What do you think explains the current state of the entertainment industry? Is it adapted postmodernism or something else?

If postmodernists treat villains as sympathetic and morality as subjective, you'd think they'd be more sympathetic to different political ideologies. but no the one moral binary they'll accept is a political one.

Thanks for mentioning Kung Fu Panda. You can make villains three-dimensional and relatable without excusing their actions.

In a lot of ways postmodernism become the thing postmodernism was trying to criticize.

"Victims with power" sounds like my anthropology classes with my professors lacking the self awareness to admit it.

"... spectacle without substance can only work once .." Basically the whole career of J. J. Abrams is built in this fallacy (the mystery box). Thank you for the video.

I hear the point about power being everything to them, and the first thing that comes to mind is how villainous a mindset that really is. Lord Voldemort, stated in the series he stems from by himself and others as "going beyond the pale" in what makes a Dark wizard, sees everything in terms of power. "There is only power and those too weak to seek it." The point about all the diversity swaps certainly isn't a new one, but I like that you reaffirm how you see it each time you bring it up. Because you certainly could take the easy way out and just shit on it like so many others do, but you take the time and explain just why it's such a blight on our current entertainment, and even how it could be improved. Another great video, Greg.

Don't have time to watch this yet, but it feels like it would be 40 minutes of perfectly articulating why I would never ever watch another Rian Johnson movie

As an academic in the humanities, let me just say that you did a great job of explaining Hollywood postmodernism for a 'popular audience' (that's the polite term we use for the benighted plebs who don't have the JSTOR subscription necessary to read our stuff). I've likened deconstruction to dissection: Both of them are great tools to strip away the visible in order to see the underlying structures at work (social for one, biological for the other), but neither one is an end in itself. Too much deconstruction becomes indistinguishable from just wanton destruction, which is what we're seeing now. Ultimately, if our entertainment industry has thrown out even the idea of values to embrace raw nihilism (Nietzsche called it!), than there is no reason as an audience to put in the emotional investment required to suspend our disbelief in their fictional narratives. If nothing matters and everything is pointless other than the pursuit of power (to be utilized for hedonism, once obtained), what reason do we have to care about the characters and their motivations?

Greg, this is one of the best videos you have ever done. My 17 year old son is a senior in high school and taking a film as literature class. He is not a fan of reading or movies, it’s only a required English credit to him. But I had him watch the first few minutes…and this helped him tremendously when it came to understanding the material. Thanks Professor Greg!

Postmodernism is like someone taking apart a clock to see how it works. Inside they find no physical time inside the clock making it work. They conclude that time is just a social construct, does not exist, and is therefore a bad thing. They then apply it by showing up late for work all the time.

I love the Ken movie how Ken found that he didn’t have to take Barbie’s rudeness and uncaring attitude towards him and grab the power for himself

I really like that instead of bashing “wokeness” in the same generic way I have heard from others before, you put effort into analysis. I actually learned a bit about postmodernism, both real and Hollywood version.

Encanto shows how people can sympathize with a character, identify with them, and not realize they're useless. That strong woman everyone was obsessed with last year? I was so let down when I realized she just had the song and no arc.

My issue with modern remakes: Bad faith deconstruction of old media, done without an adequate desire to understand or respect it, can only lead to the remakes being empty shells lacking heart and any real message. They take out the heart of what made those films great because they willfully misunderstand them. Universal truths are universal because they are real and everyone has experienced them. In the era of 'there is no truth, only MY truth' fewer and fewer people are able to connect and connect deeply.

You nailed it. I teach my screenwriting students about this too, in an attempt to get them to reject “old” postmodern tropes and identitarian ideals and embrace new ways of telling stories by first reconnecting to the modern and traditional ways. To embrace Metemodern concepts, and bring us to the future by reconnecting to the past. I tell them it’s not their job to be activists and make propaganda to raise awareness and change the world. It’s their job to reflect the world and discover themselves in the process, and to connect with their audiences through beautifully flawed characters who experience change and philosophical dilemma. Anyway, just discovered your videos and enjoying them immensely! Keep it up!

Ironically, I don't imagine Postmodern Hollywood and Karl Marx would get along. Hollywood: "Check this out Karl! We have racial and gender diversity, and we criticize the establishment!" Marx: "Okay, but why are there writers and actors striking outside?" Hollywood: "Pay no attention to them!"

Critical theory deserves a lion's share of the blame for how younger writers approach older material. They've been programmed to see everything through that lens, so anything they spew back out goes through the same with elements shoehorned in to check those boxes that they feel makes "real writing".

The "everyone's the hero of their own story" idea is the one I hate the most. No, villains are villains. Not only are such villains more interesting, they are more realistic. There are genuinely bad people out there who have no friggin' excuse. Quite often they are rewarded for this quality. Leonard Peltier is someone who's been held up as a victim for half a century, but he was a career criminal who roped people into schemes and killed people, just like Charles Manson. A lot of young people are going to get hoodwinked by monsters like that because they can't recognize genuine evil.

The whole sympathetic villains thing is especially funny because when they try to make one they fail, but when they try to make an actually evil villain they end up being totally reasonable or even heroic. I'm told King Magnifico from Wish and John Walker from Falcon and the Winter Soldier are good examples.

My criticism of saying that something is invalid because it's a construct or arbitrary is that if I take the premise as valid, then my opinions are just as valid or invalid as theirs. Therefore, I have no reason to accept their criticisms, and if they try to argue me into their position, they're abandoning their base premise and conceding the argument.

I totally agree with the simulacrum-of-a-simulacrum thing. I'm a bit confused how the doesn't-say-anything thing matches up with the power-must-be-seized thing. That seem contradictory, so I'm assuming I'm missing something. I think Hollywood's problem is that they are completely out-of-touch, like the big rich white guys in their movies. Since they no longer have their fingers on the pulse of the viewing audience, retain only a greatly weakened (and weakening) ability to push popularity, and yet still must make a profit to continue production, it's natural that they would see the culprit in capitalism, the one big piece of the chain they have the least ability to change. I can't help but think this grows from a sense that they didn't earn their success, but rather it was bestowed upon them by a fickle Kismet, and thus self-reflection can only result in horror and despair. But I'[m probably overthinking things.

one of the most underrated channel on KZfaq. Excellent breakdown from a cinematic perspective! We hear a lot of complain about the wokism but its really interesting to hear different reason why movie sucks now. I heard once that movie director back then had a life, in the sense that they had different life experience before being diector. Its probably whats missing today with this generation. Most of us, simply consume lots of content online instead of having genuine life experience. The only thing I didnt fully comprehend is the difference between Tai lung's kung fu panda and Killmonger. As far as I am concerned they were both vilain that the audience both understood the motivation at the end without justifying their action IMO. That being said how could have Killmonger been rewritten in a way that his actions arent justify(as you are arguing)

I never noticed this before, as I only have a surface level knowledge concerning most philosophical schools, but I have a serious clash internally between the post-modernism values that society raised me with and traditional Christian values that my family raised me with and that I myself try to seek. It makes sense given the world I grew up and live in, but this video really helped bring those into the light. It's nice actually being able to see and understand (to a degree at least) the internal dissonance, so thanks for shining a light on that! It also answered and addressed a lot of the questions and themes I've been working with as I've been constructing a world and writing within it. I was struggling with a lot of creative dissonance, and it makes sense now that I can more easily recognize the post-modern themes clashing with my other traditional and Christian ones.

Great video, however I don’t think it’s always that deep with films/showrunners. The producer wants to make a movie or show that will make money by banking on “ideas” that are trending in the media that will draw a profitable audience. However, by the time the movie/show has finished production, marketing, and released into theaters or on (insert streaming service here), said messaging or trend is out of style or focused on such a niche audience it flops. Velma, Wheel of Time, Rings of Power, Cuties, Cruella, Witcher: Blood Origin, etc, are just a filmmaker shooting for a massive cash grab hiding behind the idea of philosophical messaging

Syndrome from the Incredibles was another great example of a sympathetic yet effective villain. His motivations made sense and the audience could sympathize with why he was resentful towards Mr. Incredible and superheroes in general, but he was still evil nonetheless and needed to be stopped at all cost. There comes a certain point where an antagonist becomes irredeemable, despite them being sympathetic or not.

I'll disagree about "Encanto", I love the message. It's a societal taboo, "Grandma is always right!", nobody is always right. I became a family hero when I successfully explained why adding cheese cost a dollar to my MiL. It has nothing to do with the cost of cheese. She stopped complaining when We went to restaurants and just enjoyed the time with her family. Sometimes old people are the problem, and sometimes you need to stand up to them. We don't live in the Great Depression, We don't need to live like it forever.

The complicated thing is that, to some extent, the underlying post-modern elevator pitches are often quite good, across the board really. The issue with modernism is that it can often lose itself in search of the "ideal", a painter who just tries to make the "best" painting will never make a good painting because they just aren't trying to; it's not about making something, it's about making what you percieve as the best of that thing. You don't have something to say, you just want to have made something. But, in order to actually make something good, you *_need_* something to say, so the search for idealism can deny even basic adequecy. Plenty of politics have this issue, plenty of people have this issue with their purchasing decisions, hell even plenty of scientific fields ( even including the hard sciences ) similarly have this sort of issue where they desperately chase down answers that they either start reading into data way more than they reasonably can, often ignoring far more obvious and far more accurate answers. (my best analogy here is; imagine if physists, despite knowing entropy rising is a basic rule of the universe, spent years and years arguing in scientific papers about what legislation could be passed in order to reduce it. If anyone involved just said "wait, entropy is a constant fact of reality, we can't stop it, why are we arguing about the best way to stop it?" the entire conversation stops because the entire argument is built on a fundamentally broken premise.) I've seen examples of this everywhere from computer science - the halting problem proves nothing except an infinitely complex problem could take upto an infinite amount of time to compute on an infinitely complex computer - to math - if 0.9999999 repeating is directly equivilent to 1 and isn't just a flaw in our decimal numeral system the entire concept of limits underlying all of calculus are broken as the entire point of a limit is that infinite approach does not imply equality - to economics - I once saw a lecture of a professor rehearsing for their paper which looked into whether or not government scholarships/grants lead to an overall increase in amount paid or not (i.e. "will colleges raise their prices more than the grants?") by correlating the price of colleges with, exclusively, the availability of grants... yeah they just forgot student loans existed. They assumed in their premise that only grants existed, and found that the cost of college went down as more grants were offered, because *_obviously that's what happens, you're completely ignoring subsidized and unsubsidized student loans, which is what the majority of students are actually getting and the majority of what's being offered_* . Post modernism, as a vague concept, makes sense, it's a rejection of this unending search that often leaves people just treading water in mediocrity rather than actually getting much of anywhere at all. However, it's gone well beyond "take a step back, actually think about this, are you reading into things that aren't there?" and gone all the way to "nope everything is fake, your fake, the world is fake, it's all fake!". The issue with modernism is that it thinks it can perfectly define everything, often leading to it failing to adequetly describe much of anything. The issue with post modernism on the other hand is that it thinks nothing can be defined, so it just makes shit up and screeches at you for not agreeing the flubendorfs are zenajors. There is a difference between awknowledging the difficulties of defining things, and keeping that in mind while searching for the truth so that you're zeal in searching doesn't prevent you from finding anything at all, and saying "we can't define anything at all ever to any extent; feels *_are_* reals"

My philosophical thoughts are "This sucks. I miss the 80s."

Oh there are sooo many problems with current Hollywood. Here are a few: 1: Complex villain =/='Sympathetic villain' (see the video by 'The Closer Look'), or this trope done WELL - read the 'Licanius' trilogy. 2: Chasing trends without understanding WHY they are popular - see superhero fatigue, extended universes etc. But none more obvious than The Hollywood Fantasy Obsession (how many times did you see the phrase 'the next game of thrones' attached to different productions?) 3: Lack of mid-budget movies / no creative risk taking. The only productions that get greenlit are things the businesspeople executives think will make money - so you end up with runaway costs and creatives forced to work on productions they aren't inspired by (obviously not helped by hiring people who disdain the source material / genre etc) Also r.e. 'stories' I really like the conclusion Robert Charles Wilson draws in 'Owning the Unknown' which is essentially 'stories allow us to explore ideas we would not otherwise have the words for'. R.E. 'good' representation see 'Blue Remembered Earth', or 'Temeraire', or 'The no.1 ladies detective agency'. These are all stories that DID SOMETHING with their non-western settings.

We have no more heroes, because everything is written by villains.

I wasn't sure I'd watch all the way through, but this really caught me. You did a great job with this. I really don't know enough or care enough about the subject to try to offer an opinion. I just wanted to give you a "Job well done". Rivaled some of the more interesting documentaries I've watched in terms of holding my interest. Your videos are getting better. Welcome back from vacation by the way. And you are right, I do need an ibuprofen for my lower back... Witchcraft.

Blair witch wasn't the first found footage film to be thought real, the McPherson tape and cannibal holocaust both were believed real by many audience members. Blair witch just brought it to the masses. I still believe however that Blair witch is scary because the line between what is performance by the actors and what is a true fearful reaction is hard to find. So many times, in the film they were actually afraid making the footage still feel scary, at least to me. It's a bit like when Chris Pratt dropped the orb holding the power stone, it was a real goof but it worked with the tone and character.

People liked Killmonger because we had quite a few very poor MCU villains and he at least had some depth (a kiddie pool is still deeper than puddle). Thanos will always be an incredible villain as he was given an actual character background. Now I must weep for the next "re-invention" of live action Dr. Doom.

This video is a good explanation of why so much of modern entertainment seems to have nothing to say other than, "I'm writing the stories now, Daaaaaaad!"

The greatest trick the Devil ever played was to convince mankind that he didn't exist.

You know what’s a great movie featuring the stories of black women: hidden figures. It talks about great things a group of them did, and highlights racial issues (for example here, segregation), without villainizing others while also lifting up the main characters and featuring their accomplishments.

This was a really good and insightful video on this topic and I think you nailed down the concept of what I was trying to understand about why modern Hollywood is so terrible. It’s all flashy style with no substance or meaning essentially. As an aspiring writer myself I hope I can surpass these outdated beliefs and make something fun and interesting.

If you have to be a victim to have power, does that mean all villains in modern media have sympathetic backgrounds that we're turning a blind eye to? Because the most destructive villains are the ones in power, and by that logic, they'd all have to be victims in some way. Woah, I'm getting Big Jack Horner flashbacks.

It’s kinda like the way Mexico and South American countries protest for open boarders in the US, but don’t have open boarders themselves

I guess we'll just casually ignore Alice in Chains and Soundgarden. I always knew you were racist. Somehow, this confirms it. So, jokes aside, this was a great video. I think you do a great job of going into depth enough to understand the point(s) you're making and, more specifically, the supporting ideas, philosophies, etc. rather than assuming your audience knows and understands everything you're referencing as well as you do. Great stuff. Also, was that DC Talk?

If these people in Hollywood had any ounce of creativity then they’d use original stories to get across the ideas they wished to convey but instead they show how lazy and intellectually bankrupt they are when they need to coast on already famous IPs to do the heavy lifting for them.

As a life long Nirvana fan, I don't know if we can be friends anymore...

Funny enough, this makes me think of an interesting arc in the later chapters of One Piece. SPOILERS BELOW.... So the straw hats go to the land of the fishmen where they come into conflict with an anarchist group that view arlong as a hero of sorts and despise humans with a venomous passion. HOWEVER, none of these fishmen have ever even encountered humans before, so their only point of reference is the stories arlong and other fishmen told them of how humans oppressed them and are evil. What we're left with is a generation of fishmen that actively hate and want to kill all humans only based on things that OTHERS HAVE TOLD THEM, and not because they actually experienced it themselves! It's actually kind of scary how much this reflects different facets of reality today!

I dunno, I watched Encanto blind and I thought it was interesting? As someone who grew up in a large family with a lot of familial expectations placed on me, I found the conflict to be very easy to follow and the movie to be quite powerful and touching. You don't always need a villain to have a conflict. The main issue with Encanto was the pacing and the fact that it felt rushed through its ideas. Also, can't agree with your idea that spectacle without substance only works once. If that were the case, then videogames and anime wouldn't be a bigger art form than cinema and comics in the current day and age. Not saying that these mediums can't have substance, because they do, but both absolutely thrive on making spectacle the substance in a lot of instances. You cannot seriously tell me that FLCL has a lot of substance beyond some very vague ideal of 'adulthood is confusing!' as its core message and yet the spectacle alone made it well worth watching several times through because it was just so visually striking at times. Similarly, Demon Slayer resonates with a lot of people because of the flashy animation, even though the story is basic af.

At this point, when a movie doesn't try to subvert things, it actually subverts my expectations

Absolutely fantastic essay Greg! Loved it. Especially your edits as they are varied and so on point (my favourite for this vid was Mel Brooks "It's good to be the King"). I don't always agree with everything you say, but I do thoroughly enjoy your content and you certainly deserve more subscribers. Keep up the awesome work, and I'll see you next time!

This essay was sublime...thoughtful, entertaining, and actually added something of value to the topic...nicely done!

I wish this was only about our fictional media writers. One of the worst problems we face in this age is that our journalists are afflicted with the same hyperreality problem, their ability to report on factual reality being completely disabled, because they need to fit everything through the fictional reality lens they were brought up with.

Your intellectual perspective on the movie industry is refreshing. It’s not done out of anger, but clarity. Thanks, and keep up the good work.

This was amazing! You perfectly articulated thoughts I've been trying to express when having discussions around this. Especially the part about media and simulacrum... I've been trying to explain that as something I saw happening in art and media, but didn't know that this is already an idea that has been written about, so thank you!

The irony of the simulacra is the Matrix was made as a way to demonstrate the simulation/simulacra/hyperreality/matrix concept (the Wachowskis actually made the cast read the book before seeing the script). When Baudrillard saw the movie he said “The matrix is the type of movie the matrix would make about itself”

This video essay was incredible - I remember when my professor talked about modernism and post-modernism, and, nothing against my professor, you succinctly got to the heart of the issue (the only thing I believe my literature professor would add is the idea that for the people experiencing the period crossing over from the modern to the post-modern, there was a belief that the modern had already reached that apotheosis of purpose, and in so doing, had to be torn down for the sake of creating anything new) Anyway, again, incredible essay, I'll be saving the youtube address in my notes, I feel like I'll have cause to re-watch it again in the future. And as a side note, thanks for the Psych "I've heard it both ways" shout out, I love Psych

The arrogance of many of these writers also doesn’t do their art any favors. Just as psychology shows one of the reasons children play pretend is a form of coping and being able to wrestle with problems by literally stepping outside themselves, so too has art and literature been a way for artists to explore ideas and deal with their struggles and share them with others in a unique way beyond directly telling the viewer, a way of learning about someone without actually learning literal facts about a person. In this way, art becomes a dialogue between two people as both the artist and the viewer are challenged by the art. The garbage currently being peddled by Hollywood is a one-way conversation from artist to viewer, hence the countless complaints about Hollywood preaching to them. In the minds of these “victim artists”, they already know everything and are already the heroes of their story. Great artists make art that poses questions. Hack artists make art that spoils answers. Great video. Just discovered you today. Subbed.

31:50 People are obviously joking when they say that Thanos and Ultron were right...but the fact that there were people who HONESTLY believed that Killmonger was right disturbs me to this day. It just reveals all the pain thats hidden amongst African Americans when they are constantly told they can't beat what's supposedly holding them down Killmonger slaughtered and threatened his own so called "people" to get them to be his attack dogs for his own selfish agenda. Not to mention BURNT an ancient signficant part of his so called "culture" to the ground. The fact people wanted him to replace Tchalla after Chadwick's unfortunate passing is telling. There was NO redeeming that man. As bland and nonsensical as Shuri was as a replacement for Tchalla, given her MCU characterization being nothing like the og comics...I still take her ANY day over Killmonger

Dang, you brought me back to my seminary days. Good stuff!

Post-modernism is a lesson in how defining your beliefs as AGAINST something instead of FOR something goes nowhere no matter how much you thought about it or how technically correct your analysis is.

Excellent video & explanations! Thank you for taking the time to thoughtfully explain these issues!

This is the best video on postmodernism ive ever watched. Easy to digest for those of us who took STEM and lack the vocabulary to express our feelings on the whole debacle. Thabks

I want to thank you so much for doing these videos. My late fiancé (who was a Philosophy major) and I (an English major) would spend hours debating topics like this. He would’ve had a field day listening to your talking points and debating with me, asking me “What do you think about this?” For an hour or two…it’s like I have him back. Thank you so much.

To be fair: 'A film with a soundtrack so amazing, you dont care if the story is any good' is ALSO a perfect description of Rocky Horror. And I love that movie

You should incorporate meta-modernism into your thought as well. It might change your praise of Across the Spiderverse. I did a video on this topic called - Why You Hate Multiverse Stories, and Why You Will See More & More of Them.

I had a perfectly timed KZfaq advert right in the beginning of the She-Hulk segment, "the villain is"-KZfaq. Great stuff Mr. Owen.

I came for the thumbnail, I stayed for the smartness.

“Water that’s lying about being milk” 😂😂 I can’t have milk without my stomach having problems, Does that mean I’m less of a man?

Great video, Greg: you have a real knack for putting quite complex ideas clearly and with showmanship. Not saying I agree with everything, but if we were down the pub, it would be a basis for a good discussion.

This is becoming my new favorite channel Ive listened to other channels say the same thing but this sounds less bias and sensational. The Tiny Toons comment hit different since i did watch that episode AND am currently taking ibuprofen for my lower back pain 😢😅

To quote the band Slipknot, “Old does mean dead, new does not mean best.”

Thanks, for saying what I haven't been able to put together

I once criticized Netflix for allowing Cuties to be put up on their site and was told "How do you know it is bad without watching it?" and my responce was simple "If the premise alone of young girls dancing suggestively isn't enough to turn you off to it, perhaps you have a deeper problem." And with the retort of "Actually, it was critcizing it! They didn't want to dress all skimpy and dance suggestively, but they had to because they were poor!" And I said "But they made children dress all skimpy and dance suggestively to illustrate that point?" To which I was blocked. Now, okay... This was on Reddit. I'm sorry, I have since prayed to be absolved of such a sin. No, but really, Reddit is a great place for niche interests... It is just also prone to creating toxic as hell echoe chambers that thrive on strawmanning and yesmanning. I have quit but the loss of the only community that talked about my favorite TTRPG has been felt. But at a certain point it just wasn't worth the hassle of wading through whatever garbage it rocemmended I see just to see what I wanted... And also I kind of realized living in a virtual space which just steeped what I wanted to see isn't that healthy either. I could have let this pass and maybe you thought I was on Twitter or something... But honestly the guilt is just too much to omit. This is last paragraph is mostly a joke and not a cry for help, lol.

34:10 Encanto is Cats. Each character comes out and introduces themselves with a fun song and dance and we have a good time and, wait is somebody dying or being abducted by aliens or… no, never mind Memories is playing and I vibe. The Cats remake made the mistake of trying to add a plot and villain to it. Likewise, Encantos strength is the characters themselves, not the “plot” of the house falling apart. I think Encanto and Cats could both be considered postmodern successes, if having no villains or plot is postmodern.

I'm absolutely addicted to your channel, because I find that most sites talking about what you're talking about don't break things down in a constructive way. It's always, "here's the problem" for click bait, but never offer a meaningful analysis and most importantly, a resolution or way out. Although, I do think your channel could take off if you "youtuberized"... Maybe hire a team member or two, or do your own investigation on how to look more uh, professional or something. Idk, get rid of the old furniture and curtains in the background, use intro clips and stuff, and I bet your channel would grow quicker. Maybe not, idk.

once again, I find that not only do I agree with your conclusions but also that you have put words to thoughts I have had for a while but could not as succinctly articulate. Thank you please keep up the great content.

Absolutely love your videos. Your incredibly interesting to watch and listen too even though you seem to only review I’m pretty sure a book from you would be a banger I’d love to read do hope you make one. You should look into it with your knowledge on literature and human themes. Also thanks Your videos make understanding poems real easy some how. No clue why though😅

The Falcon made a name for himself as a Super Hero. I don't think he would want to take over another man's identity at the expense of his own.

34:50 I have a single objection - Discworld can indeed translate well to screen, if you’ve got terrific actors and a tight script. There’s a series of great movies and a mini-series that cover several of the books, from Hogfather to Colour of Magic. It also has Tim Curry, just to sweeten the pot lol

This is a great video. Thank you for making this, hope more people see this and try to learn about why are we even here in the first place

This video is pure education. Hope it gets the audience it deserves.

Really enjoyed this video, thanks !

Post-modernism has become so boring to me at this point. One piece was a lovely return to the ideals of modernism in art. The world was a wacky but inspiring story of following dreams

This upload should be part of school curriculums. Excellent work.

I feel I just took a graduate course in post-modernism. Very impressive analysis but a lot of it over my head. 🙂

I am glad that I can now confidently tick up my counter of "People who know the absolute bops of D.C. Talk" to two

I came across a criticism of Forrest Gump, saying it hadn’t aged well. It’s complaint was that it made Jenny look like a bad person when she was in fact just a victim. Part of what I loved about Forrest Gump was how it showed that trauma can lead to self-destructive behavior, and that behavior can hurt people around you And it can destroy you if you don’t get it under control. But it’s not OK to say that when there are no wrong decisions anymore.

I'm glad you point out what's left from Postmodernism's rubble isn't equality, but a power grab, the villain as hero. Postmodernism thereby subverts its pretense of morality in goodness (a Christian idea) for no ideals, except not coincidentally, Marxism, a politics of misplaced vengeance. If Postmodernists do not act out of goodness (or belief in God), their power hungry immorality (or amorality) is itself a confession that they deserve what they claim to have: no privilege at all.

I really think 2D animation & practical effects did wonder's for creative storytelling. We used to have such well made stories & animation. We had creative ways to show expressions, emotions, give the audience feelings without overly explaining it. I really miss it all. So much now is just bland green screen CGI disconnected hollow movie's/TV shows. *(If you would have told kid me back in the early 90s that most animation in media would basically disappear. I wouldn't have believed you and gone back to watching X-Men the animated series. That was just 1 of many animated shows that was so well crafted. The story of mutants was so universally relatable. Media abstractly taught me life lessons, touched on difficult situations, found intelligent ways to tell stories. So much so that when I've gone back & rewatched them as a adult. I realized how well they told & crafted stories that anyone can enjoy & appreciate them no matter what age they are. Great examples are (Pretty much anything created by Don Bluth or Written by Roald Dahl) The Brave little toaster, James and the giant peach, The never ending story, Rocko's modern life, Jumanji, Hook, The secret of the Nimh, Sword and the stone, black cauldron, Little Nemo and the adventures of Slumberland, beetle juice, Alice in wonderland, Rock-a-doodle, Captain Planet, Thundercats, He-man, Spawn, Batman, Batman beyond, toxic crusaders, Matilda, The BFG, Ren and stimpy, courage the cowardly dog, magic school bus, Dexter's laboratory, pinky and the brain, I am weasel, IR Baboon, Ah! Real monster's, goosebumps, are you afraid of the dark, pee wee's playhouse, she-ra warrior princess, cow & chicken, gargoyle's, power rangers, TMNT, the Indian in the cupboard, Addams family, toy soldier's, honey I shrunk the kid's, wild thornberries, hey Arnold, angry beaver's, Flintstones, the Jetsons, Kablam, So many more I won't list them all but they had such creative range. So many ways of telling stories. So many types of creatures, unique worlds, weird things, macabre things. I loved how we used to embrace those things. Nowadays everything is so bland or Shallow live action version's filed with nonsense & hollowness because it wants to be "realistic" I miss the Era of creativity, of animated series, of things that made us utilize our intelligence. Artistic depictions of the Human condition that connects us on a deeper level. No matter what kind of character, creature, specie's they are. I seriously don't understand who can enjoy these modern live action movies. Filled with so much disconnected CGI. Cheap cop out writing, acting, storytelling that is treating our entire audience like they are 2 yr olds that just need a pair of shiney keys waved in front of them for entertainment... it's a very bland & soulless way to entertain... Seeing how things are nowadays, i feel so lucky that i got to grow up in the 90's. Back then I never could have guessed that things would have changed the ways they did. It was such a great time to be a kid. The world seemed to have so many creative ways kids, teens and adults could all enjoy themselves. Entertaining movies with practical effects. Animated movies/shows galore. If they used CGI it was used intelligently. I really miss the Vibe of that Era. The creativity that came from that era. I really hope we find a way to reconnect with it because the world seems like it really needs it right now. I mean just look at the aesthetics compared to now? Things have somehow become so bland, bleek, and minimalism that it doesn't even make since. Most Old house's/building's/uúnique shop's are gone. Interesting oddities like drive in movies, indoor fun zones, arcade's, magazines that came with a demo disc to try out game's, blockbuster/Hollywood video, McDonald's had N64's, you could preview music before buying it, they had great kid's toy's, Roller Rink's, Garbage pale kid's card's. You get the point. I want to reignite that feel sort of like Retro-Futurism or that Y2K Vibe compared to this current Dystopian pessimism that seems solely focused purely on capitalistic agendas. Our Quality of Life should be better than this.

Postmodernists want villains to be treated sympathetically because so many of them are villains.

They addressed the expensive apartment thing in Friends. It's Monica's grandmother's rent controlled apartment that they're illegally subletting.

Absolutely fantastic coverage of this topic! It’s really beneficial for a lot of people to have this topic so neatly summarized and expressed in relation to entertainment media and performative ideologies. God bless!

This man hit Nirvana and Metallica within seconds of each other. He has absolutely no fear of being cancelled!

Have not finished the video yet but want to say I'm very much enjoying your work here. I haven't agreed on every point but you've definitely broadened my view and understanding of a lot of the topics already. Around 20:00-22:00, I feel like you've put it to words better than I have been and without making it sound biased or cruel in some way. Many of these movies coming out tend to try to speak to "me" in their target audience as a woman who should be feeling oppressed like "them", yet often it's just people in Hollywood who have never had to deal with that suffering and have oppressed others (example, Mindy over there talking about sexism and racism while also admitting and laughing about how she sexually assaulted a man and threatened him not to tell anyone on set and she got laughs and claps for it on tv). And their "strong female mc" is always boring and has to be physically strong and emotionally barren, all the traits labeled Toxic Masculinity are apparently Strong Feminism. I'm sorry that I don't relate to you as a billionaire vs someone growing up in the real world, that I don't relate to your character because she's an awful person and I value empathy, and that you tacking "but they're a woman/[race]/disabled!" onto their deviant art character bio sheet doesn't change their personality and your lack of giving them a related perspective. I hate to sound like this but I'm a disabled woman who grew up poor (much better off as an adult, not the highest but definitely not so low anymore), and that's the only thing thosfilm makers view me as so they expect me to agree with them and on every one of their politics or ideologies etc. But I don't need to put down the big strong yet sniveling cis straight white man to make myself feel better, and neither does any other normal person. Your disabled girl didn't give a disabled pov to the story, she just did Badass Cool Thing Without Emotion Unless The Narrative Needed Empathy and happened to have a disability often in the background. Watching Ouran Highschool Host Club as a teenager brought me more of a new understanding of another culture than your damn TV show that's apparently "trying" to teach anyone anything but spite and hate and pettiness. Once again thanks for your thorough analysis of all of this, it's very informative and easy to understand, and definitely shines a new light on why some things in TV and social media are the way they are put into words.

Fantastic video … Thank you my brother

6:12 LOL

7:11 I feel called out, attacked, and my lower back hurts.

Greg would you consider sharing what's in your library or at least your top [number here] books?

Re: Misunderstood Villains Much of the problem is cowardly writers. They're terrified to steelman the villain's position & genuinely attempt to convert him into "the good guy" by giving him the strongest reasoning for his actions, even stronger than the ostensible protagonists who are usually pretty lazy in their moral justifications, effectively handwaving it as "we're the good guys" like GWOT era american militarists. As much as I despise the French post-modern marxists, they weren't cowards. They steelmanned amorality, (to the best of their limited ability) which is why their works are remembered. To do this, they assaulted the sensory, sociological, & psychological foundations of human understanding, but it turns out those were more resilient than people like Nietzsche and Francis Fukuyama thought. The mainstream may be morally unmoored now, but this also served to train the psycho-social immune system of those who do not outsource their world model generation to the crowd or a parasitic elite, making them far more resistant to subversion. In the future, this time period may be viewed as a speciation event.

"It's good to be the king..." best movie reference ever. From back when movies were good.

I still think having Bucky be the new Captain America would have been more interesting with the dynamics set up in the MCU. Although Bucky has healed from the Winter Soldier programming while in Wakanda, that doesn't necessarily mean he's fully forgiven himself. You've got a character with a chance to redeem himself by living up to Steve's example as Captain America, but with all the training of an assassin. Opposite him you've got Sam Wilson, who is definitely more aligned with Steve's example in terms of conscious and always doing the right thing no matter the consequences. THEN you've also got the antagonistic friendship that's been established between Bucky and Sam since Civil War. Having Sam as the conscious to guide Bucky's Cap makes a more compelling story than just..... "they'll never let a black man carry the shield." Going a step further, they really should have gone straight into a new Cap film after Endwalker with a "Disassembled Saga" around Sam & Bucky looking at rebuilding the Avengers in a post-Endgame world where most of your roster is now out of the picture and looking for new members plus struggling with a lack of the funding Tony provided (we don't even know the state of Stark Industries as of Endgame. Is Potts still CEO? Did the company continue to be successful through the blip? Or did Stark & Potts mostly retire during that time?) and still dealing with governments wanting something akin to the Sokovia Accords to keep a handle on super hero teams. No need to direct appearances or major story connections, but a post-credits thread that yes, the new Captain America and Falcon are looking to rebuild the Avengers. Even She-Hulk could better connect just on the notion of them approaching her to be the Avengers' legal council (despite my opinion that even a good She-Hulk series shouldn't have been all action and fits better as a legal coutroom sit-com). Bonus fun: After No Way Home, you'd be able to slip a post-credits scene in of them considering Spider-Man, but having no idea how to get a hold of him since they don't know who he is AND the two concluding they don't really like him anyway, still holding a grudge from Germany. VILLAINS: I've always thought the film "Enemy of the State" has a single line that is 100% what a writer should aim for with a villain. Gene Hackman's character is talking to the antagonists of the film through a chain link fence and he's essentially laying out everything they've done. There's a point where he says something along this simple line: "So you kill the girl. I wouldn't have, but I understand the argument." That's it. That's the revelation for writing a compelling villain. They don't need to be sympathetic and been presented as having a truly valid point or actually being right. You just need the audience to say "I wouldn't have done that, but I understand the reasoning." You need enough for the audience to see themselves in the villain, to say they understand his reason for doing something despite utterly disagreeing with the methods he took (people saying Killmonger's right when he outright says his plan includes killing children just because of who they're born to blows my mind). That or you just throw all reason out the window and go for truly evil for the "audiences loves to hate 'em" style villain.

I'm so glad I found your channel. Every video YT has suggested is a logical video essay that gives me hope for humanity again.

I was not prepared for this video. Very well thought out and a fresh perspective on this hard to describe phenomena that’s in our culture.