Thread by @AlexandraErin

Rudy Giuliani insisting that if the whistleblower is a hero then he's a hero for trying to sandbag Biden has the exact same energy as the Joker director wondering why his movie got flak but John Wick didn't, when they're both about violent men.

This kind of facile, surface level equivalency is... I mean, it's the bread and butter of reactionary discourse.

"You say you want tolerance yet you will not tolerate intolerance, how is that any different?"

"Hating Nazis? Sounds like something a Nazi would do."

In the case of the Joker director, it really shows just how *bad* people are at understanding media analysis and criticism when their defensiveness rears its head.

The criticism of Joker isn't "he's violent". It's more nuanced than that. It's always more nuanced than that.

Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes vs. Women is pretty entry level and thus not that deep, but people who only want to refute and not understand manage to simplify its points absurdly, too.

For example, commenting on damsel in distress tropes doesn't mean "you're not allowed to have bad things happen to women".

I mean, heck, let's forget video games and jump back to John Wick.

It's a movie trilogy where the inciting incident is: a dog gets killed.

Death of animals is probably the most widely warned for trigger in cinematic culture. Even people who don't think of it as a trigger warning or content warning, who don't think they believe in those things because they heard it's against free speech...

...well, a lot of them still like to check a website to find out if the dog dies in a movie before they watch it. Death of pets, even fictional, is something people care about.

John Wick is an immensely popular trilogy of movies that deals with a dog explicitly being killed.

Lot of people don't like gratuitous animal cruelty in their entertainment, lot of people even if it's not drawn out or gratuitous or exploitative don't want to watch movies where a dog or other pet dies... but John Wick does it and it works.

There are people who will never watch it, or will skip the beginning, and I'm sure there are people who think it's horrible for that reason. But it's not ~*Cancelled*~.

People wanting warnings about [trope] is not "you aren't allowed to do [trope]." People wanting to talk about the ramifications and implications of [trope] aren't trying to ban [trope]. People wanting creators to be more thoughtful and deliberate about [trope] aren't censors.

The percentage of people who simply want violence -- specifically violence against women, or violence in general -- gone from movies is very small. Most feminists who like movies have some violent movies they like. Most people who get called "SJWs" or "cultural Marxists" do, too.

And it's not hypocrisy or double standards, as the reactionaries always cry when they notice this.

It's a single standard that the never bothered to understand.

The problem with the Joker movie isn't that he's white or a man or a violent

Even saying that the problem is he's a violent white man... I mean, it's accurate but not complete. There's more nuance, but getting to it requires willingness to read past the part that makes you defensive, and also draw some basic inferences.