The Critical Drinker and Shallow Conservative Critique

some opinions need a shout others a whisper and YouTube has space for them all but there's a type of reviewer on here that looks at modern media from a shallow conservative lens that I want to look at because I think it does a disservice to criticism while pushing an audience politically to the right and the channel doing this that I want to highlight is the critical Drinker if you're not one of his nearly 2 million subscribers The Drinker is a comedy Persona critic that rants about modern movies and TV shows detailing the ways in which he doesn't like them and when I say movies and television and typically that's the sort of terminology he uses as well it's better understood that this isn't all movies and all television but rather specific genres most often he sticks to Science Fiction and Fantasy which is perfectly fine of course those are solid genres but it's a broad term he's using for a very specific type of movie and TV show let's start with a couple of recent reviews he did of some shows to give you a sense of what his videos are like and some of the problems I have with them but instead of trying to Champion a show or movie that I liked and he didn't I thought it'd be more interesting to contrast our opinions when we feel the same way about something so the first one I chose was the Netflix liveaction adaptation of One Piece if you aren't familiar with one piece it's a manga about a pirate named Monkey D Luffy who assembles a crew of Oddball characters to find the one piece the greatest treasure in the world hidden by the Legendary Pirate gold Roger unlike most other live-action adaptations of Manga and Anime one piece is pretty darn good but this isn't my review let's see what Drinker had to say in his video One Piece succeeds where cowboy bbop failed the first thing you'll notice and right in the title is that this review needs to be understood as coming from a certain context while the cowboy Bop comparison makes perfect sense since the show does have the same production company and both are proceeded by an anime these reviews have an even broader context than that who could forget the stunning non suuccess of cowboy bbop a show that was so heavily geared towards modern audiences right away we're getting signifiers of who this review is for the vague illusion to Modern audiences and the post Trump election screaming person meme from 8 years ago reveal that this is a review for a conservative audience or at the very least someone with conservative taste in media possibly informed by their politics here's an example of a more specific bit of criticism from Drinker about one piece the men are actually allowed to kick ass make decisions and hold their own rather than existent purely to get outfought and outsmarted by their female counterparts to every opportunity this is a strange bit of criticism rather than appreciate the men in the series being able to kick ass what Drinker is highlighting is how women aren't one uping them which doesn't really say anything about what these strong men mean in one piece it's just getting points for being unlike other shows and movies by sticking to the tradition of strong men in action sequences this is an example of criticism that's built on a narrative one that supposedly reflects drinker's deep understanding of movies in their production that most of the time when it woman is strong in a movie it's not just a flaw but a sign of an encroaching political message so one piece having some men come off as strong is seen as Brave Defiance to that standard while this isn't really damning of drinker's criticism in any real way critiquing a movie within its cultural context is perfectly fine I'm just trying to establish where he's coming from and also that this reading isn't entirely consistent or motivated by a careful examination of what's going on throughout the series one piece isn't consistently showing men stronger than women in fact roron noro Zoro the green-haired guy we see kicking ass in this scene is completely humbled in a flashback when we see him as a young boy training alongside a girl in his class quina I can't beat you just kill me I was curious as to why Drinker didn't mention this scene in his review so I looked him up on a live stream talking about one piece where he explained away this moment fighting like a fellow student she's like the best and you can't beat her and she's like yeah I'm I can beat you right now as a girl but eventually you're going to be a man and it doesn't matter how hard I train you're going to be bigger and faster and stronger than I can ever be and you're just going to be better and you're going to beat me and I can't stop that and I thought godamn the feminists out there must be melting down when when a line like that gets said it's like that just destroys their entire worldview but it's true you know the the show's like honest about that he loves this line not for what it is but rather who he imagines it will bother again understanding the series in a specific context but what this also reveals is that he's missing the irony of what Kina is saying in that scene when she says her body can't keep up with Zoro this is proven true but not because she's a woman but because she dies before she gets older and zoro's frustration we see later isn't because he lost a friend but because he lost a rival he was never able to beat going back to the scene where quina says her body won't let her keep up with Zoro his response is what really matters here don't make excuses you're my goal if you just give up what has all our training been for Zoro doesn't want to win because of the circumstances of his birth he wants to win through his own hard work and effort so he rejects the idea that quina can't be a great sword fighter just because her body is different and he wants to train alongside her so they can both get stronger together one of us would become the world's greatest swordsman or woman to ever live drinkers commentary doesn't really engage with this scene on any deeper level than a swipe at feminism and it's something that reflects a lot of his commentary he's willing to forgive a girl being stronger than a boy in one scene because he can point to a line that seemingly reinforces a conservative worldview this reveals the shallowness of his criticism instead of trying to understand movies or TV shows on their merits it slotted into a larger cultural war and AED or subtracted points and how it fits into that space with a very superficial reading but what's more misleading is when he uses his supposed expertise to make up stories about the production of movies and TV shows here's another section from the one piece review immediately after he speculates on how the status of men was preserved that kind of [ __ ] just wouldn't fly in Japanese culture so it doesn't even get attempted here and by all accounts we mostly have Ichiro Oda the original manga Creator to thank for that and to hammer home just what he's talking about here here's him saying it again in the live stream the girls don't automatically win everything and they're not better at everything like you would expect from a Disney production or whatever um and I I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that the original manga writer had the rights to this and he retained creative control Oda being credited for making the series better than it could have been had he not been involved is perfectly valid and probably true though when it comes to the specifics of not letting male characters look silly Drinker doesn't present any evidence for this he is likely referring to a new story that came out that revealed that Oda had requested re-shoot a certain SC but articles about these re-shoot don't really go into details about what exactly was reshot or whether or not gender Dynamics were reinforced because of oda's Demands if Drinker had bothered to take some more time to figure out why these re-shoot happened he might have actually found some information on the influence Oda had on the production in fact we can talk about a re-shoot that was done for a scene we've already discussed the flashback with Zoro and quina in the fourth episode here's a comment from the episode's director Emma Sullivan from an interview she did with Cinema day us there's a scene in one of my episodes between young Zoro and quina in shimotsuki Village they have this fight oan watched it and he wanted us to redo it because we did it with Kendo masks on so we went back to South Africa and did it again just to make sure he was happy with it this reveals one example of how Oda wasn't simply overseeing whether or not gender rules were preserved but rather he wanted to make sure the characters were conveying emotions on their faces of course this is just one scene an interview with Steven MAA for TV line MAA revealed more of oda's directions for the production one of the mandates from manga Creator Ichiro Oda was against romance on the crew that is a hard no as far as the manga and the live action show are concerned in a subsequent interview MAA also revealed another Oda mandate was to not change any of the origins of how characters got their powers from the various devil fruits there are other example of re-shoot including the changing of the alvita fight from daytime to night time and expanding the role of Chef Z though I'm not entirely sure who requested those specific re-shoot now the reason I highlight all these re-shoot is not to give you some exhausted list of what Odo was requesting behind the scenes but rather to demonstrate what it looks like to gather evidence when you're trying to describe what's going on behind the scenes in a production just throwing out random assumptions about what's going on because of your stereotypes of what a Japanese artist and an American production might be concerned with you might assume something is happening but it doesn't absolve you of having to do the work of actually figuring out if it's happening or not otherwise you're just fueling speculation based on a narrative and not fact and a narrative without any facts to back it up is a fantasy one problem with Drinker commentary is that he assumes a degree of knowledge and expertise regarding the production of projects and does none of the work of providing evidence to support those assumptions if Drinker is going to speculate that Oda demanded that women never be shown one uping men he should provide at least some kind of evidence to his audience if he wants to make that claim here's an example of how he Compares Cowboy bbop reigning in its character whereas one piece supposedly isn't compare it to something like cowboy bbop which made a conscious effort to reign in its characters personalities for Western audiences trying to rewrite them as grounded and realistic I want to quickly contrast two moments from the one piece anime and the live action series would you care for an AAR of tee to start we have several rare mure vintages in stock or perhaps you'd like a gloss of meu you know something sweet for someone sweet something wrong with your eye just blinded by your beauty oh dear ocean thank you for this treasure you have shared from your depths oh yes my love I can't bear this hardship of loving you from afar it is too difficult I am now prepared to sail to the ends of the Earth as a pirate if it means someone of your rare Beauty will be by my side if that comparison isn't enough here's a quote from another interview Emma Sullivan did this time speaking to screen Rand I've watched a few of these shows and lots of different anime I'm a big pseudo jibli fan but you can't make actors do those big actions and faces that we get in the anime so it wouldn't work and if we tried it would be really awkward and I think it would throw everybody out of the story I think what we had to do is we had to find a grounded approach and we had to find an emotionally real approach to it we have to kind of tap into these characters and feel what makes us relate as an audience to them so in other words Drinker was wrong on this one and it reveals this unearned confidence he speaks with he wasn't familiar with the one piece anime but felt confident enough claiming that the live action series wasn't toning down the characters he didn't know the details of oda's involvement with the series but he was confident enough to speculate it would involve keeping left-wing ideals out of the series with regards to how men and women are depicted maybe it's unfair to expect every reviewer of one piece to take the time to comb through interviews or watch Source material that is truly epic in length but it's also possible for a reviewer not to speculate about those things without at least attempting to do the research first and trying to back up a claim with some kind of evidence aside from one news article about Odo requesting some re-shoot what I'm sure people have also noticed is how this review is coded very heavily with conservative politics from its emphasis on the men an implicit rejection of feminism and a general distaste for a society supposedly consumed by this Dynamic there's also this weird insistence that the show's Japanese character is what makes it itself this observation is deeply flawed in several ways most notably we're not actually comparing modern Hollywood and modern Japanese story one piece debuted in 1997 it's over 25 years old at this point so it feels like a bit of a throwback that's because it is and the Netflix adaptation is very much trying to stick to the original narrative and if you think Japan is some kind of Haven for storytelling that steers clear of feminist or leftist themes you clearly have no idea what shows are airing over there just sticking to the very narrow confines of anime and I'm no expert in that myself I personally recently enjoyed the newest Gundam series The Witch for mercury which is a story about two space lesbians who use a pride Gundam to fight against future capitalism while echoing Sylvia Federici's feminist reading of the Tempest there's also Vinland zin's critique of toxic masculinity and cycles of violence to set its characters on journeys of restorative justice and also the impact of capitalism on the colonial project or we could talk about one piece well let's just say it has distinctly leftist plot twist in the future also they're literally fighting the sea cops I'm not even saying any of these shows I just highlighted are emblematic of mainstream Japanese culture these are just relatively popular shows that I happen to enjoy there's a vast diversity of art created in Japan and it deserves more than this fetishized anti-feminist construction that Drinker is placing upon it to get a better sense of what drinker's videos are like when he doesn't like a series I want to highlight his review of the recent Marvel TV series eeko this is from the video Echo another marvelous mess for the unfamiliar Echo is the story of mayo Lopez a deaf woman of the Chua Nation who loses her mother and part of her leg at a young age when the Kingpin secretly murders Maya's father Maya is adopted and becomes his eventual assassin cutting her off from her family the story picks up from kingpin's supposed death at maia's hands and mayia returning to her hometown and reconnecting with her past and her family I want to highlight this bit of criticism because it reinforces how Drinker is more interested in speaking to his audience is distaste for Marvel movies through a standardized talking point the tough self-reliant girl boss protagonist who can beat up Men twice her size and inspires fanatical loyalty in everyone around her despite being a completely unlikable [ __ ] who gets innocent people killed calling Eko a girl boss is to completely miss one of the major plot points of the series early on when Ekko believes that Kingpin is dead she decides she's going to be the queen pin taking over the kingpin's territory her family is quick to tell her that this is a terrible idea and as the series progresses she realizes that that it's true and she gives up any dreams of becoming a female Crime Boss Ekko is a series that is about rejecting the idea of being a girl boss or in this case a girl Crime Boss but I'm not sure Drinker really knows what girl boss means or at least he uses it in a way that is more about physical violence when he mentions that Maya beat up a lot of large men that actually has nothing to do with being a girl boss which is more about succeeding in business but since girl boss is a term associated with left-wing social issues he uses it here anyway I guess he's unaware that there's a lot of leftist critiques over the term girl boss and it's actually reflective of a very modest Centrist position these days which really says more about how far right Drinker is on this issue but even just looking at ekko's ability to kick ass she isn't as overwhelmingly powerful as Drinker seems to imagine not only does she not win the first fight we see when she goes up against Daredevil she also gets captured and at the end of a big fighting set piece her family only survives because of the kingpin's mercy and in the final scene she doesn't beat up the much larger Kingpin instead she uses her powers to make him confront his own personal trauma ekko's story is not about her being a physical Powerhouse but rather her learning how violence actually isn't the answer to all of her problems she does kick some ass but that's because it's a superhero show and it'd be very weird for the superhero who is the Title Character to not win at least a couple of fights I don't know how having a loving family says fanatical loyalty as Maya's families are the only ones who lift a finger to help her and often in the most modest of ways Maya's grandfather repairs her artificial leg her grandmother explains some Visions she's been having and her cousin biscuit takes her out on a drive that last one does get pretty intense and you might call it fanatical loyalty as he ends up helping Maya rob a train but that's not what biscuit signed up for mayia tricked him into helping her he had no idea they were going to be robbing a train Maya's Uncle also tries to cover her when she starts missing ING with the kingpin's operation but I don't think it counts as fanatical loyalty trying to keep your niece from getting killed and her uncle isn't stepping up to a Crime Boss out of nowhere he runs part of kingpin's operation in the area maybe Drinker imagines that Maya's family should blame her for working for the Kingpin but that's not really true they blame her father for bringing her into that life though Maya herself is not excused from her rejection of her cousins the ones who had no say in whether or not Maya would be welcomed back and Maya basically turned her back on having any sort of relationship with her family on her own a big part of the series is about moving past these condemnations towards one another to reconcile this family and realize their love for one another is more important than misdeeds of the past going back to drinker's video I don't think a single one of his fans was surprised that he didn't enjoy Ekko his entire channel is built on hating Disney properties which is fine you don't have to like Disney no one does but his readings of these shows don't really demonstrate any attempt to understand them rather they opportunity to signal that he's anti- Disney to his audience you might even call it a message he consistently feels the need to include in each of his videos this really reflects the problem I have with the reviews of his I watched while you can get an honest albeit sometimes were inly reactionary opinion anything related to Disney or some other conservative Boogeyman will invariably lead back to stock criticisms to appe to his audience more than trying to understand to work on its own merits here's an example of something genuinely cool Drinker missed in his review of eeko some of the actors use purely sign language to communicate which works fine but others talk along with it but because they have to slow down for their hand gestur to keep up with what they're saying their dialogue comes across as weirdly jittery and stilted and it usually clashes horribly with the tone of the scene just like in real life some people are better than others at signing but this isn't simply an attempt to depict American Sign Language realistically what these varying levels of sign language reflect are someone's proximity and closeness to Maya from her mother being completely fluent to her cousin biscuit being decent to Kingpin not bothering to learn it at all it was pretty clever and it's another example of how Drinker often misses subtlety while the performances may not have been smooth in his mind to me I personally thought all the actors carried these things off pretty well and seeing them struggle or not struggle to communicate with Maya enhances the scene rather than serve as a distraction looking at these examples I'm tried to establish how the critical Drinker views media through a very specific lens one that assumes an Insider knowledge he does have or at least he doesn't evidence an affinity towards conservative political messages and a commitment towards superficial readings to reinforce a general anger towards specific companies and certain types of politics this becomes especially apparent in his series why modern movies suck the series is what the title says it is each video highlighting a very specific reason why Drinker thinks modern movies suck as seen in many of these videos Drinker has a very specific perspective on what makes a movie good shaped by his own personal lens let's look at how Drinker discusses women in movies and TV in the strong female character video from this series it starts with some very clear observations of how these characters are used as marketing tools to present movies as having some kind of moral character to their production and If This Were a video about the shallow and cynical marketing of modern movies we'd have no problem but this drifts from that observation to an outright hostility of these characters for reasons that have nothing to do with marketing drink gripe with these types of female characters is that they supposedly experience no personal growth and are therefore not good characters what strong female characters tend to focus on instead is self-actualization the idea that she already has everything she needs to succeed and all that's required is to let go of the limitations imposed on her by others the message to the audience is simple you're perfect the way you are and it's the rest of the world that has to change this is a fundamental misunderstanding of these characters the personal growth EXP experienced by them is related to confidence and learning about how Nots feel shame about who they are that is becoming bold enough to say that women are not lesser than men not that they're perfect the way they are but that they're not inferior in a way that Society tells them that they are someone going from timid and afraid to bold and assertive is a form of personal growth he follows up his observation with this bit of commentary on Captain Marvel Captain Marvel forcefully removing the control chip that keeps their powers contained it's a Sy symbolic gesture of the strong empowered woman throwing off the shackles imposed on her by Society so that she can realize her true potential it's a nice idea that probably had the writers patent themselves on the back but the problem is that when you remove struggle failure weakness and vulnerability you don't leave the audience with a whole lot to empathize with it's very strange to say this when this event happens at the end of the movie which is you know when a character Arc is typically completed the empathy we're supposed to be feeling with Captain Marvel is struggle throughout the movie Her removing that chip is her completing her journey if she started off the movie like this smashing that chip and then just kicking us for an hour and a half he might have a point it makes me think that this reading is motivated by something other than a clear and level-headed Analysis of a story on its own merits things get even worse when Drinker reduces his criticism to complaining about women beating up men the problem is you're always going to have a tough time selling a fight between a man and a woman on screen for obvious reasons men are generally bigger stronger and more robust with denser and heavier bones stronger muscles broader shoulders longer Limbs and Superior upper body strength the critical Drinker largely reviews superhero Science Fiction and Fantasy movies usually the problems that need to be solved in these movies involve punching something in the face often in unbelievable fashion not all of them do this of course but he seems to have a problem when this is done in a movie where a woman is the lead this is when discussions of realism often come up and to me at least they always ring completely Hollow it may be unusual since so much of movie history doesn't include women beating up men but it's not really any more unrealistic than pretty much any action sequence where we see a man doing things that are humanly impossible this is an example of two guys who are absolutely wrecking a bar full of other men there's some back and forth sure but in the grand scheme of things this is completely unrealistic a bar fight would never go down like this here's something to ask yourself when was the last time you saw one person beat up two people in real life I know most of us don't see many fights in real life but the fact is it's incredibly difficult to do that I'm not saying it's never happened but it's very unlikely and if we look at your standard action movie we see Heroes take on way more than two often dozens of people are fought at once or when we see various action stunts of our hero doing stuff that has no basis in reality physical Feats that no human could do we simply take it as a given that this is the world of movies and sometimes the action is exaggerated or a complete fantasy it seems strange that someone is all of a sudden breaking open the science books and trying to use science to differentiate between men and women as if it would somehow be more believable if a man could beat up 20 people at once than a woman beating up 20 people at once it doesn't really matter to me that a man would last a tenth of a second longer than a woman if he was fighting all those people at once I don't think it's simply your brain not being able to understand things in a logical scientific way but rather because you're more willing to believe one fantasy over another and why someone believes one fantasy over another isn't really being considered the only reason men doing this stuff seems normal and regular is because movies and TV shows have been doing this for decades and it reflects the political reality of how this media was made in the past it was largely made by men and it was targeting an audience that was largely men so it was playing up to a male Fantasy on the screen that we're now seeing female versions of this in the modern day isn't any better or worse it's simply a variation on the same type of wish fulfillment and fantasy that people like to put into movies if this fantasy is less appealing to you personally that's fine but it says nothing about these movies and rather the mindset you have going into these movies and I think this undercurrent explains a lot of drinker's criticism he has uncritically accepted the movies and TV shows of his youth as normal and internalize their often conservative messaging at least by today's standards he sees deviations not a reflection of changing tastes and times but some kind of top- down imposition as some kind of abnormal intrusion here's an example of how Drinker talks about the personality of these strong female characters and how they embody more masculine traits instead of being altruistic or compassionate or protective or vulnerable or quirky they're almost always written as stoic emotionally closed off blunt dismissive prickly domineering or aggressive the very same masculine traits that the writers seem to find so toxic and unacceptable in men he goes on to say that these traits aren't enough to make a character and that these women would be more interesting if they were more robust including more traditionally feminine traits the irony of this is that in another series they hate men part one he takes the opposite approach to male characters a stoic character is one that's generally reserved and emotionally distant the kind of person who Bears their troubles and discomforts without too much complaining it's a character type most commonly associated with traditional ideas of mascul and behavior why because that's how men generally act around each other there's a big disconnect here whereas men being stoic is okay women characters can only be stoic if they also include a number of other traits that is it's a positive for men and at best neutral for women it's a pretty clear example of the double standard in much of drinker's commentary and this one is similarly Guided by some very rigid ideology where media of the past as simply seen as normal and made of the present is seen being shaped by ideology the truth is all media is shaped in some way by the ideologies of the people creating it then Trier notices one and not the other really just reveals how he looks at these various Productions and his very limited ability to step outside of his own experience the result is a kind of frustrating neutered childlike interpretation of male behavior that doesn't really line up with what real normal people Experience dayto day personally I find that I can't relate to more and more male characters in movies today because they simply don't talk act or look like any of the men I've actually known in my life and they're definitely not something I'd want to Aspire to this is an incredible confession this should make him realize that perhaps his perspective is a limited one that he might want to consider viewpoints of others who are identifying with these characters or maybe simply accept that there are experiences outside of his own that he might not be able to understand and that these movies perhaps often an entry point to understanding these different perspectives to reject them for being different or unfamiliar or simply not being normal only reveals how close-minded he is towards experiences that are unlike his own and instead of trying to understand these unfamiliar experience is he's created a video for the internet to complain that these characters are destroying movies to agree with Drinker means to agree with an inherently conservative worldview where Mel fantasies are more associated with quality and normaly than female Le fantasies it's not that women aren't allowed to be action heroes but rather must operate under a double standard and have a limit to what they can be seen doing it's about preserving in a space where women can Excel but never equal the status of men and certainly never excel at the expense of a beloved male character to see this lenson action I want to choose one of my favorite examples or Jean Luke peard the cultured intelligent clear-headed Diplomat capable leader and brave Explorer from Star Trek the Next Generation once the epitome of the thinking man's hero now reduced to a confused frail old man who needs to be put firmly in his place by someone more diverse sheer huis yeah that'll teach you to get ideas above your station Jean Luke let's get the most controversial thing I'll say in this video out of the way I love the first season of Star Trek fard anyone who's watched the series is probably having a very normal reaction right now but I want you all to take a break from that so we can go back to the scene where the Admiral supposedly puts Captain Bard in his place here's a little more context it was a choice between allowing the Federation to implode or letting the romulans go the Federation does not get to decide if a species lives or dies yes we do we absolutely do thousands of other species depend upon us for Unity I was standing up for the Federation for what it represents for what it should still represent how dare you lecture me ignore me again at your cost this is no longer your house Jean luk so do what you're good at go home this scene isn't anything new the star check the Next Generation TV series where we first met beard has countless examples of him being dressed down by male and female admirals sometimes Justified sometimes not in this scene in Bard we see his plan being utterly rejected by the Admiral but we meant to sympathize with Bard what of the themes of the first season of Bard is how Starfleet as an institution has abandoned its principles and is put in its own desire to maintain its power and survival ahead of the ideals it claims to represent it's an example of how an institution becomes more concerned with perpetuating it itself rather than serving the function it claims to have in the first place what the audience is supposed to get here is that Bard is now an outsider to that institution but not because he has become weak but rather it's the institution he once represented that has become weak that's why this scene is sad or you can reduce it to a woman yelling at a man and see it as a symbol of emasculation but to me that's a very reductive reading not attempting to understand any of the subtlety or Nuance that's happening in this scene therefore this reading of peard is not really engaging with the series at all it's just using it as a tool to reinforce a narrative that media is telling society that men should be subservient to women although if it sounds like I'm stretching a bit there and you don't believe that the Drinker is trying to imply that movies and TV are offering moral lessons I want to look at another video from this series on the subject titled they teach us awful lessons this video is very explicitly critiquing the morality of modern movies and hypothesizing how this will have a negative impact on society but the problem with modern movies is that I've begun to notice the moral scale tipping in the wrong direction trying to frame negative actions decisions and messages in a positive light basically what this means is they're teaching people really [ __ ] lessons now and if this sort of thing continues for too long it's going to produce an entire generation of shitty people Drinker doesn't just see movies as a form of light entertainment he believes they have an impact on the moral development of society I'm not trying to suggest that he's saying movies are shaping how we understand the world entirely just that they have an influence the bulk of the they teach us awful lessons video uses the example of mulon contrasting the animated and live-action versions of the movie I want to First highlight his reading of the animated version the struggles and eventual successes of the main character demonstrate the value of determination and perseverance even when the odds are against you that a person's worth isn't defined by the size of their muscles and even if you're not as big and strong as other people it doesn't mean that you can't go to achieve great things it's all about playing the hand that you're dealt even if that hand doesn't seem as strong as other people's first off that line at the veryan about the hand your dealt makes it sound like Mulan was living with some kind of disability but she wasn't she was limited in society because she was a woman unless I checked being a woman is not a disability and that fact should tell you something about what the movie is trying to say about society and how it treats women drinker's reading is instead fixated on Mulan supposed physical limitations and doesn't really remark on the social pressure put on her to conform to a gender role there are parts of the movie that Drinker just gets flat wrong like the other recruits she gets put through some rigorous training to teach her how to be a soldier and because she's smaller and weaker than the others naturally she struggles to keep up with them Wulan struggles during boot camp but it's very clearly shown in the Montage it's not strictly because she's a woman everyone struggles and everyone is failing at it and if anything The Bullying B the other recruits makes things even tougher on her as the Montage progresses the turning point is Mulan being the only person to figure out how to get the arrow off the top of the tree trunk it not only gives her the resolve to continue her training but it inspires everyone else and they stop bullying her we then see everyone else start to do better in the training and Mulan not only keeps up we see her excelling she's faster than all the men and strong enough to take out her teacher she doesn't appear to have any sort of physical limitation here but this falls into the Trap drinkers in when discussing these movies is understanding is limited to Milan's personal agency as a character he doesn't have much to say about the world she finds herself in and what it means to limit a capable woman like her he frames mulan's Journey as wanting some kind of Adventure when it's more accurate to say she wants to live more as her true self something I thought was made clear in one of the movie's opening songs Mulan didn't join the Army as part of some desire for adventure she was trying to protect her father from being conscripted and her training didn't teach her to be smart and resourceful she had those qualities from the opening of the movie hard work and perseverance are nice qualities to have but the movie is so much more than that it's a movie about a woman pretending to be a man in a society that only sees women as brides and mothers it's making a very strong feminist statement here but here's Drinker take on the modern Mulan which makes many of the same points she's just as fast just as strong just as good at fighting as the others in fact if anything she's probably better than them because she was born with high levels of chi or something which allows her to perform Feats of of agility and skill that border on the supernatural so basically all the challenges and problems that made life so difficult for the original Mulan are pretty much non-existent here and well it kind of undermines what used to be a pretty inspiring message the main challenge Mulan faced in the animated version was living in a society that trapped her in a restrictive gender role the exact same challenge that liveaction Mulan Faces by reducing the story to mulan's physical abilities Drinker misses a huge portion of the movie and the obvious message of fighting against a system that won't let her taste the freedom to be who she wants to be getting away from Wulan I do want to briefly mention the weird reading of wand division where a drinker seems to think it's trying to glorify Scarlet Witch's imprisonment of a whole town because of her grief the idea that your own personal happiness is literally more important than other people's freedom well-being and personal Integrity this is the worldview of a villain not a [ __ ] hero I'm genuinely shocked to hear that reading because he clearly gets what the whole series was about it was Scarlet Witch's villain origin story the fact that you feel sympathy for her doesn't excuse her actions if anything they're trying to create a more complicated understanding of a villain one way they aren't simply reviled but empathize with while rejecting how they operate in the world based on that state but he's framing it as if Scarlet Witch was meant to be the hero of the series when we see towns folks suffering under Wanda's spell we are meant to empathize with them and see how Wanda's coping is victimizing other people the next time we see her she's a villain in the doctor strange movie that wouldn't be a surprise to anyone who is paying the least bit of attention ention but drinker's reading is so uncharitable that he's inferring the show was trying to do something it wasn't or that it's trying to impart some kind of lesson for your own grief superseding the suffering of others we're instead teaching people to be arrogant complacent entitled narcissistic and selfish these are shitty lessons designed to produce shitty people that are destined to crash and burn once they get out into the Real Worlds or even worse invade it in large enough numbers that they actually start to dilute the culture and make it just as shitty as them me final thoughts are probably drinkers videos at their silliest but to then use that reading as a way of describing movies leading to the downfall of society Echoes the most ridiculous of conservative fearmongering I do believe art can have a powerful transformative effect on people but we should be careful not to assign the ability to completely change society to a handful of Disney movies there is a grander narrative at play in these videos and this is the part that gets very close to making a good point trinker spends a lot of time talking about the conflicts between movie studios and the fans of a particular character or franchise the term fans here should be understood not as everyone in the audience or even the most enthusiastic but rather a subset of the audience that is assumed the mantle of the most devoted this isn't necessarily true fandom comes in many forms but to this particular group there is a firm belief that they not only love a piece of media the most but they love the purest and most accurate version of that media this is structured in a very deliberate way in the they hate their own fans video it explains the plot being used used by Studios to engineer outrage with the term fan baiting they're practically falling over themselves to antagonize their own fans these days and form the resulting controversy for everything it's worth the idea being presented here is that studios are taking the most extreme examples of outrage over creative decisions and using those to deflect from criticism Drinker does at least try to differentiate his critiques from those whose anger lead them to harass and threaten actors using the example of Leslie Jones from the 2016 Ghostbusters movie there were plenty of legit reasons to criticize both the character and the actor none of which had anything to do with the color of her skin but naturally the media chose to focus in on the small minority of racist [ __ ] who did exactly that well it's nice to hear Drinker call these people racist [ __ ] it rings a bit Hollow when later in the video He suggests the studio is making these casting decisions on purpose specifically to eventually generate this kind of outrage or how about Moses Ingram from Obi-Wan Kenobi who was apparently briefed in a Advanced by Lucas film that she'd be getting racist hate from toxic fans almost like they were counting on it happening this plot is also used to explain why critics praise certain movies predicated on the idea that since the critic and audience scores don't match or aren't very close on Rotten Tomatoes there must be some form of Nefarious fou play coming from Studios threatening critics ever wondered why critic and audience scores look like they're reviewing completely different movies these days it's because it's easier to take the safe option and praise the things you're expected to praise rather than risk voicing your true opinions what's notable about this critique is drinkers seems to think this is coming all the way from the top that the Studios have so little confidence in making a good movie that people want to see on its merits that they introduce diversity and therefore weaker performances in order to create controversy and transform watching that movie into a political statement they chose to turn their show into some kind of cultural flash point in the hopes that it would deflect attention and criticism away from what they'd actually produced without a doubt marketing for some of these movies leans into the controversies that are generated online but Drinker is imagining something far more Grand than trying to gain social media much of his theory is predicated on the idea that these movies are reaching some sort of objective standard of bad quality something that Studios and critics are all aware of but not willing to say it's the subtle suggestion that Drinker is unwilling to believe that someone might like a movie or TV show that he believes is bad because he's to doed some kind of objective metric for determining whether something is of good or bad quality drinker's whole why modern movies or Bad series reflect this rules-based approach to making movies positioning himself as the referee as to whether or not these rules are being followed only the rules are subjective and so are their application as he himself will often admit to in his videos when he points out several exceptions ultimately all this really reflects is his own personal taste in movies and like I've said several times in this video it's fine to not like some movies there is no problem with that but not catering to your taste personally doesn't mean it's the downfall of Cinema or this will lead to some kind of disastrous consequences for society it also doesn't mean that your tastes are emblematic of phandom either what really undercuts The Narrative here though is that he seems to think all of this is a new phenomena that it's only recently that movies have started pushing diversity or relying on Old franchises or are trying to contradict what he considers Traditional Values he says it all started in 2016 it All Began in the year of Our Lord 2016 with the release of the rebooted Ghostbusters movie before continuing I want to go back to the strong female character video he opens it with a rundown of various strong female characters that he believes are good and there was one name in this video that caught my attention Cara th for those unfamiliar Cara thce is one of the main characters in the 2003 version of Battlestar Galactica a show I happen to be watching for the first time while researching this video and when looking up some of the history of the show a few interesting facts came to light as a fighter pilot on the show Cara's call sign is starbu this is a reference to the character Starbuck from the original 1978 version of Battlestar Galactica played by Dirk Benedict as you might notice this character is an obvious gender swap from the original the 2003 version Creator Ronald D Moore explains in an interview that this was a controversial decision at the time Rogue friend who smokes cigars and chases girls and gambles I don't know what to do with that how do you make that interesting today and somewhere along the line my brain just went well what if starbu was a woman yes sir there were starting to be female pilots in the war against Terror at that time you were starting to see women in combat for the first time so it was a fairly new thing to see that dramatized in other words moris swapped the character's gender to update her for a modern audience the exact thing Drinker complains about and back then there was also a backlash and that became like a whole thing and of itself how dare you you you're you're destroying you know Battle Star Galactica and this is blasphemy and so on and you know what it just helped us the controversy helped us it helped Propel the show it played into marketing and promotion I was glad I was glad to stoke it and yeah keep arguing about it let's keep talking about it get more of these stories in the Press what I'm hoping is clear here is that more doesn't describe wanting to stoke that controversy while creating the character but rather leaning into it once it started but this gets even better because in 2006 3 years after Battle Star Galactica started and a whole new generation of fans were embracing this new version of Starbuck and 10 years before that 2016 origin point that Drinker gave us we got a blog post from Dirk Benedict the original Starbuck his words may sound a bit familiar and I'll play a few Clips if you need some reminders this is taken from the actor's own website and it's going to be a lot but I promise it's worth it the title of this blog post is Starbuck lost in castration there was a time I know I was there when men were men women were women and sometimes a cigar was just a good smoke but 40 Years of feminism have taken their toll the war against masculinity has been won reimagining they call it unimagined is more accurate take what once was and twist it into what never was intended so that a television show based on Hope spiritual Faith and family is unimagined and regurgitated as a show of Despair sexual violence and family dysfunction to better reflect the times of ambiguous Morality In which we live one would assume one thing is certain in the new unimagined reimagined world of Battlestar Galactica everything is female driven the male characters from ad dama on down are confused weak and racked with indecision while the female characters are decisive bold angry as hell puffing cigars gasp and not about to take it anymore they're almost always written as stoic emotionally closed off blunt dismissive prickly domineering or aggressive the very same masculine traits that the writers seem to find so toxic and unacceptable in men they will tell you it is still about storying character but all it is really about is efficiency about the formula because Harvard Business School technocrats run Hollywood and what technocrats know is what must be removed from all business is risk and I tell you life real life is all about risk rather than taking a risk on smaller riskier and more diverse projects they tend to blow their load on whatever is popular right now I tell you without risk you have no creativity no art I tell you that with without risks you have remakes you have Charlie's Angels the saint Mission Impossible The A Team coming soon Battle Star Galactica all risk-free brand names franchises you resurrect Dusty old franchises with inbuilt fan bases and strong name recognition and hope that it will somehow translate into financial success you your instincts your judgments are wrong McDonald's is the best hamburger on the planet Coca-Cola the best drink stardo is the best Viper pilot in the galaxy and Star Galactica contrary to what your memory tells you never existed before the reimagination of 2003 much of that could have been lifted directly from a critical Drinker script huh the full blog post even makes references to Soy lattes at one point but where the blog post is actually a little more self-aware is that it realizes this criticism isn't unique and that Benedict noticed he was under the same pressures that existed back in the 1970s and that his performance of a rogish skirt Chaser Starbuck was a throwbox for that era too although he and Drinker are both wrong in the same way not that Hollywood is suddenly trying to avoid risks and maximizing profits kind of has always been that way hence eras where we saw dozens of westerns and musicals and other trends that Studios would ride and make as much money off of as they could this outrage is hardly new and certainly wasn't new in 2006 either although the internet obviously wasn't quite as widespread as it is now you can still find old Forum threads complaining about about a liberal agenda popping up in Star Trek it certainly wasn't as widely publicized or shared because social media certainly wasn't a thing and we were still years away from giant video sharing sites like YouTube blasting this kind of anger to billions of people around the world still there are plenty of examples of fans who are angry about supposed liberal or left-wing indoctrination being inserted into their movies and TV shows an article previewing an upcoming documentary on Star Trek Voyager describes some of the outrage at Star Trek's first female captain it reads producer Lolita FAO said that even though social media didn't exist and email wasn't widely used they received so much angry threatening hate mail about Jane way the fact number had been leaked and Pacho said the machine was going constantly and in interviews Garrett Wang has described that the hate got so bad there were even death and bomb threats said to the studio there are also plenty of fans who loved seeing the first female captain in Star Trek a fact the production team can speak to as well the same way there are fans who love seeing the queer representation in Star Trek Discovery or the afro futurism of black panther or a female at MCU movie with Captain Marvel are these fans being baited or perhaps these fans simply being given something they want to see and if so does the joy they get simply not count are they not allowed to be part of the fandom I'm not even suggesting that these fan bases turning up are driving the success of any of these titles in the same way I don't think fans like drink or skipping a title is driving failure complicated Market forces and entertainment Dynamics likely have a lot more to say about that but what's really frustrating about drinker's commentary here is the obvious subtext regarding fan gatekeeping reducing the whole idea of fandom to people like him he uses the vague term of the fans rather than something more specific because if he were more accurate he'd reveal that he represents not all of the fans or even a majority but a very persistent subset that has been resisting greater representation in media for decades to paraphrase Battle Star Galactica all of this has happened before and all of this is happening again the sliver of Truth found in Benedict Drinker and every other complaint about how appealing to Modern audiences is somehow ruining movies and TVs is that it's motivated by business concerns Drinker himself says it when he remarks truly there was no PL or Gambit no matter how dirty or desperate that they wouldn't try to use to sell this movie yes the studios behind Ghostbusters and every other movie are doing everything they can to Market it and professing to have a social conscience has existed for decades this isn't new and it isn't a sign that a movie will definitely be bad it's simply a reflection of the major villain in all of this the commodification of art has poisoned the minds of everyone involved from Studios reducing creative work to Commodities that are structured to maximize profits and shaped to fit as mainstream an audience as possible and reviewers who are overly concerned with franchise integrity and see the audience as customers to be served it's the inescapable capitalism brains that poisons our appreciation of art even in these confines there are examples of movies and TV shows that make very powerful and moving artistic statements but at the end of the day we're talking about Productions that are produced by Giant entertainment companies that are concerned chiefly with making a lot of money I'm not going to pretend that this whole capitalism brain thing hasn't impacted me either and my appreciation of some of these works but as someone who engages in a bit of media criticism now and then I try not to get so swept in as to think that this is all normal or that my voice is representing the masses even if a few of my videos get over a million views on YouTube although Drinker critiques are a hollow echo of conservative fan outrage in spite of how he tries to present it as something new there's part of his work that I find even more bothersome in the they hate their own fans video he almost seems aware of his role in all of this actual fans get so burned and pissed off with the treatment of their franchise that they go into it with the worst possible Outlook determined to find problems and unwilling to even give it a fair chance trinker is the one fomenting this when he spreads this endless negativity to his audience with his reviews reinforcing a politically conservative reading as more acceptable than any sort of leftist or Progressive one his criticisms often don't amount to more than a few superficial observations tied to a thumbs up or thumbs down for all his complaints about heavy-handed messaging in modern movies his videos are just as guilty and it becomes so much more apparent how this works with his buddying up to the conservative media Outlet the daily wire for the unfamiliar the daily wire is a conservative media Outlet perhaps most well known by its top host Ben Shapiro they've entered into the world of entertainment to less than impressive results I've made plenty of videos on that subject if you're curious Drinker has reviewed several of the daily wi's movies including run hiide fight Terror on the Prairie and Lady Ballers for a channel that largely focuses on major releases from big studios it's a wonder why he would waste any time at all on these much smaller releases he's also far gentler on these movies than he is with mainstream titles here's how he described the daily wires lady Ballers it's not on par with the mid 2000s Classics like dodgeball Anchor Man or Tropic Thunder that it seems to want to emulate this movie is very much a rough gem the imperfect first attempt of a company that's still finding its feet as a movie studio for anyone familiar with this movie which yes I have watched the term rough gem is incredibly charitable but the content of these reviews is almost irrelevant to review them at all is to insert these movies in front of an audience attracted by the mainstream coverage of other reviews one of the major strengths of conservative media isn't just generating bogus stories but creating bogus narratives and inserting them into the news cycle making so much noise about an issue that mainstream Outlets have to pay attention and suddenly we're debating an issue like trans women in sports like this is a national crisis right next to real news stories such as the ongoing genocide in Gaza by covering the daily wire movies alongside mainstream titles it's doing something similar there's a big audience for other movies by Netflix Disney and other major Studios these movies are very popular and that's why he covers them so there is a huge number of people on YouTube looking for any sort of reviews about these movies when they stumble upon a Channel with a cute name like the critical Drinker they're getting a review infused with his conservative worldview if they stick around they're being directed towards smaller movies like The Daily wire already primed to like a mediocre at best production because it wasn't produced by leftwing activists I'm sure there's part of drinker's audience that does care about the daily wire though and to them these movies are a big deal and he has mentioned that there has been a demand from his audience to cover some of these movies but if so that says everything about the persistent audience he has reviewing a new Star Wars show brings people in from everywhere but the ones who stick around either share drinker's conservative leanings or more worrying are being pulled rightward because of his deeply slanted reviews and uninformed commentary there's a great example of how this works with the video titled A Tale of Two Snow Whites which is more or less an advertisement for the daily wires version of Snow White for those blissfully unaware of this supposed controversy Rachel eag was cast in a liveaction version of Snow White during an interview about the movie zegler made a comment about updating the 1937 original to be less about Snow White being rescued by a prince and more about her becoming a leader in her own right this along with a few early production pictures has produced dozens upon dozens of outrage videos on the subject it's a bit of a stretch to think these are all simply passionate Snow White fans expressing themselves and instead the same group of reactionary fans who are upset about representation in a movie that doesn't even have a release date Drinker himself has already produced several videos on the subject and the topic sneaks its way into other videos as well it's very clearly one of those hot topics for a certain audience much like the fur over Captain Marvel a few years back a reaction to Brie Larson that was so volatile and extreme in its negativity that the movie only made $1.1 billion at the box office unlike many predictions of the controversy that these statements from brie LaRon Were Somehow going to take down the production A Tale of Two Snow Whites cynically capitalizes on the similar Zigler outrage recycling the same tired interview Clips while also serving as an ad for the daily wire production it's the sort of video I hope Drinker got paid for by the daily wire to produce because aside from squeezing more juice from a very old and tired story it has no reason to exist other than as an ad I actually want this one to succeed partly because I think it's being made with exactly the kind of attitude that's sorely lacking in Hollywood today and partly because the anarchist in me wants to see the absolute meltdown that will engulf the mainstream media if this film somehow outperforms Disney's excretion I mean let's be honest it totally isn't going to but it's funny to think about all the same this animates so much of drinkers criticism a very bitter anti- Hollywood sentiment that a company like the daily wire is ready to capitalize on he's the sort of collaborator you don't need to tell what to do because you know he'll do it anyway complain about Disney and modern movies while pretending your lowbudget conservative competition deserves to be considered in the same breath like I mentioned in a previous video lowbudget ripoffs of major movies have existed for decades now including liveaction Disney ones the daily wire isn't doing anything new or different here but the reason Drinker is highlighting their Snow White and not the inevitable Asylum pictures version is because it aligns with the conservative worldview his channel is pushing or I could be wrong and they're just paying him and if so he should probably disclose that in the video there's a clip from an interview that Drinker did with the podcast trigonometry a while back I want to highlight and yes the podcast is called that I think it's supposed to make people on the left angry when it's actually the most embarrassing [ __ ] I've ever heard you get a new movie or a new TV show um by any by Disney whether it's Star Wars or Marvel whatever um that will have an old character in it but it will usually have a couple of new characters and then they get their own spin-off movie or spin-off TV show and then that will in turn create more spin-offs and it's just this ever expanding tree of of more stuff it's Moment Like These or when he acknowledges how CG animators are overworked in underpaid are other small glimpses of him nearly getting to the heart of the problem none of the complaints Drinker highlights whether real or imagined are new that he pretends they are reveal that he has no desire to consider that the movies he loved were produced by the same cynical corporate machines that produce movies today it's how he can intentionally or not miss one of the major themes of a children's movie like Mulan or make complaints about women in movies that he assumes are original but actually go back decades he's gotten old enough to see the modern political world reflected back at him in entertainment but refuses to consider entertainment of the past was produced in the same way that's why changes to the source material to reflect changes in taste seem like some sort of attack he's taken the political context of the past for granted as generally good and normal and changes to that normal must come from hubris or arrogance or some other imagined nefarious intent because if it was people honestly trying to reinterpret a story to reflect what they consider positive changes in society what does that mean about someone who never thought there was a problem to begin with it's okay not to have realized that there were some problems with society when you were younger you were a kid you weren't expected to know but now that you have the opportunity to learn it seems like the onus is on you to educate yourself on how movies were made in the past and how that reflects similar Trends in the present there's nothing wrong with enjoying an old movie or TV show that has certain things that haven't aged particularly well it doesn't make you a bad person and by not holding on to those old ones maybe it'll be more open to a modern take that provides new ways of telling those old stories that a audience might appreciate more like with Battlestar Galactica and sure sometimes these modern updates can stumble or outright fail in their own right the liveaction Mulan isn't as good as the original at least to me but its existence doesn't make the animated version vanish Disney is more than happy to sell us two versions of the same movie drinker's analysis is not a new or interesting thing he gets details wrong he makes up stories about the production and he rarely goes deeper than the superficial but its conservative character has ushered the channel into massive success he credits the rise of his channel to talking about Captain Marvel in a video while sounding a little drunk and so he was the beneficiary of finding success writing the way of a conservative outrage I guess it only makes sense that he gives back by continuing that cycle of outrage himself his channel is not really a problem but rather reflective of a larger reactionary backlash to certain types of media so I'm not trying to highlight him as some sort of exceptional bad but rather representative of a much larger ho and just know that if you're someone who's watching the Drinker videos you're not watching the every man expressing his outrage at modern movies you're watching a conservative guy expressing tired reactionary takes that have been leveled at movies for decades while working on this video I thought a lot about my own videos looking at Classic sitcoms from 2030 or 40 years ago and one thing I always set out to do that hopefully comes across in those videos is not simply tally up all the sins and misdeeds of these projects that are many many decades removed D from their original airing I don't think we need to ignore those things in the present day but we similarly shouldn't let them be the end all of whether or not we enjoy an old TV show I think the same philosophy can be held forward if you're watching a modern TV show or movie that expresses a value you don't necessarily hold and personally I've enjoyed a number of different things that have clearly more conservative politics informing them one takeaway I'm hoping you're getting from this video aside from the critical Drinker not being the best source of mov and TV criticism is that it's possible to have complicated feelings about a work of art there is often a mixture of good and bad and some of that is simply a reflection of the systems in place that shape these pieces of media and sometimes it's our own personal experiences and expectations that shape our own interactions with this media perhaps now you're reflecting on your interaction with this piece of media this video and you're thinking I rather enjoyed that I'd like to see more of it well you can help support this channel by becoming a patron or a member you'll get early access to videos your name and the credits and a couple of fun bonuses I have cooking up for members in the future but if you would like to support this channel in a non-monetary fashion you can like comment subscribe ring the bell for notifications and spread it around on social media why not and if you're wondering what kind of comment to leave below how about just telling me your favorite movie or TV show that you're confident I've never heard of I want your best hidden gems I might even watch or two of them depending on what my schedule looks like thank you all so much for watching

Channel: José

Views: 725,768

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Id: B4vlT3YUKq8

Length: 61min 4sec (3664 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2024