Asian people dunking on other Asians just because of their skin colour is not new. It's actually quite classist more so than racist; dark skin is seen as for poor people and associated with menial work, while lighter skin is prized more as a luxury among most Asians.
You can cross out the hole colorism aspect and it remains true - this is not meant to say it isn't a factor it most certainly is. But Asian people without any trace of melatonin dunking on other asian people without any trace of melatonin not being new is just as valid. It's just the aspect of the "other"...
There's also centuries of historical bad blood involved too, like how Japan and Korea hate each other because of many invasions of the latter by the former, not least of which being during World War 2.
I had to pause the video to put the Anti Gay Hate Crime in "IT' into perspective. I grew up in Maine and was a child in the 1980's. I don't remember the exact year but there was an incident an Bangor where a group of teenagers beat up a gay man and threw him off the bridge. Steven King has a mansion in Bangor and wrote it into the book as a statement.
Stephen King is pretty well known for being leftist so it isn't surprising. He was probably one of the biggest white authors who spoke out against prejudice and discrimination at the time. He especially criticized racism and homophobia. IT was probably the biggest example, with one of the characters being a direct reflection of African American struggles, and the second kill in the book being that hate crime you're talking about.
I never heard Velma called a "Trojan Horse" before, I always thought it was weird that they tried to make a conservative comedy with a nonwhite lead I always figured Mindy Kaliing had more faith in people than she should have On top of the obvious bitterness at being forced to filter an obviously different idea through the Scooby Doo IP I guess "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence" isn't as evergreen as I thought
Mindy Kahling would absolutely be LIVID that you would infer her to be a 'Conservative'. Those are lower then DOGS! How DARE YOU insult her like that! If she ever finds out, you will pay for that vile, vicious and evil slander.
Yeah this is just so much "no true Scotsman." The show creators are progressives and in every interview they had they espoused progressive talking points and said explicitly that their show was created for progressive reasons.
Velma always felt like Fox was holding one of the people who made Bojack Horseman funny hostage in the writer's room because social conservatives don't know how to do comedy.
Went to Catholic school from kindergarten all the way through to a Jesuit university. Most priests defer to medical professionals if they are ever presented with such situations. It is the more radical evangelicals who believe in possession and push for exorcisms.
And I would imagine once they learn what mental health is and how to treat it, (Which in itself is a horror story) most Priest would go, "Look I think you need to take them to the asylum."
Fun fact! That’s because of the case of Anneliese Michel! Which was treated as a demonic possession but was actually epileptic and died by parental negligence basically. Was a whole thing and now is super difficult to prove someone is possessed before trying an exorcism! I graduated from a catholic school as well and we studied this during the religion class for a few weeks!
As someone who falls into the category of "too easily scared to watch most horror but loves listening to people talk about it", I ADORED this video, you have some absolutely incredible and insightful commentary, I cannot wait to watch your backlog and projects going forward
My favourite part of The Conjuring series is that Warner Brothers had to prove ghosts exist or pony up $900 million. Essentially, the Warren's sold the rights to their stories to an author. The author sued WB for making movies based on the stories he owns the rights to. WB argued that these were historical events, and he countered by saying "No, it's just shit they made up and sold the rights to me for a book. If these are historical events, show me a ghost."
@@guilhermefranco2930 They didn't, obviously. Ghosts aren't real and the Warrens are con artists and liars. I can't find anything detailing the resolution of this case, after like 7 years. This means they likely settled out of court. Paid the guy off cause they knew they couldn't win and saved themselves the trouble of an expensive and protracted legal battle. Not to mention a public legal issue could damage this very profitable IP that churns out a bankable movie every year.
I thought the issue was that they bought the rights from Lorraine Warren but it turned out she didn't actually have the rights in the first place, but by that time, a bunch of movies had been made, so WB was kinda screwed either way.
I heard it was to avoid the dragon lady trope, which the comics may have borrowed from. And Marvel comics has had a rough history with racist characters and stereotypes.
@@yggdrasil2 The Chinese government allows only a certain number of foreign films to enter the country and the ones that are allowed in are often altered and/or delayed until it is re-evaluated under new guidelines or censored to adhere to current guidelines. When you're trying to make money off the Chinese audience it's best to just stay wide of anything the Chinese government doesn't like. Think of it this way, right now your film may be within the line of acceptability and be fine, tomorrow the line may retract and you will find your film is now outside the line of acceptability. In the west this mostly means people write you nasty tweets or write critical retrospectives on your work. In China this means your film will likely be banned immediately. If you want to make money in that market you must give consideration to this type of thing.
Autistic raised Christian here, can confirm my church and family tried everything they could to cure me. That is to say, they prayed about it and then blamed me for not being godly enough
@@Achuuu-mmmm right? If you're not feeling a connection or close relationship with God, then you're just not be praying enough! It's your fault, personally 🤢🤮
I grew up Mormon and they believe that people born neuroatypical were less valiant in the pre existence (when we lived in heaven before coming to Earth). So yeah, unfortunately that seems to be very common in religion.
Whatever the merits of religion, faith, etc. It does lead one to believe in things that cannot be seen or... I guess measured is the right word. Unfortunately, once a group believes in angels or demons or malevolent spirits, now there's an easy answer for why someone is "weird" or "sick." And now there's (usually) also some authority figure that wants things to be a certain way. So deviations can be labeled as evil or whatever. I'm not a fan
Alright so my main take away from this video was it doesn't matter if you're right, left, conservative, or liberal. We all fucking hate Velma, and that might be the most unifying message I've heard for a good long while.
Which then, technically, this concept can apply to any recent product that has sparked debates online and offline. I mean... RoP can be criticized by a right-winger, a left-winger or an apolitical one, only based on the inconsistencies between the two seasons and the absurd behaviors that the characters display, even breaking away from adherence to the original works.
@@theburgerking1236A lot of people claim that but then all they talk about is the race changes or how Velma is openly queer (even though it’s been somewhat hinted at for a long time lol). Most of the comments and even some critique videos I’ve seen is just people calling Velma “woke” even though it clearly isn’t
@@BullFrogFace Yeah, some people will always call things they don't like woke just because. While things they do like can contain the same things and not be called woke. It's just weird. Seems to be the "thing" right now to call everything they dislike woke.
Sleepaway Camp 2 and 3 ignore the forced nature of Angela's transition in the first film and just have her be legitimately trans and have reassignment surgery. The films sits in an interesting place because Angela kills for conservative reasons (killing people for smoking pot, having sex, or just being plain rude) but also violently kills the incredibly homophobic, transphobic and racist characters gleefully. I think it's an intentional contradiction created by the film - Angela's evil isn't her queerness, it's her conservatism. And yet Angela is always presented as the lesser evil, being incredibly humanised by the film by a nightmare sequence where she displays intense guilt for what she has done. The film is either trying to be a middle finger to conservatives who related to previous slasher killers because of their perceived conservative values by forcing them to relate to a queer trans woman, or earnestly trying to make people less bigoted by giving them a trans character who is likable and relatable. I know for certain that (at least with 2 and 3) the films weren't trying to be transphobic, but quite the opposite. The director, Michael A Simpson was in a band, Ravenstone, in the early 1970s, which played at the first openly held gay rights dance in the southeast USA and was harassed by the KKK as a result, another one of their songs 'Off a Pig' advocated for veganism and they played the music louder after police threatened them. One of their songs, More Love, was planned to be the credits song for the 2nd film but ended up as a DVD bonus feature instead. So yeah, it's pretty clear what stance Sleepaway Camp 2 and 3 take when it has it's trans heroine gleefully shoot a cop to death
Yeah I see Angela from the first movie as a whole different chair from the sequels. I think both versions are such interesting antagonists in their respective film but they just are not the same character. But I also fucking love it as it semi reflects how some people view supportive parents to queer children. My uncle claims I was groomed into being trans by my mom and grandma when I didn't know what a trans person was until I watched the rocky horror remake in 2016 and my mom had to explain Laverne Cox was a trans women since I was use to Tim Curry performing drag in the original. I knew what drag was and had dabbled in drag before hand. I came out as trans two years later with no further discussion with my family about the matter only my own self reflection and research. So many people see me as Angela 1 because my grandparents funded my top surgery last year and my mom helped buy me new clothes right after coming out, when I was Angela 2 and 3. (Not a killer but someone just trying to live their life and having actions doing nothing to do with my identity)
@DrJazzyBonespHd I just want to say that it makes me so happy to read about how supportive your mom and grandparents are. I have friends who have had to stay in the closet because they know what their family will do if they come out and a friend who was disowned by his parents when he came out. Luckily, his grandma took him in immediately and fought for him to be able to stay in contact with his sisters, who love and accept him. I love that your mom and grandma have been so great and loving. ❤
Wait Sleepaway Camp had a sequel 😮, now I need to watch them all. Of course I didn’t like how Angela was portrayed in the first but I may like the sequel and the 3rd film.
I think he just randomly excorsizes some children he comes across as annoying for running around and screaming or being autistic attempts to bill the parents who didn’t asks and adds it to his book Or he fakes some shit and pays the parents
I have avoided the film The Exorcism of Emily Rose my entire life cause as a kid my parents would constantly tease me saying I'm pulling an "Emily Rose" whenever as a way to wave away my autism symptoms/fits. Very frustrating and has made me bitter towards a film I never saw despite being a big horror movie fan I can't find myself willing to watch it.
I wouldn't recommend it. Despite what was said in the video the movie is very bias towards the supernatural point of view. If anything I would recomend reading about the event is based on... warning is heavy stuff.
@ I normally don’t mind a supernatural point of view so long the film or story is fictional based in a realistic world. But something like this is not to my liking. Definitely gonna put on my read list for when I’m in the mood for heavy non fiction stories
@@galilea723 Hot take but basically it's a worse Rosemary's Baby movie. If you want a movie that was a dramatized but not exploitative "based on" thing, go with the german film Requiem (2006), it's a documentary-style drama rather than horror, but I find that's more respectful.
I feel like in praise of shadows was going through a mental breakdown when he made his video. There's an immense pressure for creators to perform or give up RUclips. Making ends meet as just a RUclipsr seems frustrating. He did some great videos in the past. It was sad to see him sink his channel. I hope the guy is ok.
The whole thing just makes me sad thinking about it tbh. My gut instinct was that he wanted it to be something like his equivalent to Hbomberguy exposing James Somerton, but... he made a _mess_ of a video, it tarred pretty much everyone vaguely left, the griftosphere got hours and hours of content out of that one.
I don't want to cause a heated or bad blood argument, nor try to say that mental health isn't important, but it's no excuse for what he did. He made a hit piece on an innocent man and tried to attack people for their beliefs unprovoked. That whole video was not meant to be talking about the right in horror; it was a mask to hide the hit piece he was making on Wendigo. Mental health problems or not, what he did was fucked up and unjustified. Plus, attacking Wendigoon does not make sense because the most “Conservative” wendigoon is publicly liking guns and being Christian, to which, if that's the reason for a hit piece to be made on you, then you need to question your logic because you are attacking him for his religion and liking something that is historical (as most of wendigoon’s interest in firearms have come from history, as he has talked about many times).
Saw this comment who mentioned seeing John Carpenter at a Con and Carpenter was asked this question and his response was “There a cabin in the woods and there is an evil there. The Right Wing horror, the evil is from the past that was locked away, and will overpower the characters. Left wing horror, the evil will infiltrate causing the characters to tear themselves apart.”
@@mr.selyumor5402 I know John Carpenter remade the thing, and unlike what this video says. It’s blatantly a conservative movie because the alien in it is a communist standin. A fact you cannot overlook if you know how blunt it was in the source material. Which says something about how creators can make one work but not totally align with it. As we all know Carpenter does consider himself a liberal.
Huh. By that logic, the movie actually called "The Cabin in the Woods" is a Right Wing horror film even though we end up rooting for *spoilers* 2 people that Conservatives hate...and we're rooting for them to end the world. Huh, agian.
@@katherineknapp3782 I'm not sure that's much of a "huh"--Joss Whedon has done a lot of shitty things towards women but I do believe he's spent a lot of time *trying* to create feminist works, and so it makes sense that he would start with a traditionally conservative construction of horror to deconstruct.
@@Nassifeh It was such a shock for me to hear how Whedon was this amazing feminist writer who worked on things like Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Battlestar Galactica, only for him to turn in Age of Ultron, which is one of the most shockingly sexist things I'd ever seen from a mainstream film. I'm just saying, Hollywood would laugh at a script where Steve Rogers suddenly had this character reduced to "had trauma from being sterile thanks to the Super Soldier serum", and had to sit out telling manly stories in order to tend bar even though Stark's employees should be doing that... But do that to Black Widow and give her a "Never mentioned before now, never mentioned again" love affair with The Hulk, and it's perfectly acceptable. Yes there are more sexist films, but the fact that it was in such a big movie that didn't have this problem in previous or later entries makes it really stand out.
Yeah. This was what I was hoping the In Praise of Shadows video was going to be instead of something that made me really worried for the man's mental health.
As insufferably smug as it was, it also felt like he was unhappy with his lack of success and decided to engineer his downfall. The fact that he basically put himself all throughout the video on display, that felt very telling. Like he was putting his own image out there as a way to both gain recognition and to be destroyed.
@@rsfilmdiscussionchannel4168 i thought he had a decent amount of success. Definitely not to the same level as Dead Meat or Wendigoon but still fairly known in the online horror community.
@@royalxprincessbaka6875 He did but apparently his views were plummeting as he said and complained about in the video. I was still watching his videos to be honest, had no clue of what was happening.
@rsfilmdiscussionchannel4168 Huh, maybe the RUclips algorithm wasn't working in his favor anymore. I found his channel by his videos constantly showing up in my feed but I also watch alot horror stuff in general.
Ending on the recording of Anneliese was haunting. What they did to that poor girl is nothing short of criminal. It just drives home that religion, no matter how well intentioned, can be incredibly damaging to children. It certainly damaged me.
That entire movie is fucked. I watched it before I knew about Anneliese and didn't think it was very good already, but finding out the fact that it was based on something true, something abusive, something truly heinous, is so messed up. And the movie basically condones the actions that led to someone's horrifying death.
We protect children from things they're not ready for. Sex, violence, etc. We recognize that they don't have the emotional or cognitive maturity to deal with these topics, so we shouldn't expose kids to them. Religion should absolutely be treated the same. We should treat religion like we do porn. You don't get your first Playboy or your first Bible until you are 18 years old, and have the maturity and intelligence to decide for yourself.
@GearZNet no, see that's called science. It's backed by multiple independent and repeatable studies, and evidentiary backed observations. As opposed to religion which is backed by superstition and fairy tales.
I can’t be the only one who sees that Anthony’s channel has been popping off as of late? It’s very well deserved. Like, I originally found this channel through the Lorchard drama, but this has quickly become my new favorite video essay channel. Keep up the good work
Ive started watching since two weeks ago, and its easy to watch ants videos because he drops consistent indepth video essays that cover shit people like.
I found this channel only a few days ago and almost immediately subscribed. It was so refreshing to find a video essay channel that talks about media where the essays are actual essays with substance while still being interesting to listen to.
I feel like he’s filling the niche that James Somerton was in before yknow, Everything. But this channel has actual substance and original thought (comment, please don’t age like milk). I’m glad to see Ant taking off
The tragic thing with Stepford Wives, is that it seems more and more relevant as time go :( Same with The Handmaids Tale today. When I saw the original movie around 1990 it felt like a paranoid feminist fantasy. It does not feel like that anymore....
I'm sorry but how, 60% of university graduates or women. Women get paid as much as men even if they don't do overtime.... How is that turned back the clock compared to 1974?
@georgethompson913 That depends on the industry. For example, the wage gap in programming is not too large usually, but the wage gap in contracting can be very concerning
My mom always saw Night of the Living Dead as unintentionally hilarious because of how slow the zombies were. But among rewatching recently and absorbing the fact the lead was black and he was killed by cops in the end she was like "This movie was deeper than I thought."
Which is an instance of interpreting politics there yourself. Because the lead of that movie was decided after the script and they went with who they thought was the best. He just happened to be black.
Weirdly, I've always read The Wicker Man as anti-conservative. Howie is not a likable protagonist and it's hard to feel bad for him when he is sacrificed, so his death symbolically feels like the death of the old world of religious conservatism and the empowerment of the new world of the sexual revolution. It could be read as anti-liberal, too, given the villagers sacrifice people in order to appease their gods, but to me that's just the beauty of this film: it can be read in so many different ways and always offers something new.
In a weird way THE WICKER MAN is almost anti-horror; because horror requires you to be invested in the protagonists in order for us to feel horror when SHTF. But Howie is such a pompous cultural imperialist you may just end up cheering the people of Sumerisle! Also, I've always found it hilarious that if he'd just done the nasty with Britt Ekland he would've been in the clear. lol
It's even more funny considering its a pagan cult. Which makes the irony of an extremely conservative person being undone by cultural beliefs that pre-date his own even more fitting.
really interesting comment, ty! I just had a good 20 minute internal debate, and I think in the end the film is a study of excess. Howie's life is bound by an excess of received wisdom and repressed emotion, whereas the summerisle folk can be taken to represent an excess of permissiveness. Neither extreme is morally correct and both lead to extreme negative outcomes, howie's virginity is not a symbol of purity or devotion to god but more a symbol of how utterly bereft of human connection his life has been due to his adherence to a cultish philosophy. This is why he is so hostile towards the summerisle folk, he sees them as practicing a philisophical system that is in direct competition to his own. Two sides of the same coin.
@@paultapping9510 I mean the guy is there because he’s looking for a missing girl, and no one is giving any clues. Doesn’t help they are actively messing with him.
I mean this is kind of a minor thing but presumably the reason to dismantle the system is because it's intended method of working is flawed and by dismantling it you effectively improve it.
I think it's a cancer. One in which certain groups that are antagonistic to the survival of others, but their own survival is thriving. We can't take the approach that there is always a happy medium. Sometimes things are just wrong, out live their use or are harmful. Our system is an example of that. I very much doubt that it was intended to be as harmful, not only to those under it, but it itself overtime and it's no doubt that in the short term, some people benefit off of it, but I don't think people are so black and white to think that it's intended to cause the suffering it does. I think it's growing pains disease. A bi-product of every group and person trying to find a way to survive and sometimes thrive and just sticking to what seems to be working, even if it's actually corrosive and hurting from the inside. A multi-thousand year old medium of intermediary exchange and a first come first serve ownership basis is a great example of that. Also, appeal to nature fallacy. How the rest of the natural world works is on survival mode. We can and should do better, so our systems basis shouldn't be on the premise of dog eat dog assumption. But it is and has been for thousands of years. The dogs that survive "win" but they have to worry about new dogs. No king stays a king, nothing lasts forever, not power, not resources. Learning sustainability is about maximizing survival chances, not just some nice ideology. Learning that nature isn't a good barometer for how to run a society or monetary system is integral to us moving from mere survival of the lucky, to base line survival and thriving of the many. So I do think you're right about dismantling, but I think in order to save as many as possible from the illness we have and not take out in the cancer analogy, the good cells surrounding the bad ones, it needs to be like replacing a ship. Bit by bit. There will still be collateral damage, there always is in change, but we don't want to punish people who don't choose the system they live under. And I do think we're doing this, but there is always resistance to change. Because change means unknown and unknown equals death and we universally don't have a culture of accepting two things, that change is okay and two, it's okay to be wrong. That's how you learn. We don't live in a world where being wrong about a tiger being friend or foe is actually a concern anymore yet we still treat each other and other things as that tiger. Making quick black and white easy to digest assessments about anything new or in some cases, rejecting it existing and living in denial.
@@mr.selyumor5402 Resource based economy, starting with UBI as a catalyst. Our society is good at producing, if not overproducing enough technical resources for high quality of life status for all living humans. This would be considered the economy itself, rather than a means of participation via different work types with gate keeping to being able to work in different sectors (IE free education so that you have more people who know how to work various jobs) The resources exist, access to them is the most common limitation. Things are also produced en mass by a small group of people rather than the collective. You could switch job functionality to minor tasks taught to each participant of society, relative to their ability (such as mental and physical capability) and dedicate smaller, but still important parts of that functionality. For instance, everyone could work in the four main sectors as a majority, food, water, medicine and tech production (which are all massive umbrellas) Rather than most of the work force currently doing jobs intended to making money, instead, you're not paid at all and work at a job for a much shorter amount of time (due to how many could work in general) and do a specific small cog job, say watering/evaluating plants in a garden or hydroponic farm for 3 hours a week and that same job is something millions do. Another could be water sanitation, distribution etc. Then of course engineering, technological application, sciences, medicine etc, but most people would do smaller jobs pertaining to both so that everyone is a small cog. This means not only is the job actually a direct contribution to society because it pertains to function and upkeep, but also it's far shorter of a time needed because so long as you're educated and capable, you will work (and there are plenty of jobs in which both physical and mental limitations could easily do or can be modified to be able to do) Everyone contributes as a default and because they do, they're both educated in the task they do (which ideally you'd choose what sector you want to work in, but in crisis cases, you'd likely be educated to do various things) and due to this, everyone gains access to the fruits of all labor done, because it's decentralized by millions all doing the same task, which the time spent would be proportional to availability of said task to be done. In peoples spare time, they could learn other jobs they'd like to do (because humans like to be busy, that's in our nature) and work on hobbies which contribute to cultural and artistic expression. There is no monetary incentive. The incentive is, you benefit from doing your job well, because if you work food/water/medicine etc., that affects you directly. You want your portion of the task structure to be done right and due to not having to work really long hours all the time, you have plenty of brain and physical power to actually achieve it. Also, due to the 8 billion people available for various tasks, you likely have a choice in what you want to work to contribute with and the rest of the time, you work on hobbies. Your living is actually assured, so there isn't a fear of loss unless it's by other things we already worry about, like rogue black holes, meteors or cataclysmic events unaffected by a societies system. If anything, society would be better prepared for those events because it would have more people doing jobs they find important or interesting, like scientific study, astronomy, medical, etc etc. And you'd never feel like your job is useless, because all of it would contribute to societal upkeep an innovation. A garbage man is important, a farmer is important and a doctor is important. The fact that any of those are made to feel less or more so is a big problem in itself, that and the bars on education for people who would pursue those jobs and don't have access. This is one of many ideas of a resource based economic model. AI and robots in the future in such a model would also likely lead to any manual labor and dangerous tasks being deferred to machines, but that wouldn't matter, because money isn't the intermediary exchange anymore, jobs being taken wouldn't be a concern at all. Oh another benefit, the overproduction of things would also stop, as the amount made would actually fit the demanded need. If there is no benefit to excess to sell or gain from, then waste is also massively reduced. Not to mention anxiety over ownership of things and things produced to be basically landfill. Planned obsolescence would also go away entirely, because sustainability in a economic model that directly attributes to available resources would be super focused on recycling, re usability and longevity of anything and everything made where possible. What's super crappy is that anyone reading this thinks that's a utopia, as if problems are all gone just because people would actually have living as a right. They're not. There are plethora of issues to deal with in live with out having to worry if you could end up starving to death due to debt or lack of access to food. Peoples standards are way way too low for what technological advancement we actually have. Culturally though, that's the hurdle to cross. We're not even at ground 0, we're at -4. We still engage in us vs them mentality and struggle to fight for resource control and some people still starve to death even though food exists in such a quantity that you could feed everyone 6 times over. And people blame overpopulation when they don't understand just how much we actually produce for the sake of hopeful profit. Everything falls apart if no one can buy things, which means there has to be poor and rich. But in a resource based economy, things only fall apart if work isn't done, which is the case in ours too, but there is no extraneous extra thing to balance as there is with a monetary model. If anything, it holds back sustainability and conservation concerns for finite resources along with trying to balance it's own made up finite resource.
Im trans so let me talk about representation. The real issue with negative myths making it into films is when they stand alone. Same reason that a movie with an all male all white or whatever isnt as big of a deal when we have movies all over the spectrum with those representations. No ones immune to reactionarism. Yes conservatives slip into it easier yes i ultimately believe no one should be religious or superstitious, but ya gotta remember why you believe things whats the ground youre making your foundation on, i want people to walk away from those things because if they dont do it on their own they wont learn the lesson my beliefs teach. So they'll still be those things just without a church. Same thing happens with representation the more we get the less power the negative ones have grip.
39:52 I live in Salem Massachusetts, its funny because the satanic temple, not the church of satan, different organizations, have after school programs and cell mugs!
I would take issue with that, since most of these cannibal films are about indigenous people fighting back against capitalist exploitation. They devour that which is devouring their culture. Seems pretty anti-right wing to me. I will agree that many Italian zombie and giallo films are right-wing, but the cannibal films take pains to paint the invading Europeans as the real savages most of the time. Consider Cannibal Holocaust, where filmmakers set a hut full of villagers on fire to get a good shot for their movie, or Cannibal Ferox, where the nasty criminals looking for emeralds do terrible things to the tribe before they get their just comeuppance.
@@AWCMCultMoviesthat's a lack of perspective. Remember that Capitalists are Liberals. If you have a corporatist economic system, capitalism is Left Wing. That allows the "barbaric" foreigners to compete against the civilized Italians. See?
Okay, but in my country, classic liberalism/capitalism (free market, lower taxes, deregulation) is thought of as a right-wing ideology, whereas socialism is associated with the left wing (redistribution of wealth, progressive taxation, workers rights). Perhaps why those films played better in the US than in Italy?
There was a You're Wrong About podcast episode that discusses exorcisms. They talk about how their popularity rose during the 70s, not just because of the films, but also because of institutions of psychology and mental health and women's positions and gender roles in society. If it's between going to a 1970s mental hospital for an indeterminate amount of time for depression or an exorcism, a lot of people will probably go with the exorcism.
I recently saw a trailer for a movie called ‘Werewolves’. The trailer gave me impressions that it might be a conservative movie, but of course we’ll have to wait and see. As a follow werewolf enthusiast, I thought I should mention it.
Thx, for the Velma part. I was waiting for someone to point out that this show isn't woke at all - for this is how I felt when I checked it out, which was after I heard a bunch of whining about how "wokeness" had ruined the show. I exspected it to be the usual crybaby stuff - which it most certainly was - but aside from that the show wasn't really good. Since I really like the animation in that show, I managed to convince myself that there maybe was some sort of clever trolling going on, aimed at poking fun of the virtue signaling liberal mainstream that doesn't hold any progressive convictions whatsoever but is quick to adopt the newest language in an shallow effort to stay en vogue. But though I made it to the end of season one that just didn't happen either. I find your comparision to early Family Guy quite fitting - though personally I got 90s South park vibes, there is definitely a lot of this hole everyone is stupid and we hate them, including this stupid show, but we the writers stand above all that energy going on. That being said, I don't think this show is conservative on purpose - if it has a purpose I feel it's trying to be edgy in a topical manner. It never gets there (at least for season 1, didn't see the other - but I heard nothing that would make me discard this argument), but I think it believes it does, like a 12yo shitposting random stuff while feeling smug about it.
@@TheMonkePrince A woke show would go into a lecture about the proper ways to help someone with a panic attack, not have the main character slap someone out of one with no consequences.
@Sebastian_Niedermeier The anti-woke criticism barely ever seems to be about the political content of the media. It's basically always a piece of media that's widely considered bad and that badness is somehow gonna get blamed on some vague idea of left-wing politics.
As a conservative, I loved your video. The one thing I disagree with is the homophobic attack in It 2, what it lacks is context. It is worse because they excluded the Black Spot fire, but both events are crucial for the plot and theme: each It "hunting season" starts and ends with some atrocity that is caused by human intent and negligence. It is about the people of Derry, their own willingness to divide and dehumanize their neighbors, nurturing this great evil sleeping beneath the city, almost as if they are sacrificing themselves to It. It's actually a great example of King's valuing of human life: a factory explosion that killed 88 children was enough to wake It, and so is a bigoted attack that ended one life.
Indeed. Some of the most chilling moments in the book come when the creature and the people under its influence can hunt and kill almost in plain sight, because everyone in the town has been indoctrinated to just....not see certain things, or register them as a problem.
Or being killed for 'pre-marriage' sex. That is a trope in horror films to such a degree that is the first thing that get brought up in a japanese manga one shot called 'Final Girl' where the protag get isekai into the body of the slutty character LOL!
I had no idea Velma was a trojan horse... That actually explains a lot about why so much "woke" media feels more like "Can you just call me a slur? That'd be less offensive at this point." So insidious
Yeah, _The Hunt_ is a great talking point for how "centrism" is a conservative-to-reactionary position. It's entirely unintelligible unless you take it for granted that "liberalism" (i.e. anything from the center-right leftward in terms of "social issues" i.e. anything other than pure market-driven spin) is associated primarily with wealthy "elites" and that every indication that wealthy elites are much more _conservative_ than "normal people" is some sort of grand conspiracy. (The whole discourse is engineered to provide at least a notional veil over the reality that by "normal" conservatives mean "white and conservative," deleting the relevance of the immense number of PoC and urban white people -- the people, not "the elites," who actually drive centrist and progressive policies on a demographic scale.)
I appreciate how you handled the In Praise of Shadows stuff at the start, he's a very big inspiration for me and I'm so sick of people tearing him and everything he's ever made apart over one video where he's obviously been struggling a ton. The fact that you had the decency to show some empathy was really nice.
one of the best video essays ive seen in a while. usually essays like this struggle to hold my attention, but this one has gripped me, and its been great to listen to while i draw. parts about exorcisms in specific really spoke to me as an autistic person, every day im glad my family is jewish and not christian so they never resorted to fixing my mental disorders through prayer.
One of the themes Carpenter was exploring in The Thing was idealized zeal and the socially debilitating effects of the Red Scare... So it certainly wasn't a conservative movie. I think the Federalist was basing their choice simply on the partisan affiliation of people associated with the films.
26:40 to be fair, fantasy/horror stories going against church doctrine but at the same time portraying the church in a somewhat positive light does happen and is a bit questionable cause yeah, the church isn't JUST superstitious, its actively harmful in many cases
This is exactly my assessment of Velma; it tries to dress itself up in post-modern irony, especially when it comes to race, gender, or sexuality, but the very core of the show has nothing but contempt for its premise, characters, and the viewer. It's a show that celebrates nothing, and it sure as shit doesn't celebrate diversity or change.
Counterpoint: Dustborn exists, which proves that there are people that actually think this way and make media reinforcing their ideas while being 100% geniune
At 58:03 you mention the part in sleep away camp where Angela kills a couple kids out of no where. It’s hard to notice since it’s a background detail but when Angela’s thrown in the water, as she’s helped, the kids throw sand and make fun of her. So while yeah they didn’t do something major like the more her age bullies, they still antagonized her
That's a pretty astounding level of coping... and I don't mean that in the meme way. I cannot believe that people are actually trying to No True Scotsman that show as not being leftist despite the content of the show and the numerous interviews with the creators. Though if it makes you feel any better I feel the same way about Christian movies as you do about Velma; yet I still acknowledge that they are conservative.
@ I don’t literally think it’s not a leftist show, just a really bad one to the point it feels like it swings the other direction. There’s a difference between what the writer intends to get across and what an audience interprets from a show/book/any other kind of art. And while the writers may have intended for this to feel empowering, most of the audience had a very different take away from it. For me it feels almost mocking. I doubt that was the intent but that’s certainly how it feels to me at least.
@@pman87850 Fair enough but I have seen, even in replies to this video, people theorizing it was a big conspiracy to make leftists look bad. If that ain't you then fair play.
@@pman87850 I responded to that a long time ago and I don't know why RUclips yeeted it. All I said was "fair play." I've seen people make that fallacy and if that's not you then alright.
Loved this video! I think it's silly to assume that just because someone doesn't share your political opinions doesn't mean they don't have interesting stories to share.
As someone who has never been one for horror, you did a great job keeping me invested. One thing to note about that "God's Not Dead" vs "Top Gun" point - I think a solid argument can be made that Top Gun has a stronger conservative (ie not just Republican) impact and legacy. One film was made to very specifically pander to the filmmakers' own base and supporters, to stoke their hatred. The other is easier to enjoy and has no partisan politics nor even dares to specify the enemy. Yet Top Gun succeeded in convincing a generation of people regardless of their politics, that American fighter pilots are still cool and dashing after Vietnam had sullied that image. It helped increase recruitment, it further strengthened the American mentality that loving war is bipartisan and epic. GND is a terrible film and so overtly hateful and aimed at appealing to what its very select audience already think. it cannot reach a wider audience and despite more literally being propaganda, has little propaganda value, whereas Top Gun is one of the most effective propaganda films in US history. I am not disagreeing or anything, just what came to mind with that comparison. Though one criticism I have is it is a bit, idk uncomfortable to use the agonized screams of a young women being abused via neglect and having a mental breakdown as the outro sound. I think you are using it as a "wham" moment of what happens when things don't change, but that was half a video ago, so it feels just a tad exploitative at first. However that is just my reaction
I don't think GND is meant to convince anyone who isn't already convinced. It's in-media, something meant to reassure the target audience rather than to persuade outsiders. The purpose of GND and alot of explicitly christian media is to provide an acceptable alternative to the base, give them something to put on TV or to act as an event for them to go to the theatre together without seeing a movie that goes against their code. At the end of the day they're people with most of the same social desires as other people and in order to keep them in the fold you need to provide an alternative option. The secular world has it's movies, they need their movies. The secular world has netflix, they need to have pure flix. They will talk about films like GND as a tool of converting people and how the film has converted people etc etc, that's still in-media because it serves the same purpose.
The theory that Velma is a trojan horse is so refreshing, honestly. It really does feel like a satire of young social justice advocacy. I still have no idea what that show was even hoping to accomplish. The strangest thing to me is it's not even that horrible, more than anything it's just a painfully unfunny and cringey show.
The films are definitely more of a “watch this with friends at a party” type rather than a deep philosophical discussion of anything, but I’ll stand by the Purge movies and recommend them despite being as political as they are. Are they particularly great? Absolutely not. But are they fun? Yes.
Honestly I think the second one is the best because it walks the tightrope the best between fun horror concept and a blunt political message. I think the ones after lean into the politics a bit to much and the first one does not explore the concept or even the politics that good
On the subject of Conservative Horror: The way some conservatives view and read a horror movie astounds me. I remember reading a top ten list of “Conservative Horror films” around the time IPOS’s vid on it came out. That list had a lot of weird explanations for their choices. They had Let The Right One In (The Swedish version not the Matt Reeves Remake) on there because “it was better than My interview with a vampire” and also uses the line “The boy will become a man. The girl next door will forever remain … a girl” to describe the ending which…sounds very gross to me. Meanwhile, The Thing (1982) was on there and they barely went into the plot beyond just saying it was a cosmic horror. I’m not saying all conservatives view horror movies this way, but the way and how some view a movies in that way while not really engaging with some movies beyond the most middle of the road summary and reason why they liked it (like Texas Chainsaw Massacre also on that list and described as “Like a Scooby Doo plot”) makes me want to know what goes through their heads.
The Thing IS conservative despite Carpenter describing himself as "left of Che Guevara" (though jokingly - he contrasts it with Kurt Russel being to the right of Genghis Khan). The movie can't escape the xenophobic paranoia in its DNA. John W. Campbell preloaded it with his own far-right ideology.
Conservatives not beating the media illiterate charge. The list compiler probably put together a list of their favorites and then half-assed the reasoning after
@@Sebastian_Rabbit really just throwing my hat in the ring but, maybe they meant that teh catalyst to the movie is that a research team from another country fucks up, and releases a monster from the ice, have all of the team members die, leaving the Americans to deal with the aftermath, thereby killing almost all of them too. And this sentence is reeeeeeaaallyyy far fetched, but maybe it's also because the events of the thing would probably not happen, have they not taken in the dog, have they not shown kindness to something from outside the station, that nothing is supposed to come into. Buuuht idk, I'm prolly reading what the other commenter said in a wrong way. Lol
I think it’s more accurate to say that right wing politics are based more on solidifying hierarchies and systems of power, while left wing politics are based on dismantling hierarchies. If it were just about “past vs present” then it would be considered right wing for someone in a recent authoritarian regime to say “let’s go back to having a representative democracy”.
I think the reason the past vs present line of thinking comes from the thought that the march of progress is linear & leads to a better society as time passes, which is a more left wing view of time/march of progress. This thing I said ,are short fat otaku,s take on March of progress, just watch his vid on March of progress. You should also watch his " are conservatives media illiterate - analysing conservative core & transcore games" where he responded to lance & dead domain & how they can not view the politics in games from a right wing side ,cause they know a lot about leftist but thinks conservatism is simple. I liked that Anthony also acknowledged that right wing beliefs are not that simple. I also saw Anthony showed a clip from a director who said you can only tell 2 kinds of horror stories, where either the danger comes from outsider or inside. And Anthony said outsider danger is inherently conservative but what about a story about indeginous PPL being invaded by outside colonial forces.
People apply too many labels to this shit. Don’t set everything in stone and believe what you want in the moment. It’s a fool’s game to put yourself on the line for something as transient as a political affiliation.
@@mr.selyumor5402 I mean, I teach history. I’m not saying this to die on a hill. I’m saying it because it’s true. Making your politics about “whatever happened in the past” vs. “not that” is literally not an ideology. Looking to a mythologized past is a usually a symptom of right wing politics but not a defining feature. The ideology that pushes reactionary past worship is what matters, and time and again since “right” and “left” became political ideas, right wing political movements seek to maintain and consolidate systems of hierarchical power while left wing movements seek to dismantle hierarchies and distribute power.
Leftism is not about "dismantling hierarchies" that's merely lip service of what they claim. In reality it's really just about "despising hierarchies or anyone in a higher status than you due to feelings of personal inadequacy" Leftism is merely ideological, that being everything about it only works in your head. It has no basis in reality, everything good about it comes from hypotheticals and imagination. It's good because it sounds good, it appeals to humanity's repressed desires for comfort and security. In reality it rarely ever works, and any time it does, chances are it was really liberalism. Like I said, it's an ideology based on feelings of personal inadequacy. You may fantasize about dismantling a system, but you have no power to do anything significant. All you do is indulge in your own ideologies, create new ones when old ones don't work, and attribute everything you hate about life to some artificially created system or ideology.
@@SaberSin-mu4kt You sound very intelligent and not at all reactionary. I like the way you assume that someone who can understand and explain a thing must believe the thing. Nothing I said is contradicted by the fact that leftism is “just an ideology”. All political movements are ideologies. This is how politics works.
I wasn't sure I'd like this channel too much for a bit. But over time, Anthony has proven to be one of the most open-minded of the youtubers I've seen. He considers himself an enemy of conservatism, but he also seems to have considered their opinions and what they actually believe instead of fighting straw men in a leftist bubble. We need people like that. Perspective is easy to lose, especially in an algorithm-driven internet. He seems to tailor his beliefs according to evidence, and change opinions when new evidence presents itself. This isn't a weak thing to do- it's the correct thing to do. Regarding the topic: one thing that he's missed is queer religious horror is a very strong and thriving community. I would say most people I know that are into religious horror are some sort of queer, and they produce prodigious amounts of that subgenre. I would hazard most American queers having some sort of religious trauma, so creating on this topic makes sense.
Most my friends are very into horror and religious horror in particular, and we've had quite a few discussions about how our respective identities on the queer spectrum, have affected how we relate to horror, especially in books and film. For instance, the book Camp Damascus, a horror story taking place at a fundamentalist conversion camp, is a great horror novel. A straight cisgendered person reading it would still experience a well written story with good scares, good pacing and an ambiance of dread. For a queer person reading it, the dread is closer to home, the fear is more visceral and relatable, especially if they're from an evangelical background. The dark humor also comes through better, imo for a queer person reading it, while it might come across as being a bit in poor taste for someone who isn't an LGBTQ+ person with a ton of religious trauma. I had a point somewhere, but my adhd msy have gotten away from me. 😅
Can i just say i love your background? I love how you dont tidy it up or make it look perfect, like so many other bookshelf-for-background creators do. There is like a real weight to it (which accentuates the weight of your thoughts, myes🤓)
9:15 this was not an oversimplification. All 3 of those justices lied and said they wouldnt touch roe because it was settled law. The facts and data didnt matter to them, only their agenda.
One thing I would add to your conclusion is that media is in conversation with the audience. Whenever I view a piece of media, I'm bringing my ideas and my perspectives to it as well as it bringing the symbology and textual decisions - both subconscious and conscious - to me. (And then the results of those conversations are what we talk about when we discuss media, but this also allows me to engage with the same piece of media at different points in my life and it to mean different things at different points). This means that ideas within media aren't always held - even subconsciously - by the creators (and also that as soon as more than one person is involved in the creation of a piece of media, that media is collaborative and getting ideas from multiple sources). But also I don't think it matters if something was put into the work deliberately, accidentally, or if something in it resonated with someone's unique experiences with the world in a way to generate a bespoke meaning. As for Velma as a bisexual - Wasn't Velma crushing on Daphne cut from James Gunn's Scooby Doo film in the edit or am I misremembering behind the scenes chatter there? At this point it feels like Velma has been some flavour of queer - usually interpreted as bi from what I've seen - for about 22 years and sometimes this is left in by the studios and sometimes cut by them. Meaning Velma has been bi for over half my life.
Wanna shout out some ABSOLUTELY AMAZING possession movies that are actually progressive and empathetic. The Old Ways and Huesera: The Bone Women. Both use possession AND the proceeding exorcism as a metaphor for deeper emotional issues through a Hispanic lens. love them to bits as lefty media AND horror movies
Correction about woman not being able to open up credits cards that is for the federal law meaning credit card companies had to let women open up credit cards, women had be able to open a credit card from most companies before that law was passed. I don't blame you for thinking this, generally we only talk about the big laws and not the lead up to that law
Let the Right One In being listed as a conservative horror movie is very funny to me. Ellie, the deuteragonist who develops a remoantic relationship with the main lead was gelded and chooses to live as a woman.
@@lutherheggs451 Never seen the remake, but considering why these types of "remakes" are created, I really can't imagine it captures the unnerving atmosphere and characters that made the original so good.
Today I learned you can make a video about conservative horror movies without projectile vomiting at Wendigoon for the crime of existing for half of the runtime
My one criticism is that I feel you conflate someone (sometimes a director) as automatically being politically conservative (by USA standards). Just because a person spiritually believes in some Christian dogma doesn’t necessarily mean they are politically conservative (aka gay or women’s right, gun laws etc) since there are left wing liberals who believe in a Christian god but don’t subscribe to let’s say a west baptist church view point
As a former Baptist for 16 years (22 male), you hit the nail on the head. I am not a practicing Christian and i educated myself and left conservatism years ago but I do read The Bible and I take information from it as would anybody else with any book, obviously it's a dated piece of media so I don't trust it with my entire being. There are far more good passages than bad, but when they are bad... they are BAD. I'm about as far left as one can get without bleeding into "extremism" but there is oddly a sense of comfort in Christianity even though I don't 100% subscribe to everything regarding it.
Believing in a god does not make a person right-wing, but there is definitely a strong correlation between being a believer and being right-wing. You can't honestly try to deny that
Oh I'm gonna love this. Lately I've been reading a ton about how the political climate of the 70s influenced TCM, specifically how it reflects the rot in the "American Dream" as a concept and Hooper's feelings of being lied to by the American government, so this is already scratching all the right spots Edit: iirc the creator of Rocky Horror has said some pretty unsavory things about trans women, which is where most of the aversion comes from. I'd also argue SOTL doesn't subvert the idea of Bill being trans or not very well, especially since they claim Bill's lack of a desire to medically transition as proof that he's cis. There's plenty of trans people who don't.
Don't have anything to Add to the discussion, maybe because I am German and we never had things like the Satanic Panic here like in the US, thus a lot of times these movies just strike me as "OOoooooOOOOh! SaTaN iS eViL!111!!! Be Afraid!", good example being the Recent Longlegs where I just saw it as stupid untill it got put in another context trough a Video by Meromorphic. But to be honest, I still think it was stupid with it's Satan Stuff. I also have some trouble being like "Yeah, that's left and that is right!" expect it's extremly apparent. XD Anyway, pretty interesting and well written video!
Thank you for tackling Analise. The German film is interesting because it's conservative for Germany - in that it was largely anti-Catholic feom a very Lutheran culture in a way that said - look at these more backwards people than I. But it is their faith that killed Analise - and that film is much more of a horror film to me than Emily Rose.
2 месяца назад+12
I know this might stray from the point of the video but on the topic of alien invasions I want to point out two instances where the outsider was shown as evil without being a conservative pov: V, a 1983 miniseries that depicts an alien invasion where the aliens are clear nazis allegories (it's even point out in the text by a character who is a survivor of the holocaust) and of course the original HG Welles book, War of the Worlds, which ends by asking the reader to compare the actions of the martians with the actions of the United Kingdom in their african colonies. I want to point this out becase 1. I've seen a lot of people saying that the concept of an evil alien race is objectively conservative, which I don't think it's true and 2. I just want more people to watch the original V, it's a great mini series.
sometime i will probably watch the exorcism bc i am extremely heavily into horror media but it's something I've been putting off for a long time because my family was really deeply religious fundamentalist and constantly made me feel like demons were real and it culminated in this incident after an argument i had when I stopped following the faith and got called blasphemous and was held down on the floor and prayed at that the demons would come out of me and it was a really deeply traumatizing event for me and seeing an exorcism in this anime a friend was showing me bothered me really bad even though that was not the same thing and from an eastern religious setting, this character being burned alive by these sins in him and forced to feel like he was evil and had to ask for forgiveness just triggered this traumatic memory in me really bad
Hey there, just because you like doesn’t mean you have to watch ‘the classics’, you’re still a real fan regardless! But if it’s something you want to tackle, maybe start off small, like a minute by minute plot summary, some small clips from the movie, and work your way through it from there. Or maybe start with some parody exorcist movies/skits? Either way, I hope you do what’s best for you!
I think it gets easier with time. I still haven't watched The Exorcist but any media with fundamentalists really gets under my skin horribly, and I used to not be able to engage with it - even like Frank Darabont's The Mist stuck with me badly. But over time those wounds have gotten way easier to live with, about a decade after escaping that upbringing. It gets easier, trust me! Doesn't go away, but it gets easier.
FWIW, the movie doesn't have much in common with your experiences. The characters are very rational and spend much of the movie seeking a scientific explanation for what's happening, and even when the priests are contacted, they work hard to exhaust every rational possibility before even considering an exorcism. By the time it's actually enacted, it's blindingly clear that something deeply unnatural is happening.
I don't think Velma is a Trojan, I think mindy just does not understand her own ideology. There is a very telling leaked text by sam bankman fried in his court case. It's a diatribe about how he, among others he know masquerade as progressive and socially aware simply because people will praise them and they get good coverage. Likewise, I think Mindy, like many other creatives in her field, aligned herself with progressives for said clout for the most part. And given her voting, endorsements, and political statements, she does likely largely agree with said causes. Where she messed up is that I think her show was made out of spite like "won't the right wingers be so mad if I desecrate something they like!" But in doing so, I forgot to make something good or aligned with any values. It's crude ragebait masqueradeing as a progressive show made by a spiteful narcissist. It doesn't make progressives look good, so a cope is the idea that she is some type of secret conservative or trying to make progressives look bad.
I remember a Cracked article from a decade ago that talked about this. Specifically, they were examining how when the left is in power, we get more zombie movies where zombies are a representation of conservatives (fear of conformity, consumerism, and mindless violence); where when the right is in power, we get more vampire horror as a stand-in for liberals (foreigners, sexual promiscuity, often portrayed as explicitly LGBTQ+ or queer-stereotypes). Also, that "exorcist" did online study. FOURTY YEARS AGO?! I hate to break it to him, but there was no "online" 40 years ago. How can people take people like him seriously?
this was a wonderful watch! i’m usually not good with horror so i don’t watch it much at all, but i may look into these (: (also, the moment you started talking about rocky horror i was like, “lily orchard said something silly abt it, didn’t she” 😭)
I thijk you just cracked the code on what has been driving me crazy about Velma. I could not even begin to understand who it was made for. Repositioning it to see it from a conservative pov made it all make sense
Yeah; people typically don't like having their money taken from them to pay for things they don't want to pay for. Maybe instead of mocking them you should acknowledge the cost of these privileges you are demanding. While a capitalist society can afford to provide these things the entitlement is infantile. You're not owed the product of other peoples' labor.
@@grimjoker5572 "You're not owed the product of other peoples' labor." capitalism being all about getting others to do the work for you so you can profit off of it:
@@grimjoker5572So you probably LOVE working for someone who works half as hard as you, if even, and makes more than a thousand times you do, right? Especially someone you probably haven't ever seen face to face and who's role in the company is vague at best? Not to mention the shareholders who's entire existence is to indirectly profit off your work, and the banks and insurance companies who quite literally make money from yours.
i was curious what the in praise of shadows thing was and uh looking it up showed me the right wing pipeline. this is exactly like when i tried looking up "obiwan gay" and instead of him flirting with quinlin vos it was just pages and pages of hating gay people
The ‘right-wing pipeline’…. You need to come to terms with the fact that stupid statements made online will be responded to negatively. It doesn’t matter who you are or who does it. That is how the internet works.
@@mr.selyumor5402 it's a conservative response that's being over-represented when using the search function with the same type of "soy-boy beta thinks white people should die! the woke mind virus destroys lives! sad!" 10 times in a row. i called it a pipeline because when i was looking the only way to hear about it on youtube without finding the taken-down video itself is to hear it through right wing drama channels warped retellings. conservative reactionaries are so excited by blood in the water that when a young adult seemingly experiencing a mental and finical crisis makes a poorly thought out video they don't see a person but a springboard to rant about stupid culture war bullshit. the contents of the shadow guy video doesn't matter they don't give a shit about him only that he fits the shape of what they hate and is vulnerable enough to take out. yeah the internet works this way but it doesn't have to and to appeal to the naturalistic logical fallacy is a giant L. also obiwan "ben" kenobi is the most bisexual man to ever live and those who disagree are beneath me.
Great video. For how many Left or even queer people are drawn to the horror space, it actually feels rare that we have these good faith discussions of the conservative side of horror. The bit of Velma actually makes me think of a common part of horror that has a very Left wing fanbase, but as far as I know is not a part of Velma. Camp. Something hard to describe but certainly is that different place you were saying that Rocky Horror fits that sets it apart from the other similar things that would be conservative. I haven't done a big introspection of it, but does at least the majority of good camp fit into the space of what would otherwise be a conservative horror, but taken to the extent that it becomes ridiculous and that is why especially a lot of queer people are drawn to it? Kind of like how drag itself often fits conservative ideas of femininity but flipped on its head. The flamboyant villains of yesteryear become so charismatic that the audience can find themselves kind of rooting for them. Would Velma actually fit the inverse? Where the would be progressive elements are taken to the extreme that they become silly, and might in the end have the audience in favour of traditional people in power? Regarding this year's October, the successful sort of Horror show is Agatha All Along, which is playing both Camp and progressive.
A good example of non-religious conservative horror to me is 30 Days of Night-a mysterious stranger comes into a peaceful Alaskan community and clashes with the townfolk. Then he sabotages the town to let vampires in.
If we're going to have a go at Scooby-Doo, I think we should mention Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But how to categorize? Here's my attempt: The best Progressive Christian Existentialist show ever made.
While I’ve only just started the video I want to say thank you for the time it took to even amass this much material. Because of how RUclips comments work in the first 2/3 mins of this video I’ve seen several pop up and all of them are seemingly addressing either different points or different perspectives of points you’ve made. I really look forward to the next hour and a half because I find you often have a unique perspective of whatever material you are covering. Thank you again for your invested time and energy 🥳
and yeah, I'm really not trying to claim it's "objectively bad" or anything, but most "satanism" horror stories just don't do much for me. maybe if I were christian or had a more christian background, it would resonate more. but I suppose knowing how many people take those silly ideas _very_ seriously in real life, and just how many lives they've justified ruining because of them, I find fiction based on that to fall a bit flat. either eyeroll-inducing, or just kind of irritating. sometimes both. regardless, my immersion in the story is often broken. a story told especially competently, or that subverts those ideas in an interesting way can still succeed, but it's a bit of an uphill battle. though choosing a more fantastical setting, rather going for the usual "based on a true story" approach can help somewhat. but then they can't fence sit on to what degree the demon magic stuff is real for 90% of the runtime.
Good video. However I have to disagree in regard of the exorcism of Emily Rose: That movie HEAVILY implies that the priest is in the right even if one were to agree in the both sides as posible. Knowing the true story is based on makes my blood boil. This is not based on a book like The Exorcist but a real story of religious abuse told from the persepective of her abusers. Sorry if I came out strong that movie is a pet peeve of mine. Again good video regardless.
On the topic of Frankenstein. There was a degree to which this idea that the monster is Sympathetic is somewhat baked into the story. Much of Victor Frankenstein's misfortunes are a direct result of his own failures, his fears, his irresponsible actions, and his attempts to play God when he wasn't actually ready for it. One of the book's most famous quotes is when the Monster confronts Victor. "Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend."
I will say I do disagree a bit about Velma being a trogen, from interviews mindy kalen dose have say on the show, and while yes velma is unlikable, but I see that as the self insert problem, she's this syndical genius, who's terable traits are relatable, having her be in a romanic/ sexual relationship with every member in a vary racially diverse cast even though, the show has made jokes about the main protag being an unattractive socially awkward person, feels vary similar to a heram protagonist in an anime, I believe the politics are vary much armchair social justice, as in just what you would hear from an self-important article online, her critique of patriarchy and racism aren't really new, and feel like buzz word's taken from an article.
So, as a conservatively bent fella, id like to point out theres theres a third 'conservative stance' and thats "The system, in theory, is fine, its current implementation is flawed". This is where youll get some who want to revert it to the last time it was working correctly and the other group that wants to do a series of slow, small changes to get it back on track. This is how you get reform minded conservatives. Edit: I am noticing that you dont seem to be aware of a fairly common throughline in a lot of conservative thought, particularly during the 70s and 80s and that is that a lot of them *really* dont like the government. They want as little interference as possible and have a tendency to question authority. So theres a lot of overlap with left leaning movies on that one.
What a great video! I'm so glad RUclips served me such a great revommendation. I was confused by the inclusion of Velma at first but you used it so well to illustrate your point
Anthony, thank you for this video and all the Xmen ones I've been listening to lately. You bring such a wonderfully thoughtful, reasonable, and compassionate perspective. Even when I'm listening to you talk about something distressing, I always leave feeling happy that there are mature human beings on this platform.
As a conservative it's very refreshing to see a more left leaning person take a fair look at opposing media I personally love a lot of films made by left leaning individuals the political beliefs whether in the movie or not shouldn't effect your enjoyment but rather the quality of the storytelling and so one
In Sleep Away Camp I had actually wondered if Angela didn't actually kill the young campers, but once a few killings had started there was another killer taking advantage of a situation thinking the initial killer would take the fall for all of the killings.
An interesting point to add onto you talking about how a creator doesn't always intend for a movie to have the political measaging it does is Predator. Holy shit that might be one of the gayest movies of the 80s and it also seems to serve as a critique of toxic masculinity. Dunno if John McTiernan intended for either of those facets to be in the movie but its interesting to note that the team all seem to die in ways that mirror their toxic personality traits and Dutch survives because hes able to adjust his view of the world and think about himself in a different way.
By the way The Wicker Man is not showing that "The Christian God doesn't exist" because Howie didn't get saved at the end... that's like saying that every movie about martyrs is about God not existing because Superman didn't come down to save them lmfao
I absolutely belive that the point of the wicker man was how it made you feel and how easy it is to get right and wrong reversed. They gave Howie every opportunity to prove himself impure and unworthy of sacrifice. It was released in the early 70s which for sure is prime cult territory. Anyways can you tell it's one of my fave movies (and style of movie)
Asian people dunking on other Asians just because of their skin colour is not new. It's actually quite classist more so than racist; dark skin is seen as for poor people and associated with menial work, while lighter skin is prized more as a luxury among most Asians.
We Asians got colorism and it varies in different asian cultures. Hell you can buy lightening cream.
There is also ethnic chauvinism. lighter skinned ethnicities of northern India tend to look down on darker skinned ethnicities like Tamils etc
You can cross out the hole colorism aspect and it remains true - this is not meant to say it isn't a factor it most certainly is. But Asian people without any trace of melatonin dunking on other asian people without any trace of melatonin not being new is just as valid. It's just the aspect of the "other"...
There's also centuries of historical bad blood involved too, like how Japan and Korea hate each other because of many invasions of the latter by the former, not least of which being during World War 2.
@@zainmudassir2964 It is absolutely a thing that stems from class in most cultures, too.
I had to pause the video to put the Anti Gay Hate Crime in "IT' into perspective.
I grew up in Maine and was a child in the 1980's. I don't remember the exact year but there was an incident an Bangor where a group of teenagers beat up a gay man and threw him off the bridge.
Steven King has a mansion in Bangor and wrote it into the book as a statement.
Hmmm interesting
The book Dairy was also very, very racist
@@masqueraid988 what is "Dairy" and who wrote it?
Stephen King is pretty well known for being leftist so it isn't surprising. He was probably one of the biggest white authors who spoke out against prejudice and discrimination at the time. He especially criticized racism and homophobia. IT was probably the biggest example, with one of the characters being a direct reflection of African American struggles, and the second kill in the book being that hate crime you're talking about.
@kitsunemusicisfire sorry, typed. I mean the town "IT" takes place in. I don't rember exactly how to spell it.
I never heard Velma called a "Trojan Horse" before, I always thought it was weird that they tried to make a conservative comedy with a nonwhite lead
I always figured Mindy Kaliing had more faith in people than she should have
On top of the obvious bitterness at being forced to filter an obviously different idea through the Scooby Doo IP
I guess "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence" isn't as evergreen as I thought
Mindy didnt create the show, charlie grandy did, he was forced to push it through the IP, which really is mostly a studio issue tbh
Mindy Kahling would absolutely be LIVID that you would infer her to be a 'Conservative'. Those are lower then DOGS! How DARE YOU insult her like that! If she ever finds out, you will pay for that vile, vicious and evil slander.
Yeah this is just so much "no true Scotsman."
The show creators are progressives and in every interview they had they espoused progressive talking points and said explicitly that their show was created for progressive reasons.
Yeah that's because few people would bet so hard on that "No true Scot" fallacy.
Velma always felt like Fox was holding one of the people who made Bojack Horseman funny hostage in the writer's room because social conservatives don't know how to do comedy.
Went to Catholic school from kindergarten all the way through to a Jesuit university. Most priests defer to medical professionals if they are ever presented with such situations. It is the more radical evangelicals who believe in possession and push for exorcisms.
And I would imagine once they learn what mental health is and how to treat it, (Which in itself is a horror story) most Priest would go, "Look I think you need to take them to the asylum."
According to wiki there are stringent rules on when it can be done and it requires permission from guardians and the doctor.
@@georgethompson913 It can never be done because it obviously never works. Unless you think gods comes down to earth to "cure" autism by occasion.
Fun fact! That’s because of the case of Anneliese Michel! Which was treated as a demonic possession but was actually epileptic and died by parental negligence basically. Was a whole thing and now is super difficult to prove someone is possessed before trying an exorcism!
I graduated from a catholic school as well and we studied this during the religion class for a few weeks!
@@lepetitmonster8737 I remember in HS we had a priest come in and talk about that.
As someone who falls into the category of "too easily scared to watch most horror but loves listening to people talk about it", I ADORED this video, you have some absolutely incredible and insightful commentary, I cannot wait to watch your backlog and projects going forward
💯👍🏿
My favourite part of The Conjuring series is that Warner Brothers had to prove ghosts exist or pony up $900 million.
Essentially, the Warren's sold the rights to their stories to an author. The author sued WB for making movies based on the stories he owns the rights to. WB argued that these were historical events, and he countered by saying "No, it's just shit they made up and sold the rights to me for a book. If these are historical events, show me a ghost."
and that's how we know ghosts are real.
Wait how did WB prove it then? What could they possibly do in this scenario?
@@guilhermefranco2930 They didn't, obviously. Ghosts aren't real and the Warrens are con artists and liars.
I can't find anything detailing the resolution of this case, after like 7 years. This means they likely settled out of court. Paid the guy off cause they knew they couldn't win and saved themselves the trouble of an expensive and protracted legal battle. Not to mention a public legal issue could damage this very profitable IP that churns out a bankable movie every year.
@@guilhermefranco2930 They didn't, obviously. They settled out of court and paid the guy a bunch of money.
I thought the issue was that they bought the rights from Lorraine Warren but it turned out she didn't actually have the rights in the first place, but by that time, a bunch of movies had been made, so WB was kinda screwed either way.
Anthony saw In Praise of Shadows video and said "Fine. I'll do it myself."
Literally, yeah!
@@agramugliayou did what he couldn’t do and actually stay on topic and be nuanced with your takes without belittling people/gatekeeping horror
GIRL REAL
Oh good someone made this comment already
Thanks, Thanos.
In total fairness, the ancient one being portrayed as a white woman might have more to do with China being cagey about anything involving Tibet
True but wasn't the temple moved to Nepal anyway compared to the source material?
Also likely given how Marvel films are structured likely had no actual say on the Ancient One casting.
I think the director or Fiege said that was the reason why. They wanted the movie to make money in China and Tibet is a controversial topic there
I heard it was to avoid the dragon lady trope, which the comics may have borrowed from. And Marvel comics has had a rough history with racist characters and stereotypes.
@@yggdrasil2 The Chinese government allows only a certain number of foreign films to enter the country and the ones that are allowed in are often altered and/or delayed until it is re-evaluated under new guidelines or censored to adhere to current guidelines.
When you're trying to make money off the Chinese audience it's best to just stay wide of anything the Chinese government doesn't like. Think of it this way, right now your film may be within the line of acceptability and be fine, tomorrow the line may retract and you will find your film is now outside the line of acceptability. In the west this mostly means people write you nasty tweets or write critical retrospectives on your work. In China this means your film will likely be banned immediately.
If you want to make money in that market you must give consideration to this type of thing.
Autistic raised Christian here, can confirm my church and family tried everything they could to cure me.
That is to say, they prayed about it and then blamed me for not being godly enough
Omggg sameeeee, tired of their "let's pray about it" being their "solution" for everything atp
@@Achuuu-mmmm right? If you're not feeling a connection or close relationship with God, then you're just not be praying enough! It's your fault, personally 🤢🤮
I grew up Mormon and they believe that people born neuroatypical were less valiant in the pre existence (when we lived in heaven before coming to Earth). So yeah, unfortunately that seems to be very common in religion.
Whatever the merits of religion, faith, etc. It does lead one to believe in things that cannot be seen or... I guess measured is the right word. Unfortunately, once a group believes in angels or demons or malevolent spirits, now there's an easy answer for why someone is "weird" or "sick." And now there's (usually) also some authority figure that wants things to be a certain way. So deviations can be labeled as evil or whatever. I'm not a fan
You are enough.
Alright so my main take away from this video was it doesn't matter if you're right, left, conservative, or liberal. We all fucking hate Velma, and that might be the most unifying message I've heard for a good long while.
Velma wasn't good. People hate it for all the wrong reasons though.
Which then, technically, this concept can apply to any recent product that has sparked debates online and offline. I mean... RoP can be criticized by a right-winger, a left-winger or an apolitical one, only based on the inconsistencies between the two seasons and the absurd behaviors that the characters display, even breaking away from adherence to the original works.
@@carpeXnoctem12People don’t hate it for the fact it’s bad and poorly written?
@@theburgerking1236A lot of people claim that but then all they talk about is the race changes or how Velma is openly queer (even though it’s been somewhat hinted at for a long time lol). Most of the comments and even some critique videos I’ve seen is just people calling Velma “woke” even though it clearly isn’t
@@BullFrogFace
Yeah, some people will always call things they don't like woke just because. While things they do like can contain the same things and not be called woke. It's just weird. Seems to be the "thing" right now to call everything they dislike woke.
Sleepaway Camp 2 and 3 ignore the forced nature of Angela's transition in the first film and just have her be legitimately trans and have reassignment surgery. The films sits in an interesting place because Angela kills for conservative reasons (killing people for smoking pot, having sex, or just being plain rude) but also violently kills the incredibly homophobic, transphobic and racist characters gleefully. I think it's an intentional contradiction created by the film - Angela's evil isn't her queerness, it's her conservatism. And yet Angela is always presented as the lesser evil, being incredibly humanised by the film by a nightmare sequence where she displays intense guilt for what she has done. The film is either trying to be a middle finger to conservatives who related to previous slasher killers because of their perceived conservative values by forcing them to relate to a queer trans woman, or earnestly trying to make people less bigoted by giving them a trans character who is likable and relatable. I know for certain that (at least with 2 and 3) the films weren't trying to be transphobic, but quite the opposite. The director, Michael A Simpson was in a band, Ravenstone, in the early 1970s, which played at the first openly held gay rights dance in the southeast USA and was harassed by the KKK as a result, another one of their songs 'Off a Pig' advocated for veganism and they played the music louder after police threatened them. One of their songs, More Love, was planned to be the credits song for the 2nd film but ended up as a DVD bonus feature instead. So yeah, it's pretty clear what stance Sleepaway Camp 2 and 3 take when it has it's trans heroine gleefully shoot a cop to death
This is a brilliant analysis.
Yeah I see Angela from the first movie as a whole different chair from the sequels. I think both versions are such interesting antagonists in their respective film but they just are not the same character. But I also fucking love it as it semi reflects how some people view supportive parents to queer children. My uncle claims I was groomed into being trans by my mom and grandma when I didn't know what a trans person was until I watched the rocky horror remake in 2016 and my mom had to explain Laverne Cox was a trans women since I was use to Tim Curry performing drag in the original. I knew what drag was and had dabbled in drag before hand. I came out as trans two years later with no further discussion with my family about the matter only my own self reflection and research. So many people see me as Angela 1 because my grandparents funded my top surgery last year and my mom helped buy me new clothes right after coming out, when I was Angela 2 and 3. (Not a killer but someone just trying to live their life and having actions doing nothing to do with my identity)
@DrJazzyBonespHd I just want to say that it makes me so happy to read about how supportive your mom and grandparents are. I have friends who have had to stay in the closet because they know what their family will do if they come out and a friend who was disowned by his parents when he came out. Luckily, his grandma took him in immediately and fought for him to be able to stay in contact with his sisters, who love and accept him. I love that your mom and grandma have been so great and loving. ❤
Great analysis, as a trans person who likes the movies but knows they can be problematic
Wait Sleepaway Camp had a sequel 😮, now I need to watch them all. Of course I didn’t like how Angela was portrayed in the first but I may like the sequel and the 3rd film.
“I’ve done 40,000 exorcisms over the course of 40 years.” THIS CORRESPONDENCE COURSE JESUIT IS DOING 2.7 EXORCISMS A DAY????
He's probably lying or he has an army of clones
I think he just randomly excorsizes some children he comes across as annoying for running around and screaming or being autistic attempts to bill the parents who didn’t asks and adds it to his book
Or he fakes some shit and pays the parents
Exorcisms Georg...
Apparently that's less than three hours of work, so if you think about it he's kind of lazy actually.
@@BuddhaMonkey7 no the werd part is he found that many disabled people to "exorcise" unless he does repeats of the same person over and over agian
I have avoided the film The Exorcism of Emily Rose my entire life cause as a kid my parents would constantly tease me saying I'm pulling an "Emily Rose" whenever as a way to wave away my autism symptoms/fits. Very frustrating and has made me bitter towards a film I never saw despite being a big horror movie fan I can't find myself willing to watch it.
I wouldn't recommend it. Despite what was said in the video the movie is very bias towards the supernatural point of view. If anything I would recomend reading about the event is based on... warning is heavy stuff.
@ I normally don’t mind a supernatural point of view so long the film or story is fictional based in a realistic world. But something like this is not to my liking. Definitely gonna put on my read list for when I’m in the mood for heavy non fiction stories
It's borrrring. I felt like I wasted 2 hours watching it :/
@@galilea723 Hot take but basically it's a worse Rosemary's Baby movie.
If you want a movie that was a dramatized but not exploitative "based on" thing, go with the german film Requiem (2006), it's a documentary-style drama rather than horror, but I find that's more respectful.
I feel like in praise of shadows was going through a mental breakdown when he made his video. There's an immense pressure for creators to perform or give up RUclips. Making ends meet as just a RUclipsr seems frustrating. He did some great videos in the past. It was sad to see him sink his channel. I hope the guy is ok.
I have reason to believe that too. That's why i don't want to criticize him. With that as his sole income, the guy was clearly struggling
I feel so bad for him mate. Especially now that he's been ostracized by RUclips and his pateron is hemorrhaging
Or he's a moral puritan...
The whole thing just makes me sad thinking about it tbh. My gut instinct was that he wanted it to be something like his equivalent to Hbomberguy exposing James Somerton, but... he made a _mess_ of a video, it tarred pretty much everyone vaguely left, the griftosphere got hours and hours of content out of that one.
I don't want to cause a heated or bad blood argument, nor try to say that mental health isn't important, but it's no excuse for what he did. He made a hit piece on an innocent man and tried to attack people for their beliefs unprovoked. That whole video was not meant to be talking about the right in horror; it was a mask to hide the hit piece he was making on Wendigo. Mental health problems or not, what he did was fucked up and unjustified. Plus, attacking Wendigoon does not make sense because the most “Conservative” wendigoon is publicly liking guns and being Christian, to which, if that's the reason for a hit piece to be made on you, then you need to question your logic because you are attacking him for his religion and liking something that is historical (as most of wendigoon’s interest in firearms have come from history, as he has talked about many times).
Saw this comment who mentioned seeing John Carpenter at a Con and Carpenter was asked this question and his response was
“There a cabin in the woods and there is an evil there. The Right Wing horror, the evil is from the past that was locked away, and will overpower the characters. Left wing horror, the evil will infiltrate causing the characters to tear themselves apart.”
And exceptions to that rule exist. So don’t go using it as a gauge
@@mr.selyumor5402 I know John Carpenter remade the thing, and unlike what this video says. It’s blatantly a conservative movie because the alien in it is a communist standin. A fact you cannot overlook if you know how blunt it was in the source material.
Which says something about how creators can make one work but not totally align with it. As we all know Carpenter does consider himself a liberal.
Huh. By that logic, the movie actually called "The Cabin in the Woods" is a Right Wing horror film even though we end up rooting for *spoilers* 2 people that Conservatives hate...and we're rooting for them to end the world. Huh, agian.
@@katherineknapp3782 I'm not sure that's much of a "huh"--Joss Whedon has done a lot of shitty things towards women but I do believe he's spent a lot of time *trying* to create feminist works, and so it makes sense that he would start with a traditionally conservative construction of horror to deconstruct.
@@Nassifeh It was such a shock for me to hear how Whedon was this amazing feminist writer who worked on things like Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Battlestar Galactica, only for him to turn in Age of Ultron, which is one of the most shockingly sexist things I'd ever seen from a mainstream film.
I'm just saying, Hollywood would laugh at a script where Steve Rogers suddenly had this character reduced to "had trauma from being sterile thanks to the Super Soldier serum", and had to sit out telling manly stories in order to tend bar even though Stark's employees should be doing that...
But do that to Black Widow and give her a "Never mentioned before now, never mentioned again" love affair with The Hulk, and it's perfectly acceptable.
Yes there are more sexist films, but the fact that it was in such a big movie that didn't have this problem in previous or later entries makes it really stand out.
Yeah. This was what I was hoping the In Praise of Shadows video was going to be instead of something that made me really worried for the man's mental health.
As insufferably smug as it was, it also felt like he was unhappy with his lack of success and decided to engineer his downfall. The fact that he basically put himself all throughout the video on display, that felt very telling. Like he was putting his own image out there as a way to both gain recognition and to be destroyed.
@@rsfilmdiscussionchannel4168 i thought he had a decent amount of success. Definitely not to the same level as Dead Meat or Wendigoon but still fairly known in the online horror community.
@@royalxprincessbaka6875 He did but apparently his views were plummeting as he said and complained about in the video. I was still watching his videos to be honest, had no clue of what was happening.
@rsfilmdiscussionchannel4168 Huh, maybe the RUclips algorithm wasn't working in his favor anymore. I found his channel by his videos constantly showing up in my feed but I also watch alot horror stuff in general.
I had that video on 2x in the background for like an hour and he said literally nothing for any of that time
Ending on the recording of Anneliese was haunting. What they did to that poor girl is nothing short of criminal. It just drives home that religion, no matter how well intentioned, can be incredibly damaging to children. It certainly damaged me.
That entire movie is fucked. I watched it before I knew about Anneliese and didn't think it was very good already, but finding out the fact that it was based on something true, something abusive, something truly heinous, is so messed up. And the movie basically condones the actions that led to someone's horrifying death.
We protect children from things they're not ready for. Sex, violence, etc. We recognize that they don't have the emotional or cognitive maturity to deal with these topics, so we shouldn't expose kids to them. Religion should absolutely be treated the same. We should treat religion like we do porn. You don't get your first Playboy or your first Bible until you are 18 years old, and have the maturity and intelligence to decide for yourself.
Like puberty blockers and exposing children to advanced sexual concepts? LMAO people are silly no matter where you pluck them from. 😂
@GearZNet no, see that's called science. It's backed by multiple independent and repeatable studies, and evidentiary backed observations. As opposed to religion which is backed by superstition and fairy tales.
@GearZNet Religious fanatics snd conservative extremists have ruined or ended more lives than any of the things that conservatives fear monger about.
I can’t be the only one who sees that Anthony’s channel has been popping off as of late? It’s very well deserved. Like, I originally found this channel through the Lorchard drama, but this has quickly become my new favorite video essay channel. Keep up the good work
I’ve known about Ant since a few months ago and I knew I had to put my stocks in early. I guarantee he’ll be up next in 2025 breaking 100k
Ive started watching since two weeks ago, and its easy to watch ants videos because he drops consistent indepth video essays that cover shit people like.
I found this channel only a few days ago and almost immediately subscribed. It was so refreshing to find a video essay channel that talks about media where the essays are actual essays with substance while still being interesting to listen to.
@@-sanju- yes literally!!
I feel like he’s filling the niche that James Somerton was in before yknow, Everything. But this channel has actual substance and original thought (comment, please don’t age like milk). I’m glad to see Ant taking off
The tragic thing with Stepford Wives, is that it seems more and more relevant as time go :( Same with The Handmaids Tale today. When I saw the original movie around 1990 it felt like a paranoid feminist fantasy. It does not feel like that anymore....
Just because you're paranoid...
And the 1970s original at that. Not the 2004 remake.
@johnm.osborne5972 there are women that have died from the repealing of Roe. V Wade; you can fuck off with the gaslighting
I'm sorry but how, 60% of university graduates or women. Women get paid as much as men even if they don't do overtime....
How is that turned back the clock compared to 1974?
@georgethompson913 That depends on the industry. For example, the wage gap in programming is not too large usually, but the wage gap in contracting can be very concerning
My mom always saw Night of the Living Dead as unintentionally hilarious because of how slow the zombies were. But among rewatching recently and absorbing the fact the lead was black and he was killed by cops in the end she was like "This movie was deeper than I thought."
Which is an instance of interpreting politics there yourself. Because the lead of that movie was decided after the script and they went with who they thought was the best. He just happened to be black.
"personal fear and much like everything else roman palansky has ever touched it leaves you feeling sick and disturbed by the end"
macbeth was not particularly disturbing
@@EPWillard its a joke about the guy being ahardcore dangerous pdf file
Weirdly, I've always read The Wicker Man as anti-conservative. Howie is not a likable protagonist and it's hard to feel bad for him when he is sacrificed, so his death symbolically feels like the death of the old world of religious conservatism and the empowerment of the new world of the sexual revolution. It could be read as anti-liberal, too, given the villagers sacrifice people in order to appease their gods, but to me that's just the beauty of this film: it can be read in so many different ways and always offers something new.
In a weird way THE WICKER MAN is almost anti-horror; because horror requires you to be invested in the protagonists in order for us to feel horror when SHTF. But Howie is such a pompous cultural imperialist you may just end up cheering the people of Sumerisle! Also, I've always found it hilarious that if he'd just done the nasty with Britt Ekland he would've been in the clear. lol
It's even more funny considering its a pagan cult. Which makes the irony of an extremely conservative person being undone by cultural beliefs that pre-date his own even more fitting.
really interesting comment, ty! I just had a good 20 minute internal debate, and I think in the end the film is a study of excess. Howie's life is bound by an excess of received wisdom and repressed emotion, whereas the summerisle folk can be taken to represent an excess of permissiveness. Neither extreme is morally correct and both lead to extreme negative outcomes, howie's virginity is not a symbol of purity or devotion to god but more a symbol of how utterly bereft of human connection his life has been due to his adherence to a cultish philosophy. This is why he is so hostile towards the summerisle folk, he sees them as practicing a philisophical system that is in direct competition to his own. Two sides of the same coin.
@@paultapping9510 I mean the guy is there because he’s looking for a missing girl, and no one is giving any clues. Doesn’t help they are actively messing with him.
@@williamhanekom9882 Cultural beliefs that are ritual child sacrifice
"The system is flawed and needs to be improved."
I disagree. The system is functioning as intended and needs to be dismantled.
I mean this is kind of a minor thing but presumably the reason to dismantle the system is because it's intended method of working is flawed and by dismantling it you effectively improve it.
And what would you replace it with, huh?
I think it's a cancer. One in which certain groups that are antagonistic to the survival of others, but their own survival is thriving.
We can't take the approach that there is always a happy medium. Sometimes things are just wrong, out live their use or are harmful. Our system is an example of that. I very much doubt that it was intended to be as harmful, not only to those under it, but it itself overtime and it's no doubt that in the short term, some people benefit off of it, but I don't think people are so black and white to think that it's intended to cause the suffering it does. I think it's growing pains disease. A bi-product of every group and person trying to find a way to survive and sometimes thrive and just sticking to what seems to be working, even if it's actually corrosive and hurting from the inside.
A multi-thousand year old medium of intermediary exchange and a first come first serve ownership basis is a great example of that.
Also, appeal to nature fallacy. How the rest of the natural world works is on survival mode. We can and should do better, so our systems basis shouldn't be on the premise of dog eat dog assumption. But it is and has been for thousands of years. The dogs that survive "win" but they have to worry about new dogs. No king stays a king, nothing lasts forever, not power, not resources.
Learning sustainability is about maximizing survival chances, not just some nice ideology. Learning that nature isn't a good barometer for how to run a society or monetary system is integral to us moving from mere survival of the lucky, to base line survival and thriving of the many.
So I do think you're right about dismantling, but I think in order to save as many as possible from the illness we have and not take out in the cancer analogy, the good cells surrounding the bad ones, it needs to be like replacing a ship. Bit by bit. There will still be collateral damage, there always is in change, but we don't want to punish people who don't choose the system they live under. And I do think we're doing this, but there is always resistance to change. Because change means unknown and unknown equals death and we universally don't have a culture of accepting two things, that change is okay and two, it's okay to be wrong. That's how you learn. We don't live in a world where being wrong about a tiger being friend or foe is actually a concern anymore yet we still treat each other and other things as that tiger. Making quick black and white easy to digest assessments about anything new or in some cases, rejecting it existing and living in denial.
@@mr.selyumor5402 Resource based economy, starting with UBI as a catalyst. Our society is good at producing, if not overproducing enough technical resources for high quality of life status for all living humans. This would be considered the economy itself, rather than a means of participation via different work types with gate keeping to being able to work in different sectors (IE free education so that you have more people who know how to work various jobs) The resources exist, access to them is the most common limitation. Things are also produced en mass by a small group of people rather than the collective. You could switch job functionality to minor tasks taught to each participant of society, relative to their ability (such as mental and physical capability) and dedicate smaller, but still important parts of that functionality. For instance, everyone could work in the four main sectors as a majority, food, water, medicine and tech production (which are all massive umbrellas) Rather than most of the work force currently doing jobs intended to making money, instead, you're not paid at all and work at a job for a much shorter amount of time (due to how many could work in general) and do a specific small cog job, say watering/evaluating plants in a garden or hydroponic farm for 3 hours a week and that same job is something millions do. Another could be water sanitation, distribution etc. Then of course engineering, technological application, sciences, medicine etc, but most people would do smaller jobs pertaining to both so that everyone is a small cog. This means not only is the job actually a direct contribution to society because it pertains to function and upkeep, but also it's far shorter of a time needed because so long as you're educated and capable, you will work (and there are plenty of jobs in which both physical and mental limitations could easily do or can be modified to be able to do) Everyone contributes as a default and because they do, they're both educated in the task they do (which ideally you'd choose what sector you want to work in, but in crisis cases, you'd likely be educated to do various things) and due to this, everyone gains access to the fruits of all labor done, because it's decentralized by millions all doing the same task, which the time spent would be proportional to availability of said task to be done.
In peoples spare time, they could learn other jobs they'd like to do (because humans like to be busy, that's in our nature) and work on hobbies which contribute to cultural and artistic expression.
There is no monetary incentive. The incentive is, you benefit from doing your job well, because if you work food/water/medicine etc., that affects you directly. You want your portion of the task structure to be done right and due to not having to work really long hours all the time, you have plenty of brain and physical power to actually achieve it. Also, due to the 8 billion people available for various tasks, you likely have a choice in what you want to work to contribute with and the rest of the time, you work on hobbies. Your living is actually assured, so there isn't a fear of loss unless it's by other things we already worry about, like rogue black holes, meteors or cataclysmic events unaffected by a societies system. If anything, society would be better prepared for those events because it would have more people doing jobs they find important or interesting, like scientific study, astronomy, medical, etc etc. And you'd never feel like your job is useless, because all of it would contribute to societal upkeep an innovation. A garbage man is important, a farmer is important and a doctor is important. The fact that any of those are made to feel less or more so is a big problem in itself, that and the bars on education for people who would pursue those jobs and don't have access.
This is one of many ideas of a resource based economic model. AI and robots in the future in such a model would also likely lead to any manual labor and dangerous tasks being deferred to machines, but that wouldn't matter, because money isn't the intermediary exchange anymore, jobs being taken wouldn't be a concern at all.
Oh another benefit, the overproduction of things would also stop, as the amount made would actually fit the demanded need. If there is no benefit to excess to sell or gain from, then waste is also massively reduced. Not to mention anxiety over ownership of things and things produced to be basically landfill. Planned obsolescence would also go away entirely, because sustainability in a economic model that directly attributes to available resources would be super focused on recycling, re usability and longevity of anything and everything made where possible.
What's super crappy is that anyone reading this thinks that's a utopia, as if problems are all gone just because people would actually have living as a right. They're not. There are plethora of issues to deal with in live with out having to worry if you could end up starving to death due to debt or lack of access to food. Peoples standards are way way too low for what technological advancement we actually have. Culturally though, that's the hurdle to cross. We're not even at ground 0, we're at -4. We still engage in us vs them mentality and struggle to fight for resource control and some people still starve to death even though food exists in such a quantity that you could feed everyone 6 times over. And people blame overpopulation when they don't understand just how much we actually produce for the sake of hopeful profit. Everything falls apart if no one can buy things, which means there has to be poor and rich. But in a resource based economy, things only fall apart if work isn't done, which is the case in ours too, but there is no extraneous extra thing to balance as there is with a monetary model. If anything, it holds back sustainability and conservation concerns for finite resources along with trying to balance it's own made up finite resource.
@@mr.selyumor5402A more fair system?
Im trans so let me talk about representation. The real issue with negative myths making it into films is when they stand alone. Same reason that a movie with an all male all white or whatever isnt as big of a deal when we have movies all over the spectrum with those representations. No ones immune to reactionarism. Yes conservatives slip into it easier yes i ultimately believe no one should be religious or superstitious, but ya gotta remember why you believe things whats the ground youre making your foundation on, i want people to walk away from those things because if they dont do it on their own they wont learn the lesson my beliefs teach. So they'll still be those things just without a church. Same thing happens with representation the more we get the less power the negative ones have grip.
39:52 I live in Salem Massachusetts, its funny because the satanic temple, not the church of satan, different organizations, have after school programs and cell mugs!
A lot of Italian horror films especially the notorious cannibalism subgenre are also blatantly right wing from the Italian perspective.
I would take issue with that, since most of these cannibal films are about indigenous people fighting back against capitalist exploitation. They devour that which is devouring their culture. Seems pretty anti-right wing to me. I will agree that many Italian zombie and giallo films are right-wing, but the cannibal films take pains to paint the invading Europeans as the real savages most of the time. Consider Cannibal Holocaust, where filmmakers set a hut full of villagers on fire to get a good shot for their movie, or Cannibal Ferox, where the nasty criminals looking for emeralds do terrible things to the tribe before they get their just comeuppance.
@@AWCMCultMoviesthat's a lack of perspective.
Remember that Capitalists are Liberals.
If you have a corporatist economic system, capitalism is Left Wing. That allows the "barbaric" foreigners to compete against the civilized Italians. See?
Okay, but in my country, classic liberalism/capitalism (free market, lower taxes, deregulation) is thought of as a right-wing ideology, whereas socialism is associated with the left wing (redistribution of wealth, progressive taxation, workers rights). Perhaps why those films played better in the US than in Italy?
There was a You're Wrong About podcast episode that discusses exorcisms. They talk about how their popularity rose during the 70s, not just because of the films, but also because of institutions of psychology and mental health and women's positions and gender roles in society. If it's between going to a 1970s mental hospital for an indeterminate amount of time for depression or an exorcism, a lot of people will probably go with the exorcism.
Thank god Velma has been cancelled.
I thought the animation was amazing special in the horror scenes. It is just sad that all that work was put into a poorly written story.
@@stephennootens916A spitefully written show.
I recently saw a trailer for a movie called ‘Werewolves’. The trailer gave me impressions that it might be a conservative movie, but of course we’ll have to wait and see. As a follow werewolf enthusiast, I thought I should mention it.
I am super excited for Werewolves
What things gave that impression?
Don't, anything conservative isn't worth the time or support
@@inciniumz4671 You… seem to be forgetting the video you’re commenting under.
@@trentonbuchert7342 How come?
Thx, for the Velma part. I was waiting for someone to point out that this show isn't woke at all - for this is how I felt when I checked it out, which was after I heard a bunch of whining about how "wokeness" had ruined the show. I exspected it to be the usual crybaby stuff - which it most certainly was - but aside from that the show wasn't really good. Since I really like the animation in that show, I managed to convince myself that there maybe was some sort of clever trolling going on, aimed at poking fun of the virtue signaling liberal mainstream that doesn't hold any progressive convictions whatsoever but is quick to adopt the newest language in an shallow effort to stay en vogue. But though I made it to the end of season one that just didn't happen either. I find your comparision to early Family Guy quite fitting - though personally I got 90s South park vibes, there is definitely a lot of this hole everyone is stupid and we hate them, including this stupid show, but we the writers stand above all that energy going on. That being said, I don't think this show is conservative on purpose - if it has a purpose I feel it's trying to be edgy in a topical manner. It never gets there (at least for season 1, didn't see the other - but I heard nothing that would make me discard this argument), but I think it believes it does, like a 12yo shitposting random stuff while feeling smug about it.
I can tell you just refuse to acknowledge when things have become woke then
@@TheMonkePrince A woke show would go into a lecture about the proper ways to help someone with a panic attack, not have the main character slap someone out of one with no consequences.
@@TheMonkePrince what's woke?
@Sebastian_Niedermeier
The anti-woke criticism barely ever seems to be about the political content of the media. It's basically always a piece of media that's widely considered bad and that badness is somehow gonna get blamed on some vague idea of left-wing politics.
@TheMonkePrince
Can you define what you mean with woke?
As a conservative, I loved your video. The one thing I disagree with is the homophobic attack in It 2, what it lacks is context. It is worse because they excluded the Black Spot fire, but both events are crucial for the plot and theme: each It "hunting season" starts and ends with some atrocity that is caused by human intent and negligence. It is about the people of Derry, their own willingness to divide and dehumanize their neighbors, nurturing this great evil sleeping beneath the city, almost as if they are sacrificing themselves to It. It's actually a great example of King's valuing of human life: a factory explosion that killed 88 children was enough to wake It, and so is a bigoted attack that ended one life.
I'm on the far left even by European standards. I enthusiastically agree.
Indeed. Some of the most chilling moments in the book come when the creature and the people under its influence can hunt and kill almost in plain sight, because everyone in the town has been indoctrinated to just....not see certain things, or register them as a problem.
Who knew my epilepsy was a demon. I just had a new battery for my neurostimulator replaced... dang.
So glad this video wasn't just "slasher movies are conservative because they killed a guy who smoked a joint"
Or being killed for 'pre-marriage' sex.
That is a trope in horror films to such a degree that is the first thing that get brought up in a japanese manga one shot called 'Final Girl' where the protag get isekai into the body of the slutty character LOL!
"You're probably wondering how I got into this situation." Ahh thumbnail 😭
I had no idea Velma was a trojan horse...
That actually explains a lot about why so much "woke" media feels more like "Can you just call me a slur? That'd be less offensive at this point."
So insidious
Yeah, _The Hunt_ is a great talking point for how "centrism" is a conservative-to-reactionary position. It's entirely unintelligible unless you take it for granted that "liberalism" (i.e. anything from the center-right leftward in terms of "social issues" i.e. anything other than pure market-driven spin) is associated primarily with wealthy "elites" and that every indication that wealthy elites are much more _conservative_ than "normal people" is some sort of grand conspiracy. (The whole discourse is engineered to provide at least a notional veil over the reality that by "normal" conservatives mean "white and conservative," deleting the relevance of the immense number of PoC and urban white people -- the people, not "the elites," who actually drive centrist and progressive policies on a demographic scale.)
I appreciate how you handled the In Praise of Shadows stuff at the start, he's a very big inspiration for me and I'm so sick of people tearing him and everything he's ever made apart over one video where he's obviously been struggling a ton. The fact that you had the decency to show some empathy was really nice.
Who's been tearing everything he's ever done? Last I checked the backlash was against that terrible video in particular.
@@manolgeorgiev9664 That video and his Hills Have Eyes retrospective
If anything I saw more people say his old videos were good and were disappointed he threw out his goodwill over petty squabbling and slander.
@@mr.selyumor5402 all the dude had to do was say *"sorry", but he didn't doubles down
one of the best video essays ive seen in a while. usually essays like this struggle to hold my attention, but this one has gripped me, and its been great to listen to while i draw. parts about exorcisms in specific really spoke to me as an autistic person, every day im glad my family is jewish and not christian so they never resorted to fixing my mental disorders through prayer.
One of the themes Carpenter was exploring in The Thing was idealized zeal and the socially debilitating effects of the Red Scare... So it certainly wasn't a conservative movie. I think the Federalist was basing their choice simply on the partisan affiliation of people associated with the films.
26:40
to be fair, fantasy/horror stories going against church doctrine but at the same time portraying the church in a somewhat positive light does happen and is a bit questionable
cause yeah, the church isn't JUST superstitious, its actively harmful in many cases
This is exactly my assessment of Velma; it tries to dress itself up in post-modern irony, especially when it comes to race, gender, or sexuality, but the very core of the show has nothing but contempt for its premise, characters, and the viewer. It's a show that celebrates nothing, and it sure as shit doesn't celebrate diversity or change.
Counterpoint: Dustborn exists, which proves that there are people that actually think this way and make media reinforcing their ideas while being 100% geniune
At 58:03 you mention the part in sleep away camp where Angela kills a couple kids out of no where. It’s hard to notice since it’s a background detail but when Angela’s thrown in the water, as she’s helped, the kids throw sand and make fun of her. So while yeah they didn’t do something major like the more her age bullies, they still antagonized her
I always thought Velma was best described as what a fake show within a conservative show, making fun of 'woke' media would look like.
That's a pretty astounding level of coping... and I don't mean that in the meme way. I cannot believe that people are actually trying to No True Scotsman that show as not being leftist despite the content of the show and the numerous interviews with the creators.
Though if it makes you feel any better I feel the same way about Christian movies as you do about Velma; yet I still acknowledge that they are conservative.
@ I don’t literally think it’s not a leftist show, just a really bad one to the point it feels like it swings the other direction. There’s a difference between what the writer intends to get across and what an audience interprets from a show/book/any other kind of art. And while the writers may have intended for this to feel empowering, most of the audience had a very different take away from it. For me it feels almost mocking. I doubt that was the intent but that’s certainly how it feels to me at least.
@@pman87850
Fair enough but I have seen, even in replies to this video, people theorizing it was a big conspiracy to make leftists look bad. If that ain't you then fair play.
I think it just sucks plain and simple
@@pman87850
I responded to that a long time ago and I don't know why RUclips yeeted it. All I said was "fair play."
I've seen people make that fallacy and if that's not you then alright.
As soon as I saw Velma with Jason Voorhees and Tim Curry on the thumbnail I knew I had to watch this lol 😂
Loved this video! I think it's silly to assume that just because someone doesn't share your political opinions doesn't mean they don't have interesting stories to share.
Getting your seal of approval means a lot. :) this vid was a lot to make
As someone who has never been one for horror, you did a great job keeping me invested. One thing to note about that "God's Not Dead" vs "Top Gun" point - I think a solid argument can be made that Top Gun has a stronger conservative (ie not just Republican) impact and legacy. One film was made to very specifically pander to the filmmakers' own base and supporters, to stoke their hatred. The other is easier to enjoy and has no partisan politics nor even dares to specify the enemy. Yet Top Gun succeeded in convincing a generation of people regardless of their politics, that American fighter pilots are still cool and dashing after Vietnam had sullied that image. It helped increase recruitment, it further strengthened the American mentality that loving war is bipartisan and epic.
GND is a terrible film and so overtly hateful and aimed at appealing to what its very select audience already think. it cannot reach a wider audience and despite more literally being propaganda, has little propaganda value, whereas Top Gun is one of the most effective propaganda films in US history.
I am not disagreeing or anything, just what came to mind with that comparison. Though one criticism I have is it is a bit, idk uncomfortable to use the agonized screams of a young women being abused via neglect and having a mental breakdown as the outro sound. I think you are using it as a "wham" moment of what happens when things don't change, but that was half a video ago, so it feels just a tad exploitative at first. However that is just my reaction
I don't think GND is meant to convince anyone who isn't already convinced. It's in-media, something meant to reassure the target audience rather than to persuade outsiders.
The purpose of GND and alot of explicitly christian media is to provide an acceptable alternative to the base, give them something to put on TV or to act as an event for them to go to the theatre together without seeing a movie that goes against their code.
At the end of the day they're people with most of the same social desires as other people and in order to keep them in the fold you need to provide an alternative option. The secular world has it's movies, they need their movies. The secular world has netflix, they need to have pure flix.
They will talk about films like GND as a tool of converting people and how the film has converted people etc etc, that's still in-media because it serves the same purpose.
The theory that Velma is a trojan horse is so refreshing, honestly. It really does feel like a satire of young social justice advocacy. I still have no idea what that show was even hoping to accomplish. The strangest thing to me is it's not even that horrible, more than anything it's just a painfully unfunny and cringey show.
The films are definitely more of a “watch this with friends at a party” type rather than a deep philosophical discussion of anything, but I’ll stand by the Purge movies and recommend them despite being as political as they are. Are they particularly great? Absolutely not. But are they fun? Yes.
Honestly I think the second one is the best because it walks the tightrope the best between fun horror concept and a blunt political message. I think the ones after lean into the politics a bit to much and the first one does not explore the concept or even the politics that good
Finally somebody who knows what fun is.
On the subject of Conservative Horror: The way some conservatives view and read a horror movie astounds me.
I remember reading a top ten list of “Conservative Horror films” around the time IPOS’s vid on it came out.
That list had a lot of weird explanations for their choices.
They had Let The Right One In (The Swedish version not the Matt Reeves Remake) on there because “it was better than My interview with a vampire” and also uses the line “The boy will become a man. The girl next door will forever remain … a girl” to describe the ending which…sounds very gross to me.
Meanwhile, The Thing (1982) was on there and they barely went into the plot beyond just saying it was a cosmic horror.
I’m not saying all conservatives view horror movies this way, but the way and how some view a movies in that way while not really engaging with some movies beyond the most middle of the road summary and reason why they liked it (like Texas Chainsaw Massacre also on that list and described as “Like a Scooby Doo plot”) makes me want to know what goes through their heads.
The Thing IS conservative despite Carpenter describing himself as "left of Che Guevara" (though jokingly - he contrasts it with Kurt Russel being to the right of Genghis Khan).
The movie can't escape the xenophobic paranoia in its DNA. John W. Campbell preloaded it with his own far-right ideology.
Conservatives not beating the media illiterate charge. The list compiler probably put together a list of their favorites and then half-assed the reasoning after
@@d3nza482i don’t think its fair or accurate to read it purely as “pro xenophobia”
@@d3nza482 how is The Thing xenophobic? Unless you meant xenophobia as for aliens
@@Sebastian_Rabbit really just throwing my hat in the ring but, maybe they meant that teh catalyst to the movie is that a research team from another country fucks up, and releases a monster from the ice, have all of the team members die, leaving the Americans to deal with the aftermath, thereby killing almost all of them too. And this sentence is reeeeeeaaallyyy far fetched, but maybe it's also because the events of the thing would probably not happen, have they not taken in the dog, have they not shown kindness to something from outside the station, that nothing is supposed to come into.
Buuuht idk, I'm prolly reading what the other commenter said in a wrong way. Lol
I think it’s more accurate to say that right wing politics are based more on solidifying hierarchies and systems of power, while left wing politics are based on dismantling hierarchies. If it were just about “past vs present” then it would be considered right wing for someone in a recent authoritarian regime to say “let’s go back to having a representative democracy”.
I think the reason the past vs present line of thinking comes from the thought that the march of progress is linear & leads to a better society as time passes, which is a more left wing view of time/march of progress.
This thing I said ,are short fat otaku,s take on March of progress, just watch his vid on March of progress.
You should also watch his " are conservatives media illiterate - analysing conservative core & transcore games" where he responded to lance & dead domain & how they can not view the politics in games from a right wing side ,cause they know a lot about leftist but thinks conservatism is simple.
I liked that Anthony also acknowledged that right wing beliefs are not that simple.
I also saw Anthony showed a clip from a director who said you can only tell 2 kinds of horror stories, where either the danger comes from outsider or inside.
And Anthony said outsider danger is inherently conservative but what about a story about indeginous PPL being invaded by outside colonial forces.
People apply too many labels to this shit. Don’t set everything in stone and believe what you want in the moment. It’s a fool’s game to put yourself on the line for something as transient as a political affiliation.
@@mr.selyumor5402 I mean, I teach history. I’m not saying this to die on a hill. I’m saying it because it’s true. Making your politics about “whatever happened in the past” vs. “not that” is literally not an ideology. Looking to a mythologized past is a usually a symptom of right wing politics but not a defining feature. The ideology that pushes reactionary past worship is what matters, and time and again since “right” and “left” became political ideas, right wing political movements seek to maintain and consolidate systems of hierarchical power while left wing movements seek to dismantle hierarchies and distribute power.
Leftism is not about "dismantling hierarchies" that's merely lip service of what they claim. In reality it's really just about "despising hierarchies or anyone in a higher status than you due to feelings of personal inadequacy"
Leftism is merely ideological, that being everything about it only works in your head. It has no basis in reality, everything good about it comes from hypotheticals and imagination. It's good because it sounds good, it appeals to humanity's repressed desires for comfort and security. In reality it rarely ever works, and any time it does, chances are it was really liberalism.
Like I said, it's an ideology based on feelings of personal inadequacy. You may fantasize about dismantling a system, but you have no power to do anything significant. All you do is indulge in your own ideologies, create new ones when old ones don't work, and attribute everything you hate about life to some artificially created system or ideology.
@@SaberSin-mu4kt You sound very intelligent and not at all reactionary. I like the way you assume that someone who can understand and explain a thing must believe the thing. Nothing I said is contradicted by the fact that leftism is “just an ideology”. All political movements are ideologies. This is how politics works.
I wasn't sure I'd like this channel too much for a bit. But over time, Anthony has proven to be one of the most open-minded of the youtubers I've seen. He considers himself an enemy of conservatism, but he also seems to have considered their opinions and what they actually believe instead of fighting straw men in a leftist bubble. We need people like that. Perspective is easy to lose, especially in an algorithm-driven internet. He seems to tailor his beliefs according to evidence, and change opinions when new evidence presents itself. This isn't a weak thing to do- it's the correct thing to do.
Regarding the topic: one thing that he's missed is queer religious horror is a very strong and thriving community. I would say most people I know that are into religious horror are some sort of queer, and they produce prodigious amounts of that subgenre. I would hazard most American queers having some sort of religious trauma, so creating on this topic makes sense.
Most my friends are very into horror and religious horror in particular, and we've had quite a few discussions about how our respective identities on the queer spectrum, have affected how we relate to horror, especially in books and film. For instance, the book Camp Damascus, a horror story taking place at a fundamentalist conversion camp, is a great horror novel. A straight cisgendered person reading it would still experience a well written story with good scares, good pacing and an ambiance of dread. For a queer person reading it, the dread is closer to home, the fear is more visceral and relatable, especially if they're from an evangelical background. The dark humor also comes through better, imo for a queer person reading it, while it might come across as being a bit in poor taste for someone who isn't an LGBTQ+ person with a ton of religious trauma. I had a point somewhere, but my adhd msy have gotten away from me. 😅
Can i just say i love your background? I love how you dont tidy it up or make it look perfect, like so many other bookshelf-for-background creators do. There is like a real weight to it (which accentuates the weight of your thoughts, myes🤓)
9:15 this was not an oversimplification. All 3 of those justices lied and said they wouldnt touch roe because it was settled law. The facts and data didnt matter to them, only their agenda.
One thing I would add to your conclusion is that media is in conversation with the audience. Whenever I view a piece of media, I'm bringing my ideas and my perspectives to it as well as it bringing the symbology and textual decisions - both subconscious and conscious - to me. (And then the results of those conversations are what we talk about when we discuss media, but this also allows me to engage with the same piece of media at different points in my life and it to mean different things at different points). This means that ideas within media aren't always held - even subconsciously - by the creators (and also that as soon as more than one person is involved in the creation of a piece of media, that media is collaborative and getting ideas from multiple sources). But also I don't think it matters if something was put into the work deliberately, accidentally, or if something in it resonated with someone's unique experiences with the world in a way to generate a bespoke meaning.
As for Velma as a bisexual - Wasn't Velma crushing on Daphne cut from James Gunn's Scooby Doo film in the edit or am I misremembering behind the scenes chatter there? At this point it feels like Velma has been some flavour of queer - usually interpreted as bi from what I've seen - for about 22 years and sometimes this is left in by the studios and sometimes cut by them. Meaning Velma has been bi for over half my life.
Wanna shout out some ABSOLUTELY AMAZING possession movies that are actually progressive and empathetic. The Old Ways and Huesera: The Bone Women. Both use possession AND the proceeding exorcism as a metaphor for deeper emotional issues through a Hispanic lens. love them to bits as lefty media AND horror movies
Correction about woman not being able to open up credits cards that is for the federal law meaning credit card companies had to let women open up credit cards, women had be able to open a credit card from most companies before that law was passed. I don't blame you for thinking this, generally we only talk about the big laws and not the lead up to that law
Let the Right One In being listed as a conservative horror movie is very funny to me.
Ellie, the deuteragonist who develops a remoantic relationship with the main lead was gelded and chooses to live as a woman.
Atleast it was actually the Swedish original and not the pretty awful American "remake"
@@lutherheggs451 Never seen the remake, but considering why these types of "remakes" are created, I really can't imagine it captures the unnerving atmosphere and characters that made the original so good.
oh yeah, i knew today’s video would be good. it’s so gratifying to hear a youtuber who actually has similar opinions to me :,) thanks ant!!
Today I learned you can make a video about conservative horror movies without projectile vomiting at Wendigoon for the crime of existing for half of the runtime
My one criticism is that I feel you conflate someone (sometimes a director) as automatically being politically conservative (by USA standards). Just because a person spiritually believes in some Christian dogma doesn’t necessarily mean they are politically conservative (aka gay or women’s right, gun laws etc) since there are left wing liberals who believe in a Christian god but don’t subscribe to let’s say a west baptist church view point
Not evangelists. Evangelists aren't liberal. By definition. And Christian film is evangelist by definition.
Therefore Christian film is conservative.
As a former Baptist for 16 years (22 male), you hit the nail on the head. I am not a practicing Christian and i educated myself and left conservatism years ago but I do read The Bible and I take information from it as would anybody else with any book, obviously it's a dated piece of media so I don't trust it with my entire being. There are far more good passages than bad, but when they are bad... they are BAD. I'm about as far left as one can get without bleeding into "extremism" but there is oddly a sense of comfort in Christianity even though I don't 100% subscribe to everything regarding it.
Believing in a god does not make a person right-wing, but there is definitely a strong correlation between being a believer and being right-wing. You can't honestly try to deny that
When the moderate Christians start publicly pushing back against the theocrats and bible thumpers, then we'll stop lumping you in with them.
Oh I'm gonna love this. Lately I've been reading a ton about how the political climate of the 70s influenced TCM, specifically how it reflects the rot in the "American Dream" as a concept and Hooper's feelings of being lied to by the American government, so this is already scratching all the right spots
Edit: iirc the creator of Rocky Horror has said some pretty unsavory things about trans women, which is where most of the aversion comes from. I'd also argue SOTL doesn't subvert the idea of Bill being trans or not very well, especially since they claim Bill's lack of a desire to medically transition as proof that he's cis. There's plenty of trans people who don't.
Read that "SOTL" as "Spec Ops: The Line" and I was very confused for a moment.
Don't have anything to Add to the discussion, maybe because I am German and we never had things like the Satanic Panic here like in the US, thus a lot of times these movies just strike me as "OOoooooOOOOh! SaTaN iS eViL!111!!! Be Afraid!", good example being the Recent Longlegs where I just saw it as stupid untill it got put in another context trough a Video by Meromorphic.
But to be honest, I still think it was stupid with it's Satan Stuff.
I also have some trouble being like "Yeah, that's left and that is right!" expect it's extremly apparent. XD
Anyway, pretty interesting and well written video!
Thank you for tackling Analise. The German film is interesting because it's conservative for Germany - in that it was largely anti-Catholic feom a very Lutheran culture in a way that said - look at these more backwards people than I. But it is their faith that killed Analise - and that film is much more of a horror film to me than Emily Rose.
I know this might stray from the point of the video but on the topic of alien invasions I want to point out two instances where the outsider was shown as evil without being a conservative pov: V, a 1983 miniseries that depicts an alien invasion where the aliens are clear nazis allegories (it's even point out in the text by a character who is a survivor of the holocaust) and of course the original HG Welles book, War of the Worlds, which ends by asking the reader to compare the actions of the martians with the actions of the United Kingdom in their african colonies.
I want to point this out becase 1. I've seen a lot of people saying that the concept of an evil alien race is objectively conservative, which I don't think it's true and 2. I just want more people to watch the original V, it's a great mini series.
V is super underrated. And the original has a Robert Englund appearance
Thank you for giving this topic the level of nuance and complexity it deserves.
Oh crap didn't think I'd see you in this comment section.
Would you happen to have a favorite horror movie?
sometime i will probably watch the exorcism bc i am extremely heavily into horror media but it's something I've been putting off for a long time because my family was really deeply religious fundamentalist and constantly made me feel like demons were real and it culminated in this incident after an argument i had when I stopped following the faith and got called blasphemous and was held down on the floor and prayed at that the demons would come out of me and it was a really deeply traumatizing event for me and seeing an exorcism in this anime a friend was showing me bothered me really bad even though that was not the same thing and from an eastern religious setting, this character being burned alive by these sins in him and forced to feel like he was evil and had to ask for forgiveness just triggered this traumatic memory in me really bad
Hey there, just because you like doesn’t mean you have to watch ‘the classics’, you’re still a real fan regardless!
But if it’s something you want to tackle, maybe start off small, like a minute by minute plot summary, some small clips from the movie, and work your way through it from there. Or maybe start with some parody exorcist movies/skits?
Either way, I hope you do what’s best for you!
I think it gets easier with time. I still haven't watched The Exorcist but any media with fundamentalists really gets under my skin horribly, and I used to not be able to engage with it - even like Frank Darabont's The Mist stuck with me badly. But over time those wounds have gotten way easier to live with, about a decade after escaping that upbringing. It gets easier, trust me! Doesn't go away, but it gets easier.
FWIW, the movie doesn't have much in common with your experiences. The characters are very rational and spend much of the movie seeking a scientific explanation for what's happening, and even when the priests are contacted, they work hard to exhaust every rational possibility before even considering an exorcism. By the time it's actually enacted, it's blindingly clear that something deeply unnatural is happening.
I don't think Velma is a Trojan, I think mindy just does not understand her own ideology. There is a very telling leaked text by sam bankman fried in his court case. It's a diatribe about how he, among others he know masquerade as progressive and socially aware simply because people will praise them and they get good coverage. Likewise, I think Mindy, like many other creatives in her field, aligned herself with progressives for said clout for the most part. And given her voting, endorsements, and political statements, she does likely largely agree with said causes. Where she messed up is that I think her show was made out of spite like "won't the right wingers be so mad if I desecrate something they like!" But in doing so, I forgot to make something good or aligned with any values. It's crude ragebait masqueradeing as a progressive show made by a spiteful narcissist. It doesn't make progressives look good, so a cope is the idea that she is some type of secret conservative or trying to make progressives look bad.
I agree it's just a badly done show with forced progressive themes
I remember a Cracked article from a decade ago that talked about this. Specifically, they were examining how when the left is in power, we get more zombie movies where zombies are a representation of conservatives (fear of conformity, consumerism, and mindless violence); where when the right is in power, we get more vampire horror as a stand-in for liberals (foreigners, sexual promiscuity, often portrayed as explicitly LGBTQ+ or queer-stereotypes).
Also, that "exorcist" did online study. FOURTY YEARS AGO?! I hate to break it to him, but there was no "online" 40 years ago. How can people take people like him seriously?
this was a wonderful watch! i’m usually not good with horror so i don’t watch it much at all, but i may look into these (: (also, the moment you started talking about rocky horror i was like, “lily orchard said something silly abt it, didn’t she” 😭)
I thijk you just cracked the code on what has been driving me crazy about Velma. I could not even begin to understand who it was made for. Repositioning it to see it from a conservative pov made it all make sense
Sai did such a great job with this thumbnail
Universal healthcare. Oooh. Free school lunches. OOoh. Strong social safety nets. OOOOOH!!!
The horror.
Universal Basic Income.
AAAARRRGGGGHH!!!
Yeah; people typically don't like having their money taken from them to pay for things they don't want to pay for. Maybe instead of mocking them you should acknowledge the cost of these privileges you are demanding.
While a capitalist society can afford to provide these things the entitlement is infantile. You're not owed the product of other peoples' labor.
@@grimjoker5572 "You're not owed the product of other peoples' labor." capitalism being all about getting others to do the work for you so you can profit off of it:
@@grimjoker5572So you probably LOVE working for someone who works half as hard as you, if even, and makes more than a thousand times you do, right? Especially someone you probably haven't ever seen face to face and who's role in the company is vague at best? Not to mention the shareholders who's entire existence is to indirectly profit off your work, and the banks and insurance companies who quite literally make money from yours.
i was curious what the in praise of shadows thing was and uh looking it up showed me the right wing pipeline. this is exactly like when i tried looking up "obiwan gay" and instead of him flirting with quinlin vos it was just pages and pages of hating gay people
The ‘right-wing pipeline’…. You need to come to terms with the fact that stupid statements made online will be responded to negatively. It doesn’t matter who you are or who does it. That is how the internet works.
@@mr.selyumor5402 it's a conservative response that's being over-represented when using the search function with the same type of "soy-boy beta thinks white people should die! the woke mind virus destroys lives! sad!" 10 times in a row. i called it a pipeline because when i was looking the only way to hear about it on youtube without finding the taken-down video itself is to hear it through right wing drama channels warped retellings. conservative reactionaries are so excited by blood in the water that when a young adult seemingly experiencing a mental and finical crisis makes a poorly thought out video they don't see a person but a springboard to rant about stupid culture war bullshit. the contents of the shadow guy video doesn't matter they don't give a shit about him only that he fits the shape of what they hate and is vulnerable enough to take out. yeah the internet works this way but it doesn't have to and to appeal to the naturalistic logical fallacy is a giant L. also obiwan "ben" kenobi is the most bisexual man to ever live and those who disagree are beneath me.
I think the main controversy was him accusing Wendigoon of racism because he's ... from Appalachia or something?
bro really saw In Praise Of Shadows and went “THIS is how you do it right”
Great video. For how many Left or even queer people are drawn to the horror space, it actually feels rare that we have these good faith discussions of the conservative side of horror.
The bit of Velma actually makes me think of a common part of horror that has a very Left wing fanbase, but as far as I know is not a part of Velma. Camp. Something hard to describe but certainly is that different place you were saying that Rocky Horror fits that sets it apart from the other similar things that would be conservative.
I haven't done a big introspection of it, but does at least the majority of good camp fit into the space of what would otherwise be a conservative horror, but taken to the extent that it becomes ridiculous and that is why especially a lot of queer people are drawn to it? Kind of like how drag itself often fits conservative ideas of femininity but flipped on its head. The flamboyant villains of yesteryear become so charismatic that the audience can find themselves kind of rooting for them.
Would Velma actually fit the inverse? Where the would be progressive elements are taken to the extreme that they become silly, and might in the end have the audience in favour of traditional people in power?
Regarding this year's October, the successful sort of Horror show is Agatha All Along, which is playing both Camp and progressive.
A good example of non-religious conservative horror to me is 30 Days of Night-a mysterious stranger comes into a peaceful Alaskan community and clashes with the townfolk. Then he sabotages the town to let vampires in.
If we're going to have a go at Scooby-Doo, I think we should mention Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But how to categorize? Here's my attempt:
The best Progressive Christian Existentialist show ever made.
these thumbnails are amazing. great work by the artist !!!!
While I’ve only just started the video I want to say thank you for the time it took to even amass this much material. Because of how RUclips comments work in the first 2/3 mins of this video I’ve seen several pop up and all of them are seemingly addressing either different points or different perspectives of points you’ve made. I really look forward to the next hour and a half because I find you often have a unique perspective of whatever material you are covering. Thank you again for your invested time and energy 🥳
1:21:58 The writers and directors of Elm Street 2 also never ever had considered the gay ideas and themes in the movie until it was done
Heard the producer and director were aware the script had gay undertone but didn’t how big/blatant until they saw the first screen.
and yeah, I'm really not trying to claim it's "objectively bad" or anything, but most "satanism" horror stories just don't do much for me. maybe if I were christian or had a more christian background, it would resonate more. but I suppose knowing how many people take those silly ideas _very_ seriously in real life, and just how many lives they've justified ruining because of them, I find fiction based on that to fall a bit flat. either eyeroll-inducing, or just kind of irritating. sometimes both. regardless, my immersion in the story is often broken. a story told especially competently, or that subverts those ideas in an interesting way can still succeed, but it's a bit of an uphill battle. though choosing a more fantastical setting, rather going for the usual "based on a true story" approach can help somewhat. but then they can't fence sit on to what degree the demon magic stuff is real for 90% of the runtime.
Good video. However I have to disagree in regard of the exorcism of Emily Rose: That movie HEAVILY implies that the priest is in the right even if one were to agree in the both sides as posible. Knowing the true story is based on makes my blood boil. This is not based on a book like The Exorcist but a real story of religious abuse told from the persepective of her abusers.
Sorry if I came out strong that movie is a pet peeve of mine.
Again good video regardless.
thank you for this video! i enjoyed most of IPOS's video when it was kind of like this one. much appreciated
On the topic of Frankenstein. There was a degree to which this idea that the monster is Sympathetic is somewhat baked into the story. Much of Victor Frankenstein's misfortunes are a direct result of his own failures, his fears, his irresponsible actions, and his attempts to play God when he wasn't actually ready for it. One of the book's most famous quotes is when the Monster confronts Victor.
"Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend."
I will say I do disagree a bit about Velma being a trogen, from interviews mindy kalen dose have say on the show, and while yes velma is unlikable, but I see that as the self insert problem, she's this syndical genius, who's terable traits are relatable, having her be in a romanic/ sexual relationship with every member in a vary racially diverse cast even though, the show has made jokes about the main protag being an unattractive socially awkward person, feels vary similar to a heram protagonist in an anime, I believe the politics are vary much armchair social justice, as in just what you would hear from an self-important article online, her critique of patriarchy and racism aren't really new, and feel like buzz word's taken from an article.
I disagree.
Velma feels much more "Meet the Spartans" and the like than Family Guy.
Could easily just be the mindset of “adult animation has to be raunchy and vulgar” trap
I feel like that's insulting to Meet the Spartans xD
Meet the Spartans is already an insult to spoof movies.
So, as a conservatively bent fella, id like to point out theres theres a third 'conservative stance' and thats "The system, in theory, is fine, its current implementation is flawed".
This is where youll get some who want to revert it to the last time it was working correctly and the other group that wants to do a series of slow, small changes to get it back on track. This is how you get reform minded conservatives.
Edit: I am noticing that you dont seem to be aware of a fairly common throughline in a lot of conservative thought, particularly during the 70s and 80s and that is that a lot of them *really* dont like the government. They want as little interference as possible and have a tendency to question authority. So theres a lot of overlap with left leaning movies on that one.
What a great video! I'm so glad RUclips served me such a great revommendation. I was confused by the inclusion of Velma at first but you used it so well to illustrate your point
this is so great this is exactly what i wanted the in praise in shadows video to be
Anthony, thank you for this video and all the Xmen ones I've been listening to lately. You bring such a wonderfully thoughtful, reasonable, and compassionate perspective. Even when I'm listening to you talk about something distressing, I always leave feeling happy that there are mature human beings on this platform.
God, your commentary just keeps getting better and better, I just love your essays
Police interrogations that coerce false confessions are more terrrifying than horror movies. Glad those three were eventually free from prison.
As a conservative it's very refreshing to see a more left leaning person take a fair look at opposing media I personally love a lot of films made by left leaning individuals the political beliefs whether in the movie or not shouldn't effect your enjoyment but rather the quality of the storytelling and so one
In Sleep Away Camp I had actually wondered if Angela didn't actually kill the young campers, but once a few killings had started there was another killer taking advantage of a situation thinking the initial killer would take the fall for all of the killings.
An interesting point to add onto you talking about how a creator doesn't always intend for a movie to have the political measaging it does is Predator. Holy shit that might be one of the gayest movies of the 80s and it also seems to serve as a critique of toxic masculinity. Dunno if John McTiernan intended for either of those facets to be in the movie but its interesting to note that the team all seem to die in ways that mirror their toxic personality traits and Dutch survives because hes able to adjust his view of the world and think about himself in a different way.
I love Predator. One of my all time favorites. It has a stupid simple plot but it was executed to perfection.
Awesome video, like your exploration of Conservative ideals in Horror Movies. Definitely got the video that was advertised on the tin 😊
By the way The Wicker Man is not showing that "The Christian God doesn't exist" because Howie didn't get saved at the end... that's like saying that every movie about martyrs is about God not existing because Superman didn't come down to save them lmfao
I absolutely belive that the point of the wicker man was how it made you feel and how easy it is to get right and wrong reversed. They gave Howie every opportunity to prove himself impure and unworthy of sacrifice.
It was released in the early 70s which for sure is prime cult territory. Anyways can you tell it's one of my fave movies (and style of movie)
Ayy I was hanging out for silence of the lambs right from the beginning lol. some really interesting films in here. interesting analysis!
Yippee found this channel just a day ago and already another hour and a half video I'm eating so good today
This is exactly what i wanted out of IPoS' video, you did a great job!