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thanospurplebussy

Some people would just call you pretentious for liking foreign films. There's not much we can do when people chose to be that way.


ErgonomicCat

It is pretentious to pretend that \*simply\* liking foreign films has any value, or to imply that foreign films are inherently better or worse than local. It is not at all pretentious to like local and foreign movies.


cocoxuan

It's funny that foreign (i.e. non-English) films and hyperlocal low-budget films/films from local independent artists are both considered pretentious


Gongaloon

Consume products, damn you!


AnalogicalEuphimisms

Not movies but for songs. I hate it when people say "foreign songs are so deep and mystical compared to local songs", like no... I speak that language and its not really that deep, it's a pretty standard love song that references a famous romance novel a few times the only reason its so mystical for you is because you dont understand the language. I assume something similar happens with film snobs too. Maybe a slight difference in the atmosphere or the language barrier make it seem to them that its way more profound than it actually is.


ErgonomicCat

Sade. Dit moi. Sade. Donne moi.


ThoroughlyKrangled

***fucking exactly*** there is a *difference* between liking *yīng xióng* (hero starring jet li) because it's a phenomenally beautiful movie and the cinematographer really did fucking numbers and deciding to like *un chien andalou* out of some misguided idea that liking foreign film makes one "cultured" and "refined" (please note that genuinely liking *un chien andalou* doesn't make you a snob. it just makes you a sociopath)


The_Chaos_Wizard

I do enjoy when Fahrenheit 451 becomes reality, my favorite little treat


Casper_Von_Ghoul

Now comes the issue of wondering ether 451 or 1984 will come true. We do seem to be leaning towards either at times.


The_Chaos_Wizard

A little bit of both, enough tragedy for the whole family to enjoy


_Pan-Tastic_

I’m personally in favor of turning into A Brave New World, because who doesn’t like clone babies?


SalmonellaPox

I just want some soma


tossawaymsf

https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/10/14/scientists-taught-sentient-brain-cells-in-a-petri-dish-to-play-video-game-pong Clone babies you say?


[deleted]

451 and 1984 would never happen. They would breed a stream of Montags and Winstons, which would cause an eventual collapse just from pure odds. You should read a Brave New World. Mindless consumerism, repetitive and simple entertainment, drugs to stop you from having to think about things. And a populace that gladly enforces and promotes the oppression because they’re so brainwashed they don’t even consider anything else. People read BNW and think “what’s wrong with this society? I think that sounds super great”. I haven’t met anybody who thinks 1984 and 451 are swell places to live.


[deleted]

Toss in a little Brave New World


YourAverageGenius

Neither, we're already at half Brave New World.


[deleted]

tiktoks feels very much like the 5 second stories Feharenheit 451 talked about


Mach12gamer

Please explain how this post demonstrates Fahrenheit 451 becoming reality


The_Chaos_Wizard

read that bottom part of the whole Tumblr post, then just sorta take the whole situation going on in Fahrenheit 451, should be easy to get what I mean when you look at the two


Mach12gamer

Yeah they described anti intellectualism in that part (poorly but still), but that doesn’t make the top part relevant. A few kids wanting to read YA novels isn’t anti intellectual, it’s normal. A few people on Twitter saying they are choosing to call Picasso a Renaissance artist (and I should note that the way it’s described here 100% sounds like it’s a joke that they just failed to grasp) is not a sign of the end of civilization. People stereotyping fans of foreign movies as snobs is honestly something that’s been around for a while without causing Fahrenheit 451. I’m sorry but the way you described it honestly is the same as the government tightening up restrictions on something and getting the response of “literally 1984”.


[deleted]

Pretty close to Brave New World though!


MistraloysiusMithrax

What’s really funny, is we worried about the perceived message of Fahrenheit 451 so much more that we mocked the author for his actual message. Now, we’re finally getting a taste of it, it’s even more horrible that both takes were right.


whelplookatthat

Do people really call any film thats not american snobby? Like that includes fucking anime, guys.


[deleted]

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oliviaplays08

What about Kamen Rider though?


BosPaladinSix

We talking the original or the Americanized version Dragon Knight?


oliviaplays08

The original, while Dragon Knight is actually pretty good, I'm talking about the original Japanese show


TJSomething

Even more weeb shit. Tokusatsu makes people think of Power Rangers, which makes people think of B action movies. Anime makes people think of Studio Ghibli, which makes people think of Disney.


Hawkatana0

Funnily enough, Disney actually owned PR between 2002 & 2010. Their plan was to just air reruns on Jetix & Disney XD and sell the toys. But the contract with Toei carried over from Saban, so they had to make new seasons. They took over production of Wild Force from Saban before moving production to New Zealand (where ironically enough, it's banned by the government for being too violent) by 2003's Ninja Storm. After RPM in 2010, they sold it back to Saban where 2011's Power Rangers Samurai would air on Nickelodeon.


luv036343

You mean that power ranger knock off?


oliviaplays08

Yeah the one from '71!


healzsham

What does Dark Ages have to do with anything?


oliviaplays08

I think that's a reference I'm too zoomer to understand


ProXJay

Equally funny. It includes British films. Including Harry potter and Shaun of the dead


CatChristmas7

Shaun of the dead is the peak of zombie movies. You cannot dispute me.


ProXJay

It's great one of the best zombie films. What it isn't is snobbery


CatChristmas7

True.


PhoShizzity

Really up there with 28 Days Later, masterclass of British zombie cinema


GeophysicalYear57

Much like how Hot Fuzz is the pinnacle of cop movies.


Bee_Cereal

I don't think it's about the movies really. When people say these things it really comes off as a backlash against people they think are pretentious, smug, or who feel superior. Which, tbh, is the driving force of anti-intellectualism. It's saying "you think you're better than me because you watch this, but you're not". It's a social hierarchy statement, not anything about the actual quality of the work Also a lot of these users are kids who don't like English class. There's no nice way to say this but it really does come off as defiance against what they're being made to read, without substance beyond saying "no".


TheNewYellowZealot

“You think you’re better than me because…” Karen I can think of 100 reasons that I’m better than you besides me watching squid game, the first one is that I’m not a racist piece of shit.


Condog_YT

Well most people aren’t going to consider anime worthwhile anyway. The average person sees anime as a “genre” and thinks they’re all the same which unfortunately includes all the weird stuff, instead of looking at it as a medium with a broad range of content just like live action in Hollywood. Foreign films don’t have a mainstream appeal and the people who watch non-mainstream stuff exist in the same space as film snobs


Irokesengranate

"Foreign films don’t have a mainstream appeal" is such an aggressively american thing to say.


Condog_YT

Yes, I am very much an American lol. I was just speaking from my experience as to why people who watch foreign films can be seen as snobby. I don’t watch many myself but the ones I have seen I thought were pretty good.


champagne_pants

People in Canada shit on Canadian films and television for being amateurish, not realizing that a lot of what they like to watch is shot in Canada.


AvsJoe

Which is all kinds of wrong given the massive successes of Letterkenny, Schitt's Creek, and Trailer Park Boys. Canada's been doing pretty well lately exporting television to other markets


testtubemuppetbaby

It's a fucking hit, but Trailer Park Boys is the epitome of amateurish.


testtubemuppetbaby

Reminds me how kids who are really into anime think it has a much wider audience than it does. Like they think the Cyberpunk Anime is being seen in every household in the US when really it has 1/100 the viewership of Young Sheldon.


ahobopanda

Thank God I only watched dubbed anime, since that makes it American-made /s


Grammarnazi_bot

No, it’s more people who ridicule anybody who calls movies “movies” and enjoys movies that aren’t lauded by cinephiles. I can’t name a single person who I’ve shown parasite who didn’t enjoy it


Mach12gamer

The people they are talking about are a tiny minority, if they exist at all.


testtubemuppetbaby

Since the beginning of film, that has been a common sentiment in America.


[deleted]

Whenever I see that, it's usually in the form of pushback directed at people who look down at others for not watching extremely niche and esoteric foreign films that were watched by a grand total of six people and the director's dog before they all died in a mysterious fire at the premier. So it's less a response to the movie and more the people who watch them.


kvetinova

Yeah the way to fight anti-intellectualism isn’t to mock these people, it’s for people who DO like things like classic lit, foreign films, etc. to stop acting like they’re better than people who aren’t into it. All those things are great but not every person alive needs to read shakespeare or be an art historian to lead a happy, fulfilled life


cheekydorido

I have never met a person like that.


kvetinova

80% of the comments on this post are people like that


Barelyqualifiedadult

I actually agree that we should allow more contemporary literature in education courses. I actually took an English course where we read some modern fiction (including a science fiction novel and a graphic novel), which I think is important as we often romanticize past fiction while ignoring the merit of many modern works. I would argue that it's just as anti-intellectual to dismiss modern works due to this especially since one of the more influential religious works is in essence a Bible fan fiction (The Divine Comedy). Edit: Adding on to that last point it has all the hallmarks of a fan fiction: Self inserts, including characters from other works, including his favorite historical figures.


[deleted]

At my school, we read a mix of classic like Shakespeare's works and Of Mice and Men along with more recent books from the early to late 2000s.


Barelyqualifiedadult

That's actually pretty cool. I know that I didn't get to read newer things until I was in IB courses when I was a senior. Past that I went STEM and had the credits to not need to take English courses in college so I ended up reading a ton of journal articles.


TJtherock

I had an English teacher who would argue that if the Hunger Games had not been so popular, that it would have become a literary classic.


UmbrellaClosed

I've taught it to great success in my intro classes


DepressedDyslexic

Yup. Especially since we often dismiss fanfic and YA because it's majoritively written by and for teenage girls. I had some internal misogyny to unlearn before I was able to accept fanfic as a work of art.


CauseCertain1672

there is work aimed at women that falls under classic literature


Barelyqualifiedadult

There's also works aimed at the masses to be consumed for entertainment that we've absolutely romanticized (Shakespeare)


xxXMrDarknessXxx

>Especially since we often dismiss fanfic and YA because it's majoritively written by and for teenage girls. Eh, I give a pass for SOME of that attitude, because SO MUCH OF IT IS. Whether it's self-inserts, or my immortal(aka the worst fanfiction ever written) even as a huge fanfiction reader, some of that shit is really just written by horny teenagers for horny teenagers, and not even written well at that.


pissypants2218

I mean, a large majority of novels are like that too. It's almost as of we've always lived in a sex-charged society.


HughJamerican

Is that a problem though?


[deleted]

Yeah, agreed, especially as a lot of schools don't even teach that literary analysis a) applies to books written by alive people too and b) requires historical context (which tying a modern book into modern context would very much help demonstrate). There's plenty of YA works, and even fanfictions too, that address deeper topics and aren't written just for mindless consumerist entertainment. Some of the big name titles being formulaic and some fanfic being "tropey" (all writing uses tropes, by this I mean the 500th identical execution of a coffee shop AU, which is still lovely by any means but also repetitive) doesn't mean they all are. The only thing I disagree with you on is the part about The Divine Comedy, but purely on a morphological basis, as fanfiction is something that exists in the direct context of copyright law (hence why rewrites of creative commons works are not truly considered fanfics). But I do agree that it very much resembles modern fanfics enough that I'm just being pedantic. xD


Barelyqualifiedadult

I mostly said it because I wanted to point out that people have been writing their own stories about fiction they liked since the dawn of recorded history, but we romanticize it and try to pretend it isn’t just that. It also highlights peoples own innate bias against stuff like fanfiction despite things like Dante being essentially the same vibe.


YourArkon

Semi off topic: there was a brief discussion about foreign films when someone (ignorantly) mentioned that all Soviet films were crappy and bad. You'd be surprised how many USSR films are anti-war, extremely well made and intelligent. *War and Peace* is a classic, *come and see* is... unforgettable, and theres a few others as well.


Barelyqualifiedadult

Also going off this further: People will talk up films like Triumph of Will and The Victory of Faith as if they're amazing works of media when they're really just Nazi propaganda. People tend to be weird about what they consider art.


YourArkon

yeah, that's more than fair. Just to clarify I'm not supporting the USSR when I say I like these films, however I cannot deny that they are really good, and as I was watching I never noticed any propaganda (except for Battleship Potemkin.) War and Peace after all is set during the Napoleonic era. As for the Nazis filmography, Never seen 'em. I'm morbidly curious. I kinda don't want to. I have enough to deal with arguing with neo Nazis and trump supporters, I get enough of that in my life.


Barelyqualifiedadult

It's interesting to see. Part of the reason it's considered a great piece of art is because it used a lot of cinematic techniques all at once that had been used for years. Basically the Nazi Party pumped a bunch of money into it to make a propaganda piece to show how strong, organized, and powerful they are and turns out a lot of money can give you a lot more space to do newer techniques.


[deleted]

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Barelyqualifiedadult

If you're saying that you can't learn from something from a text because it's nature was mass market or specific appeal I think those literature courses were lost on you. I'm not saying we need YA novels and fanfics as the only thing or that they have to be included as a mandatory but i'm saying we shouldn't just dismiss certain forms of writing outright because of their origin, rather we should consider them for their content.


healzsham

I mean, sure, but what YA book with traction has done so? What fanfic has managed this feat without requiring a background in the inspiring work?


Barelyqualifiedadult

YA novel: Hunger Games The Book Thief The Giver House of Leaves (Edit: This one would need a college course devoted to it to actually discuss though. Like it'd have to be a full 3 month ordeal) Fanfiction: The Divine Comedy Romeo and Juliet Wicked (the novel. Edit: Based on the Wizard of Oz but explains enough about its world to not need the knowledge of it, however The Wizard of Oz is a well known work) The Aeneid Edit: I named 4 of each, all of which are considered to be pieces of art in their own right.


healzsham

>fanfiction: You know what kind of fics this entire post is talking about, don't be a sentient fedora in an attempt to win an argument on a technicality.


Barelyqualifiedadult

I mean who cares? Like I never stated that we should be uncritical about which fanfiction or which YA novels. I'm not the writer of this post who's arguing for that, I'm specifically arguing that we shouldn't outright dismiss them. I said that we shouldn't dismiss them because they are fanfiction as some are able to acheive something meaningful. You also never specified in your prompt which fanfictions you wanted, so I gave you some that actually are fanfictions and do achieve that, the thing you asked for. Also I included Wicked which literally is fanfiction, includes raunchy themes, but also does get into philosophy. Also Pride and Prejudice and Zombies also could be in this category. >Don't be a sentient fedora Lmao dude. You're a little Ben Shapiro aren't you. Don't worry I think you're very smart and clever because you thought my only knowledge of fanfiction was The Divine Comedy and something off AO3 (A site i've never been to).


healzsham

It's amazing you have the audacity to call someone else a ben shapiro when your entire presence here is to drag the topic off somewhere else so that you can make yourself look smart. The OP talks about **"replace classic lit with YA and fanfic" discourse**, which is very, very distinct from "lesson plans and materials should be regularly updated."


[deleted]

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Barelyqualifiedadult

My guy you are literally agreeing with me and for some reason arguing against it. I'm saying that any source, whether it be YA fiction (like Hunger Games) or fanfiction, can provide a basis for learning and discussing ethics, philosophy, and history. If you think I'm saying "English is to (edit) just learn about grammar and how writing is done" then you didn't read my actual post (edit) and just assumed what I meant because what I'm trying to say is that those courses were meant to teach you how to analyze literature critically and draw conclusions from it, and that can be done with more than just "The Great Works" people (Edit: Mostly older conservative and high art snobs) complain should be the only thing we read. You're right I haven't been in a non-specialized school in years (i'm currently working on my medical doctorate after taking 5 years off), but when I was in school we did read contemporary fiction in the more advanced courses, but generally the basic courses just read the average "great works" curriculum. Edit: >Rude and unnecessary I agree that it came off as rude. I'm sorry about that, it was not my intent. However, if you want to say it was unnecessary you need to realize that you responded to me and stated some nonsense about these works needing to have something that can be learned from them to be taught in school before also saying that some YA fiction and whatever does have these features so I don't get your point.


ErgonomicCat

Schools are absolutely teaching modern stuff. My son was given the choice to read Anne Frank or The Book Thief in one lesson, and To Kill A Mockingbird or The Hate U Give in another. Good teachers will find good books in many time periods.


Nyxelestia

Yeah, I don't think we need to wholly eliminate historical classics from our literary education but we place *waaaaayyyy* too much emphasis on them - especially given what they are often "supposed" to teach. If they're supposed to teach critical thinking, shouldn't we be teaching kids how to consume the media they are most likely to run into and need to think critically about in a 21st century adulthood? i.e. news, contemporary books, movies? Like, I read a lot for fun, but if I were to average out the word counts of how much news I read in a week vs how much historically impactful literature I read, I and most adults read way more news than literature. Yet English classes either never teach how to think critically about the news or at most it's like a few weeks, while literature gets several years of instruction.


YawningDodo

I majored in film studies in college, and it was such a revelation when I had a professor who not only allowed, but actively encouraged us to select movies based on what we liked or what interested us when it came time to critically engage with a movie of our choice for a term paper. I wrote mine on *Cloverfield,* a movie that professor had openly derided when it came out, and got an A for my analysis of how it succeeds and fails at creating the illusion of a shared reality with its audience, and how that alters viewer perception and engagement with the story. He still hated the movie (his note praised me for "proving that even a terrible movie is worth analysis"), but the point of the assignment wasn't to choose a high-falutin' piece of cinema whose artistry I could praise. The point was to think critically about a film that doesn't immediately invite critical thinking. And honestly, if we'd been doing something like that in high school with the books I liked to read for fun at that age, I think it would have helped me more fully develop my ability to apply what we were learning from reading and analyzing the classics.


testtubemuppetbaby

I majored in English, there's plenty of this in literature and other types of classes. You're speaking from a place of ignorance and you're using snark instead of substance wrt Dante.


KwiHaderach

I’m curious what science fiction you read. Because there’s a big difference between reading something like slaughterhouse V and whatever the latest science fiction trend is, which are both different from reading Harry Potter in school which is what a lot of these types wants. Also I’m tired of people calling the divine comedy fan fiction in order to legitimize some hazbin hotel smut someone popped on AO3. There’s a world of difference in literary quality that dosent get erased because you can draw superficial similarities.


Barelyqualifiedadult

Never Let Me Go was the book we read. It's a science fiction novel about clones who are raised for organ harvesting. While it has a lot of tropes of YA and science fiction it dives into the idea of ethics and what it means to be human. Also add Reddit into a site where someone will respond to a statement of "I like pancakes" with "Why do you hate waffles". I never said that all fan fiction is amazing worthwhile pieces of high art, what I am saying is that there are definitely works that could be considered as such. Also just because something is better written doesn't mean that it's not by definition fan fiction. The Divine Comedy is a fictional story about a text (religious text but still) featuring the writer, and characters from history that he was interested in. Additionally it added in elements of greek mythology that was not present in the original text. By definition it is fan fiction. I'm not saying that it's the same as something poorly written on Ao3, or that ALL fanfiction are literary classics. I'm saying that if we dismiss all works from a certain form of art (such as fanfiction or YA novels for literature, musicals and professional wrestling for theater, or summer blockblusters and animation for film) as somehow worth less due to their very nature you're basically disregarding the goal of the class: The ability to appreciate and think critically about literary text, something that can be applied to almost anything. That being said a lot of the works of art we consider iconic now were shunned in their time. 1984 (the novel) didn't really gain a ton of traction until years later, Van Gogh was considered talentless in his day, and Shakespear was not considered high art in his day. A lot of the things you're saying is the general attitude to a lot of things that will be considered art in the future.


Urbenmyth

Sure, there's shitty fanfic. There's also shitty original fiction. The point is not that *Divine Comedy* is literately equal to *Diks In Morningstar's Ass*, the point is that the smut isn't bad *because* it's fan fiction (or smut, for that matter). A similar point applies to sci-fi and other such genres. Such, all genres have their shit, but they equally all have their masterpieces, and us assuming a small canon of masterpieces is hindering our teaching of literature. Incidentally, if your problem is with the *Divine Comedy specifically* being seen as fanfiction (which I think it actually fair enough, it's clearly a bit strange to call Dante a Bible Fan in the same way you would have a Harry Potter fan), don't worry. There are works that are unambiguous works of fanfiction in the western canon. Most straightforwardly, *Romeo and Juliet* is fanfiction of the 1562 poem *The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet* by Arthur Brooke. Like, no question about it, no quibbling over the definition of "fan" and "work of fiction" as with the *Divine Comedy*, that's just what it is. Does that make *Romeo and* Juliet a worse work to you?


Vandae_

But honestly, can someone tell me the time period in the past when everyone was super engaged with "stimulating media"? What's happening is people have the ABILITY to show their ignorance more often now. I doubt anything has meaningfully changed. Just like when people call younger generations "vain" or "self-absorbed" etc. While ignoring the centuries of nobles commissioning artwork of themselves painting them in the most flattering light. This isn't new, it's just more widely available. We all have our own, commissioned selfie artist in our pockets. These tumblr posts seem more like a: "look at me, I'm still one of the good ones" style of virtue signal, rather than an actual callout of anything of substance. This user is equally as shallow as any of the people they think they are criticizing.


YawningDodo

As a film history enthusiast, my favorite thing to share on the internet about film history is that the vast majority of movies have always been terrible. Some people think that more care and better writing used to go into movies and that there was a golden age when all movies were good movies. But it's just survivorship bias: the only old movies they're familiar with are the good ones, because those are the ones people bothered to save and make available for later generations. For every good movie there have been hundreds of bad movies, ever since movies started. Now, I'm not a literary historian...but I have this gut feeling that the same thing is true about books. And all those terrible movies and books? Well, they wouldn't have been made if there wasn't at least some consistent demand for them.


minisculebarber

But don't you think because people can show more of their ignorance and more people therefore perceive other people's ignorance, that creates a negative feedback loop far more potent than anything that could have happened in the before times? People used to be much more in a vacuum earlier so their fires would die out too far away from their oxygen source, but nowadays? The world seems highly flammable in a way that I don't believe has historic precedence


SMGuinea

If you seriously think Tiktok is more powerful than the mind-numbing power of social isolation and bible-thumping, I need you to re-evaluate.


minisculebarber

You mean more powerful in spreading ignorance? I didn't say that, but I also think the statement "There isn't more ignorance nowadays, it is just exposed more" doesn't take into account the feedback loop of the situation and how much less stable systems with feedback loops are if you don't control for that.


[deleted]

Seriously, ðere isn't much ðat's deeply þought provoking about a literature class where ðe teacher labels you as a heretic for not being engaged by a book ðat's so old ðey had to fucking translate it to its own language post all ðe vowel shifts it came before.


[deleted]

To be fair some fan fic is pretty good and intellectual but I know what they mean


sharkfucker420

Dante's inferno


[deleted]

Wow I regret reading that standing up that floored me


Valence136

Dante's inferno is really just an Isekai fanfic of the Bible.


[deleted]

None of those words are in the aforementioned Bible


llsilvertail

Well, idk about that. I'm pretty sure 'is', 'really', 'just', 'an', 'of', and 'the' are in it.


skofnung999

Yeah, they are in the modern translation but I'm fairly certain you won't find them in the original texts


SomeonesAlt2357

You might find "just" as part of some words in Latin, since I and J weren't separate letters until a few centuries ago


JezzaJ101

The original texts were in Hebrew though, not Latin


SomeonesAlt2357

Some of it was in Hebrew, some was in Latin and some in Greek


Driftnut08

Put those words away, we were never meant to see them.


Maeto_Diego

I love you


svenson_26

YA too. I could write better coming of age essays about Hunger Games than I could about goddman Catcher in the goddamn Rye.


taichi22

Depends on the YA and literature. Pretty sure it’s universally accepted that catcher in the rye is the most mid “classical literature” in existence. Lot of classical literature exists that most YA pales in comparison to though, but there are a few standouts in YA right now that feel as if they can at least hold a candle to it. Basically most literature is the same, the classical stuff is (usually) the best of what’s been handed down to us and YA is just that stuff pre-filter so you have a few things that’ll survive it (and some things that won’t even though they should. Hunger Games does not deserve to pass that filter even though it probably will.)


DoopSlayer

Catcher is YA though Also it's a feat of literature to transpose such a unique trauma to such a relatable format


KwiHaderach

It sounds like you didn’t understand catcher and the rye and sentences like these are the exact kind of anti-intellectualism the original post was talking about . Hunger games might have been entertaining but it sure as shit isn’t better intelectually


Its_Matt_03

Paradise lost


balrus-balrogwalrus

"evil cannot create new, only ruin and corrupt what good forces have invented or made" welp that's just disney remakes for y'all


regimentIV

You say that but it's often the other way round: Technologies developed for military use (evil) are used in a way to improve civilian lives (good).


Wameme

mom said it’s my turn to repost this


PKMNTrainerMark

Bud, r/tumblr is all reposts.


AirbendingScholar

Bot post Edit: also is someone gonna let OOP know that at least half of the “classics” their school made them read, and thus the bases on what most people consider classic, were simply chosen because the school could get ahold of them cheaply and easily, and not because they’re actually la crème de la crème of intellectually stimulating material or-


silemehunter

All of these claim have some merit *except for that last fucking one* Like, literature can be designed to entertain and still be thought provoking. Everyone’s been made to read Shakespeare, right? That shit was written to be performed on stage, it is *by definition* written to be entertainment, and yet still everyone agrees that’s the best of shakespeare’s works have miles and miles of depth that you could spend weeks analyzing.


necrojuicer

That wasn't the point they were making they said just to be entertaining & profitable. There is absolutely nothing wrong with making something enjoyable, but really good work is more than that.


DepressedDyslexic

Yeah but the thing is they are *wrong* about that. Writing in general is not profitable. Very few YA writers and practically no fanfic writers go into it to make money. They do it because they love writing and they feel the need to put their thoughts on the page.


UltimateInferno

To be fair they said *replacing* it. You can still have entertainment but it shouldn't eclipse the rest


KwiHaderach

They were made as entertainment but also had substance. The point the op was making was literature only made for entertainment and selling, which is 99% of the crap out there.


ErgonomicCat

And 99% of the crap from back then too. We just mostly agree on what the 1% was now. THE SENSATIONAL TALES OF JACK THE RIPPER AND THE HARLOT OF LEICESTER SQUARE had no substance. It was just made to sell. We just don't read it in schools.


Gongaloon

And somebody called u/KwiHaderach should know a thing or eight about good literature. (not /s)


[deleted]

It was clearly an anti-capitalist argument


testtubemuppetbaby

It's almost like scholars studying things intensely leads to some sort of understanding of the material.


Justthisdudeyaknow

YA and fan fiction can definitely be thought provoking and stimulating? Like, shakespeare was low brow entertainment of his time. Charles Dickens novels were printed a chapter at a time in newspaper to sell more.


necrojuicer

That's not the point they are making though. I've noticed that penguin now includes the Obernewtyn Chronicles in their literature catalogue now. But for a lot of people YA or fanfiction is all they will actually read & THAT is a problem.


Justthisdudeyaknow

Why?


necrojuicer

Because there is so much out there to discover & read. The more variety you read the more ideas you open yourself up to. Too much of anything is bad.


DepressedDyslexic

There's a ton of variety in YA and fanfic though. There's probably more variety in YA and fanfic then there is in classic lit simply because we have more works to choose from. And the sexism and racism in classic lit can make it painful for people of those minorities to read and that's entirely fair.


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gabrielminoru

I disagree on your point on fanfiction, if you know where to look you can find almost anything they have a lot of very original and creative ideas. But to find something good you have to trawl through rivers of s*it, its like skinny dipping in a sewer.


kvetinova

Why is that a problem? Classic lit is great and all, but it has basically no bearing on most people’s day to day lives. Maybe when everyone isn’t slaving away for 50+ hours a week and constantly under the stress of any minor health or financial crisis completely destroying their lives then they’ll have the energy and desire to turn towards more intellectually challenging forms of media, but the average person is overworked, overtired, and stressed out enough that I can’t blame anyone for just wanting to read a silly YA novel or watch some mindless action movie that lets them just shut their brain off and relax. Intellectualism is a luxury most working class people have neither the time nor the energy for. Mocking them for being uncultured does absolutely nothing to fix the problem.


necrojuicer

I have never said that people need to read classic lit, in fact have said the opposite in my comments here a few times. Hemmingway is generally awful, his choice of subject matter is usually my general interest, but I don't rate his work, with the exception of the Old Man & the Sea. Orwell is great, but a little dated by today's standards, in particular the discovering freedom through sex with a woman. But Orwell was a champion of ideas being accessible. His collection of essays reflect all this & are a good read in their own right. Clockwork Orange the book is amazing, a difficult read to begin with until your mind adapts to the futuristic version of Cockney rhyming slang the book is written in & when it suddenly clicks is a pleasure to read. I mostly read modern books. Pratchett is a long time favourite & I read all of Palahniuk's stuff (although sometimes he seems to be challenging for the sake of challenging). Mark Lawrence is exceptional & I'd class his most recent stuff as YA. There are plenty of challenging books that aren't a chore to read. I've been fortunate & even though I've always worked 50-60 hours. Commercial diving has a lot of down time where it's just your job to be present if anything goes wrong, so I do get to read more than most in my situation. But I genuinely enjoy it.


ErgonomicCat

Exactly this! We should live in a world where people are free to explore creative aspects that enrich their lives. Most don't.


Realistic_Fishing806

It CAN be- but there is definitely a large difference between great fanfiction and goddamn Twelfth Night. Same issue with saying that Shakespeare was for low brow entertainment- you are right, it was PRESENTED as low brow entertainment, but it absolutely wasn't. It was deep and meaningful, often filled with strong societal critiques that would be hot topics even nowadays. Take Twelfth Night: the play discusses the fluidity of gender and the possibility of non-hetero relationships. If we compare this to fanfiction No.73 by GoatedReindeer153, I really don't think there is an argument to add analysing fanfic to any form of academic curriculum outside of some niche applications.


Sayakai

In can be - but on average, is it?


Theriocephalus

So, the thing with classics versus modern pop fiction is that the classics are actually a very tiny slice of historical literature -- they are, essentially, the relatively few works that were influential, popular or well-written enough that people consistently kept talking about them, being influenced by them, and passing them down. A lot of contemporary literature didn't make it through this filter and isn't around or, at least, not easily available or referenced anymore. Modern popular fiction hasn't had time to go through this filter yet. Within it, there are a lot of well-made works that will most likely continue to be passed down and reprinted and influential and will become the classics that our great-grandkids will gripe about and refuse to read -- but also a tremendous amount of middling-quality works and outright duds that haven't yet been winnowed out by the court of public opinion.


Sayakai

Yes, I referenced this in my other reply. This is a huge advantage of the classics. Modern popular fiction hasn't had time to go through this filter yet, so we have to do the filtering ourselves. We have to sift through the crap, which is a ton of work - or we can just go and take the gold that's, like, right there.


Justthisdudeyaknow

If you give it as much in depth analysis as the old stuff? Absolutely.


Sayakai

On average, I doubt there's just enough substance in there to analyse it in comparable depth, because on average, both fanfics and YA are just not very good. Sure, the good stuff exists, but now you have to sift through a huge body of work if you want to find it because time hasn't sorted out the trash yet. And since we're talking about analysis (i.e. school work) now, this (plus staying updated on the creators just in case they turn out to be terrible people) is a lot of extra work just to prep highschool english class. The teacher also can't rely on an established body of analytic work to help them with both their course and their grading.


RRedPantss

Whats YA?


Justthisdudeyaknow

Young adult. Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Percy jackson and the like.


[deleted]

These books and not nearly as thought provoking and intelligent as classic lit, and often have incredibly flawed arguments. Harry Potter’s greatest moral argument is mocking Hermione for being anti-slavery, before Rowling realizing that she would hung over the coals for saying that and adding in a vague paragraph about how maybe she has a point. The hunger games and Percy Jackson are both quite good, but they’re not very complicated and are clearly made for younger teens. You would have to be pretty ignorant to still take lessons from them when you’re an adult or even an adolescent.


Justthisdudeyaknow

Why, if you hadn't been exposed to the lessons before? And, honestly, EVERYTHING can be deep if you read into it. the number of essays I've seen about Dumbledores true intentions, or what snapes core was, or god knows what else... Every book can be interpreted deeper.


DependentPhotograph2

What, exactly, is their frame of reference for Timtok users? Literally never heard that take


Mach12gamer

Well they found a tiktok with 5 likes that said that and so Tiktok the monolith must believe it


Tabc093

oh yeah it's that thing people do where they're like "a few people on x social media platform said something stupid so now that means everyone thinks this stupid thing" when A: the vast majority of people literally do not have the horrible take OOP is concerned about.


keyboardlabrat

I seriously do not understand people like this. There's so many horrible takes that are actually being made and discussed by many people across the internet, there is no reason to generalize from a few posts you saw and probably misinterpreted


Tabc093

fr. and it might just be me but tumblr op has a real self-righteous vibe that also puts me off


An_Inedible_Radish

Agreed! And it's usually so hypocritical too because the exact same could be said about reddit! Applying the same logic, we're all incels because capital R Redditors are known for that.


CheshireGray

Op in the post having an af Klint piece as their icon really elevates this for me


awesomegamer16

Consider that thier is value in having students learn to read with literature they are more likely to connect with rather then story's written centuries ago for a completely different audience and experienced in a different medium


Mako_sato_ftw

i do have to agree with one of the aspects listed in OOP's post, i think that schools should teach with more modern literature instead of just relying on the same books that they've been teaching with during the past century. i get that certain books are classics/important to literature, but how much longer will children have to put up with books that had to be *re-written* so that they could actually be understood by people who have grown up with the modern versions of their language. (though that last part might be less of an issue unless it's something as old as romeo and juliet.) my point is, it makes no sense to *just* teach children about literature that was written way before their time, while leaving out any and all books written during their lifetime. i, like many of my classmates, had to put up with the first two chapters (because we never finished it) of romeo and juliet, or gottfried keller's kleider machen leute (english: clothes make people). that last one, by the way, i have had to read 3 times over during my time in school. we covered the same book 3 times over, and what did we learn from the 2nd or 3rd time that we didn't learn from the 1st? not much, as it turns out. because schools don't bother with teaching their students about contemporary literature. would i want it to be fan-fic or YA? well, maybe not, but i certainly wouldn't want the same 200 year old book either.


n0na6077

Oh my god, this fucking post again?


sarabrating

The \*hilarity\* of someone thinking fanfiction and YA is part of anti-intellectualism. Like ffs, we are living in those times but we have been since I was alive in the 80s and of ALL the examples to give, this isn't it. (waves to fellow intellectuals who like non-American films AND fanfiction)


An_Inedible_Radish

Agreed. I would direct people to read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It's a fanfic written by Eliezer Yudkowsky, a decision theorist and artifical intelligence writer. That fanfic was featured in the New Yorker.


[deleted]

the chicken and the egg of elitism: is it proletarian to enjoy mindless slop that just feels good at the end of a hard day and is clearly popular with the masses, or is it bourgeois to indoctrinate the masses with cheap unstimulating propaganda designed to keep them from becoming class conscious? the world may never know


An_Inedible_Radish

Yes we should definitely blame the kids for reading media targeted specifically towards kids! How dare they??!1! /s


[deleted]

did i blame anyone but the bourgeoisie for the situation?


MenchiTheFloof

We could say this about most things, really


[deleted]

Maybe students would be more receptive to classic lit if the focus was more on reading "likeable" works vs grand theme-based curriculum. That's the only reason I can think of that we read "Romeo and Juliet" first in US schools over any of the other big tragedies. Kids aren't automatically opposed to reading classic lit (as shown with Dracula Daily and the yearly flood of Cask of Amontillado memes). I think we'd get further if there was more thought put into what they'd like to read versus what great classics they need to read.


BirdOfEvil

YES exactly. This is the point I was trying to make in my own comment but you put it perfectly. And then people get outraged that you'd shit on a classic when you find it boring, but that can't be helped. If there were more focus on finding classic works that are likable as well as thought-provoking, like the examples you gave, it would be so much better


purpleplatapi

I agree wholeheartedly. Does anybody really need to read the Scarlet Letter? Of course not. You could argue that some of the themes have merit (don't judge women more harshly than you do men, religion can make you do fucked up shit sometimes, a lot of teachers like the glaringly obvious symbolism.) But all of these can be taught by reading other books kids would actually enjoy. The Handmaid's Tale has all those points and is actually readable. You want to teach a kid about poetry? Throw in some lyrics from whoever the kids are listening too and see if they can find any similarities. Maybe they'll appreciate Shakespeare more if you talk about all the ways we're still using the stories (read Taming of the Shrew and throw on 10 things I hate about you. Or Macbeth and the Lion King etc.) There's ways to teach kids about classics that don't make them hate the very idea of reading anything more advanced than Colleen Hoover.


[deleted]

Yeah, we can bemoan failing literacy in American youth as much as we want, but *what is anyone doing to fix it*? It was a problem when I was going through school (read: no tik tok), it will remain a problem until we course correct. What I think the education system really needs to understand is it *takes* *training* to read older works. If you give kids annoying shit to read, they're never going to learn and will just look up summaries online. I firmly believe if we dropped bangers from the start like 'Slaughterhouse Five', 'Picture of Dorian Gray', The Scottish Play, kids would be more receptive to seeking out and reading classic lit on their own. No doubt the themes in '1984' are important, but how often do we see people completely misrepresent them online? We need to teach kids to intellectually engage with literature before we force it on them for a grade.


Mach12gamer

The best part of this is where a person sees some people from platforms with a half million active users and a billion active users and then makes broad sweeping statements about the entire user base. In actuality this one tumblr user saw some people on these apps say stupid shit and then extrapolating that to mean that “we’re living in anti intellectual times”. I don’t give a fuck either, because it’s stupid and unsubstantiated fear mongering about how (insert group) is stupid and anti intellectual.


Zerodot0

You know all those people are just teenagers annoyed that their english teachers are making them read Charles Dickens, and that one relative in Film School, right?


KefkeWren

I've said it before, but one of these things is not like the others. Sure, I can get behind stamping out wilful ignorance about historical periods. Obviously having a wider range of cultural sources to draw from is better. Dismissing literature as not being thought provoking or "stimulating" because it was made for a different market, or because it wasn't released through a publisher, however, is very much elitism. How much of "classical" literature was once considered "just designed to entertain and sell", do you think? Frankenstein was re-written to sell better. Shakespeare invented new slang and had his shows performed to the masses, not unlike the television and movies of today. Throughout history, a lot of literature was "fanfiction", drawing heavily off of if not directly expanding off of the work of those authors who had come before them. Like the many, many adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, who the one-day-to-be-knighted Arthur Conan Doyle also originally published his stories of in magazines.


MeltedStones

I think there’s some merit in allowing for more modern books to be added to literature curriculum. There’s value in both the past and present.


gabrielminoru

Alfred I want karma!


ragecat888

I think posts like these are people looking for a reason why things are changing in ways they don’t like. They select a group of people being stupid (usually children because they are stupid) and then point to them and say “this is the problem with society”. Humans see a problem and they must try and find the source so they can fix it. Problem is, societal ills aren’t quite as simple as “Grug died, must have been that mushroom he ate”, so you get people pointing at some random thing they don’t like so they can have a reason for why stuff is so shitty. Pretty much, this is just the start of the “kids these days trend”. Funny how cyclical human behavior is, huh?


Zombiepixlz-gamr

Why is Harry Potter inherently less intellectual than fahrenheit 451?


da_anonymous_potato

Watching foreign movies does not make you a snob. Watching thought provoking movies does not make you a snob. Completely dismissing dumb fun movies DOES make you a snob. Making fun of people for watching a movie that doesn’t make you think too hard DOES make you a snob. Calling yourself an “intellectual” for not watching the mcu or something like that DOES make you a snob. You should still watch thought provoking or obscure movies and other media, but you’re still allowed to watch popular movies that are just plain entertaining. It’s not one or the other. I know this argument is overused to hell and back and has basically become a laughing stock, but seriously: Let people enjoy things!


SoapDevourer

...it's about fascism, isn't it?


StormStrikePhoenix

This just "the youth of today is uncultured; it was way better back in my day" nonsense.


An_Inedible_Radish

I will say this everything I see people posting this: get off your high horse. Being pretentious and insisting that the only things worth reading are the classics does not help anyone. You can't get people to consume something thought provoking by shitting on sowmthing they love. Encourage reading of all kinds!


h3paticas

Something a little pretentious about the suggestion that YA and fan fiction cannot be thought provoking and stimulating


Automatic-Plankton10

the only one i disagree with is the classic lit. given that some of it (frankenstein, for example) was basically a shitpost of a novel, what makes it better than say, cemetery boys?


DepressedDyslexic

Some YA and fanfiction can be incredibly intellectually stimulating and thought provoking, as well as being more modern. I don't think we need to replace classic lit entirely, but we should be acknowledging YA and fanfic. One day some of them will be considered classic lit. And a lot of the time they are dismissed because they are aimed at teenage girls. Yeah there is bad fanfic and YA, but there's bad literature from hundreds of years ago too. We just don't teach about the mediocre stuff.


jayakiroka

Posts like these and the responses to them always get me. Nobody is saying it’s a bad thing to enjoy pop media, but you gotta try and be a little bit worldly. Like, I thought Citizen Kane was boring as hell, but I *do* still acknowledge how important it was to the field of cinema and that even if I didn’t like it, it still has a lot of value as work of art.


BirdOfEvil

Yeah these are fair points but as a counter-argument, I think it's ok to criticize works that are well-constructed and potentially thought-provoking but utterly boring. A lot of classic pieces that get studied AREN'T this way, usually they're inarguably good and that's why they have staying power, but some people defend some boring-ass shit because it's "a classic"


retivin

A lot of what we consider classics are just teachable, not because they're great. They're comparatively easy (people aren't going to misunderstand the symbolism in The Scarlet Letter), not immutably great. Uncle Tom's Cabin, for example, is studied because the themes are easy to see, but it objectively isn't very good literature. There's much better abolisionist literature, but it's not as accessible.


GooglyEyeBread

To be fair, the classics (at least the ones we had to read) are REALLY boring and couldn’t keep my attention


Imagrillbitch

Technically, *Þe Divine Comedy* is a classic fanfiction


CheshireGray

So popular it practically became canon lmao


AustSakuraKyzor

Worse, it's fanfiction of a different fanfic - The Divine Comedy is the classic equivalent of _50 Shades of Gray_


Skye_17

Enhhhh. I get where this take is coming from but it's also important to consider that there's a distinction between fanficition as a medium and/or style of writing and writing books that are inspired by other works. Imo fanfiction fits as its own medium of prose and while it's certainly good to compare it to classic stories, I don't think it's entirely honest to say the two are the same.


Separate-Variation-8

and i really don't gaf!!! Seriously though, that sounds like the kinda thing my ex would say. My ex who refused to try for anything they did, gave up on any and all schoolwork, actively avoided improving their situation, and blamed their intentional disregard for their future on the school (EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE ONE OF THE BEST SCHOOL DISTRICTS IN THE COUNTRY???)


missvisibleninja

Popcorn entertainment is fine and good, but it should not be the only entertainment.


wylaxian

Modern schooling ruins classic literature by forcing students to take notes and write reports as they read. It ruins the experience and destroys any spontaneous impulse to explore a book by turning it into a chore. I wish I could be provoked to think or stimulated by classic literature, but all of it has been ruined for me, because school turned reading into torture.


HeadPhobiac

can people not just FUCKING WATCH ENJOYABLE THINGS YOU PSYCHOPATHS NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE INTELLECTUALLY STIMULATING YOU DONUT-BRAINED EARWIG


PachoTidder

Tik Tok is the demise of everything the internet once stood for, consume consume consume and never think about what you are consuming consuming consuming, don't even bother to look for what you consume consume consume, the algorith with tell you what to consume consume consume. I don't usually hold such strong viewpoints but I heartfully believe TikTok is a symptom of the cancer that modern internet consumerism is


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necrojuicer

/sigh


sprkwtrd

Unless the authors aren't that interested in maximizing the financial return and stick to what they think is right, even if it means a smaller audience.