It snowed a bit on Halloween (i.e. Oct 31, not "The Saturday Before Oct 31"), and the workers in the thrift store at the time broke out with "Are you kidding me???" and even a reference to it already being Christmas. I thought that was jumping the gun a bit -- don't we still have Thanksgiving and/or Black Friday in the way?
But that proved to be symptomatic of a larger trend this year, in which people are paying no mind, and presumably no effort or activity, to Thanksgiving, Black Friday, or even the once-mighty Christmas. As far as they're concerned, after Halloween the next milestone holiday is New Year's Eve.
I noticed both Mumei and Irys independently speaking this way during some of their recent streams, off-handedly mentioning "Wow, I can't believe the year is almost over / It's almost 2024". I assume others are as well, but these are two I tune into frequently enough to hear what's on their mind.
So I used google to search reddit for the phrase "almost 2024," and indeed there are lots of comments to that effect, with the vast majority from October (and now into November). Curiously, they didn't all hit after The Saturday Before Halloween, when the energy for that holiday would've begun dissipating. There are plenty from earlier in the month, as though they were ignoring Halloween as well, and heading straight for New Year's Eve.
Well, that ignoring of Halloween manifested all over the place this year, as I described in a series of comments to the last post, beginning here. Halloween spirit was dead throughout the entire month, in radical contrast to just a few years ago when all the stuff would've gone up at the start of the month or earlier.
Now that we've seen Halloween not-happen, we can also easily see that Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Christmas will not-happen this year either.
Thanksgiving has become weakened and parasitized by Black Friday since the 2000s, to the point where Thanksgiving had become debased into Black Friday Eve, and the real excitement and emotional investment was for the anti-social shopping free-for-all on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I covered that over the 2010s.
I also commented in the past few years how even Black Friday has died. When you think of those videos or Drudge live-blogging the chaos, that was only from the late 2000s and 2010s. When the vulnerable phase of the 15-year excitement cycle had set in, from 2015-'19, it was already pretty tame compared to the previous manic phase, 2010-'14, when most of those intense Black Fridays occurred.
But by now, the holiday is completely dead, and it is not restoring any energy back to Thanksgiving -- everything is being wiped out together.
But surely Christmas will still stand! Nope. I remember how non-eventful it was last year, possibly the least emotional Christmas in world history. It will pass with even less activity this year, with a rising number of people ignoring it altogether to build up suspense for New Year's Eve instead.
In a series of comments beginning here, I explained the point behind celebrating holidays on fixed calendar days, rather than wimping out and celebrating them only on weekends. Weekends are expected times for cutting loose, whereas major holidays require turning over the usual order of things -- for a brief time -- and that includes celebrating them on weekdays, when people usually go to school or work.
I noted that only New Year's Eve has a built-in defense against the Millennial anti-American culture-destroyers who canceled Halloween in favor of The Saturday Before Halloween. The suspense leading up to a holiday is even more relevant to New Year's Eve because there's a literal countdown on that night until the new calendar year begins.
It's difficult to shift all that suspense and excitement to some night before New Year's Eve, since the contradiction is too glaring between celebrating a new year and everyone knowing the actual countdown is still days away.
Likewise if they tried to shift it to some night after, the suspense will already have dissipated. So, its celebration is much more sticky to its calendar date, despite lamewad Millennials who would love nothing more than to celebrate it on The Saturday Before New Year's Eve.
Labor Day and Memorial Day stopped being real holidays awhile ago. July Fourth keeps getting weaker and ho-hum. Easter might as well not exist, and ditto for Valentine's Day. With the elimination only beginning now of Halloween, Thanksgiving / Black Friday, and Christmas, that leaves New Year's Eve as the only holiday that Americans will celebrate as a major, big deal, FOMO kind of holiday.
In no previous year did we start getting itchy to discuss the wrapping up of the year, the beginning of a new year, how crazy time flies, what we're going to resolve to do differently, etc. -- in October. That literally began in 2023.
But it has all the hallmarks of the earlier destruction of holidays. Remember when Christmas stuff, energy, thoughts, feelings, etc., began happening before Thanksgiving / Black Friday, eventually going up at the start of November?
Which is what happened this year as well, right after Oct 31, the Halloween candy got replaced -- and not by autumnal or harvest or Thanksgiving-related things like candy corn, caramel apples, or pumpkin-themed stuff (indeed, pumpkin spice latte coffee has already been dumped into the clearance section in the supermarkets). Rather, it got immediately replaced with Christmas candy.
If only New Year's Eve had some sweets associated with it, *that* would have gone up on Nov 1 this year, bypassing Christmas candy entirely. But then, maybe that's the direction our moribund culture is headed toward, repurposing all sweets from Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, which are scarcely celebrated anymore, into a New Year's Eve smorgasbord of sweets.
The new rationale will be similar to Carnival / Mardi Gras -- one final binge on stuff that's bad for you, before purging and purifying and rebuilding in the new year, tying it into the existing tradition of New Year's resolutions (which is similar to giving things up for Lent -- and people adhere to them just as long).
Maybe we will fold the trick-or-treating / masquerade tradition back into the New Year holiday, which is where it ultimately began, before American culture shifted it to Halloween, to distinguish ourselves from our European -- and even Indo-European -- relatives.
Who can say what precise form these changes will take? All I know is our culture is evaporating right before our very eyes, as the social cohesion that upheld our mega-society has entered terminal decline, now that its raison d'etre -- uniting against a common meta-ethnic nemesis (mainly the Indians and later Mexicans) -- has unraveled.
November 8, 2023
After non-Halloween October, skipping right to New Year's Eve, eliminating Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Christmas, as American imperial collapse wipes out its major holidays
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If anyone doubts the ease of shifting trick-or-treating / masquerades to New Year's Eve, instead of Halloween, the former is the ultimate liminal space -- or rather, liminal time-window.
ReplyDeleteIt's neither the new year nor the old year, it's got that cuspy, hazy feel to it -- and that quality is built in, apparent in its appeal to everyone.
While you're in that cuspy, hazy liminal time-window, might as well indulge in all those things that you shouldn't normally be doing -- because it is the epitome of "not a normal time".
Kids allowed to go making mischief, dressed up as bad-behaving characters of one kind or another.
Grown-ups pretending to be someone else, half-hidden, for the night, associating with people they might never associate with normally -- perhaps who they are typically forbidden from interacting with, mixing high and low, and so on and so forth.
The topsy-turvy carnivalesque nature of Halloween was never built in, it was socially constructed during 20th-century America, and agreed to and adhered to by Americans (and others in our sphere of influence) after then... until recently, when it first got dislodged to the anti-carnivalesque "Saturday Before Halloween", and now nearly gone altogether.
The liminal nature of New Year's Eve is inherent, which is why it's one of the most universal holidays, and universally intense and carnivalesque holidays. The only thing that differs across cultures is where in the Earth's orbit around the sun, the New Year is reckoned to occur.
But that has nothing to do with celebrating a holiday on it -- every culture will continue to agree to its socially constructed New Year date, just as a matter of sharing a culture at all. They have to speak the same language, reckon the calendar the same way, measure things in the same units, etc., or they can't even communicate with each other and do anything collectively.
It's the most basic and freebee holiday that a culture can have, so we will never lose that one. Even if we collectively decided to move the New Year to a different place in the Earth's orbit around the sun, we would still have all the New Year's Eve activities to celebrate -- just in potentially different weather, adapted accordingly.
It's all those other major holidays that America used to celebrate, which testify to its imperial level of ethnogenesis and cohesion. Those are on their way out the window, but we will always have New Year's Eve.
The British used to have their own Christmas traditions like Father Christmas at the height of their empire in the 19th century. In the 20th century, after the British empire collapsed, the British lost their distinctive British Christmas traditions like Father Christmas.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Irys, masquerades, and uneventful Christmas seasons, she usually sings the Carpenters around Christmastime (which she doesn't care for, feels sad during, etc.).
ReplyDeleteHere's another that she could do a great rendition of. It's jazzy, haunting, down-tempo, alluring and mature. Great for an end-of-the-year masquerade ball.
They're covering this song, actually, so cover of a cover.
And YES, it's on Karafun! ^_^
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f-R9R-3YoE
Moom ranting about Disney's self-demolition the other night reminded me of when I tried to get Aladdin on DVD for my little nephew's birthday or Christmas, around 2012.
ReplyDeleteWent to the used record store -- nothing, except for several copies of sequels / spin-offs.
Went on ebay -- $50 for a USED copy! That's more than new!
So, let's check the new price on Amazon -- out of stock!
How can Disney go out of stock? Aha, that's when I found out about the vault, where they only produce copies of their stuff for a little while and then leave it to artificial scarcity for years afterward.
So retarded and self-destructive, but this was well into the declining phase of Disney (and the American culture industries broadly). The individuals / cabals driving Disney into the ground by that point had no hand in creating the stuff they were erasing from existence. Typical destruction of other creators' works, just cuz you are incapable of matching what they created.
Some claim that the vault practice existed in the '80s and '90s, but as usual these are lies about our glorious past in order to rationalize and cope with the dystopian present. It was never impossible to find a VHS copy of any Disney movie in the good ol' days, aside from the low-rated or obscure ones. But not Aladdin, Fantasia, and the other blockbusters.
EVERYONE had multiple Disney VHS tapes back then, there was no artificial scarcity whatsoever, it only depended on how much your parents wanted to spend on building up a library for their kids.
So that's what I resorted to for my nephew's birthday -- bought several DOZEN classic Disney VHS tapes, since my brother had already picked up a VCR from a thrift store. All for about $1-2 apiece. :)
Timely reminder to Moom and everyone to get physical media, never rely on streaming services for long-term access to iconic pop culture.
ReplyDeleteShe was mentioning how nice it is to have Disney+, but just like with the vault and DVDs, they can end that business model at any time, with no warning, and no recourse on the audience's part.
Maybe they'll yank the classic movies from their Renaissance era, and only allow you to watch the shitty live-action remakes from the woketard 2010s.
Maybe they'll censor half of some movie for whatever woketarded reasons pop up at any time within the next 10 years.
Maybe they'll put movies in an online vault, where only some of them are viewable at a time, and they go in and out of rotation -- to ensure that you stay subscribed year-round, year after year, otherwise you'll miss when some classic movie finally comes back into rotation.
Fuck all of this culture-destroying bullshit -- go out there IRL and buy up the physical media, whether DVD or Blu-Ray, and never get rid of it. There's only a few dozen Disney movies, it won't take up boxes and boxes of storage space.
No one will ever be able to fuck with your access to these things that you own personally, and are physically located in your household, with no way for an online connection to allow Disney to disrupt the playback at a distance. (If they do try to conspire to such an extent, keep a dumb TV set and a DVD player handy, so they have no entry-point to screw up your world.)
Physical media will outlast Disney+, and it will have resale value unlike a streaming subscription which leaves you with nothing. Not that you should ever re-sell them, just sayin'.
Disney DVDs in particular are loaded with extras, commentaries, making-of documentaries, etc. You can't get any of that on streaming.
If you doubt whether physical media will outlast Disney+, we've already been through that experiment before -- VHS tapes vs. buying a monthly subscription to the Disney Channel on cable TV. Back then, it was a premium channel, unlike later in the 2000s or whenever.
ReplyDeleteIf you paid for the Disney Channel, you could've rationalized it as being able to watch the entire Disney library -- they broadcast their own classic movies on that channel, since there was only so many hours in the day to show their original TV-based programming.
No need to buy the tapes! No need to find a place to store them! The television medium will be around forever! And so will cable, and so will the Disney Channel, and so will its library always be broadcast on it!
Wrong! Sometime during the 2000s (?), Disney made their channel non-premium, just basic cable, and therefore nothing to sweeten the deal like access to their entire catalog of classic movies. Just a bunch of original contempo live-action programming. I don't even think they offered a separate channel equivalent to the old premium one, in case you wanted that -- or maybe they only began doing that with on-demand viewing in the 2010s.
The point being, there was a time beginning in the late '90s or 2000s, when your subscription to the Disney Channel went out the window, and along with it your access to their library of classic animated movies. You now had to resort to buying new DVDs -- and only when they were not artificially locked in the vault.
If you bought VHS tapes in the '80s and '90s, they were still there, the VCR and TV set were still there, and you could still watch the movies, with no recurring subscription fees at any point after the original purchase.
For movies you didn't buy new, there was still a huge second-hand market for VHS tapes -- pretty damn cheap, too, now that DVD was the new medium for owning movies in physical form.
These were your only two choices for watching classic Disney movies in the 2000s -- already owning or buying second-hand VHS tapes, or new DVDs, since the "monthly subscription with nothing owned" model was terminated. At best, the basic-cable incarnation of the Disney Channel might occasionally play a classic animated movie, in between blocks of Hannah Montana, Zack & Cody, etc.
Only by the late 2010s did Disney replace the old premium Disney Channel, with Disney+. But just as with the first go-round, DVDs and Blu-Rays will outlast Disney+, which will go the way of the premium Disney Channel -- either it will go out of existence entirely, the medium will shift to something else (just like cable was eclipsed by streaming), or they'll water down what they offer on the medium.
Yes, I went on a Disney DVD hunt over the past few years and got everything from Snow White through Mulan, although I may pick up Tarzan and Lilo & Stitch (a little too much CGI / 3D for my tastes, but it's not the end of the world).
ReplyDeleteAll used, in great condition, most of them thrifted for no more than $3 apiece, and the rest from used media stores where they were no more than $7-8, and often in a "buy 2 get 1 free" deal.
If you want to do this and care about the extras, the general rule is getting the 2000s DVD releases. Anything labeled "Platinum" release is safe.
Some or all of the extras were migrated to the Blu-Ray releases in the 2010s, maybe some new extras were added, idk, I don't do Blu-Ray. But most of the 2010s DVD releases stripped the extras, to pathetically fail at trying to force the entire world to migrate from DVD to Blu-Ray.
Disney's iconic library is now safe forever with me, and I am now forever safe from Disney. ^_^
Also appreciated Moom's rant about Disney blindly moving to crappy 3D / CGI just to cosplay as Pixar, instead of focusing on the story, characters, etc. It was just cargo-cult autistic techno-worship.
ReplyDeleteIt's all connected -- whenever one aspect of Disney went to shit, so did all the others, part of their general decline and death.
No more hand-drawn illustrations, no more scores or soundtracks with songs that can hold their own as single releases, no more memorable characters or lines of dialog, no more reliable way to watch any of their movies at any time, all gone.
Only Studio Ghibli was upholding the noble tradition of animated movies by the 2000s and after, in all the aspects I just listed where Disney killed itself off.
And only the Japanese video game corpos are upholding the medium of actual video games, as opposed to simulators, during that same time. The visuals derived from hand-drawn illustrations (not photography), music / score / soundtrack / sound effects, distinct and iconic characters (not bland and cursed lookalikes from character customization), preserving the library of their past works as well. Konami being the only partial exception.
It's so crazy watching Fuwamoco play Donkey Kong Country, and realizing that actual non-Japanese people (Rare, from Britain) made such an instant classic video game -- not a simulator -- with one of the best soundtracks ever (and in the New Age genre, normally not used for children's culture, whether video games or otherwise), perfect sound effects, great controls and gameplay, and where the only non-Japanese influence is the 3D / CGI visual style -- which at least did not aim for photorealism, but more of a simplified / Pixar / "computer cartoon" style.
How rapidly the West fell during the 2000s, when it was no longer capable of making such video games, but only the typical crap we are still plagued by to this day.
Mortal Kombat was always inferior to Street Fighter, but at least back in the '90s there were non-Japanese people (Midway, from America) capable of making a pretty good video game. Not a simulator, decent though not as memorable soundtrack, good sound effects, great controls and gameplay, variety of settings and landscapes, distinct and iconic characters and catch-phrases still used ("Get over here!").
ReplyDeleteAs with DKC, the only hint of its non-Japanese origin is the non-anime visual style, here more photorealistic than DKC due to the use of full-motion video capture of actors.
But as with DKC and Rare, what happened to Mortal Kombat after the '90s? It was over for them, meanwhile Street Fighter from Capcom in Japan is still going strong in the fighting game genre.
Non-Japanese people only temporarily flirted with making video games, mostly in the '90s. After that, they devoted their efforts in the "audio-visual interactive computer / screen" medium to tedious joyless simulators, often making them deliberately cursed and off-putting, rather than actual games that are fun and exciting on their own (as opposed to serving as react content for streamers and their audiences).
Imagine thinking you're a gamer and not being a Japanese supremacist in that medium...
ReplyDeleteIf Mumei is really thinking about a Twitch channel for FPS content, I'll weigh in on the "no way in hell" side, but also provide some positive alternatives.
ReplyDeleteAnd no, this is not about being mean in the guise of being honest, or about being controlling.
It's simply that most of your audience would prefer something better than that, a good number will shake their head like you're disrespecting them by forcing them to sit through pain just cuz it's with you (but we won't actually get to experience being with you, since FPS takes all your attention, and we'd just be hanging out with an interchangeable zombie), and only a tiny minority of self-hating masochists will sign up to get degraded and disrespected.
It won't create an army of antis, but we will start to change our view of the cute and quirky owl-girl who we had thought was not like the other girls.
"She just wants us to sit in quiet asocial boredom while she nolifes Apex, huh? We can already get taken for granted and looked down on by zillions of other gAmER GuRLz out there..."
We know you're better than that, so please don't do anything that would shake our faith in you.
As for doing both an entertaining and exciting stream for your audience, as well as scratching your occasional itch for FPS, the game itself has to have some must-see value, if your attention is going to be focused entirely on it rather than commentary or interaction with chat.
Perfect Dark for N64 is right up your alley -- early 3D graphics look dated and cursed, but not deliberately and offensively so. Soundtrack is good, with the Chicago Stealth song a stand-out. And the storyline is right up your alley, unlike other FPS games -- alien intervention in Earth's societies, political conspiracies to cover it up, corporate intrigue, what more can the girl who does watchalongs to Ancient Aliens want? ^_^
Goldeneye can be skipped -- same company did Perfect Dark, which is superior. Plus you might run into perms hell since it is based on James Bond and a specific Hollywood studio movie from that franchise, rather than all the IP being owned by the game creators and publishers themselves, as with Perfect Dark.
Doom II -- the ultimate FPS, about to hit its 30th anniversary. Illustrated / anime style graphics, killer soundtrack and sound effects, amusement park in Hell from outer space level designs, cinematic camera (no motion sickness, easy for audience to follow along with the action and take in the environment), sublime rather than disgusting approach to horror, various difficulties and cheat codes in case you need to skip some of the dull parts. Easiest to get perms for, since they're American, already released the source code, and you've played other Doom games on stream already.
One of the old Halo games? 1, 2, or 3. I haven't played them, but would be up for a look at what most gamers consider the golden age, during the 2000s. There aren't a zillion things going on at once on-screen, so it's easier to process, follow, and enjoy -- for you, as well as the audience! We don't want you to be torturing yourself, anymore than we want you to be torturing us. Maybe the settings and plot are exciting, maybe not, you'd have to get input from Millennials who know that franchise better.
The point being: something that's interesting on its own, an iconic or classic game. But I think you'd be more likely to do reactions and commentary on these games, rather than stay silent during contempo games, because you'll be reflecting on how they differ from FPS made in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
The model would be your Civ V streams, playing a game from 2010 instead of later, or the recent Hololive collab for Age of Empires II (even older!). These are classics, fan faves, playing the hits, in no way subjecting your audience or yourself to torture.
Most FPS do not provide a feast for the eyes or ears, but some of them do (listed above). That's the only thing that would pique our curiosity about an FPS stream, and make us put more faith in our beloved owl-girl streamer, rather than question it. ^_^
Fauna played BioShock last year -- that's another good example. Although we'd probably prefer if you played another 2000s FPS icon, since she's already done that one. But maybe not many hoomans tuned into Fauna at that time, and would enjoy you playing it too.
ReplyDeleteI hate FPS, but did tune into her playing BioShock -- it's a classic, from what most gamers think is the golden age, so I was curious why. It has an Art Deco / Streamline Moderne aesthetic, some attempt at a narrative and plot, can't remember the music and sound effects, but at least it wasn't ear-rape. Maybe I won't think it's the best game, or even best FPS, ever made -- but that's more than enough to get me to watch it rather than shrug my shoulders and skip it.
Hehe, and I mentioned how Fuwamoco should play Mario Kart 64 on battle mode -- that's actually very close to an FPS multiplayer game! And like Doom II, with elaborate environments to navigate, which are more like amusement parks, mini-golf courses, and other jungle-gym type settings. They're fun to navigate on their own!
It has a more anime / cartoony visual style, not photorealism, amazing music and sound effects, distinct and memorable characters who can actually be seen and heard during gameplay, and strikes the perfect balance between safety-padded and controller-throwing.
Maybe the newer Mario Kart games that you guys already stream, have a battle mode, and you could rope your fellow Holo honies into playing that, rather than the usual FPS experience. I haven't played any Mario Kart games after the N64 ones, and I know they altered how battle mode works, but maybe it's still fun and exciting enough to work as a streamer game -- for both the players and the audience.
Can't hurt to try it out off-stream with some colleagues and see if you like it at all, or which version of Mario Kart has the best battle mode, etc., before bringing it on-stream.
I wonder if you Zoomers ever played a racing game in quasi-FPS battle mode! You'll get some novelty value out of it, if nothing else...
Plus you can play as your beloved Donkey Kong! ^_^
(I always chose him, best balance between strength and speed -- yes, strength counts, at least in the N64 game, since you can ram into each other head-on, and only the weaker player loses an HP.)
The other cool unique thing about Mario Kart battle mode is that it combines an FPS style gameplay with the pure racing gameplay -- you don't move around by walking or running, but stepping on the gas, accelerating, drifting, braking, turning the wheel, etc.
ReplyDeleteThis makes it more fun and interesting for the player and audience, making it more like polo or jousting or some other horse-mounted sport, as opposed to an on-foot sport. (I know, I know, not a horse girl.)
Suppose you take a turn too hard, smack into a wall, and find yourself stalled out -- now you're a sitting duck for the others to target! You can't just run away at max speed at any time you want.
Those are some of the most hilarious events in MK battle mode -- the person is already upset from having crashed their car, now they're getting easily shot on top of it!
No other game combines an FPS with a whole other style of gameplay like MK battle mode, it's both a shooter and a driving game at the same time.
And it's still easy enough to control, not like the intense mecha games that Irys plays. Much more lighthearted. ^_^
BTW, if she likes mecha games and Splatoon, MK battle mode should be right up her alley. Controlling a vehicle while doing defense and offense against rivals who are also in a vehicle. But at a Nintendo, cartoony, arcade-y level, not something with a steep learning curve and 100 hours of studying ahead of time to prep you.
Ditto for Biboo, who's played MK grand prix several times already, and is fine with shooters.
And you know the sweatiest gamer in EN, the Faunanator, wouldn't pass up a chance to get competitive -- but now with kawaii rather than cursed graphics!
BTW Part 2: the N64 Mario Kart is available on Switch! And you guys have rolling perms for that franchise! No excuses! ^_^
The best part of Mario Kart as quasi-FPS? No camera movement! You can't pan to either the left or right, you can't tilt it up or down, or zoom in and out. It's totally fixed in place!
ReplyDeleteWhen you steer your car left or right, the part of the space in that direction will come into view. But you can't look to the side while driving straight: your eyes, head, neck, torso, and car are all in perfect alignment always. And parts of the space will come into and out of frame as you drive forward, not by zooming though.
This makes MK battle mode the shooter-type game that is LEAST prone to motion sickness, info overload, and that general feeling of "WTF is going on, what am I even looking at?" among the audience.
So many of the inherent features in other FPS's that plague the entire game are straight-up banned in Mario Kart!
"Unnnnhhh, but uh ackshually, that sacrifices realism" -- good! Video games are supposed to be games, not simulators! They're supposed to make you feel good, not barfy! They're supposed to make the audience feel nice, too, not brainscrambled throughout the entire stream!
Random act of kindness: a daddy-daughter pair came into the library, where I was browsing the catalog and overheard them asking for Night of the Living Dead. Long story short, they couldn't get either a DVD or Blu-Ray, and both had been looking forward to it, so they were about to get bummed out.
ReplyDeleteThat's when I remembered Gooba's watchalong with the movie itself being broadcast *and* archived on her channel -- because it's public domain, one of the handful of actually good movies to be so.
So I walked over to the dad, told him about that, that he could probably find a free copy on YouTube, and he sounded hopeful after all. He said he really wanted to share it with his daughter, it was so cool -- daddy's girl spotted!
She was a tall athlete type (had on a hoodie from her HS sports team), so they probably bond over sports, too. Didn't seem like a tomboy, though -- just a daddy's girl.
Always glad to help foster coolness in the budding daddy's girls out there, the one reliable source of cool chicks in the world. ^_^
Another bra-less babe spotted the other night in the supermarket. A Zoomer girl, on the cute side, wearing a white almost see-through form-fitting top -- but long-sleeved and ribbed. Haven't seen one of those in forever, she must've seen it on some 90s / y2k revival tiktok. She was also wearing a shacket over the top, so it wasn't a skin-baring or body-hugging look -- more about au naturel.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, clearly not wearing a bra underneath. A cup? Not a boobman, but they did seem on the small side. Could've been B's, I didn't stare and don't care about them to begin with.
Just caught my attention that she had the au naturel look, rather than the inch-thick padded bras that obscured the nipple entirely.
She had a pretty chill, quirked-up-shorty vibe (although was about 5'6). Not an attention whore type, just a typical Zoomer being chill.
She was grocery shopping with another girl, who was not cute, and a bit older, and looked nothing like her -- housemates splitting the grocery bill? Cutie was bi and the busted one was lesbo? The busted one did give me a funny attempt at a glare when I walked by, and the cutie was taking note of random hot guy...
Hey, lesbians know what they're getting into when they date a cute bi-girl -- aside from also liking guys, those girls are usually way hornier than straight girls, so they're even more likely to have a roving eye.
Did Mumei have a single male influence that was positive during her developmental years? Brother repeatedly clogged the shared toilet w/o cleaning it up. Father condescendingly and passive-aggressively backseats her driving when she's driving perfectly normally. Unnamed older male relative gave her a memorably harsh glare when she was just a lil thing and was just smiling at him during a family gathering.
ReplyDeleteEvery rant stream, there's another revealing anecdote.
Because like all Zoomers she was helicopter-parented, these are most of the interactions she had with others -- not large numbers of peers, neighbors, etc.
I think this is where her suspicious / paranoid / clamming-up tendencies come from, at least vis-a-vis men -- you would be too, if you behaved normally or even pro-socially, and all you ever received in return was being ignored or mistreated.
Over the past two years, though, she's gotten a huge number of interactions with guys outside the family who are not like that, who are the opposite of that in fact. And now she can start to trust them more, not assume the worst, and be more comfortable opening up and sharing who she is.
We reached her just in time, she won't turn into a manhater after all. And to her credit, she put her faith in us and decided to give it a try, rather than assume we'd be like all the other negative male influences in her family-based life.
Thank you for taking a chance on us, Moom, we can tell you've been changed for the better by the hoomans just as much as we have been by you. :)
I solved the puzzle of yaoi / fujoshi / slash fic fans. This refers to primarily straight girls who are into fiction that depicts romantic interactions between two guys.
ReplyDeleteBecause they're straight, they are "self-inserting" or empathizing / identifying with one of the two guys, in order to vicariously experience the romantic interaction with the other guy (the type of guy she'd be interested in IRL).
Now, guys who do this with female-female fiction (including watching girl-girl porn) simply have a poor sense of gender identity, and are more on the feminized side of the male spectrum. They're not macho men, so it's not so hard to identify with a female character. It feminizes them somewhat -- they're already there, so no big deal to their ego.
But the girls who do this with guy-guy fiction are not masculinized, tomboy types, who might feel it easy to identify with a male character. They tend to be girly girls, or otherwise within the typical woman spectrum.
I did not understand this difference between male and female slash fans until listening to Irys talk periodically about her interest in such stuff. She's not a tomboy at all -- she's one of the most girly-girl girls out there. Her "gender identity" is securely female, so she is not self-inserting as a male character because she feels male to begin with.
This is the puzzle: why are girly-girls putting themselves into the role of a male character, in order to experience romance with another male character (who they'd like IRL)? Tomboys doing that would be straightforward. Girly-girls should just want to self-insert as a female character who's the love interest of the male character they have a crush on, right?
The solution is that fujoshis either actually or in their own mind's interpretation, got burned by a guy they had a crush on -- who gave them the vibe of "ugh, girls are so yucky / boring / weepy / etc." And "bros before hoes".
ReplyDeleteIn other words, they were not spurned due to their individual looks or personality, but simply due to being a girl. And the guy was not literally gay, just a spiritually-gay girl-hater.
Either it's one major traumatic case, or a series of less intense cases, but over their development, they get the impression that guys are guided by the "bros before hoes" code.
Well then, what's a girl got to do to sneak into the bros' secret clubhouse? Why, become a bro herself! Not altering her inner nature, of course, she doesn't want to change who she is -- she just wants access to the "no girls allowed" bro clubhouse.
So it's more about wearing a disguise, so that the bros will not reject her out of hand for being female, will trust her, let their guard down around her, treat her like a human being, send positive vibes her way, and open up and be real around her.
In the girl's imagination, such "bros before hoes" guys must get awfully pent-up and tense and frustrated from not being around girls very much, and must find some kind of homoerotic outlet amongst each other -- not necessarily outright sexual acts, but at least tense and emotionally invested interactions and relationships that border on romance.
So she will not only be welcomed into their clubhouse for camaraderie purposes, but also enjoy some romance as well.
Romance with a guy she has a crush on -- and all it takes is identifying with another bro character. She can't try to sneak into the clubhouse openly as a girl, but by self-inserting in a fictional work, she can sneak into the clubhouse after all.
That's why girls who didn't get traumatically burned by a dyed-in-the-wool girl-hater don't have to self-insert as a male character, in order to get to another male character.
ReplyDeleteThey just figure, identify with the girl character who's the love interest, or potential love interest, of the male character they have their heart set on, and see where it goes.
In these normal works, guys like girls -- at least some girls, with certain characteristics, and she identifies with one such female character. Guys are not girl-hating "bros before hoes" de facto gay clubhouse types.
If fujoshis are more common in parts of East Asia, than their counterparts are in America, it must be because Asian guys are more likely than American guys to treat girls as an entire sex as yucky, boring, annoying, weepy, etc., who need to keep their distance, and should not expect much emotional investment or attachment from a guy.
And the rise of such a phenomenon even within America in the past several decades shows that guys have become way more girl-hating than their counterparts were in the good ol' 1950s, when every guy got married and occasionally griped about the ol' ball-and-chain but did not practice "bros before hoes". And when girls did not feel attacked, excluded, or looked down on merely for being female, like they do now.
I think girls are cute, soft, cuddly, and bouncy creatures.
DeleteIDK if there's hard data, but I'd expect in the Anglosphere that Australia would have more fujoshis / slash fic fans than say America or Britain.
ReplyDeleteI've repeatedly heard how relations between the sexes in Australia are basically, they self-segregate most of the time, and once in awhile meet up to hate-fuck each other into oblivion, before returning to their single-sex environment for the rest of the year.
Way more of a "battle of the sexes" vibe than in America.
But whether this battle is a cold war or hot war, it's going to give rise to the fujoshi phenomenon. There's all these girly girls who want romance with a guy, yet the culture is so "bros before hoes" that they conclude, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em".
It's a signal of last-resort resignation -- not like a tomboy who feels like it's her enthusiastic first choice to self-insert as a male character.
All the dumbass guys who think it's based, redpilled, or whatever to clog toilets, shame girls for bleeding / PMS-ing, and otherwise practice the girl-hating "bros before hoes" code -- what you actually create is a society full of manhaters, resentful femcels, and more and more male homoerotic culture being consumed by formerly normie straight girls.
ReplyDeletePatriarchy is about men being the problem solvers -- not being the problem causers. And about men organizing society -- not throwing it into disorganization. That's what we had in the good ol' days, when women didn't have to worry their pretty little heads.
Nowadays men have given them PLENTY to worry their pretty little heads about. We have guys fucking everything up and claiming it's great cuz men are doing it. It's trying to give affirmative action bonus points to them just cuz they're men, even though they don't deserve goodies or respect or status on their merits -- in fact, they'd deserve fines, shaming, and demoting their status for fucking things up.
But anyway, that's what's going on with the whole fujoshi / slash fic thing, which is brain-breakingly puzzling when you first hear about it. It's not so mysterious what's going on, after all, though.
Indeed. In any genuine patriarchy, it is considered shameful for a female to worry her pretty, little head about work as astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell noted about Scotland in the 1960s and 1970s: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/jocelyn_bell_burnell_933225
Delete"All the dumbass guys who think it's based, redpilled, or whatever to clog toilets, shame girls for bleeding / PMS-ing, and otherwise practice the girl-hating "bros before hoes" code"
DeleteBefore the Red-Pill became mainstream I don't hear of this happening even among the old Manosphereans or Red-Pill bros.
So something went wrong with the proper transmission of the message from its original source. Arbitrary cruelty isn't a hallmark of good men.
"Patriarchy is about men being the problem solvers -- not being the problem causers. And about men organizing society -- not throwing it into disorganization."
That is true. Although said society has been disincentivizing that via the law and toxic culture. This is creating more feral men which in turn creates the downward spiral and man-haters which feeds into this even more. Worse and worse. Until they are destroyed.
Aside from the men who kept their souls whilst going their own way. They are allowing darkness to consume them rather than resisting them and working towards Righteousness.
Or those who are serious in their Christianity which keeps them grounded. The genuinely religious.
Being able to reckon with human nature and believing in forgiveness and redemption. In addition to the moral code that would stop such a thing you describe occurring.
Although walking away from a hostile society is still what even Good Men will do.
So slash fic fans are the female version of the latent transgenders for males.
ReplyDelete>We have guys fucking everything up and claiming it's great cuz men are doing it.
ReplyDeleteLike who? What are they doing besides clogging toilets? Do you mean Andrew Tate et al?
Regarding the loss of holidays, I was immensely disappointed when I went out on the Saturday before Halloween and found no one dressed up at the locale I had gone to. The place had the gall of hosting their halloween event in mid October. Therefore I made a modest effort at work on Halloween with a peaked Swiss Army mountain cap and aviator sunglasses (I could have completed the army man look with a service shirt, but I didn't want to look like zelensky).
ReplyDeleteResults? I got lots of positive attention, especially with the whimsy of stacking these on top of my usual workwear, and ended up carrying the banner of Halloween cheer at my workplace. If the holiday spirit is as dead as you say, then I will be making the effort to repeat this banner bearer role for Thanksgiving and Christmas with Pilgrim and Santa hats.
Interestingly, I looked up the history of Thanksgiving, and found out it only became a proper regular annual holiday in 1870, after the formative civil war.
Regarding Daddy's girls, In Phase, Pippa absolutely adores her father, her issues with relationships stem from watching her sisters crash and burn. In contrast, Dizzy (formerly Urara/Slugma from Tsunderia) is absolutely a femcel. Woozie Wannai (she's gone indie as TeenyTommie for now) is another daddy's girl with a reputation as a retrogamer.
Reversal of cocooning report: saw a group of about 10 high school boys just hanging out in the park yesterday, most of them with bikes, a few with phones out, but generally just socializing and laughing and chit-chatting with each other, right next to the walking path in order to do some people-watching I guess, rather than in a remote area.
ReplyDeleteNo parents or other supervision, and they rode there on their bikes rather than get dropped off / picked up by their parents. The phones were just a security blanket for the few who were a little more socially awkward -- *not* the 2010s picture where they'd all be staring straight down at them, without interacting with each other.
I really can't recall the last time I saw a group of unsupervised high schoolers that big in a public space of any kind to hang out, let alone a park. I remember still going to playground during the '90s, when they were dying off and cocooning was setting in. At most we might have a group of 5, and only a much larger group if we had assembled to play street hockey at an abandoned tennis court or something.
This was the same park where I saw that group of neighborhood kids / friends playing in the front yard and driveway the other day. And that (same?) group who was playing unstructured / unofficial games was back again. Still no idea which game or sport they're playing, since it's not on one of the official fields, and it's not near the walking path -- but you can still hear them shouting, calling out, and carrying on.
I've also started to see the occasional elementary school-age girl riding a bike or a standing scooter with no parents around. That was the main demographic to worry about in the rising-crime days, so they've been the most absent from public during cocooning times. But now they're starting to be allowed back out.
I still have to pinch myself to believe the seismic shifts I'm witnessing, after 30 years of cocooning. I knew it would reverse, and predicted it would reverse circa 2020. And yet that's all intellectual and rational -- on a deep-down gut level, it felt like the social mood would never go back to outgoing and carefree.
Can't help but hear this song nowadays, both because it's being played in the stores, but also it just goes with the vibe shift so naturally:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWzWL-S05fg
Hardcore by Paul Schrader has a Manic Pixie Dream Girl in it. A quirky, corporeal, free spirit with an earthly guardian angel role to play vis-a-vis the protagonist, who is a down-on-his-luck sad sack (divorced dad of a daughter who's run away). They form an odd-couple partnership.
ReplyDeleteShe nurses him back to health, keeps him sane, guides him through hell, and keeps him on the right track to achieve his loftiest goals, including winning over or winning back a girl -- not the MPDG herself, who as usual does not end up with him in the end, nor even a romantic interest (i.e. his estranged ex-wife). But *does* help unite him with his daughter.
The movie came out in 1979, during the restless phase of the 15-year excitement cycle ('75-'79 in this case), when the MPDG type proper comes out.
The character, Niki, is played by an actress (Season Hubley) who was born in the manic phase of the cycle (1951, during the '50-'54 manic phase), like most other MPDGs. As shown in her topless scenes, she is a butt girl rather than a boob girl, just like most other MPDGs. Height varies a lot among the type, and she's 5'5 fwiw.
I knew while watching the movie that she'd be born in a manic phase, and I was right!
There's a "doomed MPDG" type in Frenzy by Hitchcock, recalling this post about Michelle from Frantic by Polanski:
ReplyDeletehttps://akinokure.blogspot.com/2021/11/doomed-manic-pixie-dream-girls-from.html
Frenzy was made in '72, during the vulnerable phase of '70-'74, like Frantic ('88, during the '85-89 vulnerable phase). So she doesn't quite get to play the full guardian angel role for the down-on-his-luck sad-sack protag.
In fact (spoilers), she winds up getting killed in the process of trying to help the protag realize his lofty goals.
Still, I knew that like Emmanuelle Seigner, she must've been born during a manic phase -- at least that much of this type stays true to the proper MPDG role that comes out during a restless phase. And sure enough, the actress who plays Babs (Anna Massey) was born in 1937, during the '35-39 manic phase.
Niki, the MPDG, is the stand-out character in Hardcore. Still thinking about her the day after viewing, she made a real impression, and without a theatrical or melodramatic performance either.
ReplyDeleteGeorge C. Scott's character, the father in search of his teenage runaway daughter, is too literally Puritan to give the audience much of an emotional opening to connect and empathize with. He bottles everything up for 99% of the time, and lets it explode during the other 1% -- but unless you're also a Dutch Calvinist Midwesterner, for whom this is normal and expected behavior, it can be hard to connect with.
Contrast with Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver, written by Paul Schrader just a few years earlier. His extensive monologue voiceovers open up his mind to the audience, not to mention his more "tell it like it is, nothing held back, no BS" back-East behavior, which lets him pour his thoughts and feelings out even in the presence of other characters, whether socially appropriate or not. It may feel like wincingly tip-toe-ing through a seedy motel entrance, but it's still an opening for the audience to connect with his mind.
That's where the MPDG comes to the rescue in Hardcore. This type is always on a rescue mission of some kind, but here it's not just within the narrative, helping him achieve his goals and rise out of the depths he's currently in -- it's to chip away at his Puritan exterior on behalf of the audience, who can finally see what's really going on inside and connect.
Only the earthy prostitute and occasional porno actress can get him to drop his guard -- her sharing of her good-vibes hippie-dippie Venusian religion prompts him to explain the tenets of his Calvinist religion, in a way that he'd never opened up about before. He and his religion come off more sympathetically after this, since he's not thundering down a sermon to her, just matter-of-factly explaining it to her like he's a Sunday School teacher and she's a new student. She (and we) may not resonate with it, but it's not off-putting either.
Her playful teasing gets him to use sexually profane slang ("sucking off"), contrary to his buttoned-up usual speech.
But most of all, she's the only one whose attentive and nurturing behavior gets him to open up about where his wife is in the whole family picture. (Before he simply lied and said she was dead, not estranged / divorced and living in some God-forsaken place back East.) It's a nice small-scale cathartic moment for him, to have a sympathetic shoulder to lean on, so that he doesn't keep bottling everything up until it explodes in an aimless counter-productive rage.
Nice spin on the typical MPDG formula of coaxing a wary sad sack out of his shell, to liven up his lifestyle. Usually it means the guy leads a boring ho-hum routine, but still in a relatable way and allowing us to empathize with him (the security of routine, can't get hurt if you don't risk much exposure, etc.). But in Hardcore, he's so bottled-up and seething that her coaxing him out of his shell is necessary to make him relatable to the audience.
Great attention to detail in the costume design, too, where she's wearing a t-shirt that simply has the word "SniFF" printed on it. Believable as a novelty t-shirt, but emphasizing that she's an earthy / sensual type, not necessarily a smell fetishist (in which case the shirt would be a deep inhaling "SNIFFFFF") -- just curious and exploring the world through the corporeal senses, rather than intellect and reason and logic and argument. Sniff, sniff, sniff...
Not something a Puritan would have printed on their shirt. The right small detail can go a long way toward cementing their odd-couple relationship, and her corporeality vs. his cerebral / spiritual approach.
Season Hubley gives a nice physical performance in her poses as well. At first, she's shown as a typical stripper / prostitute, casually taking off her top and spreading her legs akimbo, high-heeled shoes kicking right up against the glass partition in the peep-show booth. Meant to be salacious and provocative, like anyone who sells sex for a living -- emotionally checked-out from the situation, not like a trusted confidante.
ReplyDeleteBut by the time they form their unlikely partnership and have bonded somewhat, her pose changes completely. Head bowed somewhat in humility, cocked to the side in curiosity, leg raised on one side while sitting down to convey an air of opened-up, informal relaxation -- the right tone for a confidante to create, if she wants the other side to let their guard down -- rather than stiff, stern judgement that he'd be used to in a setting where he's confessing about what's gone wrong in his life.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m73JYL2ByLo/UN-fbYFWqrI/AAAAAAAAhpY/KMLY3hqiqqY/s1600/Season+Hubley+Hardcore+6.jpg
More images here:
http://mooninthegutter.blogspot.com/2012/12/31-performances-ripe-for-rediscovery-6.html
Reminder that in Taxi Driver, the MPDG is not Jodie Foster's character Iris -- she represents the lofty goal that the down-in-the-dumps protag is striving to reach (saving her from a life on the streets).
ReplyDeleteAnd she's not born during a manic phase, but a restless phase, which produces the wild-child type (1962, during the '60-'64 restless phase). True to that type, she comes across as numb and glib about her wild-child teen runaway prostitute lifestyle. She does wear a boho costume, but that just shows that the MPDG is not about costume, but the role she plays in the narrative.
She does provoke the ho-hum protag -- but more for the sake of provocation, shocking a square, to convince herself that she's cool and hip, unlike him. Not to chip away at his exterior, to get him to drop his guard, so she can nurture him and rescue him from the depths, so that he can achieve his goals in life.
Rather, the MPDG is Betsy, played by Cybill Shepherd, who naturally enough was born during a manic phase (1950). She's not a wild-child who provokes for the fun of it all. She views him as an intriguing social-emotional rehab project for her to work on, nurture, and encourage, so that he can walk on his own again and accomplish greater things than what he's currently mired in.
She's the one who the protag literally describes as an angel descending, the one who inspires him to let his guard down, take a chance on opening up and connecting to other people (including women), even if he takes that too far due to his rusty social skills from having been isolated and alienated for so long.
But by the end of the movie, when she rides in his cab again, they clearly have no hard feelings, and in fact smile knowingly at each other, as though she were the one who started him off on his quest toward rescuing Iris and cleaning up the scum from the city in his own humble way. Very tender and endearing final moment, even if (as usual) the MPDG and the protag do not wind up as a couple. Her rehab project has turned out a success, and the guy who recuperated due to her intervention is grateful for her support and encouragement that began the process of rising out of the depths.
And of course Taxi Driver came out during a restless phase, 1976.
ReplyDeleteLast thought on Niki from Hardcore. Her getting the protag to drop his guard and open up serves a further narrative purpose -- turns out, the daughter ran away and joined the seedy porno world on her own, because she felt her father was too emotionally distant, cold, judgemental, and driving her friends away as potential bad influences. She ran away to find someone who would befriend her, however parasitically.
ReplyDeleteWhen he finally tracks her down, she's reluctant to go back to the same family environment that repulsed her in the first place. So the father has to open up, be vulnerable, and show that he's at least aware that his bottled-up Puritan behavior was responsible, while still asking her to understand that he does love her but never felt comfortable showing it.
He's been changed by the MPDG's rehab process, and he's now able to prove that to the girl that represents his lofty goals (rescuing his daughter from the streets at least, ideally bringing her back home). She wouldn't have believed him if he'd shown up thundering a Puritanical sermon against her, or coldly listing the consequences of her actions, etc. That would've been more of the same, and she wouldn't have decided there was anything worth returning to.
But now able to open up, confess in a sympathetic way, ask for forgiveness again in a sympathetic way, showing a positive catharsis -- not merely on a blind revenge mission against the men she hooked up with -- he convinces her that life will be different, more socially and emotionally supportive, connected, and warm back home. So she decides to go back with him after all, thanks to the MPDG's decision to take him as an intriguing rehab project, acting as his earthly guardian angel when institutions (the church, the police, his own family) could not save him.
Heh, Peter Boyle's character in Hardcore is similar to an MPDG, although from the male camaraderie angle, not the female nurturer angle.
ReplyDeleteHe's a bit boho and unconventional himself, earthy and sensory-based (as well as logical, being a P.I.). Opens up, holds nothing back, no-BS, hoping some of that attitude will rub off on the bottled-up Puritan protag, who he refers to as "pilgrim" -- not just referencing his Puritanical religion, but conveying his awareness that the protag is on a kind of quest or journey, and needing a guide such as himself.
And he doesn't take on the father's case just for the money -- it's also to protect the protag, like a surrogate patriarch (whereas the MPDG is more maternal and nurturing). He guides him along the way to achieve his lofty goals, steering him through the hellish depths so he doesn't remain mired there forever.
He plays a similar role toward Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, as the supportive, concerned, and advice-giving Wizard. Not as central in the narrative, nor as helpful, but still in the same mold.
And sure enough, Peter Boyle was born during a manic phase (1935). The suite of traits that females pick up from imprinting on such a phase, are also picked up by their male cohorts -- they just get expressed in a more masculine instead of feminine manner. But still very similar to each other.
Neat!
Noirish thrillers like Hardcore and Frantic create more narrative tension than action-oriented takes on the "rescue a family member" story like Commando and Taken.
ReplyDeleteIn the action movies, the main theme is revenge, and we know from the outset that the family member will be rescued, in good health, and the rescuer will survive as well. The tension is not put into the narrative, but into the overcoming of various obstacles in the protag's way -- we know he's going to overcome them, but who specifically are they, what settings are they located in, how exactly does he eliminate one or the other threat, the precise way in which he's going to execute the main villain.
In the thriller movies, we don't even know if he's going to find the family member, let alone will they be alive and in good health or want to return with him. We don't know whether their fate remains undisclosed, and if the protag is going to resign himself to losing her after an ultimately fruitless search, maybe taking revenge on the most likely culprits or maybe just calling it quits altogether in order to maintain some sanity. He's not an unstoppable juggernaut, which is more relatable to the audience, whereas the action revenge movies are more about a fantasy of power.
Having to sift through masses of people, rather than quickly narrowing down who the abductors are, adds to the narrative tension, setting up a sense of hopelessness -- and that opens the door to the role of a guide for the protag, which is not really crucial in the action movies, where he's a one-man army. Maybe the guide is a surrogate patriarch, or an MPDG proper, or a doomed MPDG. But some kind of earthly guardian angel to guide the protag through the depths of hell, in order for him to rise above it and achieve his goals.
So it's not just more tension in the plot, but also in the character dynamics, for the thrillers.
Thrillers do feature violence, sex, action, and sometimes vindication or revenge -- but they all serve a purpose for the plot, sense of place, and characterization. Whereas in an action movie, we know roughly how it ends from the beginning, and they strike us as more superfluous and just giving us what we want to indulge in as a guilty pleasure.
For example, there's a totally pointless T&A scene in Commando (it was the '80s), where the protag chases one of the bad guys into a motel, and in their struggle they break into the room of a nude couple that had been bumping uglies, unaware of the plot of the movie.
In Taken, the kidnapped daughter is shown in her underwear and then topless, while she's on display in a white slavery market by the villains. That may anger the audience, but not the protag, who isn't witnessing any of it.
In Hardcore, the porno that the daughter appears in is witnessed by the protag (after being tracked down by the P.I.), causing him to break down, and add to his determination to save his daughter. It makes the nude scene more poignant and gut-wrenching and anti-pornographic, rather than voyeuristic (which is how the scene in Taken comes off).
There are seductive nude scenes in Hardcore, however, like when the protag first converses with Niki in the peep-show booth. Not the most erotic performance of all time, but still titillating and a bit sensual, rather than enraging or depressing and anti-pornographic. It adds to the complexity of tone in a thriller rather than a straightforward action movie.
Hardcore also uses nudity in portraying the making of porno movies, whereby it all comes off as choreographed, orchestrated, mechanical, and therefore artificial, fake, and not sensual and seductive.
ReplyDeleteIt's not enraging or depressing like the ones where the runaway daughter is performing and being witnessed by the father after the fact. Nor is it titillating like Niki's bantering peep-show booth performance. Maybe not *anti*-pornographic -- merely not pornographic. Showing the behind-the-scenes process of shooting the scene, dispelling the fantasy, conveying a tone of hollowness or numbness.
Complex tone.