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Not quite the same, but The Matrix and so-called “red-pilled” Republicans make me laugh every time for this reason. The Wachowski sisters have flat out and openly said that The Matrix is a transgender story about the prison of toxic masculinity and escaping it by transitioning. The red pill is Premarin, an estrogen pill from the 90s, and the blue pill is a testosterone steroid (I forget which one), both of which were produced in those exact colors. So every time a conservative talks about being “red-pilled,” they’re actually talking about taking estrogen.
Same with police brutality.
Oh god, I really wish we had the Cyborg Cop from “Ultra Murderous Cyborg Cop 3000 - Extrajudical Massacre” dealing with thiefs!
Dudes watching Robocop be like: “fucking Murphy, stifling innovation in the name of some delusional woke agenda!!”
Women and the folk who don’t categorize themselves will never understand the deep masculane urge of self destruction. Of going down in a “blaze of glory” even if you’re ultimately wrong.
The stereotype of masculinity was always a meme that drove men to destruction. The tribal warriors and knights of ye olde times idealized this type of crap too. It’s been a part of humanity ever since writing was invented, probably longer. It’s a strange part of being human.
i’ve never understood this sort of masculinity, but i also have people who need me to be alive to continue living, and i assume that changes the math (transmasc, since i figure people will wonder, and i’m fine with this being the one thing where i’m not a real man lol)
It’s super common with young men, those who don’t have someone to “live for” but plenty of people to “die for”. No dependents, but lots of people they depend upon.
The greatest sin a man can do, in many societies, is to be an immediate burden, to take in more resources than they provide. To be a momentary net drain in material terms. Of course the pressure completely ignores emotional impact ether positive or negative, and generally discredits the material value of traditionally “feminine” work.
That’s kind of the core of a lot of misogyny and patriarchy, emotions and care are not the responsibility of men, their only responsibility is material. How others might feel when they are gone doesn’t matter, the chance to benefit them by dying, even if slim, trumps any emotional impact of them not being around, or any potential long term material benefit of them still being around.
Can you explain your last paragraph a bit?
The Walter White imperative.
why is this such a perfect explaination…
the refusal of the friends money, the “buisness” as a last resort, trying to avoid medical care to go out with a bang instead of with a whimper, the emotional segregation… wow. it’s not even what the show is mainly about but you’re perfectly right
It’s because, so long as we serve nature, we aren’t really people. We are expendable warrior drones, and women only have some value, because they are drone factories. Meanwhile, all we are doing is propagating some non-sentient strand of code, that is our objective.
But it does not have to be this way, this was a choice by someone powerful, to keep us animals.
The Boys is a perfect example of this happening right now.
More kids should idolize Homelander.
His nemesis in the first season is a frikkin’ baby. Instant he has any ego threat he just tatrums like a two year old. He’s such a wet fart.
Terrible character, but a great actor.
I always think how good of an actor he is because I will see him in something else and just think they look similar because of how different the vibe he gives off is. Best example is Aunty Donna.
Get in the oven.
Fuck 'omlanda
Please, instead of more satirising toxic masculinity, can we have some more depictions of positive masculinity in lead roles like Aragorn from LotR?
Also, please feel free to list some good examples of positive masculinity in replies below because I and others I know could benefit from seeing more of that.
Many Robin Williams’ characters (e.g., Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, Awakenings…).
It depends on the version, but often, Gomez Addams from The Addams Family.
Waymond Wang in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
From Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts, Hagrid and Newt Scamander, respectively.
Good-hearted heroes such as Captain America, Colossus, etc. The new Superman, probably. The Doctor from Dr. Who. Big etcetera.
In videogames, the latest I’ve seen is the protagonist of Vampire Therapist (and probably other characters too). Give that game a try, you all.
I’m not sure if anyone else said, but Uncle Iroh from Avatar the last airbender.
One of the best farther figures in media. His treatment of Zuko; as Zouk is finding out who he is and what he stands for. Truly inspiring role model stuff.
Also Bandit Healer 👍
Bandit Heeler (Bluey’s dad)
Having “you know what Bandit says, gotta be done” in the toolbox is great.
Also, please feel free to list some good examples of positive masculinity
Star Trek is kinda cheating, but Picard and Riker. Although some of Riker’s behaviour could be seen as “use and abuse of power for sex” in some scenarios, like hitting on people at 10 forward while serving as first officer in the ship they are in.
I still love the scene where for some reason Worf and Riker are in 10 forward, Riker is hitting on … someone and Worf says he wants to talk to that person. Riker’s reaction is basically “Oh shit, you wanted to get with her? All good my man, I’ll get out the way, you know me, dime’s a dozen, I fuck everyone”.
EDIT : I really like the way Star trek has lots of different examples on leadership styles and how there’s multiple ways of being a good leader. Even Jellico, although his way of handling a transition sucks.
Riker and Troi were in a big deal relationship before the events of TNG, and there’s a scene later in the show where they are talking about their respective relationships and giving each other advice and I find that quite wholesome. It’s not always easy or even possible to break up with someone and remain in contact, let alone friends, but it can happen under the right circumstances, and it’s nice to see a depiction of a breakup that doesn’t have to turn into enmity.
Most men in Star Trek would fall into this category. Sisko fills the top spot for me though, for his portrayal as a supportive, affectionate, and masculine father while balancing the responsibilities of wartime leadership.
Sisko fills the spot for me though, for his portrayal as a supportive, affectionate, and masculine father
I really like Sisko’s leadership style, and it’s exactly what I mean when it has multiple ways of being a good leader. Picard was formal , but in a way that he used it to indicate there was a structure and formality, but he used that structure and formality to indicate to his workers that they are being elevated by participating in the process of solving problems and being representatives of the federation; everyone’s input is valuable and that he is willing to give you the time of day and that you are also someone to be respected just like he is being respected.
Wheras Sisko was always right there next to his people; he knew them, he cared for them, and let you know that. He knew what you personaly needed, and what you needed differently than other people and he adjusted and knew exactly what to say and do when he interacted with you personally.
while balancing the responsibilities of wartime leadership.
… but yeah, fuck the “War Sisko” because he’s a lying, manipulative bastard with no regard for the value of life.
Even Kirk falls into this category.
I love that Aaragorn is kind of unanimously agreed on as one of the best examples of positive masculinity.
Me too and yet it’s been too ling since last rewatch - can anybody explain why?
Just my 2 cents on a surface-level reading of the character because it’s also been a while since I’ve watched it.
Aragorn is strong and capable, with a generally masculine image about him. He’s handsome, good with a sword, rides horses, and commands respect by his presence.
But he is not prideful or boastful, he doesn’t seek glory, and he’s respectful to the women in his life.
At least the way the movies present it, his relationship with Arwen is one in which both partners are equal participants. Aragorn is not controlling, and Arwen isn’t some damsel who lacks agency without her man there to tell her what to do. And when Eowyn shows affection towards him, he is quick to respectfully decline her advances without leading her on, thereby preserving a positive and supportive relationship between them.
That might be the sort of thing people are referring to, as far as his characterization. There might be more examples, but that’s what I remember.
He also freely shows love to the rest of the fellowship and expresses emotion without shame.
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Ron Swanson, and to a greater point Nick Offerman.
New movie Superman.
I feel like it falls to the same problem. They will see Ron Swanson, a tridimensional complex character and just flat it to the “cool macho” stuff and ignore his character growth and confuse aspects that are flaws but maybe charming or colorful to actual qualities.
It’s an issue with being able to identify and assimilate positive traits, I think. Ron is a stoic and self-disciplined which is often read as emotionally repressed unnecessarily strict dad energy. Instead, it should be read as introspection, strong personal accountability, and authenticity and intentionality of thought and action. Ron also isn’t a reactive persona; when something challenges his beliefs, he chops down a tree while he mulls over the idea and decides how he wants to move on from the experience. Without the nuance, it just looks like a dude gets mad and does man stuff with an axe until he cools off.
He’s also kind of a dumbass libertarian
If all libertarians were like Swanson, the world would be a better place.
This is our park and defiling it would violate the non-aggression principle.
Absolutely. He’s a naive libertarian not a person who hairsplits and downplays SA/pedo.
I mean, yeah. That’s for the character development and human flaws. Even Jean-Ralphio has some redeemable moments.
I bailed around season 5 I think (just after Leslie won the election), so I have missed some of it, but the arc I saw was him becoming more of a dumbass libertarian not less.
He’s obviously cool in a bunch of other ways, a funny character, and he has a pretty broad sense of equity.
I don’t think I could last long in a job that I was deliberately doing poorly, and hindering other people around me. I feel like that’s a setup that can deliver jokes in a sitcom, but he would be an absolute rage inducer in the office.
He has some really good character development in Season 5/6 as he becomes a father and discovers that being a good dad involves things like not booby trapping your house.
Very much the “positive traits of conservatives” you’ve listed there. Always annoying to realise there ARE some
I’d argue these values are not inherently conservative, even if conservatism reinforces the idea of having those values and attempts to institutionalize some perverse variation of those principles.
While many conservatives and libertarians may profess to be principled, their actions demonstrate that they are full of shit.
Love the after scene with Mr. Terrific…
Ted Lasso
Shoot, Tolkien wrote near countless depictions of positive masculinity. Certainly more good ones than bad.
I’m suddenly thinking about the relation between Boromir and Faramir, brothers who loved each other, and how Boromir never put his younger brother below him, instead even protecting him from their father, despite being the preferred child.
The emperor’s new grove Kuzco just needed a positive father figure which Pacha starts to be near the middle of the movie.
I’m going to let you finish but , Commander Will Ricker from TNG portrays positive masculinity, in the greatest way.
…“because I can get real ones any time I want!”
Malcolm Reynolds, most of the time
…well, he’s alright…
IRL? H. Bomberguy
In fiction? Deadpool.
Honestly, a lot of bisexual and pansexual men and masculine characters are pretty well adjusted in part due to the fact that they are comfortable with who they are as a person and know what kinds of things make men attractive. Way too many men these days have a completely warped idea of what other people find attractive in men and toxic masculinity is built on a framework of those misconceptions.
IRL? H. Bomberguy
If only he fulfilled the positive role model aspect of being regular and dependable.
Look, the man is making feature-length films about rabbit holes he never expected to find. The “Roblox OOF!” video was supposed to be about 10-20 minutes, but then he found the Tommy Tallarico absurdity and just couldn’t leave that part out.
I can fully expect a random day after 5 years of radio silence, we just get a 2 day long video posted about Chandler Bing that ends with a compelling argument for North Macedonia no longer being recognised by the UN.
On the other hand :
Mar 5, 2022 3+hours
Nov 17, 2022 <2 hours
Dec 2, 2023 3+hoursIt’s 2026. I’m not even a patron, but then, I don’t expect I’d have gotten a video from there either. (except the 10 min newgrounds one)
He doesn’t owe me shit, but I did want to make that zinger, and I would love to see more from him.
EDIT : Oh shit, he’s got “fuck adobe” in the works, and has already gotten an hour and a half done!
EDIT : Oh shit, he’s got “fuck adobe” in the works, and has already gotten an hour and a half done!
Uncle Phil from Fresh Prince (the Will Smith version, I think they tried to remake)
From all I’ve heard the actor (James Avery) was a good guy IRL as well
Carl from Dungeon Crawler Carl
I’m not entirely sure being in a constant state of panicked contingency planning is necessarily masculine.
Blowing shit up is, though.
(Really though, caring about his fellow crawlers and insisting on always helping as many people as possible is very cool of him, and would qualify as positive masculinity.)
No need to financially support Rowling, but Newt Scamander was a great example of non traditional masculinity in the first fantastic beasts movie.
It depends on how you play, but I think Arthur Morgan from RDR2 can be a positive masculine role model if you play high honor the whole game or choose redemption in its final act.
He’s not a great guy, even on a high honor playthrough, which I did do. He’s not the worst, most of the people the gang kills do definitely deserve it, but I still wouldn’t use him as a role model. Thomas Downes certainly didn’t deserve it though. Doesn’t seem to care much about women or their rights (well, not their suffrage, didn’t care about his own either). Wasn’t racist though. That was cool. I’d give him a 5.5/10 as a role model.
Best example of positive masculinity in media, for my money, is hands down Lars and The Real Girl.
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exhibit 1 : American Psycho
Exhibit 2: Fight Club
Exhibit 3: Walter White
exhibit 4: The Boys
Exhibit 5: Falling Down
Exhibit 6: Ryan Gosling… any movie atp
Exhibit 7: 300
Patrick Bateman was the satirization of a metrosexual if anything.
He was not masculine at all in the rugged manly sense of the term.
Compare Rambo to Bateman. Rambo is the stereotypical manly man, who burns his own wound with a hot knife or gunpowder.
Patrick Bateman would scream like a little girl and freak out over his body being ruined and scarred.
I honestly think that’s part of the appeal for those who idolize Bateman. He’s particular and vane and envious. We are led to see his flaws as he sees them: extensions of justified righteous indignation at the world’s resistance to his perfection, all. His narcissism fueling disgust for the world and everyone in it.
The jilted pampered white boy is exactly what they identify with.
Evaluate the comparison drawn in the final scene of the film. Bateman confesses again, in-person this time, to his lawyer who blows him off for reasons that could be debated within the narrative. The important bit for our discussion is that, regardless of the reasons for dismissal, the lawyer simply doesn’t believe Bateman is capable of the crimes he confesses to.
Not even recognizing Bateman and mistaking Bateman for someone else the lawyer says: “Bateman’s such a dork, such a boring, spineless lightweight…” “…Oh Christ. He can barely pick up an escort girl, let alone… What was it you said he did to her?”
After some more back and forth Bateman returns to his friend’s table and finds his friends discussing Ronald Reagan’s address regarding the Iran-Contra scandal. The sentiment is how unbelievable it is that someone so unassuming could do something so vile, brazenly lie about it, and almost get away with it.
To be dismissed as incapable while believing oneself cunning and depraved and wholly underestimated. To act on that depravity and take by brutal force. To confess vile crimes that go unpunished because no believes you capable of them… It’s a twisted diamond in the rough story.
That’s not the gritty visual masculinity we normally think of, as you say, but Bateman is rape culture personified and adorned in every tropey “high-class” commecialization of masculinity at the time. Couple that with anemoia for the eighties in a generation raised on algorithmically tuned psychological traps which weaponized toxic masculinity for profit and… Tada!
We strike resonance with a certain brand both of internet-raised narcissist and naive, disaffected, emotionally-immature manchild. Especially young men who’ve been emotionally manipulated into believing alt-right propaganda makes sense of a world they’ve been stymied from understanding.
I don’t think it’s because he doesn’t think Bateman is capable of committing those crimes - far from it. Almost everyone in the film is a psychopath in their way (the sex workers are notable exceptions).
Nobody wants to deal with the consequences because it would upset the gravy train they’re on. The lawyer doesn’t want to hear a confession, the real estate agent doesn’t want to acknowledge that crimes took place there etc. The world is built on ignoring things that distract from money. Everyone will lie to keep things rolling.
Eta: that’s the joke in the book and movie title - Bateman is the psycho because he feels some remorse. Everyone just wants to carry on with their lives.
Possibly! A lot is left to interpretation in the film. I agree with your take though. More or less. I feel there’s enough presented after the initial twist (was he just imagining it all?!) to suggest an additional turn. That being the horror of a society built on such incredible self-absorbtion (and cocaine) is the real bogeyman.
The lack of comprehension from some reminds me of a certain type of Fight Club fan on whom the film is wasted entirely.
My framing in the previous comment is meant to highlight how Bateman’s story seems to resonate with the disaffected and media illiterate as I understand them. It seems much of the subtext intended to catch the viewer’s attention and request a critical eye fails to register with that crowd. My aim was answering the implied question “How could take seriously Bateman as peak masculinity?” of the comment I initially responded to.
I could have made that more clear in the perspective I used to convey the point. Note taken. 🙂
The film is so much clearer than the book 😄 Even Ellis said that Bateman is such an unreliable narrator that it’s not clear that any of the events happened at all. But I think you are 100% correct in that lead characters will always have a fandom that identifies with them no matter how repulsive the character is.
Up thread I made a joke about Marty Supreme. There is a character who is an unrepentant piece of shit who manipulates, steals from, and headlights every other character in the movie. I already hear people saying it’s inspirational because he followed his heart. No matter that he ruined the lives of every person around him.
Not satirizing metrosexual at all. He is the counterpoint to Gordon Gecko.
Why compare Bateman to Rambo, when Batman is sitting right there? Twice.
not a lot of people on lemmy really know batman, if youve seen the takes they parrot
Every comment about batman I see is either from the perspective of the arkham video games or the campy west series. It seems like there is no in between.
In this household, Shit Cumdick is an Italian American hero, END OF STORY!
Actually, come to think of it, Tony Soprano is a great example of this. The show is literally about him going to therapy because he can’t face the fact that he’s a toxic POS and he’s still lionized by a ton of people. The guy cheats on his wife on the regular, murders his own supposed friends, and is constantly just doing all manner of shithead stuff, but the morons still love him.
This is how I feel about Breaking Bad. At first, you feel kind of bad for Walt and his situation, but that should quickly chang especially as the seasons go on and he reveals how much more of a piece of shit he really is. But I also distinctly remember as people watched the show in real-time how fans would idolize Walt. Really baffled me at the time.
This one I can actually kind of understand because the shift is gradual. Like, if you started watching in season 3, it would be quite obvious that he’s a piece of shit, but if you start in season 1, the viewer establishes that he’s a sympathetic character and it’s hard to really identify a firm moment when he goes from being sympathetic to villain. It’s like the old ‘boiling water with a frog in it’ analogy… The viewer (at least it was true for me) tries to justify his increasingly bad actions because he’s been established as a “good guy” in the beginning until at some point they just have to step back and think, “Wow… he’s actually an awful person.” Then you watch the rest with a re-framed perspective.
I mean, that was the entire premise of the show, a good person who breaks bad. You are supposed to like him, and supposed to have complicated feelings about his character arc as he devolves deeper and deeper into the dark side. Of course there will be moments during the arc when you still root for him as the badass but that should all be gone by the end, when he’s just a bad guy who got a deserved end.
Eehhhhhh, yes and no. Part of why BB is so good is that Walt is believably bad. Part of it is the slow shift to full wannabe druglord, but another huge part of it is that he is a very flawed person, and shows it very quickly.
Within the first episode, he’s very dismissive of Jesse and obviously avoidant with his wife. He lies about things all the time. He demeans Jesse a lot. He quickly demonstrates an inflated ego. His jealousy over the chemical company is very obvious from the start. I’m sure I could remember more.
He’s a very not so good person even before all the stuff happens that pushes him further. Sure, he tries to be nice, but so do most bad people. The ones who don’t try to be nice end up in trouble or dead.
He also doesn’t go full bad in actuality. Sure, he pretends to, and still ends up doing all sorts of bad stuff, but he still wants to give the money to his family, doesn’t like killing people/etc.
Basically all of that is to say… Walt’s shift in BB is so believable because it’s actually not that big of a character shift. Really, the story is a great example of why it’s wise to not have a bunch of little bad character traits. lol Sure most bad people aren’t going to become drug lords, but most people don’t have Saul Goodman as their lawyer getting them off of every little thing.
Yeah I saw these things right away too. By the time he was giving his disabled son shots of tequila I already felt I knew where things were going and stopped watching lol
Yea, it was rough to watch the first time through. lol He’s such an asshole from the start. Reminded me of some family members.
Walt coerces a former student into cooking meth with him, murders a dude, and then decides to commit suicide by cop in literally the first episode of the show.
You just THINK its a gradual slide because you like the guy and his life obviously sucks. The “gradual slide” is the audience watching him become better at being a criminal. His characters journey is actually a gradual realization that he is a complete piece of shit from day one until he does ONE thing that is entirely altruistic in the final episode of the series. Its not about a good person that goes bad, its about a bad person that goes good at the very end.
Jessie actually lays this out for the audience in the first episode:
“Nah, come on man. Some straight like you, giant stick up his ass, at like what, sixty, he’s just gonna break bad?”
He is right. People don’t just turn bad. Walk was a piece of shit before the first scene ever happened. The events of the show just give him a set of circumstances where it manifests in an unmistakably obvious way.
Skyler: If I have to hear one more time that you did this for the family…
Walter White: I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And… I was really… I was alive.
It is a gradual descent, but not so much that the viewer can be excused for not picking up on it. He kept going well after the point where he had made enough to take care of his family. He also could have accomplished his goal early by getting help from Gray Matter if he just swallowed his pride. And he was very willing to hurt or kill others as collateral damage, like Gale or Jesse’s girlfriend’s child.
Walt murders a guy and blackmails a former student into cooking meth for him in first episode and then rapes his wife in like the first or second episode of the second season. It always amazes me that people feel like it was somehow a subtle slide into “maybe this dude isn’t a good guy?”. The show is NOT subtle in its portrayal of the character.
I feel like everyone forgets about or just ignores that scene. I can recognize that Breaking Bad is a well-made show but I really struggled to keep watching after that
The show isn’t really about a good person who turns bad. It is about a terrible person that unfailingly makes choices that benefit himself without any regard for the impacts to anyone else. The progression is simply that he is placed in increasingly extreme circumstances to demonstrate this behavior and the audience learns more about why he makes those decisions. He is NEVER portrayed as a good person at any point in the entire run of the show. You can count on one hand how many decent things he does, and almost all of them benefit him in some way.
The only genuinely altruistic thing he does in the entire show is the last thing he does in the final episode.
Oh, yeah, no, I get that. A “good” person would have stopped well before he got to the point where most of those things were even options. And I did eventually finish the show.
It’s not only Breaking Bad, I just think there’s so many other ways to show that a character is a horrible person without having to actually show something like that
That was the entire point of the show. The writers wanted to see if they could get people to root for a villain, if they knew why the villain was bad and if the shift was gradual enough. It’s literally the title; they wanted to break the concept of what people consider “bad”, and see if the audience would go along with it if they felt the reasons were justified.
and he reveals how much more of a piece of shit he really is
That’s the thing though. From many peoples’ perspective, he wasn’t always that piece of shit. It wasn’t “revealing” as much as it was “changing”. He took on aspects of every person he killed, for better or worse. The idolatry was certainly a problem with the fans, but (again) that was the entire point of the show. By the later seasons, even the writers were baffled at how people were still rooting for Walt, because he was inarguably a monster. But because people watched his descent into madness, they were still hoping for him to come out on top.
It’s literally the title; they wanted to break the concept of what people consider “bad”
But it’s also just a century-old idiom for what happens to the main character.
see if the audience would go along with it if they felt the reasons were justified.
Why does that remind me of American politics?
He doesn’t really BECOME a bad person so much as get places in situations that more clearly illustrate that he is a bad person.
He blackmails a former highschool student of his to cook meth, murders two dudes, and decides to commit suicide by cop in the FIRST EPISODE of the show. The series goes on to do little more than present him increasingly extreme opportunities to do something horrible to benefit himself and he never fails to do it. He is CONSISTENTLY terrible for the entire show until literally the last episode. We are given increasingly clear evidence of who Walt really is. The journey isn’t Walt’s its the audiences and that of all the other characters around him. Walt really stays the same, he just gets better at being a criminal. It is everyone ELSE that changes around him.
David Chase has talked about how it frustrated him that people were rooting for Tony like he was the hero, so he kept making him do more fucked up shit. Americans aren’t good at processing anti-heroes. Part of the problem might be that they’re all played by charismatic actors, whereas the megalomaniacs you meet in real life are just assholes.
I am literally Ryan Gosling. I am, I’m Him. He’s me.
My younger brother loves Tyler Durden quotes. One in particular “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”
I’m not sure why that one jumps out at him, dude makes more money than me. I do want to say though that hes genuinely a good person in most ways, hes completely surrounded by frothing at the mouth rightwingers but maintains that he is a centrist. And he says stuff that implies left wing and anarchist beliefs but constantly defends rightwing figures when I shit talk them around him. Most notably Joe Rogan.
Hes just badly propagandized and would end up being socially isolated if he started actually identifying as left wing because all of his friends would stop talking to him. And he refuses to move and make new friends. Its depressing.
Sounds like it will only be after he’s lost everything (his friends) that he will be able to do anything (have compassion for others and stop listening to Rogan).
Yes!! It might stick out to him cuz subconsciously he knows that’s what he’ll need to do to grow, but just isn’t ready.
Send him the latest Elephant Graveyard video. That should adjust his perspectives on Rogan at least
I do think his defensiveness of Rogan is fraying, if only because Joe Rogan is becoming increasingly bad at managing his own image. He stopped watching Rogan back when he started charging for his show so it was probably inevitable.
He probably wouldn’t watch any political or joe rogan deconstruction video I send him though.
“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”
This is a pretty common sentiment I believe. Me and Bobby Mcgee came out in 71 with the famous lyric “Freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose”
Sorry to read that about your brother. I have similar people in my life and it’s infuriating and depressing to observe.
If you want a positive read to just reframe it in your head, hear me out. People use quotes aspirationally, right? They are summaries of our values or insights into our personalities. Maybe your brother uses that quote because he’s aware that he wants change but is unable to summon the courage. Maybe the conflict between his values and his social circle is wearing him down. Maybe he regrets a bunch of stuff and wants the chance to start over but feels trapped.
You could view your brother’s use of the quote as him being a superficial emotionally stunted dude who misunderstood the premise of the film, or you could view it as something that is meaningful to him, that hints a deeper truth. “I am Jack’s wasted life.”
Maybe. It does imply a desire to be free if that quote resonates, but his actions don’t seem to indicate seeking social freedom from his current set of friends.
There was one point when he got drunk and confided in me that he thought he really had no real friends and had an emotional melt down. But this was a long time ago and as far as I know, nothing has changed for him since then other than a new job.
He is not genuinely a good person.
I think I know what you mean. He lacks “broad” compassion and is intellectually a coward. If you think those are prerequisites for being a good person, he isn’t one.
What I should have said is he is empathetic and inter-personally does what normal good people do in the immediate context of people around him, including helping strangers. Even going out of his way to do so.
I wanna be just like Tony Soprano when I grow up!
So you’ll actually go to therapy?
Lol got me
Hey! Tony gets bitches and I want bitches too
Oof the world is full of good examples for this. Like the Torment Nexus, in every genre. South Park is another one - there used to be real Cartman fans. Also some thought it was a children’s TV show.
Cartman is a great character and one that, despite being a complete piece of shit of a human, is likable because the stories are better with him around. He’s also a great depiction of certain segments of society - arrogant, envious, greedy, self centered, manipulative, petty, sore loser, whiny, bitchy - which are too dense to realize he’s supposed to be a parody of them and not a role model.
White supremacists liked American History X. The lady running the summer camp in “Jesus Camp” said she thought the movie was a good portrayal of her ministry.
Friendship with Tim Robinson is the best modern satire on this topic because it actually makes the people who don’t get it deeply uncomfortable instead.
From the trailer I was expecting a goofy dude friend comedy kind of like I Love You, Man, but holy fuck was it not that. Great film, Tim Robinson is an absolute treasure.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JQf2G-THMTU
Alan Moore on Rorschach.
I’m out of the loop. What happened?
You can’t have shiting otham
That’s what
You can have fucking otham, but not shiting.
We having fuckin otham at home.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck.
