Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Fistful of Tropes

antipope.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 50 posts

Re: A Fistful of Tropes

#11

Post by noirscape »

Biologist123 wrote: post #9
gary_0 wrote: post #4

> Zombies, for example, show us something really ugly about embedded white supremacist terror of a slave revolt I dunno about that. Years ago, I was (very stupidly) wandering alone in a very bad part of town, and the only other people on the street were the homeless drug addicts, scattered here and there and shuffling about slowly, only dangerous if you let them get within biting range, and I thought, "is this where…

I’ve started to wonder whether zombies are metaphors for bad ideas that refuse to die, as they become wired into culture and belief. A few examples: crypto, carbon offsets, some might say certain religions. Other examples welcome for my own filing system.

Most zombie stuff is largely made for cheap shock rather than anything else. Few zombie stories are about the zombies themselves. The original author almost hits the nail on the head - the "Elite panic" stuff is a closer understanding of what these stories are about.

It's... Almost an accurate description of a zombie story. The goal of a zombie story is usually to just say "Yeah, look at us humans. Even when the world falls apart around us, we'd rather still hurt and murder each other for selfish gain rather than surviving and sticking together." Which is an assumption that has been challenged very often, especially on the scale of humans that most zombie stories operate on (usually no larger than 4 or 5 families that the cast interacts with.)

It's also to the point where it becomes very predictable when a group that seemingly breaks the mold shows up, just to show they're much more morally evil than it first seems. Group is well off during the apocalypse -> they're cannibals. Odd friendly loner -> he's keeping a zombie (usually a loved one) in his basement and wants to feed the main characters to it. Safe bastion with surviving humans -> someone offs themselves and it falls apart infighting because of the added zombie. Every "good" group must be punished because it'd defy the logic of the genre.

Personally I don't really believe much of what zombie stories have to say is accurate - reality has shown us that when humans are put through events where the majority of other humans around them aren't available (ie. Natural disasters), that we tend to stick together and survive together.

Re: A Fistful of Tropes

#12

Post by earnestzombie »

gary_0 wrote: post #4

> Zombies, for example, show us something really ugly about embedded white supremacist terror of a slave revolt I dunno about that. Years ago, I was (very stupidly) wandering alone in a very bad part of town, and the only other people on the street were the homeless drug addicts, scattered here and there and shuffling about slowly, only dangerous if you let them get within biting range, and I thought, "is this where…

[flagged]

Re: A Fistful of Tropes

#13

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

gary_0 wrote: post #4

> Zombies, for example, show us something really ugly about embedded white supremacist terror of a slave revolt I dunno about that. Years ago, I was (very stupidly) wandering alone in a very bad part of town, and the only other people on the street were the homeless drug addicts, scattered here and there and shuffling about slowly, only dangerous if you let them get within biting range, and I thought, "is this where…

It's possible that he's speaking less about "Night of the Living Dead (1968)" as an early zombie film, and more about "White Zombie (1932)" as an influence on later films, as it earlier and more clearly on topic: Set on a sugar cane plantation on Haiti, with voodoo, etc. As the title suggests, the shock is not just that there's a zombie, but that ... this time, she's White!

Re: A Fistful of Tropes

#14

Post by OfSanguineFire »

pavlov wrote: post #2

> “Note that I'm allergic to kitsch Americana, especially Westerns, am a singularity skeptic and atheist in real life, expect FTL travel and/or time travel to prove impossible, ditto mind uploading and "true" general artificial intelligence, and strongly suspect the answer to the Fermi paradox is that our kind of tool-using intelligent life is vanishingly rare in the cosmos. Manifest destiny is white supremacist (rea…

> Manifest destiny is white supremacist (read: Nazi)

Nazism is a phenomenon of early 20th century Europe. Even if that political movement drew on some older prejudices, it mixed them with new contemporary concerns, and the total aggregate dates specifically to that era. 19th-century North American manifest destiny was racist, and perhaps for certain people its space-colonization echoes today are, but to apply the label Nazi feels very ahistorical, dishonestly so. One might conclude that the author is being provocative for the sake of profitable online outrage.

Labels are getting thrown around too carelessly. I’m reminded of an HN post I once saw where anti-LGBT attitudes in the Muslim world were called literally fascist, even though they often predate fascism (again, a distinct political phenomenon that appeared at a particular point in time and space) by centuries.

Re: A Fistful of Tropes

#15

Post by eesmith »

pavlov wrote: post #2

> “Note that I'm allergic to kitsch Americana, especially Westerns, am a singularity skeptic and atheist in real life, expect FTL travel and/or time travel to prove impossible, ditto mind uploading and "true" general artificial intelligence, and strongly suspect the answer to the Fermi paradox is that our kind of tool-using intelligent life is vanishingly rare in the cosmos. Manifest destiny is white supremacist (rea…

From the front page, "This site is called antipope due to a typing error long ago in the pre-history of the web. If you want to read about it, here's the history" linking to https://www.antipope.org/charlie/old/antipope.html .

> Antipope acquired its name due to a drunken mistake in 1991. ... "What sitename do you want?" ... "I said, "How about autopope.uucp?" ... "Okay." Hic. Burp. And the next day, I was the somewhat bemused owner of a site called antipope.uucp .. And of course, it seemed reasonable in 1996 to register antipope.org and hang it off my own server in 1997, when I finally got around to a colocation deal.

> So Antipope is not a significant name; it's just a communications error. You have been warned.

Re: A Fistful of Tropes

#16

Post by pavlov »

eesmith wrote: post #15
pavlov wrote: post #2

> “Note that I'm allergic to kitsch Americana, especially Westerns, am a singularity skeptic and atheist in real life, expect FTL travel and/or time travel to prove impossible, ditto mind uploading and "true" general artificial intelligence, and strongly suspect the answer to the Fermi paradox is that our kind of tool-using intelligent life is vanishingly rare in the cosmos. Manifest destiny is white supremacist (rea…

From the front page, "This site is called antipope due to a typing error long ago in the pre-history of the web. If you want to read about it, here's the history" linking to https://www.antipope.org/charlie/old/antipope.html . > Antipope acquired its name due to a drunken mistake in 1991. ... "What sitename do you want?" ... "I said, "How about autopope.uucp?" ... "Okay." Hic. Burp. And the next day, I was the somewh…

Thanks for providing context for the joke.

Re: A Fistful of Tropes

#17

Post by thinkingemote »

gary_0 wrote: post #4

> Zombies, for example, show us something really ugly about embedded white supremacist terror of a slave revolt I dunno about that. Years ago, I was (very stupidly) wandering alone in a very bad part of town, and the only other people on the street were the homeless drug addicts, scattered here and there and shuffling about slowly, only dangerous if you let them get within biting range, and I thought, "is this where…

Stereotypical movie zombies are brainless but crave brains to consume. They can only die by destroying their brain. They look like humans but are no longer human but a kind of automatic animal. They are innocent in that it's not their fault they are like this and have no interior malice in their actions.

In a way it's mindless consumption on the capitalist frame (Romeros film in shopping mall helps) but also represent a broken or wrong search for knowledge, or brains or direction, dysfunction.

Generally zombie movies are really about the non zombies, the humans and their dysfunction.

Re: A Fistful of Tropes

#18

Post by flangola7 »

earnestzombie wrote: post #12
gary_0 wrote: post #4

> Zombies, for example, show us something really ugly about embedded white supremacist terror of a slave revolt I dunno about that. Years ago, I was (very stupidly) wandering alone in a very bad part of town, and the only other people on the street were the homeless drug addicts, scattered here and there and shuffling about slowly, only dangerous if you let them get within biting range, and I thought, "is this where…

[flagged]

> Shut-in stays indoors to avoid the Edinburgh Festival crowds under the pretext of fearing covid. August 2023 mind you.

Avoiding crowds is one of the best ways to avoid COVID-19. I don't understand what you're getting at.

> Craves human contact and camaraderie, sends out cry for help by vaguely connecting random pop culture tropes to white supremacy -- as is now tradition -- to attract others of his ilk to his comment section.

As is now tradition? I don't follow this either - can you list a few examples of what you're referring to?

Re: A Fistful of Tropes

#19

Post by eesmith »

pavlov wrote: post #16
eesmith wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the front page, "This site is called antipope due to a typing error long ago in the pre-history of the web. If you want to read about it, here's the history" linking to https://www.antipope.org/charlie/old/antipope.html . > Antipope acquired its name due to a drunken mistake in 1991. ... "What sitename do you want?" ... "I said, "How about autopope.uucp?" ... "Okay." Hic. Burp. And the next day, I was the somewh…

Thanks for providing context for the joke.

What makes the joke not work is that cstross is really the autopope, drunkenly mislabeled the antipope. You can clearly see he still provides pontifications.

If Musk is the opposite of the autopope, what does that make him?

Re: A Fistful of Tropes

#20

Post by mrob »

defrost wrote: post #5
gary_0 wrote: post #4

> Zombies, for example, show us something really ugly about embedded white supremacist terror of a slave revolt I dunno about that. Years ago, I was (very stupidly) wandering alone in a very bad part of town, and the only other people on the street were the homeless drug addicts, scattered here and there and shuffling about slowly, only dangerous if you let them get within biting range, and I thought, "is this where…

If you're intent on imagining a subtext to Night of the Living Dead a movie which never mentions zombies and features the (undead) neighbours harrass a black man who is ultimately shot dead by a sheriff’s deputy then you might also want to recall it was conceived in the aftermath of the Detroit and Newark riots and released to audiences who had just seen National Guardsmen shoot antiwar protesters to death at Kent St…

According to Romero, Duane Jones got the lead role because he gave the best audition, not because the role was written for a black man.
Post reply on HN