The first part of parenting is tough. Finding that special someone that sets your heart into a state of tremulous excitement that you can be compatible with long term. Whether you want to admit it or not, evolution is a thing and there’s an advantage to being sexy as far as reproducing genes. Did you make it past the one night stand phase and want to hang with that person…forever?
Then there’s the actual genetic product. Did you really want the kid, and are you going to try your best to make it work? The “it” is parenting, you moron. Putting it to work doesn’t mean child labor law loopholes. Because like there was/is a gematria to political (usually right wing) pipeline there’s a lying to your kid pipeline. When is it time to give up on the Santa Claus/Easter Bunny/Tooth Fairy sugar injection complex of stories. When is it ok to let them watch PG-13 movies that have been getting more and more adult for decades?
Cell phone ban legislation is a thing now. The internet is in a big tizzy talking about naughty things little kids shouldn’t be listening to. It’s not been a good era to get your kid a phone early and trust them, unguided, to pick out what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense on their own. That’s the power of disinformation on the internet. And like before there were movies, we’ve seen this real life movie before. Post WWII, adult oriented movies were not fun for kids. They were dark explorations of violent conflict and exploitation of indigenous populations by colonialism and scary stuff on a wide spectrum of how subtle vs. how in your face it was with the point. As I’ve stated before. I learned more about life from movies on my own than I did from school. By mental osmosis, I also absorbed the love/hate relationship of politicians with Hollywood. Santa (consumerism) in real life = good. Bad ideas, despite a constitution written otherwise, about secular vs. religion concepts, nationalism, and history = bad. Which means Education = really, really bad.
Gematria and other online grifting became a tool to park butts in the Internet equivalent of a movie theater. Come for the bible decoding and sports betting. Hang around and get exposed to the occasional good idea, but mostly a collection of pathetic, life sucking bad ideas. The proverbial rabbit hole, switching from a TV remote to an algorithm that was pretending to read your mind on what you thought was educating you, along side a steady diet of advertisements that…sucked. Blitzploitation, grab the money and run before the word gets spread that the con has been exposed.
Now, on to the two movies for today. A companion piece to the recent post about what to expect from upcoming movies reflecting the social and economic issues of today. Two timeless classics because the core issues are ever present. And a further reminder that we’ve actually seen these movie concepts play out in real life ages ago.
Godzilla (1954)
Yes, it’s about a gigantic lizard destroying cities. Yes, it’s absolutely 100% specifically about that lizard being nuclear weapon supercharged. It’s 100% about the devastation unleashed on innocent civilians by an outside force beyond the control of ordinary people. But hidden within the celluloid, the questions about rapid unchecked technological progress. It’s not just about the horrors of nuclear weapons in the wrong hands, but what exactly happens next? The “mad scientist” who creates the device to destroy Godzilla may also be creating a solution that ends up being a worse problem than the original dinosaur.
This is not a fun movie at all. It’s dark, foreboding and not to subtle with the nuking civilians is not good message. The immediate follow up was worse. But like Dr. Who stumbled into a plot device to keep the franchise rolling with a different lead actor, Japanese filmmakers had a hit idea. Anybody could put on a rubber suit, and it didn’t have to be Godzilla. Make new monsters and other movies across the social issue spectrum. After the first two they got really, really silly. Not much of a gradient either. Toho Studios went straight to the profit = good angle. Big monster knocks down buildings, shit blows up, there’s always an annoying kid in the middle of what’s going on. Put butts in the seats and throw some special effects around at let the people touch some grass. And along the way, still throw in some pretty obvious social takes like Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster. Godzilla, definitely the hero by this point and more a mascot than a star vs. pollution and industrial deregulation.
And then there came Godzilla Minus One. The longest running franchise in movie history thanks in large to not relying in aging actors for recognition value returned to dark, scary don’t let young kids watch this material. The post WWII Japanese people don’t just have the evil Americans who nuked them to worry about. They have the downtrodden masses realizing their own country let them down and there’s a big radioactive lizard. And the sequel is set for a rematch vs. the Smog Monster, because there’s this real thing called climate change going on the makers want to talk about. I genuinely can’t wait.
12 Angry Men (1957)
Another one made before I was even born, although there was a solid remake made later. A young man is tried for murder and 12 angry men decide if he’s guilty and to be executed or innocent. And things immediately don’t go well for him because he’s obviously guilty of
His skin being the wrong color.
The courtroom drama unfolds slowly around a single human strength and flaw. Confirmation bias, a topic I like to think I know something about. Henry Fonda gets the ball rolling on getting 12 pissed off man to settle in to intellectual discussion about it because it’s kind of important. Each of the other eleven has a different problem, a different degree of difficulty to win them over. And some of their reasons for the eleven are really, really stupid. Like one that just wants the trial to be over with and go use his tickets to the baseball game.
There’s not much focus on the specifics of this defendant so we can concentrate on the broader racism issue. It’s like pulling teeth to get these 11 guilty voters to change their minds. One never really does change his core values, but just throws in the towel. And if you think parenting is hard, try pretending your transnational crime spree masquerading as a government can get hundreds of millions of people on board with your unilaterally conceived bad ideas. Yes, I’m pointing a scolding finger at Trump again. Just like Thanos jumping to genocide in Marvel movies, a real life person has decided we need to accept without hesitation that he’s right about EVERYTHING, when it’s not even close to truth. Censorship of the old school media is here. Censorship of YouTube videos (demonetizing talking about the Epstein files) is here. The legal system has mostly left the building. The accounting system has mostly left the building. The economy has mostly left the building. And there’s still millions that have the confirmation bias block in place that Trump can do no wrong. Don’t you think some adults in the room, even if it’s just 12 angry men, might be a better starting point than a mentally unwell criminal?
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