[HerbManic]

What I find funny (only not really) is the wildly different interpretations of this film people have, for many they seem to be primed by other things to see in it what they want.

Basically skeptical of common forms in modernity, that is very clearly the intention. However, I have also seen that in extreme far-right communities this film represents how Jewish people control the world... somehow I don't think that is what Carpenter was going for.

Alas, once your works are in the wild it is out of the creators control in how they end up being used.

[nraynaud]

I have not clicked, but recently I was suggested a video whose title was more or less: “everybody thinks 1984 agrees with them”.

[HerbManic]

I do recommend that one. Jacob Geller could talk for 3 hours about impressionist paintings and I guarantee it would be fascinating.

[JuniperMesos]

> Basically skeptical of common forms in modernity, that is very clearly the intention. However, I have also seen that in extreme far-right communities this film represents how Jewish people control the world... somehow I don't think that is what Carpenter was going for.

Say what you will about claiming that the Jews secretly control the world like the aliens in the 1988 John Carpenter movie They Live, the people making this claim are certainly not obeying, conforming, or refraining from questioning authority.

[cwillu]

They absolutely conform; by what mechanism do you think they all happened to pick the same bundle of labels and beliefs?

[account42]

Of course, choosing to stand up to the man together with those like minded makes you the real conformist. A deep philosophical conundrum for the prepubescent.

[wat10000]

Life got easier once I realized that being contrarian meant you were just as much controlled by other people as being conformist.

[ClikeX]

I remember a conspiracy nut telling me "the truth", saying not to believe what the media told me, and do my own research. And then proceeded to point me to a few conspiracy influencers that were telling him what to think. It was very ironic.

[throw0101c]

> They absolutely conform; by what mechanism do you think they all happened to pick the same bundle of labels and beliefs?

Are you conforming/obeying when you believe the Earth is round? That the sky is blue? Perhaps a bunch of people picking "the same bundle of labels and beliefs" is… simply them recognizing/accepting reality?

[pdonis]

Depends on why you believe those things.

If you believe the Earth is round because someone you view as an authority told you, and you never asked for any reasons or evidence, then yes, you're conforming/obeying.

If you believe the Earth is round because you understand the extremely strong evidence we have for that, then no, you're not conforming/obeying.

> Perhaps a bunch of people picking "the same bundle of labels and beliefs" is… simply them recognizing/accepting reality?

For something like "the sky is blue", sure--we can confirm it by our own observations and us all using the same word to describe the color we see the sky as being.

For something like "the Earth is round", it's more complicated, because it's not obvious just from observation, at least not the kind of observation that ordinary people today are going to be making in their daily lives. But if, for example, you have enough experience on oceangoing ships, you're likely to have made observations that were part of what convinced certain ancient Greeks that the Earth was round. Or if you've observed enough lunar eclipses to see how the shape of the Earth's shadow appears on the Moon. Or if you've observed the Sun's angle above the horizon in the sky at enough different latitudes on the summer or winter solstice. But how many people have made those observations? Or understand what they tell us about the shape of the Earth?

And of course people, even very large numbers of people, can also pick "the same bundle of labels and beliefs" about things that aren't reality. So no, you can't rely on that as an indicator.

[the_af]

I don't think it's the same.

I like to think of these supremacist/racist conspiracy theories as another form of control: in many cases these people are right to be upset, since they see things in the world that are truly unfair, but their anger gets redirected to bizarre beliefs and racism. So it's a way of controlling and channeling their anger to a place where real change becomes impossible, just anger and venting and weird beliefs in secret Jewish/Muslim/Woke/Illuminati cabals running the world.

Real change is hard, and involves compromise and dealing with people with different ideas and goals. Anger against immigrants, or some ethnic or religious group, is easier.

[JuniperMesos]

Immigrants are very often people from different ethnic and religious groups than you, who you have to compromise and deal with because they are present in large numbers in your poltical jurisdiction in a way they were not previously. Being angry at them for creating the conditions under which you have to compromise with them is normal.

[the_af]

It's normal, but misguided to direct your anger at them. It's so normal it's the usual path the frustration is channeled, often with conspiracy theories such as "the replacement" etc.

Compromising and dealing with people is what life's all about, but it's easier to hate than to build consensus and harmony.

And of course, some people exploit these misguided tendencies because they want people not to focus on systemic inequalities that are the root of their problems, and instead blame everything on some other group of people that's different from them. Or because fanning the flames works as a ladder for them.

[feoren]

> Are you conforming/obeying when you believe the Earth is round? That the sky is blue?

No, I am incorporating multiple different lines of evidence from multiple sources, including my eyes, into a framework of knowledge that I am constantly challenging and questioning, and "the Earth is round" and "the sky is blue" have survived those challenges as good first approximations to the truth. Whereas "Jews control the world" has extremely flimsy evidence, strong counter-evidence, doesn't fit with my understanding of the world, and can be traced as a myth/meme to known bad-faith actors. Which, by the way, is all also true for "vaccines cause autism" and "the earth is flat".

Not everything is the same.

[autoexec]

> the people making this claim are certainly not obeying, conforming, or refraining from questioning authority.

In my experience racists tend to just latch on to different authorities to blindly follow and obedience and conformity are even more strongly enforced. I've had long discussions with racists over the "rebel" identity they see in the confederate flag who shortly after demonstrated incredible amounts of boot-licking when it came to police. Most of the racists I've meet were very dedicated to hierarchies, a select set of social norms, old-fashioned gender roles, etc. and conformance was absolutely seen as mandatory.

[cwillu]

But it's not The Federal Authorities™, so they don't think it counts as conformity.

[kridsdale1]

Until it’s ICE boots to be licked.

[pjc50]

"Say what you want about the tenets of national socialism, at least it's an ethos" -- The Big Lebowski, another influential film to many people.

[subroutine]

And let's also not forget that keeping wildlife, an amphibious rodent, within the city isn't legal either.

[JuniperMesos]

I like The Big Lebowski, it has some fun lines, but John Goodman's Walter Sobchak doesn't have a monopoly on the English phrase "Say what you will about X".

And indeed apparently the line was in fact "say what you want about the tenets of national socialism", not "say what you will about the tenets of national socialism" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_29yvYpf4w).

[pjc50]

The second half of the line was also relevant, since the claim of Jews controlling the world was specifically a Nazi one.

[ZeroGravitas]

That actually traces back further to, appositley, the White Russians and their Protocols of Zion to smear democracy as a Jewish plot.

From there it spread to Henry Ford, Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler amongst others.

[kridsdale1]

Is that why Lebowski drinks White Russians exclusively?

[MSFT_Edging]

> somehow I don't think that is what Carpenter was going for.

Same deal with the Starship Troopers movie. When Helldivers first came out, it was really incredible to see how many people truly didn't get the irony.

[the_af]

> Starship Troopers movie

This movie is so misunderstood. It's basically disliked by Heinlein fans who took offense, and by people unfamiliar with both Heinlein and Verhoeven who thought it was actually Beverly Hills + Space Fascism without irony.

I like it for what it does, but I'm more of a fan of Robocop.

[PaulHoule]

Unfortunately most Heinlein classics like Door into Summer or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress can't be adapted visually for various reasons.

[the_af]

I admit to my shame I've never read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (I know, I know) but I have read Door into Summer and I think it could be easily adapted. I mean, they adapted All You Zombies and that was truly a challenge visually (for reasons I won't spoil here). In comparison, Door is a more straightforward time-loop + betrayal story of the kind that can be adapted to the big screen...

Edit: unless you're referring to an icky age-related situation, but that could be fixed in the movie adaptation to make it less icky.

Edit 2: wow, and it was made into a movie... by the Japanese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Door_into_Summer_(film)

[Der_Einzige]

Heinlein meant the book literally and not as a farse or satire.

[the_af]

Yes, that's what I'm meant, I just worded it ambiguously. Let me make it more explicit:

The movie was disliked by:

- Fans of Heinlein, who took offense at what they thought was a mocking and misunderstanding of the source material.

- People unfamiliar with Heinlein, and also with Verhoeven, who failed to understand the movie was satirical and thought it was actually endorsing a weird mix of Beverly Hills 9210 and fascism.

In case you wonder, I have read Heinlein (not just Starship Troopers) and know what he meant. I also appreciate Verhoeven!

[robot-wrangler]

It's interesting right? Now there's too much distrust of authority and also not enough. Even the word "skeptic" is sometimes used to refer to people who "do their own research" and doggedly latch on to wild conspiracy theories.

Avoiding groupthink is another slightly different positive spin on (my read of) the underlying message. There's such a thing as toxic individualism too, but if there's a "bad" way to be a free-thinker then you could say it usually has a pretty limited blast radius for society in general and it isn't a contagious kind of madness either

[pjc50]

So.. a lot of this is "negative polarisation" combined with "exactly wrong". People see something bad happening, or come to distrust a piece of mainstream belief/reporting when it gets caught in a contradiction or turns out on subsequent evidence to be wrong. That is the healthy side of skepticism.

The problem comes in this causing people to do one or both of:

- immediately flip to believing the direct opposite, without evidence that's true either (most things are not excluded-middle)

- immediately imprint on the first non-mainstream source they find and start treating it as gospel

> but if there's a "bad" way to be a free-thinker then you could say it usually has a pretty limited blast radius for society in general and it isn't a contagious kind of madness either

It absolutely can be contagious. Sometimes that's for the good, sometimes bad, quite often the mixed result of getting to the right place only after a fraught disruptive time. Martin Luther, originator of the listicle, was correct in a lot of the theses but also started the domino chain for some of the most lethal wars in Europe. VI Lenin was right about the problems and wrong about the solutions. And so on.

[keybored]

The system isn’t static. Anti-authority is not countered by authority, or the same kind of authority. It’s countered by co-opting anti-authority.

[qsera]

>wild conspiracy theories.

Do you know the difference between a conspiracy "nut", and a rational person?

For a "conspiracy nut", understanding that there is sufficient incentive (also implies a lack of deterrent) for X to do Y is proof enough that X is doing Y.

For a "mainstream" person, that is not enough. They require real, solid proof to consider that X is doing Y.

Note that this is about deciding their own behavior, and not about handing capital punishment for X.

I ll let you decide who is smarter...

[robot-wrangler]

Not sure you can purely talk about "is the motivation likely?" and end up with qanon stuff. This leaves out motivated reasoning coming from the rube, plus a bunch of other things like narratives that are sufficiently fun / scandalous /surprising

[M95D]

A "mainstream" person can also consider past evidence of A, B and C doing Y and assume that X is doing Y too without any evidence about Y.

[jjcob]

"Mainstream" people will also look at past evidence that A, B and C did Y, and say something like "that was N years ago, surely nobody would do this today".

[latexr]

> Do you know the difference between a conspiracy "nut", and a rational person?

The former is trivially manipulated, can be made to believe anything by appealing to their inherent obvious biases, and will double down on their beliefs even when presented with irrefutable proof to the contrary. The latter can detect false dichotomies, understands answers are often nuanced instead of black and white, and is capable of changing their mind when new evidence comes to light.

[qsera]

Yes, these categories are sometimes simply separated by what they considers as "irrefutable proof".

[latexr]

See “The Final Experiment”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Experiment_(expediti...

In particular the “Reactions” section.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Experiment_(expediti...

You’ll find this bit:

> Alabama pastor Dean Odle suggested that Satan created a fireball to act as a false Sun.

That is cuckoo cuckoo bananas to a point only “conspiracy nut” applies.

[throw0101c]

See perhaps René Descartes:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon

[secretsatan]

Looking at conspiracy nuts joining ice and gleefully celebrating unidentified armed goons abducting people, i think they more likely think, well, i would do y, so they must be doing it against me.

[aa-jv]

The difference is that one follows the collective/reactive order of things, and the other doesn't.

"Everyone knows" is the greatest conspiracy of all. Its quite possible to be a 'nut' simply by referring to what "everyone knows" ... this is a thought-stopping meme designed to end challenge to authority, since "everyone" is the ultimate authority.

[Nasrudith]

Meanwhile I've personally found myself completely unable to take it seriously due to the subliminal messages being "marry and reproduce" and "consume". Like people need sinister brainwashing to fall in love, have sex, or engage in hedonistic consumption. These are base biological urges that have existed regardless of societal economy for millennia! By casting it as something from a sinister conspiracy it makes the creator come across as someone completely insane from being so swallowed by their ideology. The sheer ridiculousness of it it brings to mind the "Mortal Engines" series and its incredibly dumb basic premise and the critical panning that it received. The lesson being, that just because something is an allegory or metaphor doesn't prevent it from being so incredibly stupid that it completely derails the message it is trying to send. Imagine if the billboards instead said.

I recognize that this is certainly a minority view given how influential the film is. But I just plain cannot unsee it, like a Lovecraftian revelation and that ruins it for me from the start. Short of thinking Jodie Foster is talking to you through screens, it is very hard to look like an outright unhinged anti-Reaganist given the many legitimate things to object to about the man and his policies. Even if you agree with some of it, you can easily see where others would reasonably disagree. But this 'basic urges are part of a sinister conspiracy' sort of message? This managed to do it.

[aa-jv]

Yes, thats the point of the movie - human beings' most banal desires can be and are weaponized against them.

That you reject the entire premise of the movie because you can't "get over" this particular aspect, just means you've got your own loaded revolver in your pocket.

[MagicMoonlight]

If it was a basic biological function then the marketing department wouldn’t exist.

[autoexec]

Consumption and love/sex are things we tend to do naturally, but marketing just ramps it up to a level we probably wouldn't reach if we weren't forced or manipulated into it. Just about anybody can fall in love, but marketing can pressure you into thinking that not falling in love and being with someone means you've failed at life and marketing can fill with you anxiety if you aren't in love, or haven't had sex, or you've had sex too early, or not early enough, or not often enough, etc. Naturally they've got all kinds of things to sell you to help.

[JuniperMesos]

Of all the phenomena in modern life a person might have anxiety about, the kinds of sex they are having (or not having) seem like the thing most relatable to their hunter-gatherer ancestors tens of thousands of years ago, long before the invention of marketing.

[onemoresoop]

> Meanwhile I've personally found myself completely unable to take it seriously due to the subliminal messages being "marry and reproduce" and "consume". Like people need sinister brainwashing to fall in love, have sex, or engage in hedonistic consumption.

I thought the billboards and other displays were not subliminal but only viewed by the aliens and the sunglasses could see through that.

[havblue]

I thought the billboard was more ironic: lots of people thought we were facing a population bomb at the time and now we're on the other side of the spectrum seeing a population collapse. For me just seeing something that I don't agree with doesn't automatically ruin my enjoyment.

[projektfu]

To be fair it was a mediocre film, definitely not one of Carpenters best, and is memorable mainly for the visual imagery of the billboards.

But don't mind me, I'm here to chew bubblegum and comment, and I'm all out of bubblegum.

[tokenburner]

> marry and reproduce

I left that out deliberately, as I think they are a good thing

Yes, I am aware of the irony of trying to manipulate people via messages

[dfxm12]

When you're already promoting baseless conspiracy theories, what's a little more acting in bad faith?

[huijzer]

> extreme far-right communities

Extreme libertarian seems a more apt description for those groups since they severely distrust government often also criticizing Trump and Netanyahu for example.

[aa-jv]

You don't have to belong to any particular in-group, except maybe humanity itself, to want to protect the human rights of people living outside ones' own nation/cultural identity. In fact, its kind of essential to the survival of the species to do so.

This stereotyping you're doing is itself a manifestation of the very problem you're attempting to describe, which is that authorities murder with impunity, while we individuals can only organize among ourselves to address their crimes if - you know - we kind of get along.

Which is less likely to occur if you label everyone who has a concern for human rights violations, an "extreme libertarian" or "far-right". Maybe you're right that 'only extreme libertarians question the actions of Trump and Netanyahu', but then again, maybe you don't care about human rights as much as you should - quickly - before your own human rights (to live) are put in peril by the war criminals you allow to rule you ..

The corollary to your position is akin to this: "if you don't resist the war crimes and crimes against humanity that Trump and Netanyahu are committing - perhaps you agree with those crimes, and, therefore stereotyping you as a 'Trump'- or 'Netanyahu'-aligned type of person allows your position and indeed entire identity to be rejected, outright..."

So, what'll it be? Shall we, human rights-concerned individuals, stereotype you? What are your political afflictions, just so .. you know .. they can be instantly rejected or discounted as invalid since you are a member of 'that filthy group over there', who seem to think that authorities should have impunity to murder ... ?

[secretsatan]

A lot of them are very concerned about restricting the rights of others

[huijzer]

Source?

[secretsatan]

Source?

[ClikeX]

To be fair, some people will always default back to "the Jews" any opportunity they get. That's not specific to this movie.