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Which book outlines how people making memes don’t get Venn diagrams?
Boris and Arkady Strugatsky - One Billion Years to the End of the World
A lot of these don’t make sense where they are.
You’re telling me the intersection of fascist doublethink, media illiteracy, and militant misogyny isn’t Lord of the Flies? Or that one of the biggest pieces of mainstream transgender media has little overlap with Handmaid’s Tale?
Brazil
This makes very little sense, but these are 12 masterpieces so I’m not too bothered.
There are 5 I wouldn’t call masterpieces.
I’m going to fight you on this. I’m going to assume the outer four, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies and Clockwork Orange (book or film, pick one) don’t need defending.
This leaves Soylent Green, Gattaca, Brazil, The Matrix, and Logan’s Run.
Soylent Green and Logan’s Run aren’t particularly well-made films, but their influence both within the SF sphere and in culture at large is way larger than their meagre budgets or box office results would indicate. When they came out, they introduced key pieces into the mix that remain as relevant today as they were in the seventies.
Brazil is an amazing piece of film. A true classic that pops up on “best film” list after 40 years.
GATTACA is the weakest one on this list. There was a brief window were it seemed prescient, but that future quickly receded to give way to the mess we’re in now. I can take it or leave it. If this scheme made sense, I could probably find a better replacement.
The Matrix… well, I’ll come clean with you: I don’t really like the Matrix. If you had been paying attention to SF up until then, the Matrix has zero interesting things to say, paving over its lack of originality with pseudo-philosophical platitudes and action sequences. It wasn’t even the best “the world is not real and the protagonist is the chosen one and is going to save us”-film that came out around that time. It was beaten by a year by Dark City. However, not everyone is a sci-fi snob, and for many people that was their first exposure to a bunch of corner stone concepts. Also, it was pretty cool. So I grudgingly allow it.
I thought I had Soylent Green figured out. Had knew the punchline long before I actually sat down and watched the movie. It was 70s level, so it was both good and bad as far as a movie itself, reminded me a lot of Colossus The Forbin Project in its feel. The forecasting of a environmentally desolate future also felt prophetic. Then a bit after seeing it I ran across someone reviewing it, and they pointed out that the biggest shock isn’t the end…the end is bad, but it is only a higher level of what has been the real horror throughout the whole movie. Complacency. And that is why we are in Soylent Green today, it’s all around us. And like all these other classics, we haven’t learned anything.
That’s an excellent point. With classic scifi, everybody remembers the twist, but hardly anyone remembers/knows the actual point of the film. Most films of the era have strong social messages that are lost when you reduce it to “lol they are eating people” or “kill the old guy”.
I appreciated this debate. I’ve only seen a half of these but think it might be time to rectify that
It was beaten by a year by Dark City.
I saw both Dark City and The Matrix, in the theaters, when they were released. I liked both, and I have talked up Dark City for years to people who only saw the Matrix.
Recently rewatched Dark City. It is nowhere near as good as the matrix. It’s still very cool, but it’s confusing and janky as hell and that’s not part of the charm.
If you’re reading this and you haven’t seen it, you should! It’s fun and you’ll see some cool shit. But don’t expect it to be better than Matrix.
That’s not really how Venn (or Euler) diagrams work.
no, i am in minnesota
Minnesota is just a myth, made up to frighten children.
You… can’t be in two places at the same time!? What’s that, we really can’t? Oh well, carry on then:-D.
i barely exist in minnesota, don’t worry
That could be a good thing, if they aren’t a good fit for you, but I hope that you find somewhere that you fit in:-). Until then, read books, bc they make you better at handling whatever life decides to throw at you:-).
“funny”
This doesn’t make any sense at all. I’d love to be on GATTACA but we are most definitely not
Gattaca is a parable about racism, in-groups vs out-groups, and the need to keep the powerful from seeing what you really are inside. We’ve basically always been there.
That’s what you took from it? I took the developing space colonies on Saturn, whatever miracle space engine development they got that allows them to get to Titan in One year, whatever security measures they have that allows them to get into orbit without any kind of spacesuit, the wholesale pervasive electric cars, implied sexual dysmorphism cures, the retro noir aesthetic, the possibility of having kids with the best chances at not having congenital diseases and the main character sheer determination on pursuit of his dreams and his sheer disregard for the security of the people depending on him while suffering from a congenital cardiac issue.
What a legend
Like a pizza cutter this is all edge and no point
If I was in the middle of that and over 30 I wouldn’t be there.
I mean, it’s happening worldwide. As each next one falls, and worse perhaps joins with the others, it will spread even further. Like a pandemic of an idea. Although perhaps there’s hope on the other side, since it seems too late to stop it now but after the afterwards there will be ways to build anew. Anyway the important thing, in my mind at least, is to learn and grow from it all.
What’s Beelzebub to do with it?
oof way too complicated
