. In the movie derailing the train is the only option, but even that doesn't mean they totally abandon it. The survivors don't get out and run away. They stay near the train. The movie just doesn't focus on the resources lefty by the train because thematically it's about escaping its confines. It ends pretty much as soon as the characters get a breath of fresh air. If it lingered and they started salvaging the wreckage the point would be undercut.
>And another reason why I personally doubt your interpretation - even if Curtis had become the strawman red fascist, in the end he would only have been proven right, as it was established that the snow was melting away, meaning that in the end, it would all have been sort of justified, and eventually would allow to move away from the ruthless system.
I think his portrayal was cheesy and cringe (I don't subscribe to muh red fash idiocy), but the point is that the characters wrongly believed that they had to stay on the train, that it was necessary. Like capitalism IRL, boarding the train was historically necessary for a time. In the film Curtis specifically draws attention away from the evidence of the snow melting to keep people moving toward the front of the train. If he replaced Wilford as intended, he would also be replacing the function of justifying the necessity of the train. Now, I don't think this always tracks in reality, but it is a common problem with state socialism. If you have that kind of power it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and get complacent. It was only in a moment of crisis and seeing the wretched results of the train that Curtis chose to help derail it. If he had succeeded in his intended role, there's no reason to think he would accept the notion that the outside world was habitable again. And the IRL equivalent is that state socialism tends to regress to capitalism because it doesn't fully embrace a socialist mode of production, trying instead to use the state to manage what is more or less the capitalist production relations.
As for being justified, if life outside the train is possible the train is not justified. If they can move beyond it now, there is no good reason to wait. That doesn't mean it's best to just destroy everything, but in this case if you're forced to choose between derailment and continuing the process with little change, the derailment is preferable. That's the point being made. My gripe is that the conflict pushing this dichotomy is somewhat contrived (as trolley problems always are).

It IS about authoritarianism

Capitalism is inherently authoritarian.

The stages of the train are the segments of society, the one ahead has social authority over the one behind. You ask for your gruel from the hierarchy above you.

You could leave but you'll freeze, (what about my "individual liberties").

I don't think the fantasy scenario offers a lot of good options though. The end seems pretty dire.

Just a reminder that there are at least three people arguing ITT.

>>4514
The train is basically pic related.

>>4548
No shit sherlock

lol what if it was called asspiercer instead and instead of the last rolling train it would be the last working vibrating buttplug

>>4441
Well I guess It's better than the /pol/ interpretation: "Everything was alright when a white man was on top and went to shit when only the asian girl and black kid remained"

I think it was revolution vs reformism

>>4614
There's a rigid caste system about the order of who gets to use the butt plug. Also because of water shortage, the butt plug can only be washed once a month which is right before Wilford uses it so everyone in the lower classes gets this filthy butt plug they all pass around and share.

>>4441
That movie was trash, even if it had a good message. Stopped watching halfway through

>>4636
But it was good so ur wrong

>>4636
Yeah, it was like Demolition Man in that way: a brilliant idea completely fucked up by bad direction.

haven't seen snowpiercer but the normie reactions to parasite once the oscar hype got rolling really had me seething for a while

> it was just so crazy how the poor people were also bad!

pic related is from this huge fb group for asians that my sister had me join. all these fucking morons jerking themselves off to the fact that a ching chong ding dong was recognized by the film industry and now they feel 'seen' and 'valid' and the basic insights of the movie completely went over their head.

they went through that whole phase of posting their own renditions of the ramdon snack. one retard posted his with a caption to the tune of

> wow, parasite was such a thought provoking movie! wonder what you guys think about the ramdon snack symbolizes. to me it was sort of an indicator of how we're all kind of similar at the end of the day. this family is rich, but sometimes they find comfort food in the same stuff we do, like cheap instant noodles. what are your thoughts? let's get some discussion going in the comments!

some people pushed back but man, lots of people just tagging their friends saying "OOOOoooo didn't think of that, that's deep"

>>4634
You think Bernie doesn’t have some skeletons on his closet, maybe even literally?

>>4705
Some say he keeps Rosa's skull on his bedside table.

>>4737
Link?… on second thought, don't,

>>4441
>Americans seemingly cannot comprehend what it's a criticism
Class conscious, they are not

Netflix just released a series based on the movie/comic
Knowing those fags they most likely removed anything even remotely class conscious about the story

>>4994
>most likely removed anything even remotely class conscious
Nah thats how they used to do it. Now they twist the class-conscious rubbish to be liberal and evil, so that potential socialists are diverted; left-wingers into liberal idpol groups and right-wingers will completely reject any attempt at seeing the message and edge more into fascism.

If anything, its class theme was too brutally overplayed to the detriment to the overall film quality. Chris Evans sells the movie with his performance though.

>>4450
Thats what the conductor (and the old guy apparently) wanted him to do, Chris Evans didn't necessarily follow through. Arguably it is what the porkies want, a 'aspirational' lower class person taking over the reign.

>>4639
Crazy Rich Asians fucking sucks. I am so mad about the ending. At least the casting of the local actors was pretty good

>>4441
The plot has some similarities to Animal Farm in some regards which is why neo-libs think its anti-communist. Why Animal Farm is thought of as such as well is explored in >>5161

>>4999
>Crazy Rich Asians fucking sucks
Why
>mad about the ending
whats wrong?

>>4444
TV tropes is garbage because they have a policy of not removing the interpretations of any person. So if one person says Barnie is a criticism of Capitalism, they'll leave it even if everyone in the comments says it isn't. That's why TV tropes is so bloated and often so dumb.

>>5005
Do you really need an explanation for why a movie called Crazy Rich Asians sucks balls?

>>5005
>Very poor representation of Singaporean society and culture, not a single minority or local slang at all. Literally orientalism from Asian Americans.
>Traditionalism isn't expressed convincingly or accurate.
>Stale "lower class girl meets upper class boy" plot often seen in Asian dramas, especially Korean
>Boyfriend has very little presence or agency, sidekicks are cringe. There is even a 90s gay stereotype.
>Spectacle over good storytelling.
An Asian American told me that it is good for AAs to have representation in Hollywood and I replied that AA proved that they can make subpar to mediocre spectacles just like Hollywood.


>whats wrong?
Because the boyfriend has the cake and eats it. The whole point of the movie was that he had to choose girl and his life in Singapore, and he suddenly ends up with both just because he has his mother's blessing? That is fucking retarded. At least Kdramas have some kind of sacrifice and suffering on the upper class male for getting the girl.

Honestly the sheer opulence of the CRA isn't so rage-inducing as the message that there is absolutely no drawbacks to being a wealthy son of an elite family. It should have ended with the boy leaving his family behind with the girl, while his mother secretly gave him her blessing and still keeps in contact with couple, something that the grandmother doesn't enjoy.

>>5017
>choose girl and his life in Singapore
choose girl or his social life in Singapore

>>5017
>An Asian American told me that it is good for AAs to have representation in Hollywood and I replied that AA proved that they can make subpar to mediocre spectacles just like Hollywood.
lol that reminds me of the time I was dunking on a mexican-american netflix show for being terrible and full of borderline racist stereotypes and some wokeys on twitter went "shut up, even if it's shit we got hispanic representation on TV" and "you don't understand because you're Mexican not chicano"
This representation meme is the dumbest shit

>>5019
I don't necessarily think that people should not want representation, but goddamn the bar for it can't be this low.

>>5015
No, but having a breakdown makes it easier to state why.
>>5019
>representation meme is the dumbest shit
It always is

>>5019
The repersentation meme is just tokenism, which used to be pretty seriously looked down upon a few decades ago.

>>5022
>used to be pretty seriously looked down upon a few decades ago
Yeah, after which the CIA geared up and employed people like Gloria Steinhem to create "le modern feminism"

>>5020
>the bar for it can't be this low
When you don't know better, even shit looks good… which is ironic considering that representation in 80s and 90s films was actually more unique and diverse without it being unnecessarily partisan.

>>4548
The things is… it's not. This is what I dislike about the film: the 'proles' at the butt of the train are not proles, they don't produce anything! We never see them working for the bottom sections, all they do is receive things and be punished. There's even a scene where they are shocked when they discover how the food they've been eating for years is made.

I never understood why the last section of the train even exists. They are the source of slave children, and that's all. But the train has a whole indoctrination system thanks to which the middle sections of the train would be glad to offer their children voluntarily to Wilford.

>>5722
tail section exists to present a common enemy for the upper classes to unite against so theres no internal conflict
tail section passengers are also easy to purge making population control easy and ofcourse provide slave children without sacrificing any of their own
best justifications i could think of

>>4447
>Just change the social relations of child labor, maaaaaan. Just call it the people's lithium mine, bro.
I mean, yeah. You probably still have to mine rare earth minerals in socialism, you baby ultra. Child labor doesn't have to be inherently bad either, Marx was for it under socialism.

If we take the train as a allegory of capitalism, then destroying it is indeed the Swing Riots solution, the primitivist solution, the Khmer Rouge solution.

>>4448
Okay, you arrive at this conclusion by taking the train as a reified social relation itself, with no material attributes.

>>4450
>the state exists in a vacuum
Fucking hell we've put this nonsense to rest over a hundred years ago

There's a new Snowpiercer TV series that's about 6 episodes so far, anyone seen it?

>>5737
Snowpiercer is one of those things that can only work as a feature film. The premise is obviously so ridiculous and allegorical that any attempt to stretch this out to a drama show that wants to be taken seriously is bullshit.

I can suspend my disbelief of a train encircling an ice planet for a movie when I see that it's a social critique. I can't not do that for 20 fucking hours of television including personal drama or whatever.

Also, 100% they throw the anti-capitalist notions out the window.

>>5737
Capitalism, milking everything dry and dead.

How would you rate this film? I give it an 8/10, with some points lost because of some inconsistent themes.

Honestly just watch El Hoyo/The Platform on Netflix.
It does everything Snow Piercer tried to but 10 times better

>>5736
Yeah, I've seen the whole thing actually. There's talk of rebellion and uprising, but ultimately it's just a liberal idea of it, where the working class and middle-class side with the tail against the upper class and after a little bit of fighting, all of the upper class's "army" is conveniently removed from the train, thus ensuring a relatively peaceful transfer of power, where nothing really changes except now there's talk of "democracy" and elections. However, in the first episode after the successful takeover, they already make it a point that these lower classes taking over doesn't change many things as these lower ones just occupied the same positions of power in the train. As someone has wrote in this thread, taking over the train and not abandoning it, just means changing the people in the necessary roles for the train. There is no brutal child labour on the train however, and there are hard jobs, but nothing like the child in the engine in the movie.

Other than a few stupid things, I've enjoyed the movie as an interesting show. I have abandoned any hope of a socialist message in the first episode. The first season is over, and in the last episode they tease what that second season is going to be about: Wilfred, presumed dead, is actually on a different train that is a supply train that can catch other trains and grab them in its jaws, then connect into them and hack the train, taking it over. Needless to say, I won't be watching the second season.

>>7940
Snow Piercer at the end of the day is fun Hollywood revenge porn. El Hoyo is just bleakness, depression and Kafka on ultra steroids just like real life

>>13853
Sniff my booty fag

>>7940
FFS then every movie where post-apocalyptic people survive in the ice and snow is "good" by that metric.

>>7950
>post-apocalyptic people survive in the ice and snow
Name 5 movies

>>8052
I've seen several and only Snowpiercer is the one I bothered to remember

>>7941
> thus ensuring a relatively peaceful transfer of power, where nothing really changes except now there's talk of "democracy" and elections.
A literal social democracy. Of fucking course

>>7940
It is 10 times worse for the sheer heavy handed metaphor. I still don't what the fuck does sending the kid up have to do with anything.

>>4443
There is a theory that the train was breaking not the first law of thermodynamics but the second, which means that it syphons energy from the surrounding areas which means that it is itself the cause for the apocalypse due to how inefficient it is. So destroying it is a necessary step to recovery.

>>8325
hope that things will change I guess.
However it's kinda obvious the protag went crazy and everything that happens in the last 10 mins is his imagination.

>>8653
>However it's kinda obvious the protag went crazy and everything that happens in the last 10 mins is his imagination.
Oh yea sure, whatever helps make the movie seems better I guess.

>>8694
It's what the director said nigga

>>8696
source?

Watched The Platform yesterday and let it sit for a bit. So, here are my takes on it.
First, on the ending. The way I interpret it is that either a) He went into delusions after being wounded in the last fight, ate the cake or ruined it some other way, died, but the visions allowed him to cope and go out peacefully, happy that he achieved his goal, or b) He died basically just after the fight, cake survived and he, in his dying visions reinterpreted the situation into a dreamy fantasy where the girl was real.
Alright, with that out of the way, my hot take analysis on the film. I actually don't think the film is that much anti-capitalist. It can definitely be read as it, but it doesn't really fit on a closer analysis. If anything, for me at first sight it seemed anti-communist with the good ol' "muh human nature" vs the ebil utopian socialist administration that want to do creepypasta social experiment to create the new socialist man. However, this analysis also doesn't really stand on further inspection, first due to the fact that some anti-capitalist commentary does indeed exist, but also due to the fact that what I think the movie is trying to tell is way smarter.
So, what do I believe the movie is about then? Well, I think it is a much needed analysis of how material conditions influence humans. The Hole is a fucking concentration camp. One that styles it self to be egalitarian, as everyone will get to experience the lower levels through random chance, but still a concentration camp. The fact is, no matter how much you would want to change a human, they will not accept it if their very survival is threatened. No solidarity can exist in such a place, no chance for some sort of "instant transformation" of how people act. They are driven to desperation and they will fight for their own lives. Not to mention the fact that the place is mismanaged as all hell, with too little food being provided for all the 300+ cells, as well as an inability to even count them all. The best you can do is have "solidarity covered in shit", as the movie says.
Goering chooses Don Quixote as his one item to keep in the Hole as quite a heavy handed symbolism, especially when he eats the book in 202, him self, symbolically, becoming Don Quixote, and the very next month embarking on his final, doomed mission. It is only the wise guru who proposes an alternative: to deliver the cake to the administration, hopefully thus satisfying their insane wishes and finally making them change the material conditions of the entire Hole.
The "leftist" readings of the film have been all the same Zizekian soyfacing over revolutionary suicide to create muh next generation that will bring the change, the way that Snowpiercer, Children of Men and to some extent Vendetta is. However, I argue that it is the exact opposite, a rejection of this take, showing that no, this individual suicide is nothing but a Don-Quixotian self delusion. In the end, it is not clear if the plan succeeded, as the visions before death make it all pretty blurry, but one thing stands true - in the end, if any change happens, it is not because Goering managed to "break the system" by killing some prisoners and feeding the bottom levels for one day, but because the administration might have been forced to change their mind about the entire situation, thus changing its conditions.
As far as the anti-capitalist motives, they are there, but can't be held as a centerpiece imo. The class system is far different than the ones in real life. People are motivated by their own survival, not by need. I fully agree with the first cellmate who says that it is not he who is cannibalizing Goering, but the administration. He is correct. His actions are just rational response to the conditions given, not some sort of personal "greedy" flaw. Also, if it was supposed to be like capitalism, then there is no way that the top floor people wouldn't just stay in their place while shuffling over only the bottom ones. However the one parallel to capitalism that I found really strong was the fear that one must experience knowing that their life could always get destroyed by simple freak accidents, with no one there to help you. The scene where they first wake up in the really low floor, hear the wailing of those who were transported there as well and finally commit suicide felt a lot like hearing the horror stories of American healthcare where people would kill themselves to not leave any loans for their family after getting sick.
In the end, I liked the film, however, it very much reminded me of a certain book called Forrest of the Gods, a memoir of an ex-concentration camp inmate, that basically shows the same situation and leads to quite similar conclusions once you think about it. And this book managed to do it all while also managing to be morbidly funny and enjoyable, while this film was quite hard to watch. However that is no fault of the directors, and it still stays an amazing film for me.

>>8715
>“Para mí, el último nivel no existe. Goreng muere antes de llegar, y lo que vemos es su interpretación de lo que habría hecho”, según el cineasta bilbaíno en la entrevista de The Digital Spy. “Quería que el final estuviera abierto a interpretaciones, como si el plan realmente funciona o si la gente de arriba siquiera se preocupa por los del hoyo”.
if you're too lazy to google translate basically the director thinks the protag went crazy but he wants you to you make your own interpretation
I also found the director was libpilled as fuck
>realmente, creemos que puede haber una mejor distribución de la riqueza, pero la cinta no trata estrictamente del capitalismo", dijo, agregando que "Puede haber una crítica al capitalismo desde el inicio, pero mostramos que tan pronto Goreng y Baharat prueban el socialismo, intentando convencer a los otros prisioneros de compartir voluntariamente su comida, acaban matando a la mitad de esas personas, a las que se supone que deben ayudar
He thinks that socialism is always violent andbad because when the protag tried to equally distribute the food, he ended killing up people,
>>8719
Very good effort post, comrade

2 films similar to Snow Piercer (in terms of the whole class heirarchy theme) are The Cube and the recent Spanish film called The Platform.

Pyrocynical ironically did 2 very good reviews on both films (even if it's somewhat meme heavy).
The Cube (& Hypercube) review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FjmELC_6mU
A good part of The Hypercube that Pyro misses is one detail: "When Simon shows up older after getting his eye stabbed, Pyro asked how he survived this long. Check out all those watches on his arm again. He's been killing and cannibalizing duplicates of Jerry over and over again for years."
DeusDaecon does a review of the third film (and the first two): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k5vcWQYwIM
The Platform review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXTnsnqvEgE
An interesting comment by Linzzy Tiger to the review and film, "the girl WASNT REAL, the ending is in the MIDDLE of the film, they never sent back the girl, she never ate the panacotta, because she wasnt there. we see the guys at the top take the panacotta, the scene were his judging it is because they think the reason no one ate it is beacuse of a HAIR, they take it as a rejection, not a form of solidarity, they think everyone in the hole has more than enough food, and are even picky about it. the system remains unchanged, the message failed."

>>9576
No the Cube is a vastly different film. It is all about being putting in a bizarre situation and slowly unraveling the internal logic of the world. There isn't any avenue for any class critique in it. At most you can make the point about how pointless the bureaucracy and dynamics of the world and how it is similar to the Cube, with the engineer's arc accepting the nonsense of the world/people and escaping it, just like the group slowly understands the Cube and escapes it. Imo the police officer going crazy is the dumbest twist ever, most pointless villain

That is why Hypercube is so dumb, it suddenly abandons all internal rules and also adds a backstory. I can't seem to find it now, but I did come across the planned sequel that the director wrote but somehow gave up on it. It follows very similar plot but now the cube is 4d, ie the entrance and exit of the cube moves after every iteration.

I think that script is much more superior than the original since the protagonist does go through the arc of not knowing shit, to having the cube explained to him, and finally obtaining the ability to solve the cube himself. Also the villain who is a nurse who thinks she is dreaming and spots a correlation in their progression through the cube and assumes it is causation actually makes sense instead of a stereotypical psychopath.

>>9596
>dumbest twist ever
I disagree, Pyro actually explains that his good-guy act is a mask that slowly wears off as they progress through the cube, and his true colors emerge.
>the planned sequel that the director wrote but somehow gave up on
Huh, sounds quite interesting.

>>9598
>Pyro actually explains that his good-guy act is a mask that slowly wears off as they progress through the cube, and his true colors emerge.
But the point is that his inclusion is needless and distracts from the real villain, the Cube and its makers. It became way too melodramatic since his motivation is him being an asshole. His sudden appearance at the end was wayyyyyyyy over the top.

>Huh, sounds quite interesting.
Yea it looks way better than the first but has a lot more effects and more complicated. The cop equivalent in it is more sympathetic as she at least attempts to solve the Cube in her own way.

>>9616
>The Cube is the villain
No, the Cube is an antagonist, but a neutral one, the focus was different people and their different changes under the duress of the Cube's rooms and traps. The Doctor was vapid, materialistic and angrily hysterial, but as things progressed grew more level-headed, Mr.Cynical slowly opened up and was the only one to oppose the cop, and the cop, pretends to be a leader but as time passes shows his true nature.
>The cop equivalent in it is more sympathetic as she at least attempts to solve the Cube in her own way
Well that's sort of the point with the original Cop though, not really sympathetic, but logically sound (initially) until you se him begin to behave off kilter.

>>9596
McNeil's insistence that the world must have sense, must have meaning, and must be about him causes him to slide further and further into madness. It isn't some "twist" that comes out of nowhere.
It's also typical copshit. Cops always have to dictate the reality around them and they go mad when the world and everyone in it doesn't bend over backwards to make their statements true.

>>4450
It really is, and everyone in this thread trying to make some "the train is capitalism" allegory is missing the point. The opening premise of the movie is that human civilization has collapsed; the world is a frozen iceball and the only people left are on a train that functions as a closed ecosystem that is slowly breaking down and cannot be replaced. This is both a post-communist AND post-capitalist world; they're not producing and exchanging commodities aboard the train, but at the same time the material abundance necessary for egalitarian communism is impossible on one closed, aging train. The class conflict between the lumpen stowaways and the regular crew and passengers is interesting, but at the end of the day the choice is between "eco-stalinism" of maintaining the train-society or nihilistically blowing it up.

You can't really make the case for a liberatory alternative to what's presented in the film when it's premised on such bleak material conditions. Maybe they could have gotten out peacefully and lived like inuits for a few generations, I dunno. Apparently the graphic novel has multiple trains and settlements of survivors, so maybe that'd be more fruitful for speculation.

>>9628
>everyone in this thread trying to make some "the train is capitalism" allegory is missing the point
A whole line of progression representing capitalist classes is somehow not part of the point… ok
>You can't really make the case for a liberatory alternative to what's presented in the film when it's premised on such bleak material conditions.
That's the point. Functionally its a dead-end. There is only a slow death or a fast one, and so the story itself is relatively pointless; no-one can ever really win. Which is why everyone is focusing on the important aspect - the class conflict.

I finally found the original sequel.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180502093136/http://www.horrorsnotdead.com/Hypercube%28Final%20Draft%29.pdf

>>9618
>the focus was different people and their different changes under the duress of the Cube's rooms and traps
Honestly it was the most boring aspect of the film and why I don't enjoy horror movies in general where it seems like putting people under pressure automatically makes someone a psychopath or crazy.

>but logically sound (initially) until you se him begin to behave off kilter
He made terrible decisions after terrible decisions, even from a selfish point of views. He didn't listen to the girl at the start and even afterwards when she claimed the idiot savant is the only one that can bring them out, he still force her to discern the cubes.

>>9619
>It isn't some "twist" that comes out of nowhere.
I meant the twist of him killing the doctor and suddenly showing up at the end.

>>9830
>automatically makes someone a psychopath or crazy.
It doesn't. The cop was a psycho from the beginning, but it wasn't visible in normal life because social norms caused him to repress it.
>He made terrible decisions after terrible decisions
I disagree. The girl was wrong initially and the claim of the idiot savant was a later reveal and rather unbelievable.

article based on this thread

https://newmultitude.org/snowpiercer-class-consciousness/

To be fair, there are things that can be analyzed regarding the RamDon, such as actual the contents of the dish, the order in which it is given to the younger male first, and the cultural aspect.

But, certainly, the AA diaspora often can be cringeworthy.

>>4441
lmao yeah dude i just watched this movie and then looked up scenes on youtube and some guy was saying that kindergarten scene actually was about north korea

but it did get me thinking about bong joon ho's politics

communism is banned in south korea and the most popular film he made this year was kinda about class warfare

so… how does that work in sk?

>>13630
communist political parties are banned, but not the ideology in and of itself

>>13644
>movie and it's primary audience were Westerners and Burgers
don't be obtuse about the OP's point.

>>4447
> the train is just the final stage of capital's response to climate change through fascism and attempting to engineer a solution to a problem created by engineering.
The problems of capitalism are created by engineering ? Marx thought it possible it could liberate us from drudgery. Do you have an excuse for negating him ?
>>4448
>When it’s destroyed the survivors are given a new, wider world filled with possibilities.
Snowpiercer ends with everybody dying, the Director Bong Joon-Ho confirmed it. The little boy and girl that get out of the train wreck don't make it.

>>13699
>The little boy and girl that get out of the train wreck don't make it.
Then what was the fucking point of everything?

>>4446
that filename kek

>>9631
>>9628
I got Brave New World vibes from the front end of the train, there isn't ANY work to be done, not even white collar
when the conductor filled Chris's head with bullshit about the ecosystem and maintaining order it's hard to see what order there is TO BE maintained

>>5723
I think this explains when the Party Car all rallied to fight the Korean unabomber

Honestly the ending of this movie to me seems to suggest that proletarian martyrdom is a preferable outcome than simply replacing the porky or just giving in to capitalism.

If you interpret the train as capitalism (imo this interpretation is far more complete and meaningful than interpreting the train as the state, or more specifically, the engine as the state) then what Wilfred is doing at the end is simply replacing the capitalist of the enterprise. Giving it to Curtis, so Wilfred ceases being the capitalist but the train continues going as normal. Imagine a scenario where Curtis actually accepts this. It would be an extremely crude ending but it would realistically showcase that the vast majority of people would switch their positions immediately if their class interests changed.

The reason why I think interpreting the train/engine as the state is kind of ineffective is because the train is supposed to represent unsustainability. It won't exist forever and the people that believe and teach this (the teacher in the kindergarten scene for example) are delusional, basically an allegory for capitalist realism. Also, interpreting the train as a state is simply too convenient for what this movie is trying to go for, it basically suggests that by killing Wilfred (proletarians seizing the "state") they can run the train according to their interests. But why would the repressive forces and de facto allied classes of the bourgeoisie allow this? Will the guards and crowd of drug addict lumpens now bow down to Curtiss and his people? No they won't, because by killing Wilfred Curtiss doesn't actually gain anything. He's not in control of anything. This is the opposite situation of workers seizing state power, because "controlling" the train (by killing its "owner") isn't a comparable situation to taking state power.

This is why the train as capitalism interpretation works so much better. Here it actually makes sense that Wilfred is passing ownership of the train to Curtiss, because he's expecting (correctly) that if Curtiss seizes the train, he can only run it the same way Wilfred has been running it the whole time. If he attempted any radical change the repressive forces of the train and other classes would oust him.

Also this interpretation also works because of the relation between the train, the classes, and the resources in the train. If the train had unlimited resources, there would be no reason to dive the train in classes obviously. It's the same with capitalism, or any socieconomic system for that matter. The train simply exaggerates the current world situation, because although there are much less people there is also an insanely few amount of resources now. This is why even if Curtiss seizes the train, gets the repressive forces on his side, and basically tries to run the train as "socialist" as possible humanity will still perish because the resources aren't limitless. If anything humanity would perish much quickly if the resources of the train are spread much more evenly.

Finally, even if Curtiss and the Korean dude and his daughter seize the train, do you guys remember why they blew up the train in the first place? Because they were getting chased by a crowd of people who literally wanted to kill them for taking away their drugs. The allegory here is almost explicit and cannot be ignored. Even if Curtis and co wanted to seize the train they physically couldn't be able to win against the lumpen horde who rather mantain the status quo if it means they can get high off their ass. The other classes of the train would never allow the people of the underclass to take over, so to me the train as capitalism is quite possible the best interpretation this movie has to offer.

>>15212
>If anything humanity would perish much quickly if the resources of the train are spread much more evenly.
You fucking porky bootlicker kill your self. If resources were spread more evenly, humans could solve all their ecological problems. Capitalists think that their wealth will make them invulnerable to ecological crisis, that fixing it has low priority. in new-speak: they don't see them self as stake-holders of the ecosphere. Industrial society is crazy powerful. The only reason, and i mean that literally, there is no other reason, why we can't deal with ecological problems is because wealthy capitalists that hoard the means of production, don't deem it to be in their interests to solve it.

>>15213
The train is not industrial society, and I wrote in my post that the train's resources will eventually run out regardless of who is running the train.