#media critic

[meerawrites]

Not to be weird or overly judgmental of other historical fiction media and media that’s target audience is children, but, I really like the way Liberty’s Kids (and TURN ~ obviously though TURN is a historical Amrev drama first and factually correct second, I do seriously recommend the factual book it’s based on of the same name…) but I really like the nuance and ambiguity of the 18th-century and American Revolution in all its aspects without being overly coarse or cynical of the subject matter, each of them give, you can tell it’s written by competent people.

#meera speaks #libertys kids #turn: washington's spies #turn washington's spies #turn amc #amc turn #american revolution #18th century #media analysis #media criticism #media critic #media critique #opinion #opinions #i have opinions

[hasellia]

I don't get the appeal for Saberspark.

He seems really dismissive of things he doesn't understand (learning to pronounce a Japanese person's name isn't hard) and very aggresive about minor issues. And not (just) in the old early 2010's media critic way of pretending to be angry. I mean he seems to get really worked up sometimes. The way he also tends to cover foreign and obscure media by small creators also comes across as punching down to me. Occasionally it's like anything less than a Disney production is a stain on animation as a global medium or something.

Do I have the wrong impression?

#saberspark #media criticism #animation #youtube #media critic #youtube personality #you tube #videos #animation industry #netflix

[betsey-socialite-1757]

Has anyone asked your thoughts on the Hamilton musical?

( Not yet, but I'm gonna say it anyway... )

#ooc / who tells your story #answered #american revolution #hamilton the musical #hamilton musical #our flag means death #amrev fandom #media criticism #media analysis #media critique #media critic #wordpress #alexander hamilton #historical alexander hamilton #eliza hamilton #18th century history #18th century fashion #meta #about betsey #historical fiction #18th century #history #historical references #queue are a learned woman #slavery cw

[rockpapercynic]

A.I. photos are flooding social media and contributing to an Internet where we can't believe what we see. Spotting A.I. 📷s is an important media literacy skill.

None of us have time to research every image we see. We just need people to notice BEFORE THEY LIKE OR SHARE that an image might be fake. If unsure, check it or don't share.

I've started drawing some comics explaining the basic of AI spot-checking and media literacy in the age of disinformation. Follow along here or on my Twitter.

#comic #webcomic #ai #media literacy #critical thinking #media analysis

[lackadaisycal-art]

I'm getting so sick of major female characters in historical media being incredibly feisty, outspoken and public defenders of women's rights with little to no realistic repercussions. Yes it feels like pandering, yes it's unrealistic and takes me out of the story, yes the dialogue almost always rings false - but beyond all that I think it does such a disservice to the women who lived during those periods. I'm not embarrassed of the women in history who didn't use every chance they had to Stick It To The Man. I'm not ashamed of women who were resigned to or enjoyed their lot in life. They weren't letting the side down by not having and representing modern gender ideals. It says a lot about how you view average ordinary women if the idea of one of your main characters behaving like one makes them seem lame and uninteresting to you.

#feminism #media criticism #this doesn't apply to media with large casts of female characters where one or the other is uncommonly outspoken or ahead of her time #and it is dealt with realistically in the setting #im not saying women in the past couldnt be wild and headtsrong and revolutionary #i just think treating it as an essential whenever a female love interest gets added to a historical story about some man is wearing

[bixels]

I watched Starship Troopers tonight.

#personal #dumb #my art #immediately after finishing i was pumped to watch some analysis vids on it #cuz i heard a lot of the drama about the original author being a pro military fascist and the director going “fuck that” and making a satir #scrolling through youtube search results was not promising. lots of male film buffs i would Not trust even on a first glance. #“The Critical Drinker” (pfp of a bearded man drinking alcohol) lol. #and then I saw cinemawins did a video on it and was like oh nice i haven't seen his stuff in a while but he's a pretty leftist creator #scrolled through the comments #second panel face #this sucks i'm outta here. #just leagues and leagues and leagues of anime pfps and right leaning people dogpiling on him for “not understanding what fascism is” #idk it's pretty alien and weird to me watching this movie and going “wow yeah that was pretty obvious huh” like literally the from opening #to the teacher preaching militance and only giving voting rights to “those who serve their nation first and earn it” #and then seeing droves of people online going #WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? It's not anti-fascist and even if it was it's #the director's fault for desecrating heinlein's incredible sci-fi epic vision. ermm media literacy is dead.

[lasnevadaslaborunion]

It frightens and discourages me how pervasive "tribal" stereotypes and imagery are in the fantasy and adventure genres.

It's all over the place in classic literature. Crack open a Jules Verne novel and you're likely to find caricatures of brown people and cultures, even when the characters are sympathetic to the plight of the colonized peoples - incidentally, this is the biggest reason I can't recommend 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to everyone, despite Captain Nemo being one of my favorite fictional characters of all time.

You can't escape it in modern cinema, either. You'll see white heroes venturing bravely into jungles and tombs to steal from natives who don't know how to use their resources "properly." You'll see them strung up in traps, riddled with sleeping darts, forced to flee and fight their way out. Hell, Pirates of the Caribbean, a remarkably inclusive franchise in many other ways, had an extended sequence of the white heroes escaping from a cannibal civilization in the second film.

And when fantasy RPGs want a humanoid enemy, the "bloodthirsty natives" are the first stock trope they jump to. World of Warcraft is one of the most egregious examples, with the trolls - blatant racist caricatures with faux-voodoo beliefs, cannibalistic diets, Jamaican accents, and a history of being killed in droves by (white) elves and humans - being raided and slaughtered in nearly every expansion.

It doesn't matter how vibrant and distinctive the real-world indigenous, Polynesian, Caribbean, and African cultures are. It doesn't matter how much potential these real civilizations offer for complex and sympathetic characterization. Anything that doesn't make sense to the white western mind is shoved under the same "savage" umbrella. They're different. They're strange. They're scary. They have to be escaped, subjugated, eliminated, ogled at from the safety of a museum.

Modern writers, directors, and developers don't even seem to realize how horrifying it is to present the indigenous inhabitants of a place as "obstacles" for non-native protagonists to overcome. "It's not racist," they say, "because these people aren't really people, you see." And if you dare to point out anything that hurts or offends you as a descendant of the bastardized culture, you're accused of being the real racist: "These aren't humans! They're monsters! Are you saying that these real societies are just like those disgusting monsters?"

No, they're not monsters. But you chose to design them as monsters, just as invaders have done for hundreds of years. Why would you do that? Why can you recognize any other caricature as evil and cruel, but not this?

This is how deep colonialism runs.

#tw racism #critical #this isn't even about any specific media anymore #it's a pattern #and it's a pattern that seems so obvious #but it's so omnipresent that even the most progressive folks can't seem to recognize how terrifying it is #these tropes were written in blood

[mostlysignssomeportents]

All the News That Fits: Tom Tomorrow brings you This Modern World

https://prospect.org/power/2024-04-09-this-modern-world/

#media criticism #tom tomorrow #this modern world #comics

[meerawrites]

Godzilla Minus One: the horror of trauma and facing monsters as a community

Happy New Year! This was too good of a movie not to write about, seriously go see it. It's a horror, a war movie, and a trauma recovery movie all in one.

View On WordPress

#meerawrites #godzilla minus one #kaiju #godzilla #monsters #wordpress #analysis #foreign film #history #horror #media #media analysis #media critic #media criticism #media critique #movie review #opinion piece

[thottybrucewayne]

For as much as I love Paris Is Burning (1990) (It was foundational in my getting into ballroom history and learning more about the ballroom scene in my area when I was in my early 20s), I feel like we barely mention its spiritual sequel How Do I Look (2006) even though it gives a much better look into ballroom and how the popularity of Paris Is Burning affected the scene. It also touches on the issues participants of the og Paris Is Burning doc had with the handling of the og doc and the way the mainstream has been trying to exploit the ballroom scene since the second they found out about what it is. While Paris Is Buring is a deeply important part of our history, it should NOT be your first and last stop when learning about ballroom culture.

#thotty speaks #I'm not getting down in the mud with yall to argue over the importance of the og doc vs a webcomic but I do think its worth looking at thes #older pieces of queer media with a more critical gaze even if they mean a lot to us #black queer history

[anneapocalypse]

So, just curious how many writers and creators will have to be forcibly outed by relentless harassment before we acknowledge that "This queer characters was written by a cishet person and that's why they're bad" is not good criticism.

#yes i'm just going to come out and say it i'm talking about sera #not exclusively but i am talking about her #'but her writer actually iS A--' you don't know that! it doesn't matter! and i don't care! #just say that you do not like the character. #people will reblog posts about the latest actor or YA author or whatever getting forced out of the closet and be like #'wow. :( that's terrible.' #and then GO RIGHT BACK TO DOING IT #when are we going to learn #when are we going to stop doing this BEFORE somebody is forcibly outed #because in practical terms #that means you have to be okay with queer characters being written by straight people. #you have to stop weaponizing that against writers you don't like. #you have to be willing to critique the writing on its own merits #without using the writer's (assumed) identity to prop up your arguments #that's how it works #but who wants to actually change the way they talk about media #when tearing apart people's identities for clout is far more entertaining. #gwaren exports #fandom problems #fandom critical

[rockpapercynic]

The internet is flooded with AI-generated photos and they're getting harder to spot.

Most of the time AI is used for click-farming, but lately images have been used in fake news stories and product scams.

Most important: THINK CRITICALLY. AI will eventually get too good to make obvious mistakes. Being media literate means checking not just if an image is real, but if the source is trustworthy.

If you're not sure, don't share! You might be spreading misinformation.

#comic #webcomic #ai #social media #critical thinking #media literacy

[productofmtwundagore]

🫢

#all media criticism is valid AS ALONG AS it is applied without bias #personally I find both peter and kamala endearing #if you hate either of them you may or may not be living a joyless life #but that’s just me! #the marvels #captain marvel #carol danvers #ms marvel #kamala khan #marvel #madeinwundagore

[prokopetz]

You need to understand that my analysis of a series of films is going to be based on what's actually present in the films. That the current owners of the intellectual properties associated with those films are loudly insisting that a specific piece of fixit fic published decades after the fact is how it was meant to be understood all along is an interesting bit of trivia, but it's got nothing to do with me.

#media #movies #literature #media criticism

[immult]

here for the wlw mlm violence again <3 because you just Know she has not forgotten about the Maude thing back at the ball <33

#critical role #dorian storm #imogen temult #cr3 #critical role spoilers #cr spoilers #c3e93 #03h 57m 50s (twitch vod) #media tag #imogen & dorian #1k

[alpaca-clouds]

Why the media CEOs will always learn the wrong lessons

Yesterday a friend and I talked about how the entire (AAA) game industrie looked at BG3 being as popular as it is and going: "Oh, we need to produce 100+ hour games, I guess! Those sell!" Which... obviously is not why it is popular. The game is not popular because it has 100+ hours of gameplay, but because it has engaging characters, that are well-acted and that work as good hooks for the players. Like, let's face it: The reason why I so far have sunken 160 hours into this game is, because I wanna spend time with these characters - and because I wanna give them their happy endings.

But the same has happened too, just a bit earlier this year, right? When Barbie broke the 1 billion and every Hollywood CEO went: "Oh, so the people want movies based on toy franchises! Got it!" To which the internet at large replied: "... How is that the lesson you learned from this?"

Well, let me explain to you, why this is the lesson they learn: It is because the CEOs and the boards of directors at large are not artists or even engaged with the medium they produce. They mostly are economists. And their dry little hearts do not understand stuff more complex than numbers and spread sheets.

That sounds evil, I know, but... It is sadly the truth. When they look at a successful movie/series/game/book/comic, they look at it as a product, not a piece of art or narrative. It is just a product that has very clear metrics.

To them Barbie is not a movie with interesting stylistic choices that stand out from the majority of high budget action blockbusters. It is a toy movie with mildly feminist themes.

Or Oppenheimer is not a movie to them with a strong visual language and good acting direction. No, it is a historical blockbuster.

And this is true for basically every form of media. I mean, books are actually a fairly good example. In my life I do remember the big book fads that happened. When Harry Potter was a success, there was at least a dozen other "magical school" book series being released. When Twilight was a big success there was suddenly an endless number of "teen girl falls in love with bad boy, who is [magical creature]" YA. When the Hunger Games was a success, there were hundreds of "YA dystopia" books. Meanwhile in adult reading, we had the big "next Game of Throne" fad.

Of course, the irony is, that within each of those fads there might have been one or two somewhat successful series - but never even one that came even close to whatever started the fad.

Or with movies, we have seen it, too. When Avengers broke the 1 billion (which up to this point only few movies did) the studios went: "Ooooooh, so we need shared universe film series" - and then all went to try and fail to create their own cinematic universe.

Because the people, who call the shots, are just immensely desinterested in the thing they are selling. They do not really care about the content. All they care about is having a supposedly easy avenue of selling it. Just as they do not care about the consumer. All they care about is that the consumer buys it. Why he buys it... Well, they do not care. They could not care less, in fact.

So, yeah, get ready for a 20 overproduced games with a bloated 100+ hours of empty gameplay, but without the engaging characters. And for like at least 15 more moves based on some toy franchise, that nobody actually cares about.

And then get ready for all the CEOs to do the surprised Pikachu face, when all of that ends up not financially successful.

Really, I read some interviews yesterday from some AAA-studio CEOs and their blatant shock and missing understanding on why BG3 works for so many people.

Because, yeah... capitalism does not appreciate art. Capitalism does not understand art. It only understands spread sheets.

#baldurs gate 3 #oppenheimer #barbie #barbie movie #hollywood #game industry #media #indie media #media criticism #anti capitalism #late stage capitalism