What if they threw a purge and nobody came?

quick content warning on this one this video is about the purge series of films which i think most people know are pretty violent but there will be some brief discussion of sexual violence and racialized violence if those types of things make you deeply uncomfortable I highly recommend maybe maybe skip this this video because it's going to have those things in it now you know you have been content warned hello boils ghouls and non die scary folk its me rot crime coming to you with another slimy spooktacular Halloween Jamboree title pending last year I did a whole thing on anti-capitalist horror movies but now I got a whole lot of their channel to talk about horror movies that youtube.com slash scaredy-cats TV so I got to find some political angle or else I'm gonna have to make non spooky content for spooky day or as they call it in America Halloween luckily there's one film franchise I can drop a hot spooky take about that's hella political the page a series of films about a spooky future where crime is legal for a 12 hour period once a year here's the twist though it's legal for everyone not just rich white people make no mistake the purge movies aren't very good I don't really like them that much but I do think they have a certain unfair reputation amongst leftists as reactionary propaganda and I understand why the idea that society would immediately descend into bloody chaos should the law not exist for like a minute does strike me as some extremely conservative shit the idea that the police and military are the only thing keeping society from descending into chaos but that's not really what the purge is about these films are progressive albeit highly liberal and anyone who's actually watched them can attest to that one thing they are definitely not is subtle they don't want you to walk away with any illusions about what they're about it might surprise you to learn that the purge movies are mostly talking about class struggle the films identify the difficulties of being poor and the way that the rich gamed the system to normalize and protect themselves from the consequences of violence towards the poor its hammered into our heads again and again that the supposedly sness of the purge only really affects poor people by design rich people can afford security systems bodyguards and weaponry to keep themselves safe during the purge poor people are left to die and it's speculated by multiple characters and in a few cases just outright confirm that this is deliberate as a means of controlling the population and getting rid of non productive members of society like the homeless or sick people in the first purge movie not to be confused with the movie the first purge we have the only heroes in the franchise that are in favor of the purge James and Mary Senden and wouldn't you know it they happened to profit off of the purge as James sells security systems that allow the rich people to stay safe and comfortable of course they support the purge it made them rich and later in the film when the situation becomes unsafe for them personally James remarks well things like this aren't supposed to happen in our neighborhood they can't get into our home no that's hard to say you don't know you say you're in the system what do you mean you don't know we have tested the system it works 99% of the time it looks good it's strong people stay away it's not case scenarios is it impenetrable no nothing's impenetrable things like this are not supposed to happen on our neighborhood the sandins are safe and cozy in their purge fortress when a man runs through the street screaming for help their son lets the men inside much to James's chagrin and then some hoity-toity upper crust purge guys demand that the man be sent back outside so they can execute him for being homeless they talk about how worthless he is because he's not productive or contributing to the economy you see in case the message is lost than you the leader of the perjures is wearing a private school uniform to show you that he's rich and and and of the upper class and also he just explicitly tells James we don't want to have to kill one of our own don't forces to hurt you we don't want to kill our own he's just purged now another movie might have done that through like matching shots or having purge men repeats them the same dialogue with James said earlier in the movie maybe get two actors that look alike maybe have them dress in similar clothes but no they just say it James is like them you see rich and white unlike the stranger they're trying to purge whose name we find out in a later film is Dante Bishop eventually through the jigs and the reels of the film Dante ends up helping Mary and the kids survive as the sentence rich upper-crust neighbors turn on them not because they're like profiteering off of the purge which would be a reasonable thing to be angry about but because they keep rubbing it in their faces that they have a nicer house a common theme in these movies is taking the high road not letting the violence of others drag you into violence Mary holds her murderous neighbors captive and keeps them from killing or being killed until the purge ends she doesn't let herself become as bad as them the poor homeless black man is heroic and willing in at least one scene to sacrifice himself to save a family that has been expressly trying to kill him well the upper crust wasps are vicious monsters willing to kill for bigotry or just petty reasons the film could not be clearer about its class messaging just kidding of course it can just wait now the second movie is probably the most contentious among an turquois like me because of the title the poisoner key even I complained about it in a video and look the movies not making a statement on anarchism I doubt screenwriter James demonaco had been watching a bunch of libertarian socialist rants videos before writing this script they're just using the word that the way most people think it's used chaos and shittiness in this movie there's literally a resistance group protecting the working-class from the violence of the state now sure in fiction they're fighting the purge but you have to remember that the purge is a metaphor for and I was watching this movie waiting for the twist that the resistance fighters were just as bad as the purged dudes but no the movie is just like yeah they're right you should stand up and stop the purge it's bad though later movies in the franchise will question their methods the movie is made by liberals but it presents radicals is ultimately a force for good in this movie the elderly sick father of one of the main characters Ava a young waitress trying to make ends meet literally sells himself to rich white perjures they pay to kill him making him into a commodity something they can just buy and consume for their own pleasure this movie also gets into how the violence of the purge like all real violence disproportionately affects women content warning for threats of sexual violence in a terrible stereotype of sweaty people this gross dude confronts Ava and her daughter and goes into sadistic detail about all the gross stuff he wants to do to them and one of the main antagonists of the film is literally named Big Daddy and he wears an apron like he's at a 4th of July barbecue they might as well have named in patriarchy then turns out that the government has been using the purge as a method of population control sending out paramilitary groups to just round up and kill poor people the first movie some people brought this up as a possibility on top radio but in case you missed the message in this movie they outright I just tell you they find the computer they just oh yeah according to this computer that's what they're doing then they walk through the banking district and it's empty because the bank's move their money because nobody's gonna fuck with the banks and their money on purge night clearly the resistance fighters didn't get the message though because they string up a stockbroker with a sign that says he stole our pensions and one of the characters remarks well sounds like he deserved it then all of the heroes are kidnapped by rich people who auction off the right to hunt them like animals then all of the rich people are killed by resistance fighters wearing berets who mentioned that they're against a quote market mentality that keeps people stunted they're the good guys by the way but wait if you still don't get it then Big Daddy comes around he explicitly tells the audience yo we're working for the government because people aren't killing enough and we need to kill a lot of people tonight in the purge the government has to do the violence because people left to their own devices don't really want to be violent they have to be conditioned to be violent and that's a big theme moving forward these movies don't want you to miss what they have to say they they leave nothing to chance case in point in all of these movies characters link patriotism to violence America is violence in these movies the purge only happens in the United States it was authorized by a party called the new founding fathers subtle stuff they came into power democratically after some sort of crisis that made crime and poverty skyrocket they're called the new founding fathers but they are Republicans they value superficial displays of patriotism which are almost always linked to violence guns because they're literally funded by the NRA religion and they're all prim joyless white people which brings us to the purge election year which came out in 2016 which follows the election between a hyper qualified and good-hearted blonde woman and an uncaring rich jerk this seeds only because of his phony populism she's gonna get elected president and she's gonna end the purge and America is gonna be fine forever never said these movies weren't liberal but then the corrupt government rescinds the rule about government officials being immune to purge so they can kill her and get her out of the way a power they announced that day so I guess they just have unilateral power to do whatever they want with no oversight but I'll show there are free and open elections okay this world is well thought out then the Republican coded bad guys hire literal neo-nazis to hunt down the heroes and kill them meat also shop owner Joe his name is Joe he's just an average Joe get it anyway his insurance company raises his premium right before the night of the purge wait wait wait a minute why are you raising my rates now do you today do you know what today is I can't afford that what do you mean you're sorry his insurance is immediately revoked on the spot which is not how that works and he can't fight back because he's just an average Joe get it what they're saying here because who could decipher these cards right his insurance goes up because of a type of condition of society one that existed before he had this plan you could call it a pre-existing condition so a heartless insurance company is squeezing a regular Joe because of a pre-existing condition just see if you can tease it out just see if you can put all that together hey remember how I said that in these movies American patriotism is linked with violence well in this movie there are a group of murder tourists dressed in Americana who talk about how much they love America because they get to murder people indiscriminately they can't do that in their country you see it's unique to America it's gun violence they're talking about gun violence and look if you still don't believe that the purge is a metaphor for class struggle check out this scene where the bad guys just say it I've had it with all these idealistic pigs they want the impossible everyone to have some cannot have not enough to go around and then there's this scene where the heroes also send me to the principal's office I can't listen to this anymore okay we'll send you to the principal's office because you can't keep your mouth shut people are killed during the purge than anyone else the money that being said the movie presents the solution of the problem as electoral reform despite the government being explicitly corrupt murderous monsters Elizabeth thrown the main character still begs the resistance fighters now led by Dante Bishop from the first movie not to assassinate the new founding fathers leadership during the purge because she knows she can beat them the right way and no no action and then she does but there are large-scale rights from new founding fathers supporters and this creates a sort of permanent purge I guess I don't know if the movie is nodding towards the failures of liberalism and electoral ISM to deal with fascist violence or they just wanted a cheap shock ending it's unclear to me I don't know how much credit I want to give this movie moving on from the purge for just a moment once there was a distant land at a distant time a land lost living memory where things beyond life and death resided there said aculon king of eyeballs he ruled over all because he saw all and now he seems a woman hello and welcome to the eyeball zone here in the eyeball zone no small leftist project is safe from getting promoted now the purge movies of a pretty childish view of violence violence is just something people can be convinced to do if you tell them that it's normal want to see a more mature view of crime and violence you tuber saber made a video that discusses the way that the media and politicians deflect from austerity measures in this case closing youth clubs lead to youth violence by trying to pin it on pop culture in this case drill music which I am such a boomer that I had literally never heard of before this video is well argued and well edited and is the type of thing you could show your dad and your dad would be like yeah he's got a point he's only got like 389 subscribers what the fuck is that about I want him at at least a thousand subscribers by the end of the week and I want pictures of spider-man on my desk or you're fired Parker do you have a small lefty project you want eyeballs to invade and conquer please send exactly one email to thought slime editor at gmail.com with the word eyeballs somewhere in the subject line and include pertinent details like your preferred pronouns and perhaps you will find yourself trapped here in the eyeball zone go now and try to forget this place sleep fitfully because in the back of your mind you know the eyeballs are watching and they are coming one more perch maybe to talk about because I'm not going to talk about the perch TV show I don't particularly like this franchise and you can't convince me to watch 12 hour-long episodes give me a fucking break the movie the first purge not to be confused with the first purge movie answers the question on everybody's mind how'd they do this dang ol purge anyway why how come there's a purge even turns out they started with a small experiment on Staten Island where they had to pay people to participate and told them they'd pay extra if they did murdering despite that though people were mostly like yeah fuck that we're just gonna throw a big party or whatever so the government sends in armed militias just as Klan members Nazis and I'm not exaggerating cops to brutally murder the largely racialized population trigger warning for racial violence here a scene where a bunch of white cops beat a black man to death on a baseball field because America is violence in the world of the purge and also often in real life and in case you still don't get it here's this David Cameron looking motherfucker telling the audience explicitly that they're just killing off the poor people so they don't have to pay higher taxes from government entitlements this country is overpopulated doctor there's too much crime too much honor is that even true those numbers can't afford to care for its own citizenry people don't want us to raise taxes our debt is tripled can't pay for anything you're trying to depopulate the lower classes just so the nffa doesn't have to support them come on we both brothers there's no easy answer where somebody some group doesn't suffer all of the heroes of this film are either black or latina one of the heroes is explicitly a gangbanger and he rallies the community around him when he feels like it's under threat from rich white interlopers then a militia that is either the Klan or disguised as the Klan shoots up a black and Latina church that's some pretty loaded symbolism if you'll pardon the expression and can I just say this is a major studio movie in a huge franchise that's directed by a black man and stars an almost exclusively minority cast the purge movies understand that race and class are intrinsically linked in the United States if you're gonna make a movie about how the poor are getting murdered by the rich it would be dishonest not to show how that falls along racial lines and this subtext is present in every purge movie there is a distinct chasm between white America and everyone else in the first movie all the white people want to kill Dante in the second movie the white people are militia members trying to kill minorities in the third movie the white people fight over control of the government while the minority characters struggle to survive and in this movie the purge is literally just an extermination as campaign to kill black and brown people I don't know how this doesn't get talked about more these movies are making no secret or their view of class and race and the intersection thereof also this happens [Music] boy what could they be talking about all of this being said I'm not so sure that the people making these movies understand that the problem the problem is capitalism sure they made movies were the rich feed off of the poor but it's always couched in the logic of how this is a disruption from how things should be and always were they recognized that America has a problem with violence and that that violence seems to disproportionately affect poor people people of color and women and people that are all are some of those things the framing of this film presents the purge is the problem the purge is the reason the poor are in danger and the purge seems like kind of a metaphor for class wars so that kind of makes sense in an allegorical level but it doesn't seem like it's saying that if we just tone down the violence in society a little everything would be fine but at the start of the first purge movie not to be confused with the movie the first purge Dante is homeless and then at the end of the movie he's he's still homeless he survived the purge though and the movie treats that like it's fine least he's still homeless it's still pretty dangerous the characters in the movie the first purge not to be confused with the first purge movie live in a filthy cockroach infested apartment and they have no economic prospects but their survival of the purge is treated like the end of the danger they still can't put food on the table and even the shitty apartment is like blowed the hell up the class war the purge represents is a deviation from the norm but for a lot of people the purge isn't fiction black people are routinely brutalized by the police a vanishingly small percentage of sexual assaults are reported let alone prosecuted and the poor are treated as disposable every single day what these movies seem unwilling to confront is that even without the purge there's still a lot of problems a lot of highly violent problems and America's problems aren't new either they're the continuation of centuries of violence there is no return to a place of decency because the American state has never been decent these movies recognize that the new founding fathers are villains but I'm not so sure that they recognize that the original founding fathers were also pretty evil of them own slaves and slavery was an institution far more brutal than the purge could ever hope to be the purge lasts for 12 hours every year slavery was the whole year at the same time I think these movies provide a window into the minds of people who understand there is a problem fundamental to the core of American society but don't really understand what that problem is or what to do about it I would say that the people who make the purge movies likely share my values if not my beliefs they seem to value equality kindness solidarity justice we can write them off for having liberal views of the government in the market but that's just that most people think what I think these movies show more than anything else is that even non leftists Intuit the reality of class struggle they see these problems care about these problems and would probably be receptive to our ideas if we learn to communicate them correctly now are the purge movies socialist no do the purge movies have a lot to say and speak truth to power when viewed through a socialist lens absolutely does that mean you should watch them no they're boring they're very boring movies everybody thanks for watching my purge video I'm glad to finally get that out of my system to purge it if you will have a happy and safe Halloween make sure to check all your candy for poisons and razorblades etc hey you know what would help me have a happy Halloween is if you went to patreon.com slash thought slime and gave me a little monthly donation in a in a bucket that's shaped like a pumpkin I'm really straining this analogy hey if you like me talking about horror movies and who doesn't you can check me out at youtube.com slash scaredy-cats TV where I'm gonna do that every week on Tuesday did a video on who ruined zombies you'll never guess if it was Zack Snyder or not here's a hint it was still not spooked enough follow me on twitch TV slash thought slime where I'm going to be streaming spooky games probably not anymore after this video goes out but I do want to finish Resident Evil 2 even though it's really hard for me to play it because I'm coward I heard his story about a couple that picks up a hitchhiker and they ask her to press the like subscribe button on YouTube but then they find out she's been dead for 15 years I don't suppress the like and subscribe button or you might be a ghost think about it boo you

Channel: Thought Slime

Views: 97,957

Rating: 4.9485688 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: kEIbyuKRXko

Length: 24min 12sec (1452 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 25 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/ScarjoISaTREE]

Anyone see the film theory “how to win the purge”?

in an attempt to be apolitical matpat went with organ harvesting

Im pretty sure the real way to win the purge is by exploiting adverse possession laws to house the homeless.

[u/Maegaranthelas]

That bit about the movie titled The First Purge is the conclusion of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Here's the full chapter summary, but the pertinent bits are that the guards in the Stanford experiment were given explicit instructions on how to dehumanise the prisoners and financial incentive to do so, and even then most of them didn't want to be mean. The mental breakdown was a complete fake by someone who just wanted to get back to his studies. And the reality-tv version of the experiment flopped because they did not give the guards instructions. "For television producers the experiment bared a painful truth: if you leave ordinary people alone, nothing happens. Or worse: they organise into a pacifist commune. Scientifically speaking, the experiment was a success" (p. 198).

[u/cyvaris]

The quick line about people needing to be conditioned to violence is something I think is a core tenant of leftist thought, alongside people needing to be conditioned to greed. Glad to see the idea at least briefly touched on here.

[u/ThereInTheTrees]

Fucking love thought slime.

[u/SnarkangelPlays]

Thought Slime is Best Slime

[u/Jasper1984]

Good that they were being so obvious! People might miss the point! (seriously)

[u/phil701]

I like this video. Not a big fan of the implication that torturous revenge fantasies against rich people is a good thing though.