As for why I was listening to conservative talk radio (🤢) in the first place, that’s all the play at my job. I usually tune it out but can’t use earbuds for safety reasons and I’m not high enough on the totem pole to change the station. I won’t specifiy the exact program because I believe it’s regional.
I’ve been excited for Alex Garland’s Civil War for months now. A24’s been killing their drama films recently and it’s been refreshing having what I thought was an unapologetically left-leaning major media studio who’s found success through authentic, grassroots support. After hearing what felt like four ad reads for the movie in an hour and knowing that means A24 paid money - gave direct financial support - to a show that, amongst other things, spends hours a day promoting bigotry, Russian propaganda, and J6 apologetism, has ruined it for me.
Am I just overreacting here?
No, I think conservatives who think they want to cosplay as soldiers are exactly the people who need to see what their fantasies would really look like, if brought to fruition. I think the ad placement was deliberate and the movie is intended to be a shock lesson for all people, but especially these ones.
Genuine question, is this what you actually think will happen, or just a fantasy about what you want? Those types are so galvanized from a decade plus of online echo chambers that I doubt any of that shock would get through to them. Meanwhile, the harm A24 is doing by funding (through ad placements) conservative commentators is very real and very immediate.
As a former conservative republican turned socialist, I’ll say that it can happen. Certainly some will never change their minds or see the world any other way.
But some of us will. And some of us only will if we are exposed to thoughts and viewpoints outside our usual echo chamber.
I agree that I’d rather A24 wasn’t offering any financial boost to extreme conservative viewpoints. But I am hopeful that at least a few people in those audiences will be drawn to watch and that it will make them ask questions they never thought about before.
Do you remember some things that got you to move from a conservative Republican to a socialist?
It was definitely a journey and I know lots of things had an influence. Probably some that I didn’t even recognize were impacting me in the moment.
I can tell you that friends made a large difference. No one has more influence on you than someone that actually cares about you. So having several friends that cared about me despite my warped viewpoint was probably a fundamental fulcrum for shifting my views.
I also had the opportunity to befriend a lot of people who are often “othered” in conservative circles. It becomes a lot harder to accept someone painting a group in a negative light, when you actually know people that clearly don’t fit that narrative. It forced me to question the narrative.
Finally though, I think it was me starting to recognize the hypocrisy. An obvious one is that Christianity is strongly tied into the culture, but nothing about modern conservatism exemplifies “love your neighbor as yourself”. Another big point of hypocrisy for me was when Trump was made the candidate in 2016. I’m old enough to remember that one of the large talking points made against Bill Clinton in the 1992 election was a lack of character. And I just couldn’t comprehend how character was so important to the Republicans then, but clearly wasn’t an issue for their current candidate. Character and integrity are important attributes to me, and in retrospect Trump’s candidacy was really a final straw for me.
As for why I moved towards socialism specifically? Largely because I don’t believe capitalism scales well, and the free market leads to too many competing priorities that basically boil down to the Prisoner’s Dilemma (the best outcome for the individual versus the best outcome for the group). I think there has to be an authority external to the market who can intervene when advancements are clearly coming at the expense of the society.
Of course it’s a fantasy about what I want. Everything that ever happens in the world starts out as a fantasy of what some people want.
I think there are more cracks in that galvanizing than you think. Overturning Roe is not turning out to be the grand success they’d hoped. Yes, it’s because people who vote conservative require the truth to impact them personally and emotionally before they get the point. Yes, that’s fucked. But it’s the sad reality we’re dealing with here.
I don’t expect people to flip full socialist LGBT ally overnight. But if someone starts suggesting we take up arms against our fellow residents of the US, a depiction of reality might cause enough people to pause and think, “You know, maybe let’s not.”
Don’t act like fictional depictions have no impact on real opinions.
Don’t act like fictional depictions have no impact on real opinions.
Like this article “How Sci-Fi Like ‘WarGames’ Led to Real Policy During the Reagan Administration” points out.
I have yet to see the movie so I can’t really comment about the content/message as it relates to conservative media, but at the end of the day, A24 is a business, and their marketing won’t really care that much as long as it generates more money in return from the exposure. They will only pull back if it starts to hurt their bottomline. I honestly wasn’t even aware that A24 was left-leaning. I know their whole deal is being the indie/grassroots type of production company, but do they specifically market themselves as left-leaning?
I understand your frustration though.
I have yet to see the movie so I can’t really comment about the content/message as it relates to conservative media
Same here. I was planning on getting tickets this weekend, but knowing that a portion of my money will be going to support conservative hate commentators has made me change my mind.
A24 is a business
This is true, but they’re also (AFAIK) still privately-owned, which doesn’t make them beholden to the same “line go up at all costs” legal requirements of public businesses. They could have conceded some monetary returns of it meant keeping their principles, IMO.
I honestly wasn’t even aware that A24 was left-leaning.
Maybe it just speaks to how poorly I view the right nowadays, but A24 always seemed pretty leftist to me. More than almost any studio of their size or larger, they seem to emphasize the stories of marginalized folks in a way that (again, to me) felt authentic. Their movies always featured POC or LGBT performers or characters that didn’t just feel like tokens but also didn’t hand-wave the experiences of belonging to those groups. Which is why I feel especially confused that they’ve decided to fund the people that make a living off hating those same groups.
It could also be that they have X million to spend on marketing and they liason with a company that owns radio stations, they just give them x amount of money to advertise in certain markets based on whatever numbers the station gave them and let the station figure it out.
Not sure why you think they are left. I’ve seen nothing to indicate that. They may be but it’s not obvious from their films.
Also private equity just bought into them heavily. So whatever they were, they won’t be in the future which I find depressing.
Anybody who tells you it’s possible to not participate in capitalism while living under capitalism is a liar
If you don’t advertise the movie, you won’t nearly have the same numbers to be able to put out said movies. Nothing is simple or black and white anymore - life has many nuances. Slow down your judgments and try to be as fair as you can and you likely be on the money most of the time
Edit: better wording
Conservatives are just too fucking dumb to understand satire. To them, this movie is like a dream fantasy come true so they can watch it and go “haw haw haw I wish I could do that.”
Similar thing happening in Helldivers right now. It’s clearly a parody of fascism, but there is a loud portion of the community who really doesn’t get it and unironically loves all of the authoritarian stuff.
That’s a reason it’s really good for them to see the movie. I only hope they don’t walk out partway through when the realize pa won’t shoot a hippie, get a medal, and marry the prom queen.
One thing that makes me actually hope for our future is that we have a lot of veterans of serious wars in our country, and the ones who have really seen the bad stuff know what civil war will bring, and they won’t stand for it.
Yes, I know some people know cosplay veterans who shoot all day and talk about killing liberals, but the vast majority of those guys did not fight and kill people.
Seems like a reasonable reaction.
Shut up and go see the movie.
A couple of the early ads that I saw for the movie leaned pretty hard into “god save america” so I don’t really know what I think about A24 right now.
This movie looks to be ripe for using extreme propaganda like Starship Troopers, where the over the top jingoist rhetoric is part of the irony.
Based on the director and the one preview I saw, it is not going to be putting conservative gun nuts in a positive light.
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At first, I understood these to be satire. I also don’t know what to think of the movie or A24 now.
I mean what better place to advertise left-leaning media than in a right-wing show? Maybe get some of the racists to stop being racist.
The movie is neither. The director didn’t intend it to be anti left or anti right. If you watched the trailer, Texas and California are teamed up together.
