Similarly, making an anti-war film that depicts war is hella difficult, because fighting and shooting and explosives and camaraderie are cool. Even the simple act of showing how horrible things can get must tautologically be shown on screen, which means straining the reality through a visual story, which is exactly what makes audiences show up; my reaction to violent war movies as a young man, seeing all the blood and tears and horror, were more along the lines of “Wow, things got *real*” instead of “we must ban war”, and the horror and terror seemed to favorably compare to a banal life of empty modernism.
I think the closest thing I’ve seen to a show that depicts war’s brutality but doesn’t totally glorify it by accident is *Generation Kill*, set in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The preponderance of scenes are simply not violent at all- Marines playing cards and bitching about their officers and running into supply issues and screwing around- and while several fights depicted on scene are visceral and thrilling and crazy, there are also numerous scenes of incredible violence that are devoid of conflict.
Marines shooting kids on a whim because the ROE technically allowed for it and then dealing with their weeping mother afterward; watching a family vaporize from a stray artillery round; shooting civilian drivers who don’t know to stop at checkpoints; seeing the end result of air strikes hours after the fact.
It’s hard to get a secondhand war high off of that second category.
Something the Sopranos also did was to occasionally give you glimpses of Tony's violence from his victim's point of view. I'm thinking especially of the scene (I think near the end of season one) where Tony assaults Melfi and breaks her table. At least there the show conveyed that this is a terrifying person to be around.
I'd never seen that Sopranos clip, I gave up on the show sometime in season 2 after the absurdly stupid episode with a trip to Italy and the introduction of Furio. This clip is masterfully written.
This is why I hated the Irishman, while all the typical mob fan boys loved it - the characters were empty shells designed just to create the kind of violence-is-cool mob movie garbage. It's too bad because Hoffa was a real life anti-hero.
I appreciate the fact that you can talk about morality in film without devolving into a sneering, judgmental attitude toward people who liked the films anyway.
After all, that attitude, more than anything else, is what drove me away from Film Twitter. It was EVERYWHERE on that site. Like you said, it's not necessarily the politics, it's the expression.
As you allude to, I think it's just nearly impossible to make a show centered on one person that people will want to tune into for 60 hours and not have them be interesting, complex, and charismatic.
Which I think points to something interesting about the human mind where just time and familiarity seem to sand down the sharp edges of anger and moral judgment. Trump is certainly an example of someone who is personally reprehensible but, by virtue of being in the limelight for decades, gets a large number of people to do the "yeah, sure he's kind of a lout but..." I mean, just today, there will probably be thousands of families (mothers, wives, kids) trudging to prisons across America to see their loved ones who are murderers, rapists, abusers. Our affiliative natures winning out over our moral ones more often than not is, to me, really interesting. Don't know enough to say whether this is ultimately a good or bad thing in the long run.
It's also not always clear who the author is – it's not like a TV show is a dictatorship – nor whether his publicly stated intention is their intention. I remember having a discussion with someone about rape scenes in HBO shows, and saying they took me out of it because they always made me imagine a bunch of executives thinking – correctly – that viewers are going to get a kick out of watching them. She countered that the characters discuss the morality (I think this was Westworld) and condemn it, so they belong there. So was the screenwrite the author, or the producer who wanted more nudity? Well, they get to have their cake and eat it too.
I think a big part of the appeal of anti-hero narratives is that they're superhuman, übermenschen who bend the world to their will. If you win every battle against formidable opposition, you're going to look cool. Sticking a speech at the end about how they suffered just doesn't cut it. And you can say your intent was to condemn it, but if the scenes you film revel in it, was your intent really what you say it is?
Thank you for posting that scene with the psychiatrist. I'm a fan of the show, bit did not remember it. So powerful and moving. The clarity of moral authority.
That clip is also one of my favorites, not just for what it says about Tony, but also for what it says about Carmela. She's perfectly happy to be complicit in his crimes, as long as she gets her share. She'd be fine with his career of murder, violence and theft, if only he would be faithful to her. Or, perhaps more accurately, if he would be unfaithful more discreetly so she could pretend it wasn't happening.
But this scene is a perfect example of the biggest thing I dislike about the show. I think any person at all familiar with story telling tropes would understand this to be pretty heavy foreshadowing. Carmela is told, pretty straight out, where this life of hers leads, but it never really goes there, except for the final scene in the diner...maybe.
Chase sets up things left and right throughout the series and very few of them pay off in any real or interesting way.
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood... is a great example of Tarantino doing this for me. He sets Pitt up as cool, he looks cool, he takes care of business at the Spahn Ranch, he kicks ass and cares about old friends – but it's also set up that he kills his wife. The movie doesn't dwell on that, doesn't offer him redemption, just drops in that this confident dude who's good with violence and takes down the Manson Family while tripping and giggling is also a wife-killer. So lionise him all you like, but he's already damned.
When did the left land on this idea that the only way to judge fiction is on how well it conveys a clear moral lesson to the audience? When I was growing up I always thought it was bizarre how Christians would judge movies purely based on how well they conveyed godly values and nothing else, but now it's the left who has taken this puritanical approach. "Did the filmmaker fail to 100% convey to his audience how to live their life like a good, progressive citizen? What a tragic mistake, they must not have realized they missed the mark." Or, maybe they just wanted to portray a thing and trust the audience to have the maturity to know that, you know, murdering and defrauding people is wrong? Because they're not toddlers?
The ending of Sopranos is wonderful, despite the dumbass intent behind it. "It was very simple and much more on the nose than people think. That’s what I wanted people to believe. That life ends and death comes, but don’t stop believing." Dumb. But a great, great ending.
So for a story to exhibit a moral judgment on a character it has to explicitly show bad person -> bad result?
I think that disharmonizes with what we see all around us in the world every day. The world is full of awful people doing awful things and then living long lives surrounded by family a friends (I shy away from calling them "happy" because I don't want to pretend to know their minds). If everything were as simple as good things happening to good people and bad things happening to bad people, being a good person would be a breeze. But the reality is that sometimes being an awful person works out for the person being awful. And sometimes being a good person has an enormous cost. That's a balance everyone has to engage in within themselves.
I personally think the Sopranos hit the balance perfectly, continuing to remind us that Tony being able to constantly indulge his id does have a certain attractiveness to it while also keeping a crystal clear moral clarity about who Tony is. Truly he is half animal and half god, just an exaggerated version of all of us.
I don't think you'll get any angry pro-Tarantino comments. This is mostly anecdotal, but what I've noticed is that while Tarantino has legions of admirers - people who speak highly of his "craft" and refer to him with words like "auteur" - he has surprisingly few obsessive diehard fans. And I think that lack of a coherent moral perspective is a big reason why. There is, to me, something a little hollow about his movies. Great fun, brilliant filmmaking, stylish as hell, but they lack - not just a moral dimension, but a human one.
Similarly, making an anti-war film that depicts war is hella difficult, because fighting and shooting and explosives and camaraderie are cool. Even the simple act of showing how horrible things can get must tautologically be shown on screen, which means straining the reality through a visual story, which is exactly what makes audiences show up; my reaction to violent war movies as a young man, seeing all the blood and tears and horror, were more along the lines of “Wow, things got *real*” instead of “we must ban war”, and the horror and terror seemed to favorably compare to a banal life of empty modernism.
I think the closest thing I’ve seen to a show that depicts war’s brutality but doesn’t totally glorify it by accident is *Generation Kill*, set in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The preponderance of scenes are simply not violent at all- Marines playing cards and bitching about their officers and running into supply issues and screwing around- and while several fights depicted on scene are visceral and thrilling and crazy, there are also numerous scenes of incredible violence that are devoid of conflict.
Marines shooting kids on a whim because the ROE technically allowed for it and then dealing with their weeping mother afterward; watching a family vaporize from a stray artillery round; shooting civilian drivers who don’t know to stop at checkpoints; seeing the end result of air strikes hours after the fact.
It’s hard to get a secondhand war high off of that second category.
The death of the author! The creator’s intent is irrelevant to art criticism.
Something the Sopranos also did was to occasionally give you glimpses of Tony's violence from his victim's point of view. I'm thinking especially of the scene (I think near the end of season one) where Tony assaults Melfi and breaks her table. At least there the show conveyed that this is a terrifying person to be around.
I'd never seen that Sopranos clip, I gave up on the show sometime in season 2 after the absurdly stupid episode with a trip to Italy and the introduction of Furio. This clip is masterfully written.
This is why I hated the Irishman, while all the typical mob fan boys loved it - the characters were empty shells designed just to create the kind of violence-is-cool mob movie garbage. It's too bad because Hoffa was a real life anti-hero.
I appreciate the fact that you can talk about morality in film without devolving into a sneering, judgmental attitude toward people who liked the films anyway.
After all, that attitude, more than anything else, is what drove me away from Film Twitter. It was EVERYWHERE on that site. Like you said, it's not necessarily the politics, it's the expression.
As you allude to, I think it's just nearly impossible to make a show centered on one person that people will want to tune into for 60 hours and not have them be interesting, complex, and charismatic.
Which I think points to something interesting about the human mind where just time and familiarity seem to sand down the sharp edges of anger and moral judgment. Trump is certainly an example of someone who is personally reprehensible but, by virtue of being in the limelight for decades, gets a large number of people to do the "yeah, sure he's kind of a lout but..." I mean, just today, there will probably be thousands of families (mothers, wives, kids) trudging to prisons across America to see their loved ones who are murderers, rapists, abusers. Our affiliative natures winning out over our moral ones more often than not is, to me, really interesting. Don't know enough to say whether this is ultimately a good or bad thing in the long run.
It's also not always clear who the author is – it's not like a TV show is a dictatorship – nor whether his publicly stated intention is their intention. I remember having a discussion with someone about rape scenes in HBO shows, and saying they took me out of it because they always made me imagine a bunch of executives thinking – correctly – that viewers are going to get a kick out of watching them. She countered that the characters discuss the morality (I think this was Westworld) and condemn it, so they belong there. So was the screenwrite the author, or the producer who wanted more nudity? Well, they get to have their cake and eat it too.
I think a big part of the appeal of anti-hero narratives is that they're superhuman, übermenschen who bend the world to their will. If you win every battle against formidable opposition, you're going to look cool. Sticking a speech at the end about how they suffered just doesn't cut it. And you can say your intent was to condemn it, but if the scenes you film revel in it, was your intent really what you say it is?
Thank you for posting that scene with the psychiatrist. I'm a fan of the show, bit did not remember it. So powerful and moving. The clarity of moral authority.
That clip is also one of my favorites, not just for what it says about Tony, but also for what it says about Carmela. She's perfectly happy to be complicit in his crimes, as long as she gets her share. She'd be fine with his career of murder, violence and theft, if only he would be faithful to her. Or, perhaps more accurately, if he would be unfaithful more discreetly so she could pretend it wasn't happening.
But this scene is a perfect example of the biggest thing I dislike about the show. I think any person at all familiar with story telling tropes would understand this to be pretty heavy foreshadowing. Carmela is told, pretty straight out, where this life of hers leads, but it never really goes there, except for the final scene in the diner...maybe.
Chase sets up things left and right throughout the series and very few of them pay off in any real or interesting way.
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood... is a great example of Tarantino doing this for me. He sets Pitt up as cool, he looks cool, he takes care of business at the Spahn Ranch, he kicks ass and cares about old friends – but it's also set up that he kills his wife. The movie doesn't dwell on that, doesn't offer him redemption, just drops in that this confident dude who's good with violence and takes down the Manson Family while tripping and giggling is also a wife-killer. So lionise him all you like, but he's already damned.
When did the left land on this idea that the only way to judge fiction is on how well it conveys a clear moral lesson to the audience? When I was growing up I always thought it was bizarre how Christians would judge movies purely based on how well they conveyed godly values and nothing else, but now it's the left who has taken this puritanical approach. "Did the filmmaker fail to 100% convey to his audience how to live their life like a good, progressive citizen? What a tragic mistake, they must not have realized they missed the mark." Or, maybe they just wanted to portray a thing and trust the audience to have the maturity to know that, you know, murdering and defrauding people is wrong? Because they're not toddlers?
"Look, but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow."
--John Miton
That's the high-wire act to aim at.
The ending of Sopranos is wonderful, despite the dumbass intent behind it. "It was very simple and much more on the nose than people think. That’s what I wanted people to believe. That life ends and death comes, but don’t stop believing." Dumb. But a great, great ending.
So for a story to exhibit a moral judgment on a character it has to explicitly show bad person -> bad result?
I think that disharmonizes with what we see all around us in the world every day. The world is full of awful people doing awful things and then living long lives surrounded by family a friends (I shy away from calling them "happy" because I don't want to pretend to know their minds). If everything were as simple as good things happening to good people and bad things happening to bad people, being a good person would be a breeze. But the reality is that sometimes being an awful person works out for the person being awful. And sometimes being a good person has an enormous cost. That's a balance everyone has to engage in within themselves.
I personally think the Sopranos hit the balance perfectly, continuing to remind us that Tony being able to constantly indulge his id does have a certain attractiveness to it while also keeping a crystal clear moral clarity about who Tony is. Truly he is half animal and half god, just an exaggerated version of all of us.
I don't think you'll get any angry pro-Tarantino comments. This is mostly anecdotal, but what I've noticed is that while Tarantino has legions of admirers - people who speak highly of his "craft" and refer to him with words like "auteur" - he has surprisingly few obsessive diehard fans. And I think that lack of a coherent moral perspective is a big reason why. There is, to me, something a little hollow about his movies. Great fun, brilliant filmmaking, stylish as hell, but they lack - not just a moral dimension, but a human one.