Even Modern Family still does it though. Phil Dunphee (sp?) is pretty much a straight example.
Though that show benefits from having three other more competent dads.
And even Phil isn't worthless. If I remember right he's actually really good at his job and while not especially bright does make an effort to be involved with his kids.
There's nothing wrong with finding certain traits attractive or unattractive.
These ideas may be in conflict.
This television show potrays women as victims, and there is already a cultural narrative of women being weaker and less intelligent and meant only to serve as gratification and/or motivation for men, and there is already a large quantity of media promoting and reinforcing this narrative, and we have lots of problems with sexism and gender roles, and what we really need is media challenging all that instead of reinforcing it, and so the television show is bad.
There's nothing wrong with finding victimized women attractive. How dare you judge his preferences!
One of those has to go.
_J_, you keep trying to distill neat little dichotomies by divorcing the argument from all historical and social context.
This seems to come up frequently, where somebody will hold up an example and say, "Given the state of our media and culture, this is yet another harmful piece of it."
And the response is, "But if we ignore our media and culture, what is so wrong with that specific piece that it should be changed?"
Which changes the discussion into something useless.
"and what we really need is media challenging all that instead of reinforcing it"
Yeah, that's my question. When did it become the responsibility of video game developers, comic book writers, television show producers, etc. to spur social change?
If we take it to be the case that
There is nothing wrong with finding X to be attractive.
Then why is it problematic for persons to create media that displays X?
I find victimized women to be attractive.
There is nothing wrong with finding victimized women to be attractive.
Ok, then I will make a show about victimized women.
SEXIST!
That doesn't make any damn sense.
If it is entirely acceptable to like X, then why is it problematic to produce bits of media that contain X?
i think the bumbling dad trope has receded some in recent years
tho i think it's less that society has advanced and more that it just got to be a tired story device
It definitely reached it's peak in the 90s I think.
The advent of the single-camera comedy seems to have killed most of them off. I personally think it's because the trope was often based around a comedian getting his own show. And so the main character is the bumbling comedian.
+3
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SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
There's nothing wrong with finding certain traits attractive or unattractive.
These ideas may be in conflict.
This television show potrays women as victims, and there is already a cultural narrative of women being weaker and less intelligent and meant only to serve as gratification and/or motivation for men, and there is already a large quantity of media promoting and reinforcing this narrative, and we have lots of problems with sexism and gender roles, and what we really need is media challenging all that instead of reinforcing it, and so the television show is bad.
There's nothing wrong with finding victimized women attractive. How dare you judge his preferences!
One of those has to go.
_J_, you keep trying to distill neat little dichotomies by divorcing the argument from all historical and social context.
This seems to come up frequently, where somebody will hold up an example and say, "Given the state of our media and culture, this is yet another harmful piece of it."
And the response is, "But if we ignore our media and culture, what is so wrong with that specific piece that it should be changed?"
Which changes the discussion into something useless.
"and what we really need is media challenging all that instead of reinforcing it"
Yeah, that's my question. When did it become the responsibility of video game developers, comic book writers, television show producers, etc. to spur social change?
When has it been anyone's responsibility, ever? Can others not try to spur social change by trying to influence developers, writers, producers, etc.? I'm not sure what this question is getting at.
If it is entirely acceptable to like X, then why is it problematic to produce bits of media that contain X?
Someone already answered this, but liking something and acting upon that like are not the same thing. One can even act upon it in ways that are not the same! Someone could draw in their personal sketchbook, they could post on their personal website, they could submit a film to some indie festival, they could direct a several hundred million dollar motion picture that millions will watch.
These will all have varying levels of impact on other people, and it behooves people to be mindful of their impact on others.
Furthermore, oftentimes producing any given bit of media containing X (ignoring any social and historical context goodness why do you keep cutting that out) isn't problematic. Look at the tropes presented in this thread. Nobody is saying there shouldn't be any sitcoms featuring bumbling dads. The bumbling dad was quite refreshing at first! They're saying there aren't enough sitcoms featuring non-bumbling dads anymore. It's not any given bumbling dad that's the problem, it's the lack of variety, and the cultural mindset that a lack of variety produces.
When media is overwhelmingly loaded with X to the point that's it's harming people's lives it's a problem.
But the media is not harming people's lives.
Only if you believe people are not influenced by the culture they're surrounded by and media they consume.
Why isn't the media's influence like the person's desire?
It's ok to desire X. Bringing about X in the world might be problematic, though.
Portrayals of X in media seem to be just like the desire: A kind of inert wanting.
If the answer is "influence" then, well, a person's desire influences them, too. So, the desire for bad things is bad.
Why are desire, and portrayals of desire, treated differently?
Sam desires victimized women: Great.
Sam victimizes women: Not Great.
Sam makes a comic about victimizing women: Not Great.
Why is the external display of the desire, in a form of media, not permissible, if the desire, itself, is permissible?
Because thoughts in your head that you do not act on do not affect people.
The problem is while this mechanism may make sense it's not vetted except through anecdote. And that last line in particular can be used to justify or refute the entire concept.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
When media is overwhelmingly loaded with X to the point that's it's harming people's lives it's a problem.
But the media is not harming people's lives.
Only if you believe people are not influenced by the culture they're surrounded by and media they consume.
Why isn't the media's influence like the person's desire?
It's ok to desire X. Bringing about X in the world might be problematic, though.
Portrayals of X in media seem to be just like the desire: A kind of inert wanting.
If the answer is "influence" then, well, a person's desire influences them, too. So, the desire for bad things is bad.
Why are desire, and portrayals of desire, treated differently?
Sam desires victimized women: Great.
Sam victimizes women: Not Great.
Sam makes a comic about victimizing women: Not Great.
Why is the external display of the desire, in a form of media, not permissible, if the desire, itself, is permissible?
None of this is relevant. Please stop changing the subject.
Too much of X media is a bad thing because, as we all know perfectly well, the culture a person is exposed to influences their decisions and actions. If you want to claim otherwise, go wild. But it's disingenuous to argue as if anyone posting here is upset at the idea of any single comic book. It's the over whelming trend in comics, movies, video games, etc. that people find unsettling.
+13
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SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
When media is overwhelmingly loaded with X to the point that's it's harming people's lives it's a problem.
But the media is not harming people's lives.
Only if you believe people are not influenced by the culture they're surrounded by and media they consume.
Why isn't the media's influence like the person's desire?
It's ok to desire X. Bringing about X in the world might be problematic, though.
Portrayals of X in media seem to be just like the desire: A kind of inert wanting.
If the answer is "influence" then, well, a person's desire influences them, too. So, the desire for bad things is bad.
Why are desire, and portrayals of desire, treated differently?
Sam desires victimized women: Great.
Sam victimizes women: Not Great.
Sam makes a comic about victimizing women that people have to actively seek out to read and because society has fixed all its social problems women aren't treated horrendously anymore and comics like Sam's are something of a rarity: Oh Well Who Cares.
Sam makes a comic about victimizing women and it is published by one of the few major publishers who are already publishing tons of comics about victimized women that reinforce the feedback loop of people seeing women as etc. etc.: Not Great.
Why is the external display of the desire, in a form of media, not permissible, if the desire, itself, is permissible?
They're treated differently because they are different. Even similar external displays of the desire, in different contexts, can have different consequences!
When media is overwhelmingly loaded with X to the point that's it's harming people's lives it's a problem.
But the media is not harming people's lives.
Only if you believe people are not influenced by the culture they're surrounded by and media they consume.
Why isn't the media's influence like the person's desire?
It's ok to desire X. Bringing about X in the world might be problematic, though.
Portrayals of X in media seem to be just like the desire: A kind of inert wanting.
If the answer is "influence" then, well, a person's desire influences them, too. So, the desire for bad things is bad.
Why are desire, and portrayals of desire, treated differently?
Sam desires victimized women: Great.
Sam victimizes women: Not Great.
Sam makes a comic about victimizing women: Not Great.
Why is the external display of the desire, in a form of media, not permissible, if the desire, itself, is permissible?
Because thoughts in your head that you do not act on do not affect people.
The problem is while this mechanism may make sense it's not vetted except through anecdote. And that last line in particular can be used to justify or refute the entire concept.
When media is overwhelmingly loaded with X to the point that's it's harming people's lives it's a problem.
But the media is not harming people's lives.
Only if you believe people are not influenced by the culture they're surrounded by and media they consume.
Why isn't the media's influence like the person's desire?
It's ok to desire X. Bringing about X in the world might be problematic, though.
Portrayals of X in media seem to be just like the desire: A kind of inert wanting.
If the answer is "influence" then, well, a person's desire influences them, too. So, the desire for bad things is bad.
Why are desire, and portrayals of desire, treated differently?
Sam desires victimized women: Great.
Sam victimizes women: Not Great.
Sam makes a comic about victimizing women: Not Great.
Why is the external display of the desire, in a form of media, not permissible, if the desire, itself, is permissible?
Because thoughts in your head that you do not act on do not affect people.
The problem is while this mechanism may make sense it's not vetted except through anecdote. And that last line in particular can be used to justify or refute the entire concept.
Rephrase?
The argument is that an overwhelming numerical bias in culture produces biased worldviews, which is intuitive - if you're constantly inundated by the same message you may believe that message - but other mechanisms can better explain why certain educated people can withstand the tide of a huge volume of a single opinion just fine and still maintain a contradictory view. It's because the exchange of thoughts in media is not the same as the exchange of actions. Pure repetition has little effect on someone who's cognizant of a better idea than the one that most commonly gets thrown around. You can freely choose what thoughts you allow to enter your decision making and personality regardless of how maliciously the media tries to invade your mind without permission.
Thoughts in your head that you do not act on do not affect people. Just because you are familiar with a bunch of horrible thoughts doesn't mean you have to act on any one of them, as long as you're aware of them and can put them in context, you're pretty much immune.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Great. Another interesting thread that turns into an episode of Star Trek where our intrepid crew teach a bobbly-headed alien about hoo-man society. Hi jinks ensue as he discovers prune juice is meant to be taken orally and that yes, a human can indeed be influenced by repeated exposure to media!
When media is overwhelmingly loaded with X to the point that's it's harming people's lives it's a problem.
But the media is not harming people's lives.
Only if you believe people are not influenced by the culture they're surrounded by and media they consume.
Why isn't the media's influence like the person's desire?
It's ok to desire X. Bringing about X in the world might be problematic, though.
Portrayals of X in media seem to be just like the desire: A kind of inert wanting.
If the answer is "influence" then, well, a person's desire influences them, too. So, the desire for bad things is bad.
Why are desire, and portrayals of desire, treated differently?
Sam desires victimized women: Great.
Sam victimizes women: Not Great.
Sam makes a comic about victimizing women that people have to actively seek out to read and because society has fixed all its social problems women aren't treated horrendously anymore and comics like Sam's are something of a rarity: Oh Well Who Cares.
Sam makes a comic about victimizing women and it is published by one of the few major publishers who are already publishing tons of comics about victimized women that reinforce the feedback loop of people seeing women as etc. etc.: Not Great.
Why is the external display of the desire, in a form of media, not permissible, if the desire, itself, is permissible?
They're treated differently because they are different. Even similar external displays of the desire, in different contexts, can have different consequences!
If a better society works that way it will certainly be the first time, as usually what happens is the actual physical victimizers are reduced while awareness of the atrocity - war, disease, racism, genocide, etc - is actually increased, and even trivialized and popularized as it becomes less of an actual public threat.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
When media is overwhelmingly loaded with X to the point that's it's harming people's lives it's a problem.
But the media is not harming people's lives.
Only if you believe people are not influenced by the culture they're surrounded by and media they consume.
Why isn't the media's influence like the person's desire?
It's ok to desire X. Bringing about X in the world might be problematic, though.
Portrayals of X in media seem to be just like the desire: A kind of inert wanting.
If the answer is "influence" then, well, a person's desire influences them, too. So, the desire for bad things is bad.
Why are desire, and portrayals of desire, treated differently?
Sam desires victimized women: Great.
Sam victimizes women: Not Great.
Sam makes a comic about victimizing women: Not Great.
Why is the external display of the desire, in a form of media, not permissible, if the desire, itself, is permissible?
Because thoughts in your head that you do not act on do not affect people.
The problem is while this mechanism may make sense it's not vetted except through anecdote. And that last line in particular can be used to justify or refute the entire concept.
Rephrase?
The argument is that an overwhelming numerical bias in culture produces biased worldviews, which is intuitive - if you're constantly inundated by the same message you may believe that message - but other mechanisms can better explain why certain educated people can withstand the tide of a huge volume of a single opinion just fine and still maintain a contradictory view. It's because the exchange of thoughts in media is not the same as the exchange of actions. Pure repetition has little effect on someone who's cognizant of a better idea than the one that most commonly gets thrown around. You can freely choose what thoughts you allow to enter your decision making and personality regardless of how maliciously the media tries to invade your mind without permission.
Thoughts in your head that you do not act on do not affect people. Just because you are familiar with a bunch of horrible thoughts doesn't mean you have to act on any one of them, as long as you're aware of them and can put them in context, you're pretty much immune.
You have to be aware of thoughts to gatekeep. Even the most educated person is a library of falsehoods and biases that have slipped in under the radar.
Great. Another interesting thread that turns into an episode of Star Trek where our intrepid crew teach a bobbly-headed alien about hoo-man society. Hi jinks ensue as he discovers prune juice is meant to be taken orally and that yes, a human can indeed be influenced by repeated exposure to media!
If you're repeatedly exposed to mockery, do you eventually believe that you deserve to be mocked?
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Great. Another interesting thread that turns into an episode of Star Trek where our intrepid crew teach a bobbly-headed alien about hoo-man society. Hi jinks ensue as he discovers prune juice is meant to be taken orally and that yes, a human can indeed be influenced by repeated exposure to media!
If you're repeatedly exposed to mockery, do you eventually believe that you deserve to be mocked?
Depending on the person, yes! They do! That's literally a situation that destroys people's self esteem.
Great. Another interesting thread that turns into an episode of Star Trek where our intrepid crew teach a bobbly-headed alien about hoo-man society. Hi jinks ensue as he discovers prune juice is meant to be taken orally and that yes, a human can indeed be influenced by repeated exposure to media!
If you're repeatedly exposed to mockery, do you eventually believe that you deserve to be mocked?
You're asking this expecting a different answer, but many times abusers do repeatedly belittle and break down the spirits of those they abuse by making them feel worthless and that they deserve the abuse.
When media is overwhelmingly loaded with X to the point that's it's harming people's lives it's a problem.
But the media is not harming people's lives.
Only if you believe people are not influenced by the culture they're surrounded by and media they consume.
Why isn't the media's influence like the person's desire?
It's ok to desire X. Bringing about X in the world might be problematic, though.
Portrayals of X in media seem to be just like the desire: A kind of inert wanting.
If the answer is "influence" then, well, a person's desire influences them, too. So, the desire for bad things is bad.
Why are desire, and portrayals of desire, treated differently?
Sam desires victimized women: Great.
Sam victimizes women: Not Great.
Sam makes a comic about victimizing women: Not Great.
Why is the external display of the desire, in a form of media, not permissible, if the desire, itself, is permissible?
Because thoughts in your head that you do not act on do not affect people.
The problem is while this mechanism may make sense it's not vetted except through anecdote. And that last line in particular can be used to justify or refute the entire concept.
Rephrase?
The argument is that an overwhelming numerical bias in culture produces biased worldviews, which is intuitive - if you're constantly inundated by the same message you may believe that message - but other mechanisms can better explain why certain educated people can withstand the tide of a huge volume of a single opinion just fine and still maintain a contradictory view. It's because the exchange of thoughts in media is not the same as the exchange of actions. Pure repetition has little effect on someone who's cognizant of a better idea than the one that most commonly gets thrown around. You can freely choose what thoughts you allow to enter your decision making and personality regardless of how maliciously the media tries to invade your mind without permission.
Thoughts in your head that you do not act on do not affect people. Just because you are familiar with a bunch of horrible thoughts doesn't mean you have to act on any one of them, as long as you're aware of them and can put them in context, you're pretty much immune.
You have to be aware of thoughts to gatekeep. Even the most educated person is a library of falsehoods and biases that have slipped in under the radar.
This has gotten metaphysically complicated because you also have to be aware of tropes to subvert them. Ignorance is immune both to better quantity and quality of education.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Great. Another interesting thread that turns into an episode of Star Trek where our intrepid crew teach a bobbly-headed alien about hoo-man society. Hi jinks ensue as he discovers prune juice is meant to be taken orally and that yes, a human can indeed be influenced by repeated exposure to media!
If you're repeatedly exposed to mockery, do you eventually believe that you deserve to be mocked?
You're asking this expecting a different answer, but many times abusers do repeatedly belittle and break down the spirits of those they abuse by making them feel worthless and that they deserve the abuse.
So, yes.
I want this interpretation to follow through, because if you simply stop or impede the abuser, the fact that the victim can have their own self-esteemed overwhelmed by constant attrition will ensure a road paved with future abusers who find it terribly easy to take advantage of this person. Better to teach this person to have self-confidence not dependent on the absence of worthless opposition than to act as their shield their entire life.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Too much of X media is a bad thing because, as we all know perfectly well, the culture a person is exposed to influences their decisions and actions.
Right. But the thoughts in a person's head influence the person. And those are permissible. Because the thought doesn't hurt anyone. The action can hurt someone.
So if particular instances of media (comic books, video games, movies) influence people, why are we censoring / punishing them?
With people, we punish the act, rather than the influence.
But we media we're punishing the influence, rather than the act.
If a guy punches a woman, then we punish him. Just as if a comic book punches a woman, we punish it.
But if a guy thinks about punching a woman, there is no punishment.
And a comic is just an illustrated thought.
So, we can't censor and punish influential thoughts, but we can censor and punish influential thoughts.
Why are desire, and portrayals of desire, treated differently?
Sam desires victimized women: Great.
Sam victimizes women: Not Great.
Sam makes a comic about victimizing women: Not Great.
Why is the external display of the desire, in a form of media, not permissible, if the desire, itself, is permissible?
If you want to make a comic which is about your desire for submissive women that's called "porn". The characters in that instance would probably be expected to be little more than boner props.
In a more mainstream dramatic context though, I'm not sure its good writing to write female characters as essentially outlets for the writers female victim fetish.
Too much of X media is a bad thing because, as we all know perfectly well, the culture a person is exposed to influences their decisions and actions.
Right.
Excellent, you accept overwhelming amounts of sexist media hurts people. The rest of your post is pretty much irrelevant to your original line of inquiry.
Also pretty absurd given no one is getting censored.
Being aware of things makes it easier to act on them, yes.
The power of the internet lets us take one - just one - person's idea and distribute it to pretty much everybody. Our minds are still living in the world where people only know things brought to them via the dice roll that is person-to-person word of mouth. But we know that it only takes one passionate blog post or well written article to counter tens of thousands of poorly constructed 200 character limit contrarians. Disseminated through an exponentially linked ubiquitous social network, and indelibly retrievable through thousands of redundant recycled storage devices, it no longer takes hundreds of thousands of people saying the same thing to reach the ears of Joe Luddite in Kentucky.
Why fight a bloody meat grinder war when we can just send in one atomic bomb to decimate the opposition? One Gandhi, one Leonardo da Vinci, one Fred Rogers. Religions and governments have used the one to many philosophy quite more powerfully than any democratic cultural movement in human history, so why settle for second rate revolution?
I've been playing a lot of Civilization
Paladin on
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Because Reality TV gets a lot more attention than a good blog post.
If we must exert social change through reality TV I will seriously reconsider my plans to drill to the center of the earth and live eternally with the stalagmen
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Being aware of things makes it easier to act on them, yes.
The power of the internet lets us take one - just one - person's idea and distribute it to pretty much everybody. Our minds are still living in the world where people only know things brought to them via the dice roll that is person-to-person word of mouth. But we know that it only takes one passionate blog post or well written article to counter tens of thousands of poorly constructed 200 character limit contrarians. Disseminated through an exponentially linked ubiquitous social network, and indelibly retrievable through thousands of redundant recycled storage devices, it no longer takes hundreds of thousands of people saying the same thing to reach the ears of Joe Luddite in Kentucky.
Why fight a bloody meat grinder war when we can just send in one atomic bomb to decimate the opposition? One Gandhi, one Leonardo da Vinci, one Fred Rogers. Religions and governments have used the one to many philosophy quite more powerfully than any democratic cultural movement in human history, so why settle for second rate revolution?
I've been playing a lot of Civilization
Because the idea of One Great Man in history isn't really a thing. Change happens through people as a whole changing. Not through a magical culture bomb that instantly changes stuff. There is no atomic bomb for sexism, racism or people putting dumb stuff that normalizes it in media. The way it changes is through discourse and voting with your wallet.
When media is overwhelmingly loaded with X to the point that's it's harming people's lives it's a problem.
But the media is not harming people's lives.
Only if you believe people are not influenced by the culture they're surrounded by and media they consume.
I think accepting this uncritically is unwise. The Comics Code, Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons, playing Metal music backwards to worship Satan, Jack Thompson's crusade against violent video games, etc. have all been proved to be a ridiculous farce, so ridiculous that believing in it undermines your overall credibility as a person, let alone older ideas like arresting people for blasphemy (well, in non-shitty countries), or banning teaching evolution, and the like.
I think you can reasonably argue it is artistically bankrupt or there's a greater overall responsibility to create culture that engages everyone, but if sexist media is corrupting society's morals, it would be the first time that criticism has ever been true in human history*.
* I could see an argument over racist materials, but I'd say the consistently worst of them claim to be true and/or are deliberately constructed to incite, rather than just being fiction using racial tropes, like Bagger Vance.
It fosters an environment where geese* can speak out and those who oppose geese* keep quiet. It rewards behaving like geese* and punishes opposing geese*
No it won't turn people into geese* ,it just fosters an environment where only geese* exist to most onlookers.
It fosters an environment where geese* can speak out and those who oppose geese* keep quiet. It rewards behaving like geese* and punishes opposing geese*
No it won't turn people into geese* ,it just fosters an environment where only geese* exist to most onlookers.
When media is overwhelmingly loaded with X to the point that's it's harming people's lives it's a problem.
But the media is not harming people's lives.
Only if you believe people are not influenced by the culture they're surrounded by and media they consume.
I think accepting this uncritically is unwise. The Comics Code, Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons, playing Metal music backwards to worship Satan, Jack Thompson's crusade against violent video games, etc. have all been proved to be a ridiculous farce, so ridiculous that believing in it undermines your overall credibility as a person, let alone older ideas like arresting people for blasphemy (well, in non-shitty countries), or banning teaching evolution, and the like.
I think these are particularly extreme examples that obscure the point debated. One can think there are problematic correlations between violent or sexist images and violent or sexist behavior (or at least lacking sensitivity to the same) without sliding all the way to Jack Thompson territory.
Being aware of things makes it easier to act on them, yes.
The power of the internet lets us take one - just one - person's idea and distribute it to pretty much everybody. Our minds are still living in the world where people only know things brought to them via the dice roll that is person-to-person word of mouth. But we know that it only takes one passionate blog post or well written article to counter tens of thousands of poorly constructed 200 character limit contrarians. Disseminated through an exponentially linked ubiquitous social network, and indelibly retrievable through thousands of redundant recycled storage devices, it no longer takes hundreds of thousands of people saying the same thing to reach the ears of Joe Luddite in Kentucky.
Why fight a bloody meat grinder war when we can just send in one atomic bomb to decimate the opposition? One Gandhi, one Leonardo da Vinci, one Fred Rogers. Religions and governments have used the one to many philosophy quite more powerfully than any democratic cultural movement in human history, so why settle for second rate revolution?
I've been playing a lot of Civilization
Because the idea of One Great Man in history isn't really a thing. Change happens through people as a whole changing. Not through a magical culture bomb that instantly changes stuff. There is no atomic bomb for sexism, racism or people putting dumb stuff that normalizes it in media. The way it changes is through discourse and voting with your wallet.
Of what do you talk about? Nationwide coverage of single scandals or videos or artists or atomic bombs dropping on a civilian populace.
In what do you invest? Centralized crowdfunds that do not just meet the rubric of the platform - rather, the best and the brightest.
We adopt views refined through recursive introspection and critique, not a bunch of clones that statically bombard you with the same message over and over. The fact that the latter works for general politics is a symptom of the failure of communication and education in our country, resulting in a professional society more dysfunctional than all other professional societies whose membership and participation is earned through refinement and not just acceptance of ideas and skills.
Also you should really get BNW, culture bombs sheesh
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Posts
Though that show benefits from having three other more competent dads.
And even Phil isn't worthless. If I remember right he's actually really good at his job and while not especially bright does make an effort to be involved with his kids.
"and what we really need is media challenging all that instead of reinforcing it"
Yeah, that's my question. When did it become the responsibility of video game developers, comic book writers, television show producers, etc. to spur social change?
If we take it to be the case that
Then why is it problematic for persons to create media that displays X?
That doesn't make any damn sense.
If it is entirely acceptable to like X, then why is it problematic to produce bits of media that contain X?
We're talking about a man who has sacrificed his sexiest, most vagabond days to clean up your poop and tell bad dad jokes. "Hi, Hungry. I'm Dad!"
But the media is not harming people's lives.
Only if you believe people are not influenced by the culture they're surrounded by and media they consume.
It definitely reached it's peak in the 90s I think.
The advent of the single-camera comedy seems to have killed most of them off. I personally think it's because the trope was often based around a comedian getting his own show. And so the main character is the bumbling comedian.
Someone already answered this, but liking something and acting upon that like are not the same thing. One can even act upon it in ways that are not the same! Someone could draw in their personal sketchbook, they could post on their personal website, they could submit a film to some indie festival, they could direct a several hundred million dollar motion picture that millions will watch.
These will all have varying levels of impact on other people, and it behooves people to be mindful of their impact on others.
Furthermore, oftentimes producing any given bit of media containing X (ignoring any social and historical context goodness why do you keep cutting that out) isn't problematic. Look at the tropes presented in this thread. Nobody is saying there shouldn't be any sitcoms featuring bumbling dads. The bumbling dad was quite refreshing at first! They're saying there aren't enough sitcoms featuring non-bumbling dads anymore. It's not any given bumbling dad that's the problem, it's the lack of variety, and the cultural mindset that a lack of variety produces.
Why isn't the media's influence like the person's desire?
It's ok to desire X. Bringing about X in the world might be problematic, though.
Portrayals of X in media seem to be just like the desire: A kind of inert wanting.
If the answer is "influence" then, well, a person's desire influences them, too. So, the desire for bad things is bad.
Why are desire, and portrayals of desire, treated differently?
Sam desires victimized women: Great.
Sam victimizes women: Not Great.
Sam makes a comic about victimizing women: Not Great.
Why is the external display of the desire, in a form of media, not permissible, if the desire, itself, is permissible?
Because thoughts in your head that you do not act on do not affect people.
The problem is while this mechanism may make sense it's not vetted except through anecdote. And that last line in particular can be used to justify or refute the entire concept.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
None of this is relevant. Please stop changing the subject.
Too much of X media is a bad thing because, as we all know perfectly well, the culture a person is exposed to influences their decisions and actions. If you want to claim otherwise, go wild. But it's disingenuous to argue as if anyone posting here is upset at the idea of any single comic book. It's the over whelming trend in comics, movies, video games, etc. that people find unsettling.
Rephrase?
The argument is that an overwhelming numerical bias in culture produces biased worldviews, which is intuitive - if you're constantly inundated by the same message you may believe that message - but other mechanisms can better explain why certain educated people can withstand the tide of a huge volume of a single opinion just fine and still maintain a contradictory view. It's because the exchange of thoughts in media is not the same as the exchange of actions. Pure repetition has little effect on someone who's cognizant of a better idea than the one that most commonly gets thrown around. You can freely choose what thoughts you allow to enter your decision making and personality regardless of how maliciously the media tries to invade your mind without permission.
Thoughts in your head that you do not act on do not affect people. Just because you are familiar with a bunch of horrible thoughts doesn't mean you have to act on any one of them, as long as you're aware of them and can put them in context, you're pretty much immune.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
If a better society works that way it will certainly be the first time, as usually what happens is the actual physical victimizers are reduced while awareness of the atrocity - war, disease, racism, genocide, etc - is actually increased, and even trivialized and popularized as it becomes less of an actual public threat.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
You have to be aware of thoughts to gatekeep. Even the most educated person is a library of falsehoods and biases that have slipped in under the radar.
If you're repeatedly exposed to mockery, do you eventually believe that you deserve to be mocked?
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Depending on the person, yes! They do! That's literally a situation that destroys people's self esteem.
You're asking this expecting a different answer, but many times abusers do repeatedly belittle and break down the spirits of those they abuse by making them feel worthless and that they deserve the abuse.
So, yes.
This has gotten metaphysically complicated because you also have to be aware of tropes to subvert them. Ignorance is immune both to better quantity and quality of education.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I want this interpretation to follow through, because if you simply stop or impede the abuser, the fact that the victim can have their own self-esteemed overwhelmed by constant attrition will ensure a road paved with future abusers who find it terribly easy to take advantage of this person. Better to teach this person to have self-confidence not dependent on the absence of worthless opposition than to act as their shield their entire life.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Right. But the thoughts in a person's head influence the person. And those are permissible. Because the thought doesn't hurt anyone. The action can hurt someone.
So if particular instances of media (comic books, video games, movies) influence people, why are we censoring / punishing them?
With people, we punish the act, rather than the influence.
But we media we're punishing the influence, rather than the act.
If a guy punches a woman, then we punish him. Just as if a comic book punches a woman, we punish it.
But if a guy thinks about punching a woman, there is no punishment.
And a comic is just an illustrated thought.
So, we can't censor and punish influential thoughts, but we can censor and punish influential thoughts.
If you want to make a comic which is about your desire for submissive women that's called "porn". The characters in that instance would probably be expected to be little more than boner props.
In a more mainstream dramatic context though, I'm not sure its good writing to write female characters as essentially outlets for the writers female victim fetish.
Excellent, you accept overwhelming amounts of sexist media hurts people. The rest of your post is pretty much irrelevant to your original line of inquiry.
Also pretty absurd given no one is getting censored.
The power of the internet lets us take one - just one - person's idea and distribute it to pretty much everybody. Our minds are still living in the world where people only know things brought to them via the dice roll that is person-to-person word of mouth. But we know that it only takes one passionate blog post or well written article to counter tens of thousands of poorly constructed 200 character limit contrarians. Disseminated through an exponentially linked ubiquitous social network, and indelibly retrievable through thousands of redundant recycled storage devices, it no longer takes hundreds of thousands of people saying the same thing to reach the ears of Joe Luddite in Kentucky.
Why fight a bloody meat grinder war when we can just send in one atomic bomb to decimate the opposition? One Gandhi, one Leonardo da Vinci, one Fred Rogers. Religions and governments have used the one to many philosophy quite more powerfully than any democratic cultural movement in human history, so why settle for second rate revolution?
I've been playing a lot of Civilization
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
If we must exert social change through reality TV I will seriously reconsider my plans to drill to the center of the earth and live eternally with the stalagmen
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Because the idea of One Great Man in history isn't really a thing. Change happens through people as a whole changing. Not through a magical culture bomb that instantly changes stuff. There is no atomic bomb for sexism, racism or people putting dumb stuff that normalizes it in media. The way it changes is through discourse and voting with your wallet.
I think accepting this uncritically is unwise. The Comics Code, Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons, playing Metal music backwards to worship Satan, Jack Thompson's crusade against violent video games, etc. have all been proved to be a ridiculous farce, so ridiculous that believing in it undermines your overall credibility as a person, let alone older ideas like arresting people for blasphemy (well, in non-shitty countries), or banning teaching evolution, and the like.
I think you can reasonably argue it is artistically bankrupt or there's a greater overall responsibility to create culture that engages everyone, but if sexist media is corrupting society's morals, it would be the first time that criticism has ever been true in human history*.
* I could see an argument over racist materials, but I'd say the consistently worst of them claim to be true and/or are deliberately constructed to incite, rather than just being fiction using racial tropes, like Bagger Vance.
You do not think people are influenced by the ideas their culture teaches them?
No it won't turn people into geese* ,it just fosters an environment where only geese* exist to most onlookers.
* 'geese' can be racist, sexist, whatever.
I think these are particularly extreme examples that obscure the point debated. One can think there are problematic correlations between violent or sexist images and violent or sexist behavior (or at least lacking sensitivity to the same) without sliding all the way to Jack Thompson territory.
Of what do you talk about? Nationwide coverage of single scandals or videos or artists or atomic bombs dropping on a civilian populace.
In what do you invest? Centralized crowdfunds that do not just meet the rubric of the platform - rather, the best and the brightest.
We adopt views refined through recursive introspection and critique, not a bunch of clones that statically bombard you with the same message over and over. The fact that the latter works for general politics is a symptom of the failure of communication and education in our country, resulting in a professional society more dysfunctional than all other professional societies whose membership and participation is earned through refinement and not just acceptance of ideas and skills.
Also you should really get BNW, culture bombs sheesh
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.