Stephen Ferguson

so casual

[Theodora Augusta @ghostatno1]

mom (baby boomer) was reading a story where someone made $15/hr babysitting, reacted furiously, "that's too high!"

"Ok, how much did you make babysitting in the 60s?"

"$2.50/hr"

Inflation calculator puts that at $27 in today's terms, almost double

No reaction, just moved on

[Drake @theelderdrake]

The interviewer asked Nolan if he sees himself as a bard for a civilization at dusk. He was also asked whether he feels he must apologize for greatness. His answer was essentially yes to both. His reason was that the audience would reject the work otherwise.

Wrong. But I’ll come back to that later.

He went on to note that people judge stories by the underlying structure of the genre. He gave the example of Memento, which runs in reverse chronology, yet it remains a familiar three-act story at its core. More on the underlying structure below…

It strikes me that he is describing a particular audience: one that is hostile to greatness, that treats civilizational confidence as a sin, and that assumes the West is failing and not worth defending. In other words, a modern Leftist audience.

The irony is that this same cultural posture is why so many modern Hollywood efforts fail at truly undermining the heroic story. You can layer on the critique, the doubt, the sarcasm, the irony, or the cautionary framing. But … if the deeper structure remains… the call out of obscurity, the trials, the sacrifice, the transformation into something more… the older, and truer, pattern asserts itself.

Look at Dune. They turned Chani into a scowling girlboss to undercut Paul. Herbert himself wanted the messiah figure read as dangerous. Villeneuve leans into the warning. Yet audiences still feel the ascent. Courage. Purpose. Destiny. The myth is older than the author’s intention and it doesn’t bend. The same thing happened with Starship Troopers. Verhoeven made it as satire… an exaggerated send-up of militarism and propaganda. But what do people actually take from? Duty, brotherhood, sacrifice, and the idea that citizenship is earned through commitment to something larger than the self.

The deeper layer wins because these are not modern constructions. They are ancient recognitions: the desire for meaning, the pull toward struggle, the admiration of courage under pressure, the instinct to rise and become more. You can dress the story in irony or openly argue against it. But if the archetype is present, it will still assert itself.

Why? Because the story is never fully the author’s. It belongs to something older: myth and meaning. And the propagandized ideology of any given era cannot change that. That is why the repeated impulse to subvert or apologize for heroic narratives keeps running into the same wall. As it should.

[Mustafa Güven @Musty61ts]

@populergazete Yorumlara bak aq. Okuduğunu bile anlamayan tayfa var burda. "Fas ordusunun askeri geri dönmek isteyen faslıya taş atıyor" yazıyor. Bunlar İspanya askeri ülkesini savunuyor diye yorum yapıyor.

[Way of the World @wayotworld]

The invaders were not supposed to return to Morocco.

[The Matthew Principle @MattPrinciple]

Amazing. Christopher Nolan actually says in his answer that unless we apologize for individual greatness the audience will reject it, because it conflicts with the latter’s belief in equality and democracy.

Nolan could not be more wrong. If he had depicted greatness unapologetically his audience would have been thrilled. There’s a huge unmet demand here but Nolan’s brain is too clouded by the nostrums of liberalism to see it.

[HeroHei @_Hero_Hei_]

Bethesda union members are protesting after being laid off and it's hilarious how out of touch they are

>"we make great games!"
>"we make games players love!"
>"we make games that define generations!"

They're even holding signs that say "PLAYERS DESERVE BETTER" and it's like, where was that energy the entire time that corrupt AAA has been taking advantage of gamers by putting out buggy, overpriced, modern audience slop?
They were radio silent, but now that they got laid off they're pretending to care about the players😂

[An Actor Explains @AnActorExplains]

@Warner1776 There's a larger argument, @Warner1776:
Politics is the death of Art.

Entertainment isn't meant to sell a divisive partisan agenda, especially covertly. The moviegoer isn't expecting a lecture. They want Nolan's expertise!

Nolan sold his soul.
MORAL bankruptcy.

[Christian Warner @Warner1776]

Nolan concedes that he made Odysseus apologetic for his greatness because that’s the only thing mass audiences can digest. So instead of the bard shaping the audience, the audience shapes the bard. Plato and Rousseau totally vindicated?

[Funk Mother @FunkMother]

@LCincinnatu1488 @hayasaka_aryan We don’t even really know what the populations of India and Africa are. They just make them up, and the larger they are he more aid they can get. But cursory satellite examinations show they don’t have the infrastructure they would need to support the pop they claim in some areas

[Autism Capital 🧩 @AutismCapital]

"Do you consider yourself a bard for a civilization at dusk?"

[Alain Astruc @alainastruc]

Christopher Nolan had to go to China for us to finally have a pertinent interview. He answers honestly, and that honours him, allowing us, I think, to close the debate.

His attitude is mostly one of arrogance.

The gods. His ideas about how the Greeks viewed their gods are simplistic and typical of a kind of scientific arrogance that thinks religion was there simply to answer what science could not. Entirely wrong.

Xenia. His version of Zeus’s law is absolutely a vision informed by Christianity and the Golden Rule, as if the Greeks had no morality and were waiting for Christianity to educate them, again.

Guilt. Again, Nolan treats the absence of guilt and atonement as something needing to be fixed by Christianity or post-Christian liberal guilt, as if the Greeks were too stupid to have their own set of morals.

Greatness. Maybe the most frightening part. For him, in a democracy, the great man has to be humiliated in some way and atone for his greatness, at the risk of being shunned by others. An awful message for all people of great ability: do not be yourselves, act like NPCs.

Odysseus. He is not allowed to be Odysseus. He is not an exceptionally clever and complex human being, but the hero of a boomer film about American veterans, a decent dad who was dragged against his will into a dirty war.

Hollywood. Nolan clearly states that the audiovisual language of the world is that of Hollywood, something to which I am strongly opposed, obviously.

Critics. Again, Nolan takes people for idiots and thinks they criticise his films because they recognise tropes. People at this level of analysis are usually his own fans. The distinction he makes between professional and amateur critics shows clearly that he should get an email address and a cell phone and start realising that we are no longer in 1985.

Bronze Age collapse. I am not a specialist, but it is not difficult to see that he simply put the structure of Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb onto Odysseus and the Trojan Horse. It makes for a particularly sad film.

What he did was adapt the story beats and the characters into a pure Hollywood Nolan film.

He made an adaptation of The Odyssey that ultimately denies the universe of The Odyssey. He refuses to immerse us in the strangeness of that ancient world. Federico Fellini adapted the Satyricon as science fiction, searching for a cinematic equivalent to the strangeness of the ancient world.

Nolan chose to do the exact opposite. He forced Antiquity to conform to Hollywood tropes and to his own obsessions. The result is a completely Nolanian film: grey and beige, falsely complex, arrogant, sad, humourless, filled with empty display.

Thank you @ZhugeYY for this great questions.

[Kaguya’s Top Gal @hayasaka_aryan]

“Earth is overpopulated” niggas when you propose stop sending aid to Africa to stop their population growth

[Nick @astoldbyNGR]

@romanhelmetguy Blows my mind someone could helm a project that costs millions of dollars & countless man hours, & when asked about basic thematic elements like its moral sensibilities vs the historical context, just shrug like "huh interesting, never thought about it". Total hater vindication

[Roman Helmet Guy @romanhelmetguy]

Incredible interview. She completely dismantles Nolan here, and he’s too stupid to even realize it.

[Covfefe Anon @CovfefeAnon]

The meta question is naturally then "which systems produce good elites?" and it's impossible to not notice that the mainstream elite institutions in America specifically filter for dishonesty and a desire for attaining power while avoiding all responsibility

It is a bureaucratic system that produces the ideal environment for bureaucrats to thrive

[An Old Fashioned Girl @JaneAusten4ever]

The inheritance tax was made to destroy legacies.

[Boxy @Boxy_FT]

The leftoid position is now, without exaggeration: "diversity is our strength and there's nothing wrong with Muslim migrants, but Israel is using them to punish us"

[Ava- I Love My USA! 🇺🇸 @WEdwarda]

@TheOnlyDSC

[HowlingMutant @Howlingmutant0]

This is gonna be be really disappointing for all the chuds who loved the gay odyssey movie

[ThanksForTheMemeries @The_Memeries]

@haunted_838 @reddit_lies The crazy thing is that it doesn't make them reconsider their whole community. They literally promote anti-child thoughts and then get surprised Pikachu when someone wants to do horrible things to prevent births.