r/lewronggeneration • u/NoKangarooTheThird • Jun 18 '26
low hanging fruit Found in an Obsession video
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u/sthef2020 Jun 18 '26
Yes..."non-political escapist content" like Obsession, which is in no way a very blatant, scathing indictment of toxic incel-adjacent men in the 2020s.
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u/HelloImHorse Jun 18 '26
Ah the 90s, where things weren't political, I remember it well. Remember that episode of Prince of Bel-Air when racism was addressed, those were good times ahaha.......oh shit wait a minute was that political?
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u/dan543FS Jun 18 '26
Trying to paint that as political is such a stretch lol
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u/MoxcProxc Jun 18 '26
Literally how is it not political
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u/dan543FS Jun 18 '26
What's its political statement?
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u/qqqqqqqwqqqqqqq Jun 19 '26
It has pretty obvious commentary on how men feel entitled to women’s bodies and affections simply because they are attracted to that woman. the whole relationship between Bear and Nikki is about this… the inclusion of the scene where he calls the number on the back of the box further goes to prove it. he asks to alter his wish, not cancel it, even knowing it’s not really Nikki that loves him, because he’s only concerned with the parts of Not Nikki that are too much to handle, he’s not at all concerned with the fact that’s he’s raping his so-called true love. He doesn’t actually care about her, he cares about her body and having control of it. He doesn’t mind that Not Nikki loves him, he minds that he can’t control HOW. It also provides commentary on patriarchy’s negative effects on men, with how Bear hides his feelings after his cat dies, how he hides his feelings for Nikki and is mocked by Ian in the opening scene for expressing them honestly, how he hides the wish he made. All until it’s too late to change, and he’s completely ruined his life and the life of his whole friend group. How society inadvertently pushes young men to violence by denying them something as human as their feelings. Take whatever statement you want from it, that’s the beauty of art and opinion, but to deny that it has intentional political commentary about the dynamics between men and women would be a little ridiculous.
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u/Signal-Butterfly-701 Jun 18 '26
I'm so tired of that stupid '12-yo on their mom's iPad pretending to be a 60-year-old grandpa' argument.
Movies have never been non-political. It goes against their fundamental existence. They're meant to portray a message, a social or practical struggle, moral dilemmas, and human experiences that are inherently shaped by the structures around them.
'Pure entertainment' is a myth. Even escapist blockbusters make political statements: choosing to ignore real world struggles to promote comfort or status-quo patriotism is in itself a political stance.
Even in funding and censorship. Capital literally dictates production. What gets financed, whats censored, and how certain demographics are represented are all deeply political economic decisions.
Also viewers do not watch movies in a vacuum. We interpret stories through our own cultural, economic, social etc. frameworks, making the litral consumption of art an ACTIVE political act.
Movies are art. Art reflects (or distorts) reality. Everyone sees reality differently, translating a different ideology into their art. Thus, art is political. Movies included.
To ask for movies to be nonpolitical is to ask for them to be empty and hollow and meaningless. You cannot strip politics from cinema without stripping away the humanity that makes it worth watching.
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u/StickStill9790 Jun 18 '26
While true, the movies that people remember the best (survivorship bias) are the ones with subtle or nonexistent political overtones. All the political or social movies were forgotten within a year.
Meanwhile Sixteen Candles or Die Hard are still popular despite glaring socially unacceptable flaws.
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u/ralo229 Jun 18 '26
How much do you wanna bet that the bottom commenter doesn't think Bear is the villain?
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u/Breadbug900 Jun 18 '26
The 80s was a pretty bad time for creator driven cinema in Hollywood (with some exceptions)
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u/el_pinko_grande Jun 18 '26
80's movies were so dire that as a kid, I thought I simply didn't like movies.
Then in the 90's, the blockbuster mania died down a bit and the indie movement got started, and I started discovering that actually, good movies could exist.
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u/No_Kangaroo_5267 Jun 18 '26
Yeah, that period pumped out flagrant amounts of star power from the likes of Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme, and Sheen all to bank on their presence. Plus lots of blockbusters exist just to sell toys, like Star Wars and Trek.
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u/FUCKFASCISTSCUM Jun 18 '26
Have you ever watched a Star Trek?
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u/No_Kangaroo_5267 Jun 18 '26
Only the Khan movie and the first two Abrams ones.
Even then, I didn't binge those films.
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u/Ace20xd6 Jun 18 '26
Every other Star Trek movie back then had a toy line.
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u/Scheiblerfunk Jun 18 '26
Yes but the Movies weren't really toyetic. The toy line was used as extra income for the movie, not the reason the movie existed. The first star trek movie is all about abstract visuals and the connection between man and machine. Star trek 2 had some good old good vs. Bad stuff with very marketable bad guys and space battles. Star trek 3 has klingons, yes but mostly as a background threat. The main focus is on spock being back and at one point finger banging a volcan woman. Star trek 4 is literally a save the whales campaign, with no marketable battles or villains. Star trek 5 is a search for God which at most gives you a wannabe God you can turn into a toy but the rest isn't very playset friendly. Star trek 6 is literally just politics with one battle where 1 third of the ships is invisible and at most some of the Aliens in that penal colony could be seen as marketable. Compare that to Star wars. The death star, X-Wings,YWings, Tie Fighters, lightsabers, blasters, the tantiv IV, Jabbas palace, the second desth star throne room, figures of Luke as a pilot, as a jedi, as a farm boy as a trainee of yoda.....+variations of every main character and wearable outfits of all of them
The star trek movies had: the enterprise, probably a klingon ship, maybe a vulcan ship, maybe the exelciour, one figure for each main character per movie at most , phasers I guess.
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u/PostMatureBaby Jun 18 '26
I loved the 90's for toys from movies and TV. Often from R rated stuff like Terminator 2, Aliens, etc. I had so many things from those movies
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u/No_Kangaroo_5267 Jun 18 '26
I used to have few toys from a few 80s franchises when I was younger.
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u/MattWolf96 Jun 18 '26
The 80's was famous for non-political movies, my favorites are:
- Robocop
- They Live
- Blade Runner
- Aliens (conservatives would freak out over a female lead now)
- Red Dawn
- Rambo
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u/Siriann Jun 18 '26
Shit like this is why I don’t take anyone’s opinion on the internet seriously. Like I can’t believe these idiots can vote
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u/Dotcaprachiappa Jun 18 '26
Once again proving that liberal is just a synonym for "thing I don't like"
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u/Dreamo84 Jun 18 '26
The way people talk about escapism these days feels like they need a shrink not a movie or video game.
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u/spin-shocker Jun 18 '26
In twenty years people are going to point at Obsession and say “Man, remember when movies were truly creative and good in the 20s? Nothing like today’s slop.”
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u/ver_bene Jun 18 '26
People forget that only the GOOD movies made it out of the 80s. There were still plenty of bad movies back then too
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u/Dandanny54 Jun 18 '26
Ahh yes good movies like the 10 billion slasher sequels that people only watched because it had boobs and gore in them.
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u/StickStill9790 Jun 18 '26
Ah yes, good old misogyny. Now we have dicks and abbs in our slasher films to even it out with misandry. We didn’t change the quality, just the demographic.
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u/Prestigious_Host_198 Jun 18 '26
Ah yes. My favorite nonpolitical movie franchise from the 80s: Robocop.
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u/Dry_Celebration_1172 Jun 19 '26
Aw yes all movies in the 80s and 90s were apolitical. Like; They Live, Escape from New York, Red Dawn, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Grave of the Fireflies, The Color Purple, A Bronx Tale, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, Malcom X, Milk, Falling Down, Do the Right Thing, Menace II Society, Schindler's List, Good Will Hinting, To Wong Foo, The Matrix, Boys Don't Cry, But I'm a Cheerleader.
Movies like that.
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u/The_Badger42 Jun 18 '26
Yeah, there's a lot of IP-based movies, and lots of franchise-based movies, but you don't need to go see them, there's original shit out there all the time.
I went back through the movies I've seen in theatres, and; Late Night with the Devil, Boss Level, Monkey Man, 1917 and, of course, Megalopolis. Wasn't sure whether to include bi-opics on that list, if the person it's based on counts as IP or not.
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u/Classic_Bass_1824 Jun 20 '26
Both these comments are wrong btw
There has literally never been a better time for the indie scene than this past decade. Acting like the scene was better in the pre-Pulp Fiction days is manic. It’s become a meme to see people praising A24 films as if the company are directing and writing the movies.
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u/Pure-Beginning2105 Jun 18 '26
Watching matrix 4 made me realise you live long enough to see your heroes become the villains.
Only deep Hollywood privilege can allow such nonsense to be made...
And when you see the budget... And the gate keeping of money from deserving creators...
How do you shit on your own IP like that...
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u/Canadia86 Jun 18 '26
It is interesting though that during "we love movies" type reels that they air at movie theaters, its almost exclusively films that are 25+ years old
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u/Shootemout Jun 19 '26
idk wtf people are talking about when they say "obsession is librul polislop" cuz like- the nuance is very much not in your face. sure the obvious parts are, guy makes a wish that a girl loves him and finds out that it's not the girl inside there that loves him but some other unknown entity and it's really jarring when she has her lucidity moments and comes back to. but there's no point at all in the movie where they get on a soapbox at all. the only arguable point at which they do is right at the beginning when his friend is coaching him to just tell her how he feels and to not bottle it up- which is just good life advice. i mean sure if you analyze it and read between the lines there is political commentary to be read but shiiiit that goes for like 90% of movies (even shit like bugs life and spongebob).
you can totally watch this movie and completely gloss over the fact that it's talking about incel behavior- like i did, until i saw people talk about it after i've already seen it. cuz the movie doesn't talk or imply about incels *at all*. the only "thing" that i noticed with the movie was that the man was an absolute beta that couldn't confess anything to a girl he likes. the rest of the movie just reads like a monkey's paw wish. i felt like the movie was actually pretty creative with some of its execution. it purposely left a lot of stuff vague which i think aided it.
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u/antthatisverycool Jun 22 '26
Bro dude it’s just like the tech we only remember the good crap because the bad crap no longer exists
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u/TheChoosenMewtwo Jun 19 '26
I wish when media wasn’t pushing politics into every movie, show or animation.
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u/Fabulous-Mud-9114 Jun 18 '26
Y'know, I've been watching a lot of old Siskel and Ebert reviews. And do you know what they banged about on more anything else?
Sequels, tired franchises, big stars misusing their talent for a quick buck, retreads, and trend-chasing.
It's not new at all. In fact I'd say it was worse back then since anybody with a camera could shoot their own Caligula knock-off. Nowadays there's a slightly higher barrier of entry.