Title says it all.
I am a huge 40k fan and I know how problematic 40k is with its portrayal of endless war and facism. Comrade @relay@lemmygrad.ml has put it best:
Maybe all of the 40k factions are fascist and that universe’s lore has no dialectic of class struggle and is to violent to be realistic, thus serves as part of the superstructure for fascism.
it reinforces the idea that the conflict between tribes will always supercede the conflict between classes. It’s wrong on so many levels.
And yet I can’t hate it. I have a hard time taking 40k serious and seeing it as more than a silly boardgame with cool minis and (deliciously) stupid lore.
Same with B99. I know that the show is horrid copacanda, I know that shows like this prevent people from seeing pigs as the pigs they are because “funny cop show portraits them as silly and relatable.” But I still like the show a lot. I like the characters and just pretend that it plays in a parallel universe were cops aren’t the worst.
I just sort of suppress any critical thoughts and take those things at face value without thinking about what they imply. It’s just very hard to find alternatives.
So yeah I feel terrible for finding enjoyment in this stuff even though I know I shouldn’t. Can anyone relate or do you perhaps have similar feelings towards other franchises?
I get it. In terms of fiction I can let it slide and just enjoy the entertainment as long as it’s not in your face lib grandstanding. For example I’ve enjoyed the current Star Wars series.
In terms of documentaries I just can’t anymore. My partner enjoys the Netflix true financial and cult crime type stuff and I get headaches from that kind of non-materialist drivel.
I actually just started watching some C-dramas and I’m having a great time.
Andor was nice in parts, I thought they portrayed the efficient evil of the Empire really well from a personal level and the uprising kicked ass. Wish there was more of SW from the people’s perspective, thought they might go there with the second sequel when they had that kid slave during the casino heist, but it didn’t go anywhere.
Yeah I know what you mean.
I feel like 40k or B99 problems stem from the liberal environment in which they are created. In another society I wouldn’t have any problems with them. A show about silly cops doing silly stuff comes of way different in a communist society where the job of the police really is helping and protecting others instead of being the skull breakers and murderers of capitalism. That’s part of the reason why I can find enjoyment in B99 but not in stuff like the Rookie.
B99 is almost a caricature and while it never engages in any solutions or real (read non liberal “a few bad apples”) criticism of the police. It’s comical enough for me to go “Yeah that’s fiction.” While still being aware that at the end of the day it shows racist murderers and enforcers of the bourgeois rule as funny good guys.
The Rookie tries to make you feel sympathy for real life cops sooooo bad it’s ridiculous. It’s rather obvious that the intention of the show is to portray a “relasticish” police drama. Which just doesn’t gel with me since there just is nothing sympathetic about real life cops at all.
If you can enjoy it, enjoy it. No entertainment is completely free of issues and problems. It is frustrating watching something with friends and they clearly don’t examine the deeper themes whatsoever (“It’s just a fun superhero movie, there’s nothing deeper about it, you overanalyse everything!”)
But if you’re just enjoying something on its own, especially something with a huge variety of writers coming at the franchise with wildly different interpretations like 40k, there’s nothing wrong with that.
I’ve touched on this before, but as socialists, we need to be able to reach the masses. The masses aren’t interested in theory, or why their favourite cop show is problematic, they just want fun distractions. You have to ease people into that stuff, and you start by being a regular person who can enjoy things rather than an overly uptight “stop having fun guys” kind of person.
*Insert that Ultra-Maoist copypasta here. *
It is frustrating watching something with friends and they clearly don’t examine the deeper themes whatsoever (“It’s just a fun superhero movie, there’s nothing deeper about it, you overanalyse everything!”)
I pretty much never examine the deeper themes of whatever I’m watching
After listening to and reading Parenti, I couldn’t watch any/liberal entertainment media at all. It wasn’t a feeling of guilt put undiluted anger. Books, shows, graphic novels. Everything.
Thankfully that feeling relented. Now I can enjoy most fiction (written, audio, or audio-visual). I’m a little bit more discerning than I was. But I can even enjoy the stuff that’s right on the nose because it’s so ridiculous.
So long as you’re treating 40k as entertainment rather than a guide to life, it’s fine, I think. You can always critique it while you’re engaging with it. Just know that it could ruin it for you for a while, until you ‘re-adjust’ to enjoying things that you are critical about.
No, I can easily find reason to hate something especially if I realize it’s bourgeois propaganda.
