(no subject)

[riseupwithfists]

I love being reminded of the fact that large swaths of fandom actually can't understand the difference between depiction and approval to save their life (the above link spoils the entirety of the movie Splice, btw, but I can quote if people want to know the gist without having it spoiled).

I saw Splice today and the person above... we didn't see the same movie, clearly. And maybe I'm privileged because I see a lot of film and read a lot about film, but an interpretation of the film that assumes that it's condoning and promoting what's going down is at best facile and at worst made in extremely bad faith.

And this is a separate issue from people getting triggered by material in the movie! Apparently the American marketing campaign really misrepresented the film, and I understand that. This movie is not for everyone. It is filled with fucked up stuff. But it isn't saying what the reviewer in the link above said it was saying. ARTISTIC COMPREHENSION, Y'ALL. YOU CAN HAS IT.

Comments

[riseupwithfists]

The movie IS pretty disturbing, don't get me wrong! Here's, it's playing at the theater that tends to showcase the big Hollywood releases instead of the theater that deals in foreign and arthouse, and that was a big surprise to me, because this is SO not a mass market movie and I think a lot of the shock and pushback is coming from the marketing misrepresentation? I just can't stand shock from seeing something you didn't necessarily want to see being turned into claims that the movie is promoting what it's depicting.

This has been a weird week in film reactions for me - one of my classmates acknowledged the massive racism in the new Sex and the City movie while defending it because "they didn't make up any new racism, just used old racist jokes that we've all heard before" (yeah, I don't know, either), and last night another classmate said that Philadelphia is an important film because it explores "the line between God's law and human compassion" and is about "whether Jesus Christ hates the gay or the lesbian or the acts of the gay or the lesbian". Which is, um, not only a serious misreading of the film, but also the most homophobic thing I have ever heard in a classroom and I grew up in the South. The racist girl was reprimanded via shunning, but the blatant homophobia was met with absolutely no pushback and I sat through the rest of the class wondering if I should have spoken up. So, ugh.

[gloss]

I think the theatrical distribution weirdness probably speaks to the mainstreaming of the horror genre.

And I think that fandom will see anything with David fucking Hewlett in it, so they were caught off-guard.

I can't even form coherent rage for that Philadelphia comment. I just want to *die*.

[riseupwithfists]

I think that fandom will see anything with David fucking Hewlett in it, so they were caught off-guard.
Ahaha, yeah. I had no idea that he was in it, and then I recognized him from everyone's icons and understood why fandom was losing their shit over this film and not over, say, Sex and the City 2, which is way more offensive IMO.

It was so awful! I was in SHOCK and just couldn't formulate a comment! And of course it had to be in the class I'm taking that's not being run by My Sassy Professor, who definitely wouldn't have let that shit slide, you know? I've been thinking about saying something, but I don't know if there's anything that can be done - the syllabus for this particular class actually doesn't have one of those "sexism and homophobia, etc will not be tolerated" disclaimers, and I'm not even sure what good a reprimand would do.