A Critique of Red Letter Media’s Bigoted Content (See Staff Post)

[PhoncipleBone]

White male fragility in video form. Why are they still allowed on here?

 

[Vincent Alexander]

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You should add their shitty remarks from review of Godzilla. I will try to find the specific quote.

Found it.

Godzilla 2019, AKA King of the Monsters, which is sexist, cuz we don't know Godzilla's gender.

Godzilla's a male

Well, he could be gender fluid. No one can understand -roars-.....I guess (some monster name) kind of can. She never asks him if he's gender fluid. She just wanted to get him to calm the fuck down. But she didn't ask him his preference."

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[Khanimus]

Almost all of their criticism is aimed at corporate cynicism that is about coopting progressive topics for movie sales and marketing.

And you're also getting mad at Plinkett, who is literally a character. His character is an old, racist, sexist, murderer who kidnaps people and chains them to his heater and forces them to watch Star Wars movies. It's a caricature.

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What does the Women's March have to do with corporate cynicism?

What about this?

 

[Seesaw15]

I'll have to watch it again, but in recalling the content that video, I don't think I can agree that the point was that "sexism is fake news," much less racism which they don't even mention. It's been awhile since I watched anything of theirs, but I would also be deeply surprised if they said "x group doesn't need representation," in fact I've heard them say diversity is a good thing, praise Daisy Ridley, mock man babies. Got a clip?

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Clip starts at 10:38

Essentially at the very end of the video Rich brings up all the racist attacks Leslie Jones got after being cast in the film. They play a clip of Dan Aykroyd explaining why this happened/calling the 2016 election. Its not analyzed and is pretty much played as a joke that they are the victims.



Quote starts at 2:29.

Feminism ,stereotypes, political awareness, misandry ,misogyny, feminazi, proto feminism, mansplaining, Hetero- narrative, empowering feminists topicality. These are terms we can now associate with a fun superhero movie today. Thanks world.

Why it's Wonder Woman. Finally in this hopeless age of Trump little girls have someone thay can look up to. Forget their own mother's, physicist Marie Curie ,Mae Jemison, Harriet Tubman, Margaret Thatcher, Rosa Parks, Susan B Anthony, Hillary Clinton and even fucking Cleopatra. Finally little girls and grown women all over the world can look up to a fictional amazon princess with a magic whip who stars in a movie no one will remember in two weeks.

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Honestly, if anyone wants to understand why people have a problem with RLM in 2019 all you have to do is watch their 2012 review for Redtails. The world has changed around them but their level of thinking/film criticism hasn't evolved past 2008 post-race Obama America. Racism/sexism is a problem society has dealt with a long time ago so stop trying to play the race/sex card to sell movie tickets! Sometimes they have good points but then just trip over themselves whenever they try and discussion social issues.


Starts at 18:17

 

[Seesaw15]

The whole point of the video wasn't, that sexism and racism doesn't exist or was fake in the attack of the movie, but that Sony Picture took the attacks and used them as a marketing tool. Putting oil into the fire to sell the movie (the Dan Aykroyd interview). It's a new marketing tactic now called "Woke Brands".

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The whole point of their video was that the racism/sexism the cast of Ghostbusters 2016 faced was mostly overblown by Sony to sell tickets and any actual harassment they faced online was statistically insignificant. Essentially, 'people don't care about women/minorities replacing historically white male roles in media so stop trying to divide us Sony'. They briefly touch on the large online harassment campaign Leslie Jones faced explicitly because she was a black women in Ghostbusters but only to make a joke.

With hindsight publishing that analysis 4 months before the 2016 election is amazing. Its just like when HitB did their condescending Box Office Number Crunching episode but didn't realize that theaters take a percentage of the profits. Its that same level of smug yet inept criticism that RLM applies to all subjects. When its them talking about bad B movies on VHS its typically great because they have experience and are somewhat of an authority on the subject.When its them trying to explain away social issues they have no idea about is when it gets embarrassing.

I think, you believe that the RLM's guys don't see value in female heroes but in male heroes instead. No, they said multiple times, that they don't care for super hero movies at all, because they don't really enjoy it. For some time they hopped multiple times, that trend would stop and just now realized, that it will not go away. They don't see much value in a female superhero, because they don't see value in any super hero movie.
Also accusing Disney in using feminism as a marketing tool (the same as above).

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I'm not confused. I've been watching RLM and HitB since 2011. They will talk about any number of super hero schlock as schlock. However, when it comes to super hero/ any mainstream media starring women/minorities they go out of their way to lecture us on how minority groups don't care about representation. ' Women/minorities related to Luke Skywalker. Who cares who they cast in the lead.Just make a good movie.' When a diverse cast is in a film they dog whistle tokenism and paint it as Hollywood inorganically cashing in on a trend disregarding all historical context/the concerted effort needed to change the industry.

Also, Mike and Jay can cry me a river complaining about super hero movies on HitB. They've been doing it for almost a decade and the show has gotten progressively worse. They've nearly completely abandoned any type of interesting framing device to ground the show. They could talk about different/interesting movies but they do the show on super hero stuff cause it'll give them the clicks. Its just as cynical as Adam Sandler at this point.

The same think, they accuse Georg Lucas of using the "only all black cast"-angle as a marketing tool to sell his movie. A white guy making a movie about the achievements of black people and try to sell it as progressive.

I see the pattern, that many people believe, that any kind of major representation is good representation. And RLM's angle, that those are just marketing tricks, are seen as problematic in this thread. You can disagree with them, but i just don't see, what makes them bigots.

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All Hollywood is marketing tricks. This isn't new or novel observation. My point in highlighting the Red Tails review is that the crews ( mainly Mikes) perspective is so dated and insular that its almost useless in discussing modern topics.

For example , here is an all time whataboutism quote from Mike during their Annihilation review. He's trying to point out the hypocrisy in the media on why they didn't champion a female lead, mid budget, hard R ,sci-fi film like Annahilation in the same way they did Black Panther.

Mike: You've got people creaming in their pants over silly comic book movies about changing the world and then here quietly you have a science fiction horror drama that completely failed. With all the talk that this is the the time for women, the uprising of women in Hollywood you know women don't get enough roles, women need positive role models. And they're like this is it on a fucking silver platter and no one talked about it.

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Jay is so baffled by the bad whataboutism take that he has to explain it to Mike.

Jay: I think a part of it is when they say that they want these movies you know to have representation and equal screen time for everybody they're talking about the mass appeal movies.

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I was so baffled that Mike didn't understand that a 200 million dollar four quadrant black directed/led super hero movie would get more press coverage than a 40 million dollar niche, hard R, Cronenberg-esque sci-fi film. Its almost as if established white female movie stars have a history of leading mid budget sci-fi movies in Hollywood (Sigourney Weaver, Jodie Foster,Scarlett Johanson,Sandra Bullock,Amy Adams, Natalie Portman ect) and Black Panther/Wonder Woman was something unprecedented.

This was the point I had to tap out on RLM content. They are either stupid or malicious. Both are dangerous when they have such a large audience.