The Hugh Manatee Challenge

[Nordic]

A lot of soldiers are starting to support the OWS movement.

What's a good Oligarchy to do?

I don't think there's any propaganda component to the story at all, but I wouldn't be surprised if they indeed started disparaging returning soldiers. I mean, the ones who don't commit suicide are gonna be just a drain on the system, right? And what if they talk? And what if they get popular? I mean, Ron Kovic would have been a lot less of a thorn in the side if he'd just died, right?

[eyeno]

Wow, dig the manatee whisperer.

[IntegratingInsanity]

But, a returning soldier that reports that America is not under threat of Jihad, and that his true duty was to be a mercenary for empire is not what empire desires. Empire does not want returning soldiers to report that they guarded poppy field, oil fields, etc...This is what I mean when I said "taking the starch out of returning soldiers is high priority".

Not that Hugh's story has anything to do with this. But if the story were a plant for the media I would suspect it would be to cast doubt on returning soldiers so that people would view them as ptsd nutso.

Hope it ok to post here.
Wasnt this exactually what happened after Vietnam? Alot of Vet's were strongly involved in the anti-war movement, and as someone with ptsd (me - for a diff reason) ive communicated with quite a few online, and all seem to be quite aware of illegal operations their government carries out.
Didnt alot end up homeless/without pensions etc? I wonder if this was anything to do with them speaking out?
Its intresting (here in England where im based) how effective the "support our heros" publicity still is. We went from being against the middle east invasions, to supporting the troops near enough overnight.

[Col Quisp]

But no one has been able to answer the most pressing question: Why did Benjamin Colton Barnes, a 24-year-old Iraq war veteran, open fire on Anderson?

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2012/01/mount-ranier-set-to-reopen-as-cause-of-gunmans-death-disclosed-.html

Indeed. Why?

[kafor]

Off the cuff, after driving 400 miles straight, Re: Vietnam Veterans. The first that comes to mind is Cool Hand Luke. A crazy combat vet, drunk, cutting parking meter heads, I'll assume everyone knows the story. And the effort to discredit continu. ed at least to Miami Vice, with Hero*n smuggled in coffins. Admittedly, I stopped viewing media decades ago, so my examples probably don't come close to being all inclusive.
kafor

[JackRiddler]

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So what's coming the next few weeks?

Hm, movie looks like a French middlebrow life-affirming trifle about a couple helping their sick child fight a disease, but what's with the title, the poster and the glee? War as amusement park?

Jan 27

Perhaps this war will be due to a crisis with China that keeps both nations riveted to their screens?

Jan 20

In New York City in 1980, Dexter Mitchell plays half-willing big brother to his neighbors, a trio of exchange students from the People's Republic of China.

Hmmm, maybe how it ends has already been foreshadowed?

Jan 13

Set in New York City as civilization collapses, eight survivors huddle in a bomb shelter and begin to turn on each other as they wait for a rescue.

The "handful of strangers in a box go nuts and turn on each other" seems to be very popular the last few years, both at the movies and in reality shows. Plus: Blowing up New York. They never tire of that, before or after 9/11.

Unlike the above, the following has a TV spot running. The ads mainly convey the idea that no security system, no government weapons or prisons and no mere Pentagon budgetcan contain the danger of Osama's High Tech Domestic Successors Denzel Washington.

Jan 13

Synopsis: The storyline follows the only surviving agent of an attack on a CIA safe house (Ryan Reynolds) as he tries to get a lethal prisoner (Denzel Washington) to a second safe house before being taken out by violent forces that want them both dead.

Looking ahead to the rest of the year, amid all the superhero blockbusters (Batman, Spiderman and the Avengers in one year) and the War-Is-Good blockbusters, the thing that really grosses out is that 21 Jump Street is going to be a movie.

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[Wombaticus Rex]

The Divide should be pretty brutal, Frontier(s) was one of the most vicious horror films I have ever seen. Made all the recent American stuff look quite tame, although in true Patriot fashion Hollywood promptly got around to stealing everything from that film...so now The Divide is indistinguishable.

This is why I never bought Pasolini apologist lines re:Salo ... you can't make shit like that without moving that there Overton Window. Now your "extreme art statement" is part of the working vocabulary of every hack with a studio deal and a few decades later there's 10,000 sequels to Hostel, each more sneering and clinical than the last. That shit is black magick, pure and simple.

[compared2what?]

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Looking ahead to the rest of the year, amid all the superhero blockbusters (Batman, Spiderman and the Avengers in one year) and the War-Is-Good blockbusters, the thing that really grosses out is that 21 Jump Street is going to be a movie.

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You know what might help with that, though?

If you stop to think about what that show's cultural legacy actually turned out to be for a minute. Or so I find, at least.

Plus, in a more general sense, it's as good an illustration as any of what an ugly little blight on the mind the exercise proposed in the OP is inevitably destined to be. Just in case anybody (newsflash, Sepka) needs one.

[Searcher08]

invariably...?
If one is seeing it as mind blight, one is already displaying the first symptoms. Eating people in confined places may follow (see Young and Rubicam for further details)

[JackRiddler]

If you stop to think about what that show's cultural legacy actually turned out to be for a minute. Or so I find, at least.

So starting the career of Johnny Depp (someone whom we both love, madly, I assure you, as an artist and for his political significations too) retroactively turns "21 Jump Street" into a show that didn't provide ideological affirmation for the incursion of police into schools that escalated around that time and has continued ever since? I can follow as far as agreeing that Depp's body of work is consequential and the series is no longer of measurable consequence (pending how the remake does), but these are unrelated facts.

Plus, in a more general sense, it's as good an illustration as any of what an ugly little blight on the mind the exercise proposed in the OP is inevitably destined to be. Just in case anybody (newsflash, Sepka) needs one.

Ah, I'm taking this as a humor thread.

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[Nordic]

"The Divide" looks like an inconsequntial B movie to me, might not even get a theatrical release in the US.

And the story looks like a classic low budget "a bumch of people in a room" excuse to make a movie.

I could be wrong but it really looks like one of those films that are made strictly for the international market you see hawked at the film bazaars here such as the AFM.

[compared2what?]

Deleted due to the inadvertent deletion of the post I was trying to expand upon.

I don't know how I managed to do that. But I apologize for it.

[compared2what?]

If you stop to think about what that show's cultural legacy actually turned out to be for a minute. Or so I find, at least.

So starting the career of Johnny Depp (someone whom we both love, madly, I assure you, as an artist and for his political significations too) retroactively turns "21 Jump Street" into a show that didn't provide ideological affirmation for the incursion of police into schools that escalated around that time and has continued ever since?

No, don't be silly. Who said or suggested that?

I can follow as far as agreeing that Depp's body of work is consequential and the series is no longer of measurable consequence (pending how the remake does), but these are unrelated facts.

You've lost me. It seems highly unlikely that you're arguing that the consequential impact that a cultural artifact has on...well, the culture isn't relevant to what it's cultural legacy actually turned out to be. Impossible, in fact.

To what premise do the stipulated facts not relate?

Plus, in a more general sense, it's as good an illustration as any of what an ugly little blight on the mind the exercise proposed in the OP is inevitably destined to be. Just in case anybody (newsflash, Sepka) needs one.

Ah, I'm taking this as a humor thread.

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It was an overstatement. It is inherently a reductive exercise, though.

[compared2what?]

Hi, honey! This is a recap of my prior response to you, which I inadvertently deleted:

invariably...?
If one is seeing it as mind blight, one is already displaying the first symptoms. Eating people in confined places may follow (see Young and Rubicam for further details)

No, inevitably.

And also: Okay. You're right. No, not inevitably. That was an unjustified overstatement on my part.

(I then went on to note that it's not necessarily true that seeing mind blight is indicative of a blighted mind, my main point being that mind-blighting tactics are real precisely because psy-ops are real. Because, very loosely speaking, they're pretty much one and the same thing, as a matter of fact.)

The really important part was that you were right, though. Obviously.

[JackRiddler]

So I saw a trailer for 21 Jump Street and it's not a remake but fart-n-piss skit humor for 12-year-olds, in the same vein as the Starsky & Hutch revival and other such trifles. So no, there's no danger that the cultural legacy of the original will be affected. Depp is safe.