> "Stories often touch on topics like space travel, benevolent robots, disease-curing nanobots, and deep-sea exploration. They lack aliens and beings with superpowers. Instead, the real superheroes are the exceptional North Korean scientists and technologists who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders."
Here is an interesting symmetry as reflected by ideological mirrors. In NK, the state sanctioned imaginal worlds lack others that are superior, and superheroes are loyal technocrats. Here in the West, "market driven" Hollywood insists superheroes are distinct tiny subset of humanity and that it is to our benefit that they are hidden but highly organized. And no, you can't just become one of the special superheroes. Both are aiming to pacify the target society.
> And no, you can't just become one of the special superheroes. Both are aiming to pacify the target society.
Worse: You aren't such a superhero, but by random chance you might be chosen to become one and you are invited to imagine yourself in that situation. Any common person who might want to limit your hypothetical powers is an awful bigot and many of the stories revolve around tension between those with powers who would oppress the plebs vs those with powers who wish to benevolently rule over the plebs (but certainly not cede their power to them.) Also, when the superheroes abuse their position and power it's okay when they're motivated by good intentions, because the ends justify the means and they'll surely revert back to being good once the crisis is over. Power doesn't corrupt everybody who gets it, you can trust the good superheroes with their unchecked power.
All of this mirrors the way Americans are encouraged to think about the ultra-rich, encouraged to believe they might randomly join the ranks of the ultra rich one day. Encouraged to believe that they could be a good and benevolent billionaire, and that the plebs who would limit their wealth are harmful bigots. Taught to believe that the meaningful conflict is between the good billionaires who would benevolently rule, opposed to the bad ones who can only be kept in check by the good ones.
> many of the stories revolve around tension between those with powers who would oppress the plebs vs those with powers who wish to benevolently rule over the plebs (but certainly not cede their power to them.)
Except not really. The most popular superheroes like Spider-Man has nothing of that sort going on. The tension in his story is the balance of his duty to use his gifts for good (with great power comes great responsibility) and the demands of his everyday life - with the latter often suffering to his detriment.
On DC’s side, Batman is probably the most popular. Frankly, Batman is more a plot device than a character, the most interesting characters in his stories are the villains.
Heck, in most cases, their super powers are not transferable.
Reality: Americans have not been ruled by the superhero-like ultra rich for decades, and are starting to notice that little is improving and much is getting worse.
I think a lot improved for the countless people who got medicaid.
When you assert something hasn't improved, it tells me it hasnt improved according to your personal criteria. I suspect those dont cover the wellfare and health of your society.
.... I looked back to the very root comment for any mention of Musk. Why did you mention him? What relevance does he have? What point are you trying to make?
For as much as any man in 21st century America can claim to stand for the position of the superhero rich man trying to dictate policy in favor of industry, he does. He argues for less regulation, less taxes, even such quaint things like free speech. But the rich can also stand for the opposite of those things, as the Rockefeller trust and the Bill Gates fund do.
I'll just point to basically everything that's happened at Twitter as an example of bad policy, including the 'free speech' he promised except not really. He's also dialing labor laws back by a century or two with the pressure he put on people to sleep in the office, even setting up beds that were in violation of building code.
Pedo Guy Space Karen is not the billionaire superhero you want him to be, so simp for him elsewhere.
I'm not assigning any moral value by calling him a 'superhero' only pointing out that he can represent a side, and that side does not even hold the majority of the wealthy.
Calling him a superhero assigns him the moral value of things generally considered "good", which is quite an assumption to make about Pedo Guy Space Karen WeChat2 Wannabe. He represents the non-billionaire cohort about as well and faithfully as Trump did. 'Kill your heroes' and you'll be better off.
No. Most were in the $1-10 million net worth range before taking office. Former presidents, of course, can easily make tens of millions on book sales and speaking fees. But that's still small time compared to the owners of major firms.
The difference that makes that much less logical being that in the West the government is not determining what people can watch, they're watching what they enjoy.
Western writers (usually) aren't taking direct orders from the government, but that doesn't mean they're impartial weather vanes that reveal currents in society but never try to manipulate (or fabricate) those social currents as they see fit.
You should read Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chompsky. Most of what seems to be a conspiracy in western media is not actually organized as a conspiracy, but is emergent behavior in a system in which individual actors have aligned incentives. Acting individually without coordination, people hire and promote people who think like them, and ape then adopt the beliefs of their superiors.
I said usually western writers don't take direct orders from the government because sometimes they do, and this isn't even a secret. Hollywood lets the US military rewrite movies whenever they want access to military hardware and facilities. And during wartime, the US government employs writers to produce propaganda. Superhero comics in particular have their roots in overt war propaganda.
The conspiracies being your attempt to argue that the superhero movie fad is some absurd attempt at making billionaires look good.
If you look for a conspiracy in everything, you're going to find it in everything. Entertainment is generally just entertainment and this sort of overanalysis of things to push an agenda has been part of what has made so much of modern entertainment so cookie cutter.
Yeah but just with literally everything else in life, everything is way more complex than first glance suggests, interconnected and if you actually care to dig deeper, you find interesting stuff. Nobody sane argues western Illuminati is steering and manipulating everything and everybody towards desired future, yet mass media manipulation is extremely common practice, ie mr Murdoch and similar folks have significant powers.
Also lets not forget that CIA was very active in Hollywood for many decades with light and not so light touches here and there, I mean its the propaganda tool for US hegemony and spreading western view on society, values, 'american dream' etc. If you want to shoot say an action movie with real US planes landing on real aircraft carriers, US navy will have non-trivial impact on your movie and its story (so most end up as over-patriotic to the point of being unwatchable for many non-US viewers).
Its all natural and logical, all humans like to see or hear stories that make us feel good even if its not proper truth, much more than stories telling some ugly hard truths.
I just told you it's not a conspiracy, you're tilting at windmills.
I have not proposed a conspiracy to create movies like this, I don't think there's a cabal of billionaires who dreamed up and coordinate this as a deliberate propaganda campaign. I assert that the Hollywood system creates movies like this because because of the way it is structured and the nature of making movies. People who fit the mold and are naturally inclined to make movies like this get promoted and given opportunities by like-minded people. People who don't jive with the crowd never have the opportunity to make movies of their own, because making movies (particularly blockbusters) requires access to a system with lots of capital and manpower.
I'm not the one looking for conspiracies. You're looking for a conspiracy in what I'm saying so that you can dismiss it. Read Manufacturing Consent.
I'm calling it a conspiracy not because I think you're saying there's a cabal of billionaires doing this. I get that you're trying to pull the popular claim these days about things being "systemic".
My fundamental disagreement is that I don't care about what an obviously biased guy has to say about the media, I think a superhero movie is just a superhero movie and that of course Chomsky sees propaganda in everything, it'd be like expecting a politician anywhere in the world to not try to imply that all things wrong in the world are their opponent's fault.
To bring in a lighthearted example of the impression I have, regarding the sexualized outfit worn by characters in Nier Automata, there's been tons of analysis and whining, and mocking all that and to the satisfaction of most fans of the game, the author, when asked about the decision, pretended to be giving some complex reasoning before just straight up saying that he just likes girls.
It's the same with superhero stuff, the biggest takeaway from Iron Man isn't that irl billionaires are good guys, it's that an exoskeleton that can fly and shoot lasers is really fucking cool.
> My fundamental disagreement is that I don't care about what an obviously biased guy has to say about the media
That's not disagreement, that's just covering your ears and going la la la. You're barking up the wrong tree, that book is a good primer for you to find out how, if you don't read it you're still barking up the wrong tree.
No, it's just you're talking to yourself. You are not interacting with the points raised by the person you reply to, you just twist them into a straw man to beat down on. Which is fine, but doesn't require the presence of anyone but you.
> I assert that the Hollywood system creates movies like this because because of the way it is structured and the nature of making movies.
You respond to that with
> I get that you're trying to pull the popular claim these days about things being "systemic"
And go on to talk to yourself some more. You just aren't equipped to even read that comment, much less that book and others exploring the same issues.
"Everybody who disagrees with me is a conspiracy theorist, even if they explicit say there is no conspiracy. Also they're biased but of course I'm not."
Chompsky makes a biting critique of the US military-industrial complex. It's a great book that I recommend everyone sink their teeth into at some point.
Not really. These days, if you have talent, spreading your work is as easy as making a Reddit or HN post and get traction in no time at all. What sinks probably isn't worth much attention. Of course, works are also made and not published anywhere, but people are free to stay a hermit and not publish their work.
Hey, can you please not post in the flamewar style? The site guidelines contain several rules that ask commenters to avoid posting like this—including:
"Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Not anymore. I can't imagine what media doesn't have a free type of publisher (Youtube for videos, Amazon or Lulu for text, itch.io for games, Github for software, play store for apps, etc), and getting traction is as easy as a Reddit/HN post.
If your content is good, it takes 5 minutes to get it to the entire world for free.
You're too absorbed in your own cynicisim to see the obvious.
There is hundreds of thousands of hours of all sorts of content added to the internet every day from all over the world.
Western governments have nowhere near the sort of control over what their people can see to pull off anything anywhere near comparable to NK's attempts at controlling their people's entertainment.
The whims of the morally aggressive Western elite substitute for heavy handed regulation from top down. Although recent moves have been made to try and institute a CCP style bureau of misinformation even in America.
While I agree that social media is way too aggressive with moral policing of content, I can still trivially watch any of the morally reprehensible stuff that would be banned from there.
I guess I’m also pretty naive then. Got any examples of the US government dictating what people can watch through censorship on par with North Korea or even China?
That is not categorically true. There is a great diversity of superhero origins. Some are allegories for minorities (X Men), some are not secretive at all and a regular part of society, sometimes it turns out that the organisation is not to our benefit, sometimes they are just plain evil. Still others are secretive but not organized
Jules Verne is fun to read in this regard because the people who organized to go to the moon in "From Earth To The Moon" were simply part of a gun club that chose to fund the effort privately, not the government. It reflects how people had a different relationship with the government in the 19th century.
Before the income tax, people like Rockefeller would just bail companies out during panics from their personal bank accounts, much to the consternation of bankers like J.P Morgan. Private individuals were massively more economically powerful and that's were people looked for progress. Only Elon Musk comes close to this level of economic power in the modern era, especially because he is a hands on industrialist and not a financier, but there were probably a few hundred who had that level of influence back then and they were mostly industrialists.
While Elon is the only one with the intuition to bail out a company as large as Twitter, there probably are a few dozen Rockefeller CEOs of various SV/tech-adjacent companies that can and do use their power to command acquisitions of medium size startups that have promising tech but suffer from issues of cash flow or business strategy.
> While Elon is the only one with the intuition to bail out a company as large as Twitter
What intuition? Wasn’t he forced to buy Twitter by the SEC? He bought it at 4x the valuation - Twitter’s ex-shareholders made it out like bandits. Now he is losing money hand over fist thanks to Twitter - as Twitter’s ad revenue has dropped due to his changes (and big mouth) and he is paying to the tune of 1 billion USD a year in interest from the loan to buy Twitter; Twitter’s yearly income on the best of years have come nowhere close to a billion.
> Before the income tax, people like Rockefeller would just bail companies out during panics from their personal bank accounts, much to the consternation of bankers like J.P Morgan.
To my understanding it was Morgan and not Rockefeller who engaged in these kinds of bailouts.
Jules Verne is an interesting example, because his books often have themes about traveling more than anything. I feel like at the time (and now!) major projects to just go somewhere were seen as "rich people hobbies". Things are "easier" now for things like mountain climbing but even now most undersea exploration is just financed out of rich people's pockets.
In a world where artificial satelites aren't a thing that is a useful good, I doubt that NASA exists.
> Private individuals were massively more economically powerful and that's were people looked for progress
Did they? The people themselves looked? Or did the private individuals get to fund a large amount of libraries and educational institutions with "[your name here] supports progress" instead?
The peak of this may have been Fordlandia, Ford's attempt at doing a private Latin American colony, which was a spectacular failure.
Interestingly, Verne has a book about private libertarian-separatist rich men: "Propeller Island". It ends in infighting and disaster.
In the West it’s really to make money. No one cares if the target audience is pacified or not - might even be more profitable if they are riled up to spend more money.
Luckily they both didn't have rich parents in charge of large companies. Not saying they didn't work hard but they certainly had help financially that unfortunately normal people probably don't have.
But the whole US ideology is about anyone can be a rich. Of course in real world it's not true, but it's a direct contradiction against the GP's weird "western ideaology = you can't just become one of the special superheroes" conspiracy.
“Normal” human beings, as in, the rich scions of super-genius hyper-capitalists who have a functionally unlimited amount of inherited capital to fall back on as they create their own super-hero enterprises.
Here is an interesting symmetry as reflected by ideological mirrors. In NK, the state sanctioned imaginal worlds lack others that are superior, and superheroes are loyal technocrats. Here in the West, "market driven" Hollywood insists superheroes are distinct tiny subset of humanity and that it is to our benefit that they are hidden but highly organized. And no, you can't just become one of the special superheroes. Both are aiming to pacify the target society.