I certainly hope you brought gifts. And maybe do those magic tricks for the kids?
Stay outside the kitchen with those special spices you have.
Y’all wouldn’t believe who this looks like… 
The second one is Margot Robbie. Even has the same number of fingers as Margot Robbie.
Ironically, all gender-bending cosplay is called crossplay
Hehehe, that’s one we actually bought on Blu-Ray to watch whenever we want. But it’s been in the rotation on the cable stations as well. So we’ve watched it a ton of times. It’s become like Bringing up Baby, 2001, Lawrence of Arabia, or Raising Airziona. It’s just a delicious treat, and we’re going to watch at least part of it if it’s on.
I actually haven’t seen the subject of the thread, but I figured I might eventually. We’ll see.
Don’t piss Tommy off.
I feel just the opposite. Having an opinion about something you’ve read about seems completely natural. Whereas having no opinion at all of a book just because you haven’t read it yourself seems utterly bizarre.
And it’s perfectly possible to have a better, more informed opinion about a work if you’ve read competent criticism of it than just because you happen to have read/watched it yourself. I don’t watch all that many movies, but I read a fair amount, and I read an enormous amount of serious literature as teen and young adult. And you know what? A lot of it was over my head. I really didn’t get it.
One in particular that I remember is “An American Tragedy”. I read that one because it was assigned in my English class, not because I chose to. And I didn’t understand any of the characters, any of their motivations, really, the whole book was over my head. (My teacher wasn’t very good that year, either.) And then I complained about it to a friend of my mother’s, who had actually understood it, and she explained it to me and you know what, THEN I got it. I can name several other books that I read that I’m pretty sure I didn’t get much out of – in particular, I didn’t understand why someone might have cared about the books, been moved by then, hated them, whatever.
And on the other side, there are books that I read about, and DID get. And some of those I later read. And I might have enjoyed the journey of actually reading the book. But I didn’t have a deeper or better understanding of it just because I’d done that.
There are areas where I am an expert, and if I have first-hand experience of something in my field of expertise, I really will know more about it than if I’m just told about it. But neither movies more literature are within my expertise. And I don’t think they are within the expertise of many posters here, either. And on the other hand, those ARE in the field of expertise of many professional critics, professors of literature, etc. I believe that I (and probably you, gentle reader, as well) can learn a lot more about many books and movies by reading what those people have to say about them than just by blindly chugging through them yourself.
I don’t think you should go and present yourself as an expert just because you have read someone else’s analysis. But can you confidently say, “I don’t think I would enjoy this, and here’s why”? Yeah. That’s literally the purpose of movie reviews, and they aren’t perfect, but they are pretty effective.
And, you know, i think it’s kind of stupid to admit that you are so fixated on race that you won’t be able to enjoy a prequel to the Lord of the Rings because some of the characters are played by actors who aren’t the same race as you imagine the characters to be. But that doesn’t mean your opinion that you won’t like the show is wrong or uninformed. You probably WON’T like the show if you read that about it and find it disturbing.
This, very much this. I read, “The Blythedale Romance” Nathanial Hawthrone in college. I really did like the book, but if it hadn’t been for the analyses in the back of the text, I would have been lost. I still think myself in circles regarding some parts of that book. And I still don’t get why the hostility when someone says paraphrase: I don’t think I’d like this movie because of these reasons. As far as I can tell she didn’t say the movie sucked, should be banned, shouldn’t have been made, etc. She said she didn’t think she’d like it. It’s all sort of weird to me.
I think the whole OMG they’re making the red headed mermaid blaaaack! How DARE they. Or any other movie book etc. with more diverse characters than certain melanin deprived folks think they should have. These people aren’t going to like the movie. More tickets for the rest of us.
I haven’t heard of Poor Things before this thread, but it certainly looks up my alley. Emma Stone is typically great, the movie sounds interesting, and it got great reviews.
As a sex-positive woman, I have no issue with portrayals of sexually liberated women in media, and I’m not going to cast judgement on a movie I have not seen. At least not to the level that my opinion should be given any weight.
Wouldn’t be the first time I was accused of being that. 
Reading criticism and watching/experiencing for yourself — that I get. That I do a lot of, whether before watching a movie or reading a book or after. That helps me process and compare experiences and interpretations. But just reading about it and not seeing it? Nope. I won’t form what I’d call an informed opinion. I don’t think it’s fair to the creative work. It has happened to me time and time again that something I was told is garbage by friends or critics and I’ve found to be quite good or misunderstood. So I personally am unable to solidify my final opinion until seeing it, and even then that opinion is malleable and probably full of caveats. That’s my quirk.
Of course it is okay though to believe some reviews over others and to decide from those reviews that you don’t want to read it or watch it though. And to have reasons why.
But the position in this thread that one can have a fully (just “differently”) informed opinion regarding different takes and experiences of a movie and join in on a discussion regarding those takes to bash the film with a sarcastic comment about it sight unseen?
@puzzlegal that’s having seen a book cover, skimming one negative, several positive, and mixed reviews, and joining in a book club discussion about it to say that the book cover made you think the book would be trash and the one negative review they read confirms just how horribly offensive the book is.
That’s a threadshit that stinks up the house you were visiting and clogs the plumbing flooding the floor.
Mind you I could learn a lot from someone with fuller knowledge of the book and the director’s previous works. Even someone who hasn’t seen it and isn’t expert themselves sharing some thoughts from one of those experts.
That was not this.
And portraying my response as saying that anyone who thinks that the movie is misogynistic should just be quiet and is dumb is just an altered state of reality farther away from our world than the movie’s world is.
ISTM that @Eonwe is perfectly entitled to their opinion, while at the same time the post in the original Poor Things thread was a mild threadshit and thus (IMO) worthy of (equally mild) criticism.
Who said that?
This is the pit, right?
You seem incredibly defensive about this whole thing. So much so that you exaggerate and twist every criticism of the movie. I don’t get it.
The OP? In the OP?
And sure it is fine to do that in The Pit. And it is fine to hit back here. This is The Pit, right?
Hey. @iiandyiiii is right and I am exaggerating how bad of a threadshit it was. But it was a threadshit. And when my comparing it to review bombers panning something they’ve never seen was determined to be attacking the poster I questioned but accept the moderation as correct. And I laugh at someone calling me an ass in CS or elsewhere. I’ve been called much worse IRL.
BUT describing my accurate portrayals as mendacious, as the pissant OP does, and you do as well, that is annoying.
It’s definitely not just for disagreeing with me. Lemme try to explain better. There are layers.
First, she makes absolute statements about sex workers and sex work. I think she’s missing a lot of nuance here, but whatever, it’s a respectable position, and that’s not where my hostility is coming from.
Second, she thinks that firing women who engage in sex work somehow empowers women. That’s a pretty harmful position IMO, and I was pretty hostile to her over that–but that’s not what’s going on here.
Third, she divides those who disagree with her into two categories–not based on their positions, but on their naughty bits. Men who disagree with her? They’re just dogs who want to drool over porn. This is a pretty obnoxious and stupid take, but it’s not what I’m on about here.
Women who disagree with her? Oh, they’ll grow up, and when they’re as old as her, they’ll understand how wrong they were in their youth.
And THAT"s the bit–not the wrongness of her position, not the harmfulness of her willingness to destroy the livelihoods of people, not her nasty dismissal of guys who disagree with her–that led to my talking about her gransplaining.
Of course there’s nuance and power dynamics and so on in the debate over the sex industry. Some people think it’s inherently harmful to women. Other folks think that it doesn’t have to be, and are trying to build alternatives to male-controlled sex work. Earlier, I linked her to a very extensive and well-researched WaPo article about one such effort, and I’m pretty sure she ignored it entirely. In any case, there’s a debate to be held.
But the sort of arrogant, “You only disagree with me if you’re a drooling mandog or you’re a young flibbertijibbet girl who doesn’t know any better” really doesn’t contribute to the debate.
It’s possible I’m dismissing her because she’s a woman, I suppose. But I think I come down just as hard on dudes who make stupid arrogant arguments, from Clothahump to Martin Hyde to a million other moronic dudes.
Mendacious? You mean intentionally lying? I didn’t say that, either. And the op accuses you of defending art against claims of misogyny, it doesn’t accuse you of lying. I think you are overreacting and misreading. I think you are feeling defensive of this movie.
As always, @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness, that was extremely eloquent. As you explain,the biggest problems with her posts is not her negative view of porn, but her insistence that she is right and everyone else needs to
I really don’t understand why @Kimstu is so insistent on defending a hypothetical version of Beck’s argument. Like I said before Kimstu, I basically agree with everything you’ve said about how we can criticize porn/the sex work industry from a feminist perspective. But that has never been where Beck is coming from.
That’s a fantastic coincidence
Eta: or maybe that’s the joke? Literal crossplay?