6 Reasons There's no escape from Hollywood Racism

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6 Reasons There's no escape from Hollywood Racism

Postby thatindianguy » Tue Aug 25, 2015 1:57 pm

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-t ... od-racism/

A comment I was too late to make, 'McKinney you're so full of shit, your skin is browner than mine!'
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Re: 6 Reasons There's no escape from Hollywood Racism

Postby sunglasses » Tue Aug 25, 2015 2:51 pm

*reads article*

I still like Luke.
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Re: 6 Reasons There's no escape from Hollywood Racism

Postby archaeologydalek » Tue Aug 25, 2015 4:21 pm

REDACTED
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Re: 6 Reasons There's no escape from Hollywood Racism

Postby Cobra-D » Tue Aug 25, 2015 4:38 pm

archaeologydalek wrote:I don't like Luke's non-science articles, but...I kinda liked this one. I caught that same trailer last night and started asking the same question ("was that movie solely about foreigners chasing white people?") so it's nice to know that the hivemind is still working. As always, some parts of the article were stronger than others, but the thesis - that this is a really dumbfucking trailer - was strong and not-reaching.


Really? I just thought it was a trailer about a family on a little vacation getting caught up in some revolution or what have you and a father doing whatever he can to get his family to safety. But yeah sure i guess racism.
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Re: 6 Reasons There's no escape from Hollywood Racism

Postby Marcuse » Tue Aug 25, 2015 4:46 pm

I'd make a few points. One is that it'd be more obvious that the "no escape" being referred to is the film if it was italicised in the title. I think that'd communicate that the title is a play on the title of the film being critiqued better.

Which brings me to my second point. The article doesn't really make much attempt to communicate any sort of synopsis of the film at the start. It makes a weird joke about hashtags, but seems to sort of assume the reader knows what the hell it's talking about from the off, which I find doesn't work too well for me. I get the film is americocentric guff, but then say that it is while communicating the paper thin plot. Linking the trailer seems...um well a little lazy to me when a couple of sentences could do the same job.

I sort of take issue with #5 on a storytelling standpoint. Why invent a fictional Asian country to be in when really all that is is a smokescreen for "foreign place"? Is it more or less insulting to craft an entire backstory for a place only for it to be a setting for foreign zombie adventures? I just think if the plot is as wafer thin as he claims, why then expect a detailed faux Asian nation from the writers of something he's happy to call drek.

I kind of agree that the film looks like crap, but the point is pretty laboured. Yes, it's racist, do we need to have six separate ways to tell us it's racist? Probably not. I feel like the point could be communicated more effectively in a far more succinct format, but the problem is that the expanded format doesn't really provide a scaffold for enough comedy to justify it. Maybe it's just that the humour didn't work for me, but it made the rest of the article feel like a flagpole with no flag.

Edit: also, he might have checked the wiki to find a potentially racially insensitive element of the film. It's pre-emptively banned in Cambodia because the police in the film contain "upside down Khmer lettering" on their riot shields. Given that the original source makes claims that they deliberately included such lettering to take cultural sides in order to smooth permission, essentially thumbing their nose at Cambodia to impress the Thais, this might have been a more interesting thing to talk about.
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Re: 6 Reasons There's no escape from Hollywood Racism

Postby EvilerDictator » Tue Aug 25, 2015 4:58 pm

I'm glad I came here for some kind of an explanation. The comments on the article were mostly arguments and it didn't help my confusion about what the crapping hell the article was even supposed to be about. I agree he should have made it clearer because initially I thought the film was actually called "No Escape from Hollywood Racism".
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Re: 6 Reasons There's no escape from Hollywood Racism

Postby archaeologydalek » Tue Aug 25, 2015 5:49 pm

REDACTED
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Re: 6 Reasons There's no escape from Hollywood Racism

Postby Cobra-D » Tue Aug 25, 2015 6:31 pm

archaeologydalek wrote:
Cobra-D wrote:
archaeologydalek wrote:I don't like Luke's non-science articles, but...I kinda liked this one. I caught that same trailer last night and started asking the same question ("was that movie solely about foreigners chasing white people?") so it's nice to know that the hivemind is still working. As always, some parts of the article were stronger than others, but the thesis - that this is a really dumbfucking trailer - was strong and not-reaching.


Really? I just thought it was a trailer about a family on a little vacation getting caught up in some revolution or what have you and a father doing whatever he can to get his family to safety. But yeah sure i guess racism.


In your haste to make a witty zinger, you seem to have confused 'plot' with 'theme'. You're correct in that this is the plot, but the way that they portray that plot - through a trailer that doesn't hint at any reason other than 'crazy foreigners' for why they're being chased - is dumb and gives the wrong impression of the movie.

You're attempting to reduce a subjective discussion about race down to an objective "HOHOHO YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE PLOT IS", which is intellectually disingenuous at best. The most racist films in the world have a plot, but that doesn't negate any discussion of their themes.


You really thought my zinger was witty? Awww that's so sweet.

Anyways, the problem is we don't know what the theme is, all we got is a trailer, and from past experience trailers aren't the most accurate depiction of what a movie is about(lookin at you Bridge of Terabithia and Sweeney Todd).

I don't know about you but it seems pretty wrong to judge something on limited information about the thing you're trying to criticize......

I should end with a zinger......Cracked writers mirite?!
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Re: 6 Reasons There's no escape from Hollywood Racism

Postby sunglasses » Tue Aug 25, 2015 6:37 pm

archaeologydalek wrote:The most racist films in the world have a plot, but that doesn't negate any discussion of their themes.


As soon as I read this I thought about film class and The Birth of a Nation. We spoke on the cinematic techniques used in the film and avoided discussion of the plot of the film at all times.
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Re: 6 Reasons There's no escape from Hollywood Racism

Postby DjiboutiDan » Tue Aug 25, 2015 6:39 pm

I keep seeing commercials for this movie and I have no idea what the plot is, or if it even has a plot. Is it a revolution against the government? Is it a revolution against foreigners? Are they targeting the white people or are we just seeing lots of white people because that's who Owen Wilson would be staying/working with?
My one main thought on the movie is that it looks stupid, BUT I will go see it in a second if you tell me that in the scene where he's throwing his daughters between roofs that one of them doesn't make it all the way across. That would be one of the ballsiest moves in cinema history.
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Re: 6 Reasons There's no escape from Hollywood Racism

Postby Cordslash » Tue Aug 25, 2015 7:31 pm

Cobra-D wrote:
I don't know about you but it seems pretty wrong to judge something on limited information about the thing you're trying to criticize......


*Sigh*
This is the internet Cobra. And that's what it does....
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Re: 6 Reasons There's no escape from Hollywood Racism

Postby archaeologydalek » Tue Aug 25, 2015 8:23 pm

REDACTED
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Re: 6 Reasons There's no escape from Hollywood Racism

Postby Taluun » Tue Aug 25, 2015 8:35 pm

We need to install an alarm on the site so it signals when a zinger is made like Gladstone has in his Hate by Numbers videos. Boom no more question of what a good zinger is!!
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Re: 6 Reasons There's no escape from Hollywood Racism

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Tue Aug 25, 2015 8:38 pm

Given the fact that the movie is released TOMORROW, couldn't he have, you know, written the article after actually seeing it?
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Re: 6 Reasons There's no escape from Hollywood Racism

Postby Cordslash » Tue Aug 25, 2015 9:02 pm

archaeologydalek wrote:
Cobra-D wrote:
archaeologydalek wrote:
Cobra-D wrote:
archaeologydalek wrote:I don't like Luke's non-science articles, but...I kinda liked this one. I caught that same trailer last night and started asking the same question ("was that movie solely about foreigners chasing white people?") so it's nice to know that the hivemind is still working. As always, some parts of the article were stronger than others, but the thesis - that this is a really dumbfucking trailer - was strong and not-reaching.


Really? I just thought it was a trailer about a family on a little vacation getting caught up in some revolution or what have you and a father doing whatever he can to get his family to safety. But yeah sure i guess racism.


In your haste to make a witty zinger, you seem to have confused 'plot' with 'theme'. You're correct in that this is the plot, but the way that they portray that plot - through a trailer that doesn't hint at any reason other than 'crazy foreigners' for why they're being chased - is dumb and gives the wrong impression of the movie.

You're attempting to reduce a subjective discussion about race down to an objective "HOHOHO YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE PLOT IS", which is intellectually disingenuous at best. The most racist films in the world have a plot, but that doesn't negate any discussion of their themes.


You really thought my zinger was witty? Awww that's so sweet.

Anyways, the problem is we don't know what the theme is, all we got is a trailer, and from past experience trailers aren't the most accurate depiction of what a movie is about(lookin at you Bridge of Terabithia and Sweeney Todd).

I don't know about you but it seems pretty wrong to judge something on limited information about the thing you're trying to criticize......

I should end with a zinger......Cracked writers mirite?!


I also take it back, you don't know what a zinger is. TCS'ers, am I right?


Emphasis mine.

The vast majority of TCS'ers have always had the utmost respect for Cracked writers.

So low blow there dude.
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