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can we stop making movies where a character has an innate noble quality by birth? or magic blood? or anything like that?
like, I enjoyed wonder woman, the movie; chris pine is great and they do a good job of diana-as-glamorous, but that movie is basically:
here's an immortal, perfect goddess who has a great job and an expensive apartment and can date anyone who sobs "why can't I have what I want"
here's an immortal, perfect goddess who has a great job and an expensive apartment and can date anyone who sobs "why can't I have what I want"
the movie goes:
it's bad that a poor woman who isn't super attractive gains powers because she doesn't deserve it
it's GOOD that a rich woman who's very attractive retains her power because she deserves it by birth
it's bad that a poor woman who isn't super attractive gains powers because she doesn't deserve it
it's GOOD that a rich woman who's very attractive retains her power because she deserves it by birth
and we keep. seeing. this. the bad guy of spider-man homecoming? a poor guy who's jealous of the rich guy. the bad guy in black panther? a poor guy who's going up against the prince.
and time and time again in these movies, the rich characters with noble birth, the characters who are told 'you have a destiny,' who spend a lot of time talking about how important their parents are, the story rarely has them earning their place; they're born into it.
it's so often this plot: important protagonist, obsessing over parentage (tony stark's dad died and he's sad about it), then a poor person who is jealous (killian, a poor disabled engineer) of tony's success tries to fuck him up.
oh god rey can't be just a nobody, she must have some magic blood in her bloodline, there's no way she's great from nowhere
every single time, our protagonists in these modern day superhero movies ~deserve~ to win because of their lineage, not because of any challenges they face emotionally
Diana literally sobs like "I do all this stuff for other people why can't I have this one thing" and it just sounds to me like when a super rich philanthropist who's making millions of dollars off the backs of underpaid workers getting mad they can't have Just One Thing.
So many of these movies are like "the poor person is trying to TAKE something from the rich person who deserves it because they were born into it"
blockbuster filmmakers stop telling stories where the protagonist's genealogy and/or destiny is a plot point thank you.
movies have a big problem in general with saying shit like "hope" and "destiny" and not meaningfully grappling with these ideas. as if naming them is enough. but it isn't.
"it's your destiny" is so often just, like, something a character says to our protagonist which strengthens their resolve but doesn't _do_ anything, nor is it clear why except like someone just... says it is?
it's hard for me not to see this as people internalizing the process by which their parents plan for them a successful future by getting them into ivy league schools and whatnot and taking that assumption of innate destiny into their screenwriting
like, lori loughlin went to jail for trying to get her daughter into school, right? but that shit happens all the time, she just happened to get busted. I knew a guy in film school who was in because his dad was rich. Said I didn't 'deserve' to be there.
(he made an awful student film I helped a bit on; almost got shot by the cops because he didn't get a permit to film something a nd had a character brandishing a gun one day when I wasn't on set)
when you have people who succeed on the merits of their parents, I think they take this and go "I must just be special" and they're unable to write convincing narratives about people actually doing anything meaningful.
because their lives were preordained, they assume everyone's is. And then there's a bit of classism where people who aren't 'old money' like they see themselves as being don't 'deserve' to be there.
so tony stark's nemesis is a poor engineer that tony fucks over, but tony's the hero
i was on a scholarship so I didn't deserve to be there but some dentist's fucking kid did, I guess.
i was on a scholarship so I didn't deserve to be there but some dentist's fucking kid did, I guess.
most rich people I know have an outsized sense of self-worth, mistakenly tying success to destiny and assuming they're more hard working than the guy who works 14 hour days and is on food stamps.
so it makes sense that wonder woman 84 empathizes with a woman born from the gods, who's beautiful and amazing and good and got told one time some platitudes about how cheating is wrong but never really grapples with how cheating hurts those with less power than you.
the entire throughline of wonder woman 84 is "cheating is bad, getting what you want falsely isn't right" but the movie does not know how to empathize with the victims of cheating--it never considers the guy who gets possessed, for instance.
max's success is largely business related and the only people who are really shown to be suffering as a result of his actions are, well, his kid. Sure it pays lip service to the idea of nukes going off but it only has two people it empathizes with as victims:
1) the rich, hot, cool, immortal princess who everyone wants to bang or emulate
2) the kid whose father is a multimillionaire who doesn't spend time with him
nobody else gets that kind of empathy in the movie.
2) the kid whose father is a multimillionaire who doesn't spend time with him
nobody else gets that kind of empathy in the movie.
so many of these movies are like "you just kinda have some destiny to be successful i guess" and "those poor people who are mad at you for being successful are the real villains!! actually!!!"
If you enjoyed this thread, I'm actually writing another essay on storytelling (I write games and consult on narrative for a living, and before that I was a games critic) which you can read a preview of and get a link to here: https://twitter.com/docsquiddy/status/1343158768234729477
If you liked my thread:
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1) I'm making a game called Adios which you can wishlist here; it helps me a lot with visibility. I have diabetes and currently no medical coverage and only 3 bottles of metformin left. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1271400/Adios/
2) I also have a tip jar at http://paypal.me/stompsite and can be supported at http://patreon.com/docgames (I get payouts once a month there, so the paypal is better for immediate support)
I do not have a soundcloud but I do occasionally sing awfully on http://twitch.tv/docseuss
I do not have a soundcloud but I do occasionally sing awfully on http://twitch.tv/docseuss
I am not CURRENTLY taking requests, but I did say, on stream, while contemplating my next game after Metroid Prime, that I would stream Barbie Horse Adventures for Xbox if someone gives me $2000 for expressly that purpose.
