I very much enjoyed this version by Joe Lycett Hugo Boss and other (mostly) British (mostly) comedians:
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He did give $1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins 2 years ago for their School of Public Health. Even for Bloomie that’s not pocket change, and I expect that that money is actually helping at least a little with this pandemic. Bezos and Musk now, I can’t see them giving away anything without finding a way to profit from it.
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Yeah, “imagine there’s no heaven” is a great way to reassure folks facing an existential crisis.
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I find that soothing and reassuring. But that’s just me.
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What, telling people God will fix it, you’ll be fine later, just die in place?
Fuck that. We need to science the shit out of this.
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I liked Ryan George’s contribution:
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When I had to leave Carlisle everything that I owned that I cared about fit into the back of a car, including clothes. We aren’t talking about an SUV here, it was a European hatchback.
I have had an aversion to minimalism and decluttering ever since, but I try my best to not let things get to the point of hoarding.
ETA:
Actually having no possessions isn’t what the song meant as far as I know, John Lennon was talking about communal ownership. Even with that there is a recognised difference between private property (the means of production, think factories and server farms) and personal property (anything that makes sense to be owned on an individual level).
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I find it hilarious that the only “celebrity” I recognize here is Sarah Silverman. They may be tone-deaf (or, more likely, couldn’t agree on a mutual key to sing in) but I am definitely star-blind.
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Maybe you’ll like her and Matt Damen’s song for Jimmy Kemmel. Who used to date Sara Silverman.
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and his follow up.
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You know that’s an antisemitic trope, right? Especially in the context of talking about hollywood? Maybe… think of something else there for your criticism?
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(Re: Was it a millionaire who said, “Imagine no possessions”?)
I’m somewhat willing to give Lennon a pass on it. Think of science fiction, and the difference in what an author can get away with setting something 50 or 100 or 200 years in the future in our solar system, vs. 2000 years. This song always struck me as the 2000 year sort of “imagining”, just a daydream about being a better species, not a policy prescription for daily life right now. Something to drive towards knowing you’ll never get there.
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Yyyeahh…
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The homeless people who hang out in my local library and use the public computers
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I’m pretty sure it’s possible to have anti-corporate sentiments without being antisemitic. One can dislike the goings-on in Hollywood, without it having anything to do with one’s feelings toward Jewish culture.
But maybe I’m wrong. I am curious why you think this way.
Just to be clear, I did not accuse you of being anti-Jewish. Plenty of people are ignorant of the history of this sort of symbolism. I don’t mean to suggest you hold any antisemitism personally. However, what we say online does matter, in part because it can put off people and in part because it can act as a dog whistle, which was likely what the popularization of such tropes were meant to do in the first place in the age of mass media.
When it comes to Hollywood especially, it’s really not. For years, anti-Semites (like the KKK, in the American context) condemned Hollywood and high finance (compare how they discussed the Rothschilds with how some modern right wing groups talk about Soros) with precisely that imagery (tentacles). They use such imagery that can easily stand in for other things (corporations as a whole) in part to spread their message about the supposed threats Jews pose to Christian civilization. We’re talking from the first publication of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to today (Will Eisener wrote a great graphic novel on the Protocols that are worth picking up). See for example…
Stuff on Soros specifically:
And a general round up on wikipedia:
I study history is why I think this way… Lots of my work focuses on mass media and culture, too. I also took a class on the holocaust, and these issues were part of our coursework. This stuff sticks with you, given the outcome.
I get your criticism, that the celebrities who are being so tone deaf are merely puppets of the industry, but I’d argue it’s more complicated than that. Rather than top-down control, I see it more as a network of affinities within a web of connections. The people who participated in this have agency and are not being “controlled” by anyone. It’s entirely true that they have to think about their careers, but doing this or not doing this would likely have no real material impact on their long term survival as actors or celebrities. I’d argue that the case of Weinstein getting away with rape for as long as he did when it was pretty much an open secret is a more damning case of how power and control work in hollywood. Plenty of women who tried to speak out prior to the recent me too movement saw their ability to act seriously curtailed because of the power that he had in hollywood, especially in indie films. I seriously doubt that who ever participated in this did so because they were told that they had to do so, as that amount of control over the lives of the talent went out the window with the old hollywood system (generally speaking, unless like in the case of Weinstein, you pose a direct threat to a person with actual power over your career). They probably participated because they genuinely thought it would cheer people up, but it obviously alienated people instead. That tells me that they are merely out of touch with most of us, rather than puppets controlled on high by some exec.
Anyway… my $.02… you can take it or leave it of course.
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I know all of us smart elites on Boing Boing are agnostic/atheist and aren’t taken in by silly religions, but most people do believe in a next life, and it’s not very nice to troll them during a very scary pandemic that could kill their loved ones.
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You’ve made a fair point, and I know something now about tentacle imagery that I didn’t before. (Thanks!)
What I really want instead, is an icky metaphorical image that doesn’t imply the bosses are telling the actors what to say, so much as the bosses subtly encouraging the actors to steer away from certain career-limiting topics.
Of course, sure! It’s self-censorship that does most of the damage. I love to watch the extras discs in movies, with all the outtakes and special effects stuff… but the commentary is so focused on what a pleasure it was to work with so-and so… I really get the feeling that if so and so was hell to work with, we’d never know feom listening to the commentary.
And no matter your political leanings, there’s no denying that this silencing effect enabled Harvey Weinstein and his ilk for far too long.
There’s a corresponding effect in politics where corporate lobbyists have got such an influence over the culture in DC, they don’t really have to speak too loudly for their thralls to understand what’s what.
Anyway, insular hollywood culture makes for some tone deaf messaging. I think you and I agree on that one.
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Or maybe, it’s an expression of their class solidarity? Or the whole concept of the creation of common sense, with the ruling class setting those terms? I can see some amount of pressure from studio execs on some issues, but I doubt with this. For me, it just comes off as a tone-deaf attempt to make people feel better.
True, because it’s still too recent and connected to the promotional materials that is tied to their work on that particular project. They have contracts they must uphold in the short term, at least.
One example is watching recent Doctor Who DVD extras, which have just these sorts of videos that downplay any problems vs. watching the extras on the classic Doctor Who DVDs that are likely to have more criticism, of the actors, producers, the BBC, etc. it’s really telling what a few decades of distance will get you.
Right, because they are in the business of creating artifice in the first place. That really is an old hollywood mode of creating a sense of glamour that the average person can aspire to or at least admire from afar. They are meant to seem larger than life, not like us… But something happened in the postwar period. New Hollywood and then punk and postpunk culture in the 70s and 80s that influenced a new wave of independent films in the 90s. In other words, the demand for authenticity came for them. Now in the age of social media, actors seek out ways to “connect” and be (or seem) authentic for their fans, because it’s the expectation for many people. So when something like this happens, it’s an excellent means of showing that artifice. Sometimes you see it with actors who just aren’t great at doing artifice - I saw a clip of Cillian Murphy on Seth Meyers or some such, and you could just tell how uncomfortable the whole thing makes him… much the same of Keanu Reeves.
Yes, but again, there is just so much overlap between the corporate lobbyists and the politicians, that to me it seems more like class solidarity as opposed to a command and control kind of situation. Often times, politicians have stakes (of some variety) in the industries that pass legislation on behalf, not just because they are cynical, but in part because they believe in the system as they support it. In addition to the lead actor being an alleged rapist, one of my problems with House of Cards is that it ignores that many people on capital hill probably are acting on behalf of their believes and economic self-interest. That’s class solidarity right there, I’d argue.
Sure!
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