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BONUS - Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Patreon)

Published:
2020-10-27 16:00:31
Edited:
2020-11-29 20:02:59
Imported:
2024-06

Downloads

Content

We had to do it. We discuss the new Borat movie, the difference between "good" and "bad" liberal comedy, and the difference between liberal and left comedy.

"Notes on Borat Subsequent Moviefilm" by Will Sloan - https://willsloanesq.wordpress.com/2020/10/25/notes-on-borat-subsequent-moviefilm/

Our episode on the original Borat - https://soundcloud.com/michael-and-us/episode-30-borat

Files

Comments

Tony Mines

(Content warning for mostly unrelated) I feel like I should know the answer to this, but did you guys ever do 'Planet of the Humans', I can't recall? I watched it last night and found it a frustrating wind up. It's not Moore's movie - he only produced it - but it might as well be for how it constantly constructs arguments through omission. My frustration is that I claim no expertise or prejudice on this subject, but the film insists on constructing itself as though I do, deferring constantly to that "here's where you've been believing a lie" jump point that is the stock in trade of paranoid stoner memes. Climate science is an empirical subject that demands empirical questions and answers, to which the normy viewer can but defer to expert claims, trying to determine their veracity using contextual analysis. But the film asks no empirical questions, and no space is even given for the making of empirical claims. Instead it's comprised entirely of 'Gotcha' moments where various spin-merchants are shown to contradict themselves. This tells me precisely zero about competing sciences. I'm trying to figure out who the audience is supposed to be? The film is almost entirely concerned with exposing the hypocrisy of corporations who commit violence under a green banner, but is trying to do so without mentioning capitalism. I kinda' sorta' get this idea - "our film has an important message that everyone needs to hear, but most people are not anti-capitalist, so coming off like a left wing polemic will turn folks away" - but the result is to side-step the central dichotomy between technology and capital. The film euphemistically refers to "the profit motive" twice, and finally "capitalism" for the first time only once in it's closing moments. There are references also to the unsustainability of "growth", but with a dangerous unwillingness to define what it means by "growth" allowing space to conflate capitalist accumulation with population growth, unexamined. Constantly throughout I was, "okay, so this implementation of a technology by capital is inefficient. But is that a shortfall of the technology or the implementation? Could the same technology under different paradigms be effective? Is this 'secret' dependency on fossil fuels you've 'revealed' an inherent feature, or contingent to this existing practice?" The film never asks those questions. So again, who is it for? I feel like most of the likely audience would already not conflate green-capital with a more general theory of a renewable-driven society? More people than not have an antipathy towards the expensive 'organic' hipster shit in supermarkets. I mean, like, I've seen Quantum of Solace, yeah? I kinda know this part. But the film wants to tell me I don't know this part, and then tell me I should draw a line under Wind and Solar because Octan did them badly? Maybe Wind and Solar *are* bullshit, but the film fails to make that distinction or that case, which again is an empirical query. So it's a wind up. It's a shame, because as an investigation of the thesis 'there's this thing that capital calls Biomass, but it's bullshit and you should be against it' the film seems like an informative account. But it leaves so much space for eco-fascist depopulation ideologies (and never once mention nuclear) that I didn't know what to do with it beyond that? Anyone else?

Willis

You guys should look at the supplemental material released after the film. Debunking Borat would be worthy of its own M&U episode.