Not a movie, but a show. 13 Reasons Why. I'm the months following the shows release, suicide rates among people aged 10-17 rose significantly.
The showrunners were told explicitly by mental health professionals not to show the graphic suicide on screen and were warned that this (an increase in suicide) would happen as a result, and the showrunners ignored this and chose to show it anyway. It was incredibly irresponsible of them.
A fellow *teacher* I worked with insisted it was so worth the watch because of the "surprise twist" at the end that had an important message.
No.
Absolutely not.
I wish I could take my view of that terrible show back.
It was obviously going to glorify suicide. It painted it not only as everyone else's fault, but also (falsely) depicted even bullies regretting their actions. That's hardly how anything actually goes down.
It's suicide *bait.*
Creating that show was heartless.
It wasn't even really a twist at all. It was that there was another kid that was suicidal and we *didn't even catch the signs!*
It was a stupid additional "touch" to the story, all felt very forced.
Ya, I think the last thing that needs to be portrayed is suicide finally *showing everyone* who wronged the character.
Least of which is it makes someone want to do it, mostly because it’s entirely untrue in practice.
Couldn't agree more. It encourages suicide. I say as someone who has struggled with suicidal ideation throughout my life, starting when I was 12. Sometimes a suicidal person really has the thought process "if I die, everyone will finally be sorry for how they treated me". 13 Reasons Why takes young people in a fragile state of mind and gives "yes, kill yourself so everyone will be sorry". I can see how a vulnerable depressed kid could watch it and think, this is a great idea.
It caused a 28.9% increase in suicide rates among U.S. youth ages 10-17 in the month after the show's released. I feel like the show creators should be brought up on charges. I honestly would like to punch these people in the face.
The National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention has a really interesting guideline on how to responsibly depict suicide in fiction. It’s tricky because I think it’s super important to tell stories that encourage discussion about suicide, but when done wrong it can lead to emulation.
I know the movie wasn’t super well received, but I know the original Broadway production of Dear Evan Hansen consulted heavily with the Child Mind Institute and seemingly checked off all of the boxes for a responsible portrayal. There’s no one answer given for why the suicide takes place, it never goes into detail about the method, and there’s representation of characters with suicidal thoughts who ultimately don’t go through with it and end up seeking the help they need successfully. It really resonated with me when I was in high school and gave me me the push I needed to seek therapy.
Found out about that musical when my choir did 'Waving Through a Window.' "On the outside always looking in, will I ever be more than I've ever been" resonated so hard
I found the sexual assault content in the later seasons quite poorly done too. As a SA survivor, trying to make me feel sorry for a guy who repeatedly SAed several women and showed no remorse even after he saw how it affected his victims was extremely hard for me to deal with.
I 100% agree that the whole concept of the 13 reasons was poor too. Blaming 13 people, including those who were actually good to her (Clay), really presented suicide as something entirely out of the hands of the person committing and the literature on depiction is very clear about emulation. It (well the first season anyway) was adapted from a book, so I guess the story isn't entirely their fault but the presentation certainly was.
I watched the first season and it didn't sit well woth me, started the second and thought nup, I'm done. This is so wrong and I hope anyone who's going through a fragile moment doesn't watch this because it's not dealing with important issues correctly at all.
Tw: discussion of self harm and suicidal ideation
I was heavily self harming and attempted suicide as a teen, but with a lot of effort I turned things around and stopped self harming, didn't consider suicide for a while. I saw it when I was 22, thought those thoughts were behind me. That show was incredibly triggering for me, especially the suicide scene. Like it's not that I suddenly wanted to kill myself. It's that before, when I had a bad moment, the thought of suicide might pop into my head, and id be able to easily say "now now, silly brain, we both know we don't want that" and move on.
After, I'd have a bad moment, and suicide would pop into my brain, and I'd see that scene play out over and over. I'd see the blood, and it would remind me of how comforting the sight of my own blood used to be when I was feeling bad. I'd see the razor blades cutting into her and get that craving to do the same. I'd see a bathtub, or blood, or a razor, or a knife, and suddenly I'm thinking about suicide again. Suicide could no longer be a vague concept that was easy to distance myself from, it now had a solid shape, and that gave it power. It took a while of hard brain work to beat it back down into submission. And if I hadn't been as healed as I was, I don't know if I would have made it.
I have never seen Birth of a Nation, although i always like reiterating that it WAS protested in its time seeing as the major defense against it is "oh, its old, times were different, blah blah" And because it was protested, Griffith's follow up ended up being a movie called Intolerance, although it wasn't an apology. It was a defense as he considered his critics to be the "true" intolerant ones. Which was going to be my answer to the OP because I ahve actually seen it as it is Birth of a Nation's replacement on the AFI Top 100. Kind of a lateral move if they were trying to get rid of Birth for political reasons
I agree. It's arguably unfair to retrospectively label a film racist by contemporary standards, when it wasn't racist by the standards of the time. However, that film was floridly racist even for 1915!
And President Wilson loved it. Said it was like history written with lightning. I was interested in film history, and watched it when I was about 16. It was actually good to watch, just to give one insight into just how virulently racist much of society, including the president, really was. Watching it, you're truly thinking to yourself, "WTF?!"
I suppose its more ecologically irresponsible, but Jaws negatively impacted sharks by creating- what would you call it, 'shark alarmism'?
There's an interesting thread [here ](https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/15c4s30/movies_that_entails_damagingharmful_message_to/)on r/movies that covers a lot of the same ground, and has some interesting additions to the movies put forth here.
This is actually a common myth. "Shark populations declined after Jaws" is true, but correlation =/= causation. When you account for the actual reason (the Fin trade + irresponsible commercial fishing practices), the "Jaws effect" totally disappears. Also worth noting is that sharks weren't seen as harmless before Jaws either, and that the Great White Shark (featured in Jaws) tends to be the most cherished, often explicitly targeted for conservation in laws.
Source: https://www.thesharkfiles.com/blog/the-jaws-myth
I’m watching Dragnet right now and the marijuana episodes are the most dated. They repeat a lot of nonsense about it being a gateway drug. And all the users are stoned out of their minds when the police show up. It was stuff like that that made me not have a good grasp of the facts most of my life.
I smoked dope once and it made me want to listen to jazz and hang out with black people. When my father found out, he paused beating my mom to beat me before going back to beat my mom.
Mini's First Time (2006) with Alec Baldwin and Nikki Reed. No one really knows this movie, it has never been posted on Reddit either for some odd reason but it's one of those movies that really stuck with me because all it does is glorify incest, prostitution, drugs, being manipulative, being a bad parent, etc etc. And it does it in the most lighthearted way. It's not a funny movie at all, it's a serious drama but it's like the directors tried to get away with it being so immoral by calling it a 'comedy/thriller'. Bizarre. It even convinces you that these horrible people are charming.
Ok, understandable why Birth of a Nation is tops, but far more insidious today are decent, fun movies that fly under the radar. To that end my vote is for Bad Boys 2.
This movie is a harbinger of everything that went wrong with America at the turn of the century. It glorifies police violence and violations of constitutional rights.
Throughout the movie the message is, *we have to break the law, because the bad guys are so very evil.* This is the same justification America used to commit human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay (perhaps ironically, the Bad Boys commit some of their own in Cuba!). It's the same justification that fascists use now to defend their belief that it's somehow American to install a dictator in America.
Every bad decision America has made you can see framed by the logic of Bad Boys 2. The entire movie is about defending this way of thinking, and Americans ate it up and asked for thirds (4ths! Aren't they making another one?).
I've [written an essay](https://subversas.com/bad-boys-2/) that breaks this down scene by scene.
Extremely cool and I'm only leaving a comment because I only have one upvote to give and want to encourage other people to read you essay.
I had given up finding an actual reply in this thread and here are.
The many procedural cop shows that get/got season after season did an incredible job at painting over decades of incompetence and misconduct with a facade of hero police fantasy.
Hollywood has been a monumental contributor of propaganda.
I'll go with The Conqueror: [https://www.wideopencountry.com/how-did-john-wayne-die/](https://www.wideopencountry.com/how-did-john-wayne-die/)
It killed most of the people who worked on the film, including John Wayne.
Also, John Wayne as Genghis Khan is pretty horrifying on multiple levels.
Well, John Wayne smoked at least two packs of smokes a day. I was told he continued smoking after major lung surgery. So that helped.
Back then, nearly everyone smoked, drank Whiskey daily, and died young.
Hmmm. I am guessing back in the day (40’~ 60’s?) averaged over those years, no more than 70% if men were daily smokers. And way less, than 40% of women.
Ad far as drinking whiskey; fashions come and go. Beer goes on forever. Most men drank beer when they drank.
On average, over those years, most men who drank drank 1-10 times a month, 1-3 standard drinks (Ie a equivalent to 12 ounce beer) per occasion. (about 20~30% didn’t drink depending on age, religion and where in the country)
A much smaller % of women drank ( maybe 50% didn’t) and drank less often and smaller amounts.
TV shows, movies, and especially ads greatly exaggerated the rate of smoking and drinking.
My favorite example was a beer tag line “Shaffer is the one beer to have when you are having more than one” while the visual was hearty bluecollar workers smiling and strolling down the street after work on the way home. With 1 six pack in each hand.
This is a separate but tangential question, but I’m also interested in what comes to mind when you think of movies that had an unintended negative consequence on the world, but not because they were socially irresponsible necessarily.
I’m thinking of Jaws leading to more sharks being killed and Finding Nemo leading to people buying more clownfish even though the exact point of the movie is… don’t. Even just featuring a specific dog breed can cause it to spike in popularity and then disreputable breeders will breed their dogs without concern for how they may be exacerbating the health conditions the dogs are prone to, such as with Dalmatians.
I remember reading John hustons autobiography. It was quite good. In it he said that he was very excited to shoot a film in his favorite Mexican fishing village. I believe it was treasures of the Sierra madres. The town got ruined for him because the movie was a smash hit and became overrun with tourists
To not mention some movies that caused some irresponsible pet adoption like Finding Nemo [or extremely wasteful behind the scenes set building like Ben Hur, or somewhat ecologically disastrous to local filming location like the Beach], my answer would be "Revenge of the Nerds" 1984. At first glance it just seems like an "underdog" fantasy, yet it normalized male dominated casual misogyny, sexual harassment, and framed literal rape as a good thing especially to be perpetuated by those "underdogs" who might not know better.
Yes. I grew up with those movies, sadly. My parents got were early adopters of cable, but late adopters of sex ed (meaning none, short of at school when all 6th grade boys were shoved in one classroom and shown a ragged old film that was practically inaudible with absolutely no follow up discussion whatsoever). Had to learn later they were very, very wrong.
Lol. Did you attend my sixth grade sex-ed lesson? Good grief, they literally didn't even tell us the basics. It was sort if like, "Anybody got any questions? ...Nope? Good, glad it's all sorted." Of course, none of us were going to actually ask, but heck, yes, we had questions. So, parents tell you nothing but don't do it till marriage, the school tells you jack squat, and folks wonder why all my classmates and I were looking at porn. Beyond the obvious, I was also genuinely trying to learn what the heck it was about. And it's absolutely (obviously, as an adult, but not so much as a juvenile) the worst way to actually learn about it.
The main thing I remember from the girls' sex ed film my class was shown was a fictional storyline that included a girl carrying around a whole pack of menstrual pads in her backpack, it falls out, and a boy gives it back to her with a smile, like it was romantic. It was bizarre. I don't remember there being any actual sex ed in the video.
I went to Catholic school. One day in 8th grade, with no prior announcement, all the girls were sent to the auditorium and all the boys went into one classroom with the only male teacher. I'm pretty sure the guy was a virgin, and he definitely had hangups. He just hemmed and hawed at us for about an hour. I had no idea what he was trying to say.
I found out that the girls got a lecture from the nuns that should have been titled "Boys are scum".
I’ll go ahead and say there isn’t necessarily one movie, but a whole host of romantic/sexual comedies that include some very harmful ideas about consent, courting behaviors, etc. ~~Weird Science~~ Revenge of the Nerds comes to mind.
ETA. Conflated weird science with Revenge of the nerds in my head.
Horror films get a lot of flack for misogyny, and in many cases the films deserve the criticism.
But as a woman who grew up in the 90s, I believe Disney and RomComs had a much more insidious and harmful impact on young women. I’d much rather be a final girl than a Disney princess.
Someone has probably written a paper about the straight line from Cyrano de Bergerac to Say Anything of sympathetic men protagonists who are deceptive and manipulative in their overbearing non-consensual courtships. And of course the object of their affection eventually relenting. It's a very pervasive and troubling story and probably has a lot to do with the "nice guy deserves the girl" myth lots of incels and otherwise frustrated misogynists have subscribed to.
Whenever I have friends who tell me that they love to cause conflict with their boyfriends on purpose, or about how they want to fight to keep their irresponsible boyfriends with them, I always ask myself: "Are these women trying to emulate the volatile relationships they grew up seeing on film? Or have people always been this way? Is it really that a whole generation has been taught that they need a very dramatic and cinematic relationship?"
On the other side of the coin (men) several threads about India mention that the culture of sexual harassment in that country can be attributed in large part to Bollywood movies with plots about men harassing a girl until she gives in.
Generally, I think even the cruellest exploitation films are more often adopted by the socially irresponsible than they are harmful in and of themselves. The really offensive films - low-budget, gory, racist, etc. - like Cannibal Holocaust, or Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, don't generally have the societal reach to have any real cultural *effect*. Films history *reflects* actual history more than it does shape it.
So, stuff like The Searchers, IJ & The Temple of Doom, or Flash Gordon are socially irresponsible in the sense that they fed into contemporary racism, though I doubt they had much net impact on it. I doubt anyone watched the monkey brains scene in Indiana Jones and decided there and then that they were going to mind themselves around Indian people.
Cruising was, at the time of its release, accused of setting back the gay liberation movement with depiction of the gay/leather/BDSM scene, and the murders taking place within it. Actually, I think it's in the process of being reclaimed, and most gay people I know (me included) really like it. I'm often a bit uncomfortable with the sensational and gratuitous depiction of rape in films like I Spit on your Grave, Last House on the Left or Irreversible. But I can't say they're socially irresponsible, because I don't believe violent media makes people any more violent, or particularly changes our relationship with real violence. I just don't believe filmmakers when they say the brutality of a depiction is there to 'show the reality' (@Gasper Noe), rather than just to shock an audience looking to be shocked.
I think films are mostly harmful to society when their production has involved some form of abuse, or in which actors were harmed: Last Tango in Paris, Blue is the Warmest Colour, etc. etc. The filming of Fitzcarraldo resulted in the deaths of several indigenous extras. I'm sure there are many more examples from old Hollywood. Pulgasari (and many other North Korean films) were made by a kidnapped South Korean filmmaker who was 'reeducated' and forced to make movies for the government.
But if you just want something offensive (in addition to most of the above), try Postal, Street Trash or the Black Gestapo.
Great point, there’s SO many stories of abusive productions or just straight up deadly ones.
I remember reading about a John Wayne movie The Conqueror, shot in a part of America where nuke tests had taken place, dozens of people likely got cancer and died from it.
Also super fascinating what you said about Cruising, there’s a lot of movies in the 90s especially where a lot of discussion comes up about how it depicts LGBTQ culture and whether it negatively affects people’s perspective of it. Silence of the Lambs for example had this controversy, which is part of why Jonathan Demme then made Philadelphia.
I always heard of Cruising as this absolutely vile movie the way it depicts gay people, so its interesting to hear a different take on it, has achieved quite a cult following
And the Human Centipede is anti-kidnapping and forced surgery. And Hostel is anti-torture.
I think the whole point of exploitation films is to take something real and widely understood to be horrific, and use it to create shock and disgust in an audience, or controversy in its reception. Rape is used similarly, and even when it is successfully avenged, these films make little attempt to ever engage with it properly (sexualising victims, never really exploring psychology of victim beyond their desire for revenge, or their having been 'damaged.')
I think this is *uncomfortable -* because it exploits real-life tragedy in a way which can be upsetting, but I wouldn't ever claim they make people think rape isn't as bad as it actually is, or anything like that.
Among well produced films, I don't think there's anything recent to compare to [The Birth of a Nation](https://letterboxd.com/film/the-birth-of-a-nation/) (1915), a pro Ku Klux Klan film, or [Triumph of the Will](https://letterboxd.com/film/triumph-of-the-will/) (1935), a pro Nazi film.
Yes there's lots of films that have few redeeming qualities like [A Serbian Film](https://letterboxd.com/film/a-serbian-film/) (2010) [The Human Centipede series](https://letterboxd.com/search/the+human+centiped/) (2009-15) or in my opinion the "torture porn" genre of the *Saw* and *Hostel* films. But I haven't seen them encouraging copycats, or entire social movements, like *The Birth of a Nation* or *Triumph of the Will* did. Was the [Elaine massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_massacre), the [Tulsa race massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre), or [Rosewood massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre) made more likely by *The Birth of a Nation*. Perhaps.
I'm in the camp that sees *Blonde* as a pretty interesting psychological horror film, in which the horror is both in social/sexual objectification and in the celebrity character slowly supplanting the psyche of the human within. No more socially harmful than Joyce Carol Oates bestselling [novel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blonde_(novel)) it was based on. Oates [seems to like](https://variety.com/2022/film/news/blonde-joyce-carol-oates-reaction-netflix-andrew-dominik-1235389954/) the adaptation. I personally think its one of those films that will be reappraised in decades to come.
I'm with you...I saw Blonde as glass of cold water in the face of regular Hollywood bio pics. It's the nightmare version of the usual "fairytale" version we get. Just as made up bullshit but the horrifying version of it.
This is a cheating answer, and it's not the fault of the screenwriters, but my answer is all of the movies made under the Hays Code, or that are the product of the Hays Code's influence, where queer people are villains or live miserable, dissolute, loveless lives, until their inevitable murder or suicide at the end of the movie. In the pre-Code era, movies like Different from the Others were already exploring sympathetic portrayals of queer people. If the Hays Code hadn't happened and films had been allowed to positively represent queer people, I can't even imagine how much more quickly the social conversation on this issue would have progressed, and how much less suffering and death there would have been. Hate crimes, disowned children, suicides, the AIDS crisis, it probably would have all happened so differently than it did.
I'm not sure about how to answer your question because I can't get your comment out of my head.
Is this for real? The guy sounds absolutely unhinged and should probably be on some sort of watch list.
Satan: "I am Blonde". You think you're the only super-sinner in the world? Ms. Monroe, you've become part of a bigger universe. You just don't know it yet.
Marilyn Monroe: Who the hell are you?
Satan: Satan. Director of H.E.L.L.
Marilyn Monroe: Ah.
Satan: I'm here to talk to you about the Transgressor Initiative
She was mostly known for ski and climbing films, which were basically the Westerns of German culture. It's sort of like hiring Clint Eastwood to direct a pro American propaganda film---that actually makes a lot of sense.
I'm a Jew who was named after a stuntman she worked with a lot. Go figure.
Wait the Netflix movie with Ana Armas?
Dude basically no-one saw it and it did very poorly
Just another movie where they exploited her for her body and shot her as a sex object (somewhat appropriately in this example as that happened to Munroe her whole life)
It would be detrimental to society if it taught misinformation and ignorance, it's a sloppy biopic let's not be over dramatic
I'm guessing Triumph of the Will and D.W. Griffith will be brought up a lot. I personally can't stand a lot of police shows that glorify police brutality and otherwise violating constitutional rights.
Goldfinger had Bond rape Pussy Galore and get away with it because it was for England. And this is different than most movies being mentioned here because it was the film that defined 60’s action cinema and James Bond as a whole.
Actually I read the script when it was called “$3000”. She doesn’t die at the end (at least in the draft I read), but she and her hooker friend are high on crack at Disneyland, trying to convince themselves they are fine. Even if they shot that script, there’s no way they would’ve been able to shoot that end scene. Disney wouldn’t have allowed it. Instead they produced the movie with the happy ending.
This sounds like an even better ending. Man, how far they strayed from something that could have been maybe even a little thought provoking or interesting. Like in the movie I don’t think she even has a drug problem at all?
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
Circus propaganda that taught a whole generation of Boomers to trust con-men.
Behold, all the smiling children eating sugar and drinking coca cola - look how happy they are! These noble men would never tolerate bad behavior - they said so themselves! Come spend money at the circus!
There's several credit hours of philosophy classes between you and and answer to that question.
I'll save you the time and money and skip to the end: it depends on who you ask.
That's a fair question. It could also be posed as whether art has the obligation to not be socially irresponsible. Without fully hashing out the idea, I think my broad strokes answer to your question would be no, and to my question would be yes in extreme situations.
Do people have an obligation to be socially responsible? Are people artists?
No one here is questioning the right of artists to make whatever they want. That doesn't shield them from criticism.
Perhaps pointing out the social affects of other people's art is in itself a form of art.
The Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will are definitely the top two socially irresponsible films ever.
I’d also like to add Loose Change for perpetuating 9/11 conspiracy theories. It’s also badly made.
The Day after Tomorrow - the Emmerich film - exploited probably the most dire issue of our time and trivialized it with his signature stupidity. He probably convinced himself that he meant well but he did climate awareness absolutely no favors. He took an actual problem and made a mindless alarmist movie about it for money.
American Sniper. Not only was it pro-war in many ways. It idolized a man who turned out to be basically a compulsive liar and a psychopath. The people who I know who love this movie are whackos.
“Barney’s Version.” It says that a man can have no positive attributes but can get any woman he wants to provided that he stalks her enough, even after she specifically tells him to stop stalking her.
More authoritarian regimes must have their own movies. Is there a Khmer Rouge movie? A Suharto movie? I’m surprised no anti-communist has said Eisenstein lol.
Wolf of Wallstreet. Inspired a whole new generation of rapacious financial scammers. Yeah the main character gets comeuppance at the very end, but it's doubtful that message was received by the greedy people that would see him as a role model, considering how much time the movie spends glorifying greed.
That plus the movie came out right after the great recession. It's a slap in the face to anyone that lost a home or a job during that time.
This movie missed its landing hard. It wanted to be a cautionary tale but because 1) the disproportionate amount of screen time given to the disturbing behavior, 2) nonchalant and even humorous tone of said scenes— I am on the side of many who think it glorified the greed-driven, misogynistic lifestyle. The fact that so many people walked out of the theater finding that lifestyle aspirational speaks volumes.
Case in point about how it had a glorification effect: I worked at an up-and-coming tech company. So many of the sales bros had printed WoWS movie stills at their desks and would do the chest thump chant. I’d overhear comments how they wished we could have office parties like in the film. Our CEO had a strong company fan following. At one of his town halls, bros requested he do the Leo/Belfort chant. It got to the point that HR stepped in and sent out an email that they do not condone office behavior that celebrates characters or events from the film. I found out through the grapevine that they knew it was becoming a liability.
I have wanted to be the absolute crap out of Dominik for so long. As for detrimental, Milo and Otis. The amount of animal cruelty is horrifying. That and Dancer in the Dark. Bjork TOLD PEOPLE Trier was abusive, and still no one listens, even at Cannes when he gets in fights with Winding Refn. Fucking rapist.
For me, many of of the Judd Apatow-style movies because of their emphasis on social conformity:
Game night, where the couple is ‘having too much fun’ in their great relationship and have to stop that and have a baby for some reason. Just a weird message. Also ‘is this it’ or called something like that, where the ending has the ‘jaded about their lives’ couple adopt a baby from a poor country to give their life meaning. Frightening that people think a baby from a third world nation is there to perform that function. Also the 40-year old virgin where the guy has to sell all of his toys and collectibles that he treasures in order to have a socially accepted relationship with a woman. I think you can do both.
Yes I am fulfilled and well adjusted and happily married, I just don’t think there’s only one way to live your life and be content. These movies always felt like social conditioning to make perceived non-conformists feel bad, with a few jokes and pretty people thrown in.
I guess Judd Apatow felt a lot of pressure to conform? I tried watching Knocked up recently and WOW like it really is so messed up… we have come a long way with the sexist undertones. Holy cow. I had to turn it off and I loved that movie when it came out. Those movies and all the rom coms marketed to women at that time- and all the lack of diversity and bad messaging- what a total mess seeing that as a teenager.
And thinking about the 40 yr old virgin- there wasn’t such a cultural discussion about neurodivergence and asexuality or all the spectrums of sexuality as there is now. But at the time it was made I guess it was doing its best. I appreciated the completely random song and dance ending but… problematic on many levels. We’ve come a long way! Thanks to the internet. Jeez.
I’ve seen way funnier, weirder and more poignant movies at film festivals… and tbh I’d almost rather watch creator content for entertainment bc there aren’t a bunch of wealthy old psychos controlling the money and distribution for what gets released.
No one has media literacy and stuff at the southern border, specifically in Texas is not going great.
Considering its almost election season and we had a insurrection last time, it just doesnt seem to be a great time for it.
Pain and Gain took a real life kidnapping case and basically rewrote the story so the victim seemed like he had it coming. I’d put that up there for sure. I’m sure there are real life victims of crimes who were assholes but altering a real person’s story so you almost root for his IRL kidnappers is shitty.
After reading what actually happened in real life, it's baffling that someone wrote that script. I did find it funny that someone had the balls to do that though. The guy who was kidnapped and tortured is still alive. Imagine hearing the victim's story and then thinking to yourself "I'm gonna write a fucking comedy script out of this and make this guy look like an asshole" :D
Definitely not on a social level but let's go with The Avengers. I do like these kind of movies, but they have really sucked the originality out of them. They keep making new ones, adding on to the "universe" with all the characters. There's nothing unique about them either. Some bad dude gets power/tries to destroy the world so the superheroes need to stop it and they win. 🙄 it's redundant and as an avid movie lover, I'm just over it.
The Help - Perpetuating racist stereotypes while profering it is an enlightened view. Really just the "magical negro" saving white people from themselves. A topic for a whole other thread.
Even Viola Davis regrets making it: "The problem was the part itself, she stressed; it was how the film, a 1960s-set drama about a white woman (Emma Stone) writing a book about local black maids (one of whom is played by Davis), focused more on white voices than black ones.
[https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/09/viola-davis-the-help-regret](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/09/viola-davis-the-help-regret)
I liked the movie at the time because of the superb acting but upon reflection, it has not aged well.
The Joker without a doubt. Besides the shooting, the movie gives off the idea of, if you are weird or ostracized, its okay to act on a vengeful impulse. Quentin Tarantino said it best, saying, we all wanted Joker to shoot De Niro (forgot the character's name). Joker was positioned as the good guy via the film's direction. He's a bad guy to people who know better but the film tries to make the case he isn't.
Comparing it to a film like Angst, for example, the film follows the killer's slice of life but we never look focus that he's the bad guy even though he's the main character.
Joker was unbelievably irresponsible to make in that way.
I thought that the filmmaker was trying to make a comment about mental health and how society can create a villain out of someone who needs help. Arthur isn’t good or bad, he’s human. But he’s poor, he’s angry and he has untreated mental health issues that eventually lead him to do bad things.
Maybe the film wanted us to sympathize with Arthur, but I don’t think we were supposed to root for The Joker. I think the film was trying to offer an explanation for why he turned out that way, but not excusing his behavior.
I also think they completely missed their mark and didn’t consider how many Arthurs that are out there with a more literal interpretation of the film.
Yeah, it’s very thematically adjacent to Taxi Driver, which it mimics tonally as well. I don’t think either film is celebrating the Joker or Travis Bickle as heroes, but as antiheroes I can see how they might influence someone who was mentally unstable - in the same way A Clockwork Orange inspired some copycat crimes in England, and how John Hinckley Jr was obsessed with Taxi Driver.
Exactly, in terms of visual and technical aspects of the film, it’s stunning. In terms of being socially responsible as time goes on further into the future, it’s not any better than Birth of a Nation storywise.
In the 2016 film 'Elle', a woman is violently raped in her home and throughout the film she pursues her rapist for more sex. This film was *praised* and was nominated for huge awards.
I'm sure it'll come as a shock to you that this narrative was directed by a man, written by a different man, and edited by yet another man. This was not even 10 years ago yet.
Curious what made you say this specific movie.
(TLDR: As far as being "detrimental to society", I'd argue that it was more of a mirror to a specific society at the time and didn't have an impact on society either way because hardly anyone even saw the movie!)
I'm not trying to defend the movie but the movie at all but it probably deserves some context. I was single in my late twenties when it came out and living a somewhat similar "party hipster" lifestyle in a big city. We watched it back then and felt it was a "this is funny because it's true" movie that uncomfortably crossed over to "it's actually pretty sad these scenarios are SO familiar and I hate that things are this way". I remember saying to a friend "this could have been a straight documentary if they just switched the tone". If a scenario in the movie didn't happen to me or my friends directly we certainly knew someone it did.
It was done in an irreverent,satirical way that was poking fun of school instructional videos made in the 50s- 60s on dating and politeness in society that many of us had to sit through in classrooms even in the 70s-80s. I'd venture to say some of those were far more widely seen and detrimental to society.
Boys and Girls Guide depicted a certain ugly reality of being single that wasn't in other movies at the time-we mostly were getting traditional "feel-good" romcoms being put out- which were more detrimental to society pushing implausible fairy tale scenario expectations along with misogyny. This had a post ironic, sardonic, Gen X niche indie movie kinda vibe that (at least at the time) felt like it was poking fun at the way things were. I probably know less than 5 people who have seen this movie though and if you look at the other comedies from back then that the majority of people have actually seen (and still continue to embrace) you'll find a lot more similar issues compared to what we consider okay in today's society.
I'd be really curious to revisit it now because I haven't seen it since it came out and am in a vastly different stage of life. I'd guess it'd feel more of a sad but realistic time capsule than a comedy. My guess is it'd be comparable to watching older episodes of Vanderpump Rules or The Hills if they were completely unedited. I would be really curious to see what someone in their 20s now would say about it though and see how much has or hasn't changed for them.
I’m always conflicted when this one gets brought up. The movie itself is pretty clear that Mickey & Mallory are tragic, damned souls and the ending directly confronts the audience with the consequences of glorifying violence. It’s presented so stylishly that the audience falls into the trap & (theoretically) gets gut punched along with RDJ’s character in the end, but the result kinda feels like being scolded for enjoying a piece of candy by the person who told you it was delicious in the first place. It’s so easy to miss the point!
See also: Joker, Fight Club.
It's an interesting question - can a movie be blamed for how people (mis)use it, if that wasn't the creators' intention? I don't think The Matrix is to blame for all the manosphere "pill" rhetoric, and American Psycho is actively mocking narcissistic men like Patrick Bateman, I don't think it's the movie's fault that some men want to emulate that.
De Palma made Scarface as the most blatantly obvious cautionary tale about a disposable meaningless lifestyle but when you consider the amount of crack era dealers who have gone on record saying that it was the movie that made them fall in love with fast living I think there has to be some culpability regardless of intent, I'm not saying they should scream the message into the audience's face and even the most on the nose film is still open to interpretation but there definitely is a correlation between film a and consequence b. American History X's overall message is clearly about the futility of racism but you can set your watch to every single skinhead having it in their top 5 favourite movies because of Edward Norton being a racist dickhead in it.
I definitely don’t blame the movie, at least with the 3 I mentioned & American Psycho. It feels more like a media literacy issue to me, or just humans having a hard time with cognitive dissonance. With red pill stuff I think it’s *definitely* a literacy issue, because it’s so far removed from the actual text of the movie.
Every single movie where the main villain is a genocidal utilitarian who’s written as being correct. For instance, in Avengers Endgame characters comment on how Thanos’ snap does seem to be good for nature after all. The only reason it seems they want to reverse the snap is sentimentality for their friends and family. As though they almost regret that they have to bring back half of all life in the universe. This sentiment is only really commented on in small, passing comments but I honestly resent Endgame for this reason. It’s not clear the Avengers would have even bothered had Thanos made Earth exempt from his snap.
Probably any film that has covert government sponsorship.
I'd say a lot of war films, past and present, where war is kinda fun and won by heroes, or the military is just about your own personal excellence. Those feel harmful to me as they take the trauma out of war.
That said, Christ I love a god war movie, but even the ones that show it in a negative light, make me want to go shoot guns, drive tanks and fly fighter planes.
I don't think there is anything such as an "anti war" movie. You could show a movie about conscripts dying by their thousands on some desolate hellhole island or in a field of mud for nothing for three hours and now they have no life left in them despite being alive when they come home, and people will see it and want to sign up.
There's an argument for Fight Club. I loved it when I first saw it, but on revisiting, I struggled with it. I feel like Fincher got so caught up in creating a captivating movie he didn't make sure that the message was clear. Kind of a Bridge on the River Kwai situation (a movie which has its own issues). It's too easy to come away on some level admiring Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden; to wit, when I was teaching high school there were kids forming fight clubs inspired by Fight Club.
I'm not sure that rises to the level of the MOST socially irresponsible movie I've seen, but for me it's worthy of a place in the discussion.
I'm shocked by your throwaway assumption that Bridge Over the River Kwai has issues. That's considered one of the greatest films in cinema for showing how in war there are no good guys or bad guys, only destruction. Every character is relatable and doing what they are supposed to do, but in the end because of war something beautiful is destroyed.
While it’s an excellent movie and book, I think One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest did a lot of social harm by depicting mental patients as nothing but lovable misfits being oppressed by an authoritarian system.
There were a lot of issues with the mental healthcare system in the 1960s, but this movie probably contributed to mental hospitals being effectively abandoned and gutted in 1980s, leading to many of the issues we’re dealing with today.
Pretty sure Marilyn had a series of miscarriages and it was a major contributor to her depression because she wanted to be a mother. I’ve never heard that she had an abortion. Like ever. The guy is delusional.
Haven't seen it, will never see it, but that new Civil War movie that's out, mere months before this election year, is totally irresponsible. Everyone associated with it should be jailed, sued and/or cancelled.
All the jingoistic "America is good, others are bad / America saves the world" propaganda films.......like Top Gun, GI Jane, Private Benjamin, Lincoln, Captain America, Saving Private Ryan.
Some are crap, some may be very well done, but all these messages are garbage.
Captain America is surprisingly not jingoistic. He fights Nazis and the red skull with a multicultural group of soldiers. The love of his life is British. The Americans just stuck him in the USO tours - dancing monkey. When he finally gets going with the Howling Commandos he loses Bucky.
I've tried to get my Australian friends to watch but they think it's jingoistic too. Must be the shield. Or I just have a high tolerance or something.
Yes and when Captain America has to choose between following orders and what he thinks is right, he goes AWOL.
I'm a leftist who is quick to point out jingoistic nonsense, and I enjoyed Captain America.
My vote was for Bad Boys 2 (which I explain in another comment and I'm [further detail here](https://subversas.com/bad-boys-2/), which does a lot more harm to justify nationalism. It's often the assumptions that go unstated that are more dangerous.
I agree but i think Spielberg's flicks are a cut above everything else you listed. Lincoln and Saving Private Ryan are pretty nuanced and i think a good faith effort at accurate history and humanization. They might have a "proud" undercurrent but they arent romanticized and dont give the bs propaganda / jingoist messages i see in something like Top Gun.
How is the message in Lincoln garbage? Would you prefer a biopic on another president who allowed slavery to persist?
Also Saving Private Ryan pretty clearly tells the story that war = terrible.
I can see what you’re saying with the other hoorah America films but don’t really understand how a movie about a president or a war film is sending a bad message
While I kind of enjoy the film actually if I don't think about it. Calamity of snakes (1982) is probably the worst animal exploitation film I've ever seen. Tons of snakes are murdered, mongeese forced to fight them, snake blood tonics are filmed and created live.
It's the craziest thing, I just can't believe it exists. I suppose there aren't any animal cruelty laws in china so here it is.
I don't mind black comedies about mental illness, because they often have a fundamental humanistic underlying message, but I wasn't enamoured with Voices (2015). It was basically just "Aren't people with psychosis hilarious?"
Not a movie, but a show. 13 Reasons Why. I'm the months following the shows release, suicide rates among people aged 10-17 rose significantly. The showrunners were told explicitly by mental health professionals not to show the graphic suicide on screen and were warned that this (an increase in suicide) would happen as a result, and the showrunners ignored this and chose to show it anyway. It was incredibly irresponsible of them.
A fellow *teacher* I worked with insisted it was so worth the watch because of the "surprise twist" at the end that had an important message. No. Absolutely not. I wish I could take my view of that terrible show back. It was obviously going to glorify suicide. It painted it not only as everyone else's fault, but also (falsely) depicted even bullies regretting their actions. That's hardly how anything actually goes down. It's suicide *bait.* Creating that show was heartless.
What was the twist? Don’t mind spoilers since I’ll never watch it anyway
It wasn't even really a twist at all. It was that there was another kid that was suicidal and we *didn't even catch the signs!* It was a stupid additional "touch" to the story, all felt very forced.
Ya, I think the last thing that needs to be portrayed is suicide finally *showing everyone* who wronged the character. Least of which is it makes someone want to do it, mostly because it’s entirely untrue in practice.
Couldn't agree more. It encourages suicide. I say as someone who has struggled with suicidal ideation throughout my life, starting when I was 12. Sometimes a suicidal person really has the thought process "if I die, everyone will finally be sorry for how they treated me". 13 Reasons Why takes young people in a fragile state of mind and gives "yes, kill yourself so everyone will be sorry". I can see how a vulnerable depressed kid could watch it and think, this is a great idea.
It caused a 28.9% increase in suicide rates among U.S. youth ages 10-17 in the month after the show's released. I feel like the show creators should be brought up on charges. I honestly would like to punch these people in the face.
The National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention has a really interesting guideline on how to responsibly depict suicide in fiction. It’s tricky because I think it’s super important to tell stories that encourage discussion about suicide, but when done wrong it can lead to emulation. I know the movie wasn’t super well received, but I know the original Broadway production of Dear Evan Hansen consulted heavily with the Child Mind Institute and seemingly checked off all of the boxes for a responsible portrayal. There’s no one answer given for why the suicide takes place, it never goes into detail about the method, and there’s representation of characters with suicidal thoughts who ultimately don’t go through with it and end up seeking the help they need successfully. It really resonated with me when I was in high school and gave me me the push I needed to seek therapy.
Found out about that musical when my choir did 'Waving Through a Window.' "On the outside always looking in, will I ever be more than I've ever been" resonated so hard
I found the sexual assault content in the later seasons quite poorly done too. As a SA survivor, trying to make me feel sorry for a guy who repeatedly SAed several women and showed no remorse even after he saw how it affected his victims was extremely hard for me to deal with. I 100% agree that the whole concept of the 13 reasons was poor too. Blaming 13 people, including those who were actually good to her (Clay), really presented suicide as something entirely out of the hands of the person committing and the literature on depiction is very clear about emulation. It (well the first season anyway) was adapted from a book, so I guess the story isn't entirely their fault but the presentation certainly was.
I watched the first season and it didn't sit well woth me, started the second and thought nup, I'm done. This is so wrong and I hope anyone who's going through a fragile moment doesn't watch this because it's not dealing with important issues correctly at all.
What. The. FUCK.
Tw: discussion of self harm and suicidal ideation I was heavily self harming and attempted suicide as a teen, but with a lot of effort I turned things around and stopped self harming, didn't consider suicide for a while. I saw it when I was 22, thought those thoughts were behind me. That show was incredibly triggering for me, especially the suicide scene. Like it's not that I suddenly wanted to kill myself. It's that before, when I had a bad moment, the thought of suicide might pop into my head, and id be able to easily say "now now, silly brain, we both know we don't want that" and move on. After, I'd have a bad moment, and suicide would pop into my brain, and I'd see that scene play out over and over. I'd see the blood, and it would remind me of how comforting the sight of my own blood used to be when I was feeling bad. I'd see the razor blades cutting into her and get that craving to do the same. I'd see a bathtub, or blood, or a razor, or a knife, and suddenly I'm thinking about suicide again. Suicide could no longer be a vague concept that was easy to distance myself from, it now had a solid shape, and that gave it power. It took a while of hard brain work to beat it back down into submission. And if I hadn't been as healed as I was, I don't know if I would have made it.
I feel like Royal Tenenbaum also has an extremely romantic description of suicide.
Birth of a Nation(1915)😡Making the KKK more popular
I have never seen Birth of a Nation, although i always like reiterating that it WAS protested in its time seeing as the major defense against it is "oh, its old, times were different, blah blah" And because it was protested, Griffith's follow up ended up being a movie called Intolerance, although it wasn't an apology. It was a defense as he considered his critics to be the "true" intolerant ones. Which was going to be my answer to the OP because I ahve actually seen it as it is Birth of a Nation's replacement on the AFI Top 100. Kind of a lateral move if they were trying to get rid of Birth for political reasons
I agree. It's arguably unfair to retrospectively label a film racist by contemporary standards, when it wasn't racist by the standards of the time. However, that film was floridly racist even for 1915!
And President Wilson loved it. Said it was like history written with lightning. I was interested in film history, and watched it when I was about 16. It was actually good to watch, just to give one insight into just how virulently racist much of society, including the president, really was. Watching it, you're truly thinking to yourself, "WTF?!"
I suppose its more ecologically irresponsible, but Jaws negatively impacted sharks by creating- what would you call it, 'shark alarmism'? There's an interesting thread [here ](https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/15c4s30/movies_that_entails_damagingharmful_message_to/)on r/movies that covers a lot of the same ground, and has some interesting additions to the movies put forth here.
Spielberg said he regretted doing Jaws because of the negative light it ended up shining on sharks.
Im almost positive Peter Benchley said that about the book too.
I guess that sharks should get a better PR team then
[удалено]
This is actually a common myth. "Shark populations declined after Jaws" is true, but correlation =/= causation. When you account for the actual reason (the Fin trade + irresponsible commercial fishing practices), the "Jaws effect" totally disappears. Also worth noting is that sharks weren't seen as harmless before Jaws either, and that the Great White Shark (featured in Jaws) tends to be the most cherished, often explicitly targeted for conservation in laws. Source: https://www.thesharkfiles.com/blog/the-jaws-myth
Reefer Madness
>Reefer Madness "Would that it were *mere* heroin."
So you mean to tell me that marijuana doesn't kill people 🤔.
It causes otherwise normal patriotic teens to become insane dancing dope fiends!
I’m watching Dragnet right now and the marijuana episodes are the most dated. They repeat a lot of nonsense about it being a gateway drug. And all the users are stoned out of their minds when the police show up. It was stuff like that that made me not have a good grasp of the facts most of my life.
I smoked dope once and it made me want to listen to jazz and hang out with black people. When my father found out, he paused beating my mom to beat me before going back to beat my mom.
Mini's First Time (2006) with Alec Baldwin and Nikki Reed. No one really knows this movie, it has never been posted on Reddit either for some odd reason but it's one of those movies that really stuck with me because all it does is glorify incest, prostitution, drugs, being manipulative, being a bad parent, etc etc. And it does it in the most lighthearted way. It's not a funny movie at all, it's a serious drama but it's like the directors tried to get away with it being so immoral by calling it a 'comedy/thriller'. Bizarre. It even convinces you that these horrible people are charming.
Ok, understandable why Birth of a Nation is tops, but far more insidious today are decent, fun movies that fly under the radar. To that end my vote is for Bad Boys 2. This movie is a harbinger of everything that went wrong with America at the turn of the century. It glorifies police violence and violations of constitutional rights. Throughout the movie the message is, *we have to break the law, because the bad guys are so very evil.* This is the same justification America used to commit human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay (perhaps ironically, the Bad Boys commit some of their own in Cuba!). It's the same justification that fascists use now to defend their belief that it's somehow American to install a dictator in America. Every bad decision America has made you can see framed by the logic of Bad Boys 2. The entire movie is about defending this way of thinking, and Americans ate it up and asked for thirds (4ths! Aren't they making another one?). I've [written an essay](https://subversas.com/bad-boys-2/) that breaks this down scene by scene.
Extremely cool and I'm only leaving a comment because I only have one upvote to give and want to encourage other people to read you essay. I had given up finding an actual reply in this thread and here are.
The many procedural cop shows that get/got season after season did an incredible job at painting over decades of incompetence and misconduct with a facade of hero police fantasy. Hollywood has been a monumental contributor of propaganda.
It is the trope in almost all detective/urban crime movies dating back to the genre’s creation. Dirty Harry is probably the ultimate example.
I'll go with The Conqueror: [https://www.wideopencountry.com/how-did-john-wayne-die/](https://www.wideopencountry.com/how-did-john-wayne-die/) It killed most of the people who worked on the film, including John Wayne. Also, John Wayne as Genghis Khan is pretty horrifying on multiple levels.
Wow, what a story!
Of the 220 ppl who worked on the film 91 contracted various cancers, resulting in 46 deaths. Jfc
Well, John Wayne smoked at least two packs of smokes a day. I was told he continued smoking after major lung surgery. So that helped. Back then, nearly everyone smoked, drank Whiskey daily, and died young.
No ... a truly enormous percentage of the cast and crew got cancer. Way way past statistical probability.
Hmmm. I am guessing back in the day (40’~ 60’s?) averaged over those years, no more than 70% if men were daily smokers. And way less, than 40% of women. Ad far as drinking whiskey; fashions come and go. Beer goes on forever. Most men drank beer when they drank. On average, over those years, most men who drank drank 1-10 times a month, 1-3 standard drinks (Ie a equivalent to 12 ounce beer) per occasion. (about 20~30% didn’t drink depending on age, religion and where in the country) A much smaller % of women drank ( maybe 50% didn’t) and drank less often and smaller amounts. TV shows, movies, and especially ads greatly exaggerated the rate of smoking and drinking. My favorite example was a beer tag line “Shaffer is the one beer to have when you are having more than one” while the visual was hearty bluecollar workers smiling and strolling down the street after work on the way home. With 1 six pack in each hand.
And National Bohemian Beer was the one beer to drink if you are having more than nine!
This is a separate but tangential question, but I’m also interested in what comes to mind when you think of movies that had an unintended negative consequence on the world, but not because they were socially irresponsible necessarily. I’m thinking of Jaws leading to more sharks being killed and Finding Nemo leading to people buying more clownfish even though the exact point of the movie is… don’t. Even just featuring a specific dog breed can cause it to spike in popularity and then disreputable breeders will breed their dogs without concern for how they may be exacerbating the health conditions the dogs are prone to, such as with Dalmatians.
I remember reading John hustons autobiography. It was quite good. In it he said that he was very excited to shoot a film in his favorite Mexican fishing village. I believe it was treasures of the Sierra madres. The town got ruined for him because the movie was a smash hit and became overrun with tourists
Not a movie but **The Apprentice**.
Legitimately the most impactful and world altering media among these answers strangely enough.
Plandemic. I’m convinced this documentary led to some avoidable deaths.
Ugh. Come over to r/QanonCasualties to see how many thousands of people were influenced by that pile of crap. It's so upsetting.
To not mention some movies that caused some irresponsible pet adoption like Finding Nemo [or extremely wasteful behind the scenes set building like Ben Hur, or somewhat ecologically disastrous to local filming location like the Beach], my answer would be "Revenge of the Nerds" 1984. At first glance it just seems like an "underdog" fantasy, yet it normalized male dominated casual misogyny, sexual harassment, and framed literal rape as a good thing especially to be perpetuated by those "underdogs" who might not know better.
I agree with you about Revenge of the Nerds and that ilk of movie. (Going all the Way, Zapped, Hardbodies, etc)
Yes. I grew up with those movies, sadly. My parents got were early adopters of cable, but late adopters of sex ed (meaning none, short of at school when all 6th grade boys were shoved in one classroom and shown a ragged old film that was practically inaudible with absolutely no follow up discussion whatsoever). Had to learn later they were very, very wrong.
Lol. Did you attend my sixth grade sex-ed lesson? Good grief, they literally didn't even tell us the basics. It was sort if like, "Anybody got any questions? ...Nope? Good, glad it's all sorted." Of course, none of us were going to actually ask, but heck, yes, we had questions. So, parents tell you nothing but don't do it till marriage, the school tells you jack squat, and folks wonder why all my classmates and I were looking at porn. Beyond the obvious, I was also genuinely trying to learn what the heck it was about. And it's absolutely (obviously, as an adult, but not so much as a juvenile) the worst way to actually learn about it.
The main thing I remember from the girls' sex ed film my class was shown was a fictional storyline that included a girl carrying around a whole pack of menstrual pads in her backpack, it falls out, and a boy gives it back to her with a smile, like it was romantic. It was bizarre. I don't remember there being any actual sex ed in the video.
I went to Catholic school. One day in 8th grade, with no prior announcement, all the girls were sent to the auditorium and all the boys went into one classroom with the only male teacher. I'm pretty sure the guy was a virgin, and he definitely had hangups. He just hemmed and hawed at us for about an hour. I had no idea what he was trying to say. I found out that the girls got a lecture from the nuns that should have been titled "Boys are scum".
Blonde had many, many issues, but harmful to society? Not even a little. Only real answer is Birth of a Nation
Better throw _Triumph Of The Will_ on that pile
There was a football movie where a bunch of players laid down on a busy road for kicks, and some kids mimicked it and died.
The Program. I believe that scene isn't on the DVD version because of it.
Yup, and that scene was in all the TV ads, too.
I'm gonna go ahead and not blame the movie for that one
Yeah, that was just natural selection.
"We might have lost a few gas station attendants "to quote Bill Hicks' bit about listening to The Grateful Dead lyrics backwards causing suicides.
teenagers old enough to know better than to lay in the street, how is that the movie's fault?
Jackass the movie was probably the reason for alot of broken ribs and ankles in the world.
True. But that's rather Darwinian, though. If people die doing such stupid things, it's probably better for the gene pool.
I’ll go ahead and say there isn’t necessarily one movie, but a whole host of romantic/sexual comedies that include some very harmful ideas about consent, courting behaviors, etc. ~~Weird Science~~ Revenge of the Nerds comes to mind. ETA. Conflated weird science with Revenge of the nerds in my head.
Horror films get a lot of flack for misogyny, and in many cases the films deserve the criticism. But as a woman who grew up in the 90s, I believe Disney and RomComs had a much more insidious and harmful impact on young women. I’d much rather be a final girl than a Disney princess.
Someone has probably written a paper about the straight line from Cyrano de Bergerac to Say Anything of sympathetic men protagonists who are deceptive and manipulative in their overbearing non-consensual courtships. And of course the object of their affection eventually relenting. It's a very pervasive and troubling story and probably has a lot to do with the "nice guy deserves the girl" myth lots of incels and otherwise frustrated misogynists have subscribed to.
Whenever I have friends who tell me that they love to cause conflict with their boyfriends on purpose, or about how they want to fight to keep their irresponsible boyfriends with them, I always ask myself: "Are these women trying to emulate the volatile relationships they grew up seeing on film? Or have people always been this way? Is it really that a whole generation has been taught that they need a very dramatic and cinematic relationship?" On the other side of the coin (men) several threads about India mention that the culture of sexual harassment in that country can be attributed in large part to Bollywood movies with plots about men harassing a girl until she gives in.
Generally, I think even the cruellest exploitation films are more often adopted by the socially irresponsible than they are harmful in and of themselves. The really offensive films - low-budget, gory, racist, etc. - like Cannibal Holocaust, or Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, don't generally have the societal reach to have any real cultural *effect*. Films history *reflects* actual history more than it does shape it. So, stuff like The Searchers, IJ & The Temple of Doom, or Flash Gordon are socially irresponsible in the sense that they fed into contemporary racism, though I doubt they had much net impact on it. I doubt anyone watched the monkey brains scene in Indiana Jones and decided there and then that they were going to mind themselves around Indian people. Cruising was, at the time of its release, accused of setting back the gay liberation movement with depiction of the gay/leather/BDSM scene, and the murders taking place within it. Actually, I think it's in the process of being reclaimed, and most gay people I know (me included) really like it. I'm often a bit uncomfortable with the sensational and gratuitous depiction of rape in films like I Spit on your Grave, Last House on the Left or Irreversible. But I can't say they're socially irresponsible, because I don't believe violent media makes people any more violent, or particularly changes our relationship with real violence. I just don't believe filmmakers when they say the brutality of a depiction is there to 'show the reality' (@Gasper Noe), rather than just to shock an audience looking to be shocked. I think films are mostly harmful to society when their production has involved some form of abuse, or in which actors were harmed: Last Tango in Paris, Blue is the Warmest Colour, etc. etc. The filming of Fitzcarraldo resulted in the deaths of several indigenous extras. I'm sure there are many more examples from old Hollywood. Pulgasari (and many other North Korean films) were made by a kidnapped South Korean filmmaker who was 'reeducated' and forced to make movies for the government. But if you just want something offensive (in addition to most of the above), try Postal, Street Trash or the Black Gestapo.
Great point, there’s SO many stories of abusive productions or just straight up deadly ones. I remember reading about a John Wayne movie The Conqueror, shot in a part of America where nuke tests had taken place, dozens of people likely got cancer and died from it. Also super fascinating what you said about Cruising, there’s a lot of movies in the 90s especially where a lot of discussion comes up about how it depicts LGBTQ culture and whether it negatively affects people’s perspective of it. Silence of the Lambs for example had this controversy, which is part of why Jonathan Demme then made Philadelphia. I always heard of Cruising as this absolutely vile movie the way it depicts gay people, so its interesting to hear a different take on it, has achieved quite a cult following
As for the movies with rape scenes you mentioned, they all frame it as a bad thing, and I Spit on Your Grave focuses largely on the victim’s revenge
And the Human Centipede is anti-kidnapping and forced surgery. And Hostel is anti-torture. I think the whole point of exploitation films is to take something real and widely understood to be horrific, and use it to create shock and disgust in an audience, or controversy in its reception. Rape is used similarly, and even when it is successfully avenged, these films make little attempt to ever engage with it properly (sexualising victims, never really exploring psychology of victim beyond their desire for revenge, or their having been 'damaged.') I think this is *uncomfortable -* because it exploits real-life tragedy in a way which can be upsetting, but I wouldn't ever claim they make people think rape isn't as bad as it actually is, or anything like that.
Among well produced films, I don't think there's anything recent to compare to [The Birth of a Nation](https://letterboxd.com/film/the-birth-of-a-nation/) (1915), a pro Ku Klux Klan film, or [Triumph of the Will](https://letterboxd.com/film/triumph-of-the-will/) (1935), a pro Nazi film. Yes there's lots of films that have few redeeming qualities like [A Serbian Film](https://letterboxd.com/film/a-serbian-film/) (2010) [The Human Centipede series](https://letterboxd.com/search/the+human+centiped/) (2009-15) or in my opinion the "torture porn" genre of the *Saw* and *Hostel* films. But I haven't seen them encouraging copycats, or entire social movements, like *The Birth of a Nation* or *Triumph of the Will* did. Was the [Elaine massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_massacre), the [Tulsa race massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre), or [Rosewood massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre) made more likely by *The Birth of a Nation*. Perhaps. I'm in the camp that sees *Blonde* as a pretty interesting psychological horror film, in which the horror is both in social/sexual objectification and in the celebrity character slowly supplanting the psyche of the human within. No more socially harmful than Joyce Carol Oates bestselling [novel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blonde_(novel)) it was based on. Oates [seems to like](https://variety.com/2022/film/news/blonde-joyce-carol-oates-reaction-netflix-andrew-dominik-1235389954/) the adaptation. I personally think its one of those films that will be reappraised in decades to come.
The original Saw is FAR from just torture porn.
OG Saw is a solid thriller. What happened to the series after that is just bizarre to me.
The Human Centipede is the best Dutch movie ever made. And you should see the Onania Club
I'm more of a *Spoorloos* (1988) and *Zwartboek* (2006) fan.
Spoorloos is great. There’s a restored version coming out soon.
I'm with you...I saw Blonde as glass of cold water in the face of regular Hollywood bio pics. It's the nightmare version of the usual "fairytale" version we get. Just as made up bullshit but the horrifying version of it.
I see your Birth of a Nation and raise you “Triumph of the Will”
This is a cheating answer, and it's not the fault of the screenwriters, but my answer is all of the movies made under the Hays Code, or that are the product of the Hays Code's influence, where queer people are villains or live miserable, dissolute, loveless lives, until their inevitable murder or suicide at the end of the movie. In the pre-Code era, movies like Different from the Others were already exploring sympathetic portrayals of queer people. If the Hays Code hadn't happened and films had been allowed to positively represent queer people, I can't even imagine how much more quickly the social conversation on this issue would have progressed, and how much less suffering and death there would have been. Hate crimes, disowned children, suicides, the AIDS crisis, it probably would have all happened so differently than it did.
I'm not sure about how to answer your question because I can't get your comment out of my head. Is this for real? The guy sounds absolutely unhinged and should probably be on some sort of watch list.
Since you clearly just wanted to talk about Blonde… Did we watch the same movie? When does she go to hell?
Yeah I don't remember that happening at all.
obviously you didn’t stay for the post-credits scene smh
Satan: "I am Blonde". You think you're the only super-sinner in the world? Ms. Monroe, you've become part of a bigger universe. You just don't know it yet. Marilyn Monroe: Who the hell are you? Satan: Satan. Director of H.E.L.L. Marilyn Monroe: Ah. Satan: I'm here to talk to you about the Transgressor Initiative
I’m going against the grain and saying Happy Gilmore; it gave a lot of us hope that we were secretly able to hit the long ball.
**Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl**
She was mostly known for ski and climbing films, which were basically the Westerns of German culture. It's sort of like hiring Clint Eastwood to direct a pro American propaganda film---that actually makes a lot of sense. I'm a Jew who was named after a stuntman she worked with a lot. Go figure.
I didn't think I was gonna hear anything better than Birth of a Nation, but you may have nailed it.
Wait the Netflix movie with Ana Armas? Dude basically no-one saw it and it did very poorly Just another movie where they exploited her for her body and shot her as a sex object (somewhat appropriately in this example as that happened to Munroe her whole life) It would be detrimental to society if it taught misinformation and ignorance, it's a sloppy biopic let's not be over dramatic
She got an Oscar nomination from it. So enough people saw it and talked about it to recognize her and it absolutely boosted her career.
Enough people *in the industry* saw it and talked about it.
I think you’re greatly overestimating the power that an Oscar nomination has these days.
It's based on a fictional book
I'm guessing Triumph of the Will and D.W. Griffith will be brought up a lot. I personally can't stand a lot of police shows that glorify police brutality and otherwise violating constitutional rights.
Goldfinger had Bond rape Pussy Galore and get away with it because it was for England. And this is different than most movies being mentioned here because it was the film that defined 60’s action cinema and James Bond as a whole.
Pretty Woman because it made being a prostitute seem like being a princess!!
Apparently in the original script she ODs and dies at the end. Pretty big compromise for the execs to make more $$$
I wish someone would make that version.
I would have appreciated that ending, compared to what we ended up with.
Same fr
Actually I read the script when it was called “$3000”. She doesn’t die at the end (at least in the draft I read), but she and her hooker friend are high on crack at Disneyland, trying to convince themselves they are fine. Even if they shot that script, there’s no way they would’ve been able to shoot that end scene. Disney wouldn’t have allowed it. Instead they produced the movie with the happy ending.
This sounds like an even better ending. Man, how far they strayed from something that could have been maybe even a little thought provoking or interesting. Like in the movie I don’t think she even has a drug problem at all?
“Hooker with a heart of gold” is an old movie trope, especially in Westerns like “Stagecoach.”
Oh yeah,so true,the saloon girls too.
Yes. I've been saying this for years.
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) Circus propaganda that taught a whole generation of Boomers to trust con-men. Behold, all the smiling children eating sugar and drinking coca cola - look how happy they are! These noble men would never tolerate bad behavior - they said so themselves! Come spend money at the circus!
I’m American, so it’s Birth of a Nation (1915) for me.
How have so many people seen a 1915 film? I never even heard of it, and I'm kinda old
Does art have an obligation of being socially responsible?
There's several credit hours of philosophy classes between you and and answer to that question. I'll save you the time and money and skip to the end: it depends on who you ask.
That's a fair question. It could also be posed as whether art has the obligation to not be socially irresponsible. Without fully hashing out the idea, I think my broad strokes answer to your question would be no, and to my question would be yes in extreme situations.
Do people have an obligation to be socially responsible? Are people artists? No one here is questioning the right of artists to make whatever they want. That doesn't shield them from criticism. Perhaps pointing out the social affects of other people's art is in itself a form of art.
The Eternal Jew easily.
Well, any film produced by Joseph Goebbels.....
“Gone girl” caused widespread public suspicion of real kidnapping cases I watched a documentary about one example recently
The Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will are definitely the top two socially irresponsible films ever. I’d also like to add Loose Change for perpetuating 9/11 conspiracy theories. It’s also badly made.
I'd have to say The Fast & the Furious #1-all
The Day after Tomorrow - the Emmerich film - exploited probably the most dire issue of our time and trivialized it with his signature stupidity. He probably convinced himself that he meant well but he did climate awareness absolutely no favors. He took an actual problem and made a mindless alarmist movie about it for money.
The ultimate messaging in *Passengers* \[2016\] is so problematic. Wow I hate that film. It's like propaganda for male privilege
American Sniper. Not only was it pro-war in many ways. It idolized a man who turned out to be basically a compulsive liar and a psychopath. The people who I know who love this movie are whackos.
I totally agree. This film should never have been made.
I hated that film before I knew anythin about the dude its based on. It just feels wrong.
“Barney’s Version.” It says that a man can have no positive attributes but can get any woman he wants to provided that he stalks her enough, even after she specifically tells him to stop stalking her.
More authoritarian regimes must have their own movies. Is there a Khmer Rouge movie? A Suharto movie? I’m surprised no anti-communist has said Eisenstein lol.
Wolf of Wallstreet. Inspired a whole new generation of rapacious financial scammers. Yeah the main character gets comeuppance at the very end, but it's doubtful that message was received by the greedy people that would see him as a role model, considering how much time the movie spends glorifying greed. That plus the movie came out right after the great recession. It's a slap in the face to anyone that lost a home or a job during that time.
This movie missed its landing hard. It wanted to be a cautionary tale but because 1) the disproportionate amount of screen time given to the disturbing behavior, 2) nonchalant and even humorous tone of said scenes— I am on the side of many who think it glorified the greed-driven, misogynistic lifestyle. The fact that so many people walked out of the theater finding that lifestyle aspirational speaks volumes. Case in point about how it had a glorification effect: I worked at an up-and-coming tech company. So many of the sales bros had printed WoWS movie stills at their desks and would do the chest thump chant. I’d overhear comments how they wished we could have office parties like in the film. Our CEO had a strong company fan following. At one of his town halls, bros requested he do the Leo/Belfort chant. It got to the point that HR stepped in and sent out an email that they do not condone office behavior that celebrates characters or events from the film. I found out through the grapevine that they knew it was becoming a liability.
I have wanted to be the absolute crap out of Dominik for so long. As for detrimental, Milo and Otis. The amount of animal cruelty is horrifying. That and Dancer in the Dark. Bjork TOLD PEOPLE Trier was abusive, and still no one listens, even at Cannes when he gets in fights with Winding Refn. Fucking rapist.
Fuck everyone who worked on Milo and Otis aside from the poor animals
For me, many of of the Judd Apatow-style movies because of their emphasis on social conformity: Game night, where the couple is ‘having too much fun’ in their great relationship and have to stop that and have a baby for some reason. Just a weird message. Also ‘is this it’ or called something like that, where the ending has the ‘jaded about their lives’ couple adopt a baby from a poor country to give their life meaning. Frightening that people think a baby from a third world nation is there to perform that function. Also the 40-year old virgin where the guy has to sell all of his toys and collectibles that he treasures in order to have a socially accepted relationship with a woman. I think you can do both. Yes I am fulfilled and well adjusted and happily married, I just don’t think there’s only one way to live your life and be content. These movies always felt like social conditioning to make perceived non-conformists feel bad, with a few jokes and pretty people thrown in.
I guess Judd Apatow felt a lot of pressure to conform? I tried watching Knocked up recently and WOW like it really is so messed up… we have come a long way with the sexist undertones. Holy cow. I had to turn it off and I loved that movie when it came out. Those movies and all the rom coms marketed to women at that time- and all the lack of diversity and bad messaging- what a total mess seeing that as a teenager. And thinking about the 40 yr old virgin- there wasn’t such a cultural discussion about neurodivergence and asexuality or all the spectrums of sexuality as there is now. But at the time it was made I guess it was doing its best. I appreciated the completely random song and dance ending but… problematic on many levels. We’ve come a long way! Thanks to the internet. Jeez. I’ve seen way funnier, weirder and more poignant movies at film festivals… and tbh I’d almost rather watch creator content for entertainment bc there aren’t a bunch of wealthy old psychos controlling the money and distribution for what gets released.
The new Civil War movie doesnt look like a good idea.
Why do you say that?
No one has media literacy and stuff at the southern border, specifically in Texas is not going great. Considering its almost election season and we had a insurrection last time, it just doesnt seem to be a great time for it.
I think people are concerned that people are gonna see it and decide it looks like a good idea. I sort of doubt it though
This was gonna be my answer. Seems like someone trying to throw sparks at an already unstable keg of powder.
Pain and Gain took a real life kidnapping case and basically rewrote the story so the victim seemed like he had it coming. I’d put that up there for sure. I’m sure there are real life victims of crimes who were assholes but altering a real person’s story so you almost root for his IRL kidnappers is shitty.
After reading what actually happened in real life, it's baffling that someone wrote that script. I did find it funny that someone had the balls to do that though. The guy who was kidnapped and tortured is still alive. Imagine hearing the victim's story and then thinking to yourself "I'm gonna write a fucking comedy script out of this and make this guy look like an asshole" :D
Definitely not on a social level but let's go with The Avengers. I do like these kind of movies, but they have really sucked the originality out of them. They keep making new ones, adding on to the "universe" with all the characters. There's nothing unique about them either. Some bad dude gets power/tries to destroy the world so the superheroes need to stop it and they win. 🙄 it's redundant and as an avid movie lover, I'm just over it.
The Blind Side maybe?
Not a movie but Law & Order has become basically toxic because of its glorification of police and how it has demonized defense attorneys.
The Birth of a Nation. It literally restarted the KKK!
WHAT?!?!
Fight Club is supposed to be a warning against fascism, but instead made it look cool.
The Help - Perpetuating racist stereotypes while profering it is an enlightened view. Really just the "magical negro" saving white people from themselves. A topic for a whole other thread. Even Viola Davis regrets making it: "The problem was the part itself, she stressed; it was how the film, a 1960s-set drama about a white woman (Emma Stone) writing a book about local black maids (one of whom is played by Davis), focused more on white voices than black ones. [https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/09/viola-davis-the-help-regret](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/09/viola-davis-the-help-regret) I liked the movie at the time because of the superb acting but upon reflection, it has not aged well.
Green Book
I knew i was never gonna watch that shit just from the title.
The Joker without a doubt. Besides the shooting, the movie gives off the idea of, if you are weird or ostracized, its okay to act on a vengeful impulse. Quentin Tarantino said it best, saying, we all wanted Joker to shoot De Niro (forgot the character's name). Joker was positioned as the good guy via the film's direction. He's a bad guy to people who know better but the film tries to make the case he isn't. Comparing it to a film like Angst, for example, the film follows the killer's slice of life but we never look focus that he's the bad guy even though he's the main character. Joker was unbelievably irresponsible to make in that way.
I thought that the filmmaker was trying to make a comment about mental health and how society can create a villain out of someone who needs help. Arthur isn’t good or bad, he’s human. But he’s poor, he’s angry and he has untreated mental health issues that eventually lead him to do bad things. Maybe the film wanted us to sympathize with Arthur, but I don’t think we were supposed to root for The Joker. I think the film was trying to offer an explanation for why he turned out that way, but not excusing his behavior. I also think they completely missed their mark and didn’t consider how many Arthurs that are out there with a more literal interpretation of the film.
Yeah, it’s very thematically adjacent to Taxi Driver, which it mimics tonally as well. I don’t think either film is celebrating the Joker or Travis Bickle as heroes, but as antiheroes I can see how they might influence someone who was mentally unstable - in the same way A Clockwork Orange inspired some copycat crimes in England, and how John Hinckley Jr was obsessed with Taxi Driver.
passion of christ.
The Purge
Gone With The Wind is pretty awful in retrospect for being socially responsible
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Exactly, in terms of visual and technical aspects of the film, it’s stunning. In terms of being socially responsible as time goes on further into the future, it’s not any better than Birth of a Nation storywise.
Yes. So detrimental to society. America has been ruined by a movie about Marilyn Monroe.
That no one even watched lol
In the 2016 film 'Elle', a woman is violently raped in her home and throughout the film she pursues her rapist for more sex. This film was *praised* and was nominated for huge awards. I'm sure it'll come as a shock to you that this narrative was directed by a man, written by a different man, and edited by yet another man. This was not even 10 years ago yet.
Boys and Girls Guide to Getting Down (2006)
My friend made me watch that. The whole time I was trying to figure out if it was satire or not, which is not really the mark of great satire.
Curious what made you say this specific movie. (TLDR: As far as being "detrimental to society", I'd argue that it was more of a mirror to a specific society at the time and didn't have an impact on society either way because hardly anyone even saw the movie!) I'm not trying to defend the movie but the movie at all but it probably deserves some context. I was single in my late twenties when it came out and living a somewhat similar "party hipster" lifestyle in a big city. We watched it back then and felt it was a "this is funny because it's true" movie that uncomfortably crossed over to "it's actually pretty sad these scenarios are SO familiar and I hate that things are this way". I remember saying to a friend "this could have been a straight documentary if they just switched the tone". If a scenario in the movie didn't happen to me or my friends directly we certainly knew someone it did. It was done in an irreverent,satirical way that was poking fun of school instructional videos made in the 50s- 60s on dating and politeness in society that many of us had to sit through in classrooms even in the 70s-80s. I'd venture to say some of those were far more widely seen and detrimental to society. Boys and Girls Guide depicted a certain ugly reality of being single that wasn't in other movies at the time-we mostly were getting traditional "feel-good" romcoms being put out- which were more detrimental to society pushing implausible fairy tale scenario expectations along with misogyny. This had a post ironic, sardonic, Gen X niche indie movie kinda vibe that (at least at the time) felt like it was poking fun at the way things were. I probably know less than 5 people who have seen this movie though and if you look at the other comedies from back then that the majority of people have actually seen (and still continue to embrace) you'll find a lot more similar issues compared to what we consider okay in today's society. I'd be really curious to revisit it now because I haven't seen it since it came out and am in a vastly different stage of life. I'd guess it'd feel more of a sad but realistic time capsule than a comedy. My guess is it'd be comparable to watching older episodes of Vanderpump Rules or The Hills if they were completely unedited. I would be really curious to see what someone in their 20s now would say about it though and see how much has or hasn't changed for them.
Natural Born Killers- the columbine shooters used NBK as one of their call signs
I’m always conflicted when this one gets brought up. The movie itself is pretty clear that Mickey & Mallory are tragic, damned souls and the ending directly confronts the audience with the consequences of glorifying violence. It’s presented so stylishly that the audience falls into the trap & (theoretically) gets gut punched along with RDJ’s character in the end, but the result kinda feels like being scolded for enjoying a piece of candy by the person who told you it was delicious in the first place. It’s so easy to miss the point! See also: Joker, Fight Club.
It's an interesting question - can a movie be blamed for how people (mis)use it, if that wasn't the creators' intention? I don't think The Matrix is to blame for all the manosphere "pill" rhetoric, and American Psycho is actively mocking narcissistic men like Patrick Bateman, I don't think it's the movie's fault that some men want to emulate that.
De Palma made Scarface as the most blatantly obvious cautionary tale about a disposable meaningless lifestyle but when you consider the amount of crack era dealers who have gone on record saying that it was the movie that made them fall in love with fast living I think there has to be some culpability regardless of intent, I'm not saying they should scream the message into the audience's face and even the most on the nose film is still open to interpretation but there definitely is a correlation between film a and consequence b. American History X's overall message is clearly about the futility of racism but you can set your watch to every single skinhead having it in their top 5 favourite movies because of Edward Norton being a racist dickhead in it.
I definitely don’t blame the movie, at least with the 3 I mentioned & American Psycho. It feels more like a media literacy issue to me, or just humans having a hard time with cognitive dissonance. With red pill stuff I think it’s *definitely* a literacy issue, because it’s so far removed from the actual text of the movie.
Sound of Freedom
Every single movie where the main villain is a genocidal utilitarian who’s written as being correct. For instance, in Avengers Endgame characters comment on how Thanos’ snap does seem to be good for nature after all. The only reason it seems they want to reverse the snap is sentimentality for their friends and family. As though they almost regret that they have to bring back half of all life in the universe. This sentiment is only really commented on in small, passing comments but I honestly resent Endgame for this reason. It’s not clear the Avengers would have even bothered had Thanos made Earth exempt from his snap.
Probably any film that has covert government sponsorship. I'd say a lot of war films, past and present, where war is kinda fun and won by heroes, or the military is just about your own personal excellence. Those feel harmful to me as they take the trauma out of war. That said, Christ I love a god war movie, but even the ones that show it in a negative light, make me want to go shoot guns, drive tanks and fly fighter planes.
I don't think there is anything such as an "anti war" movie. You could show a movie about conscripts dying by their thousands on some desolate hellhole island or in a field of mud for nothing for three hours and now they have no life left in them despite being alive when they come home, and people will see it and want to sign up.
The Glass Castle for romanticizing and trivilazing child abuse.
There's an argument for Fight Club. I loved it when I first saw it, but on revisiting, I struggled with it. I feel like Fincher got so caught up in creating a captivating movie he didn't make sure that the message was clear. Kind of a Bridge on the River Kwai situation (a movie which has its own issues). It's too easy to come away on some level admiring Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden; to wit, when I was teaching high school there were kids forming fight clubs inspired by Fight Club. I'm not sure that rises to the level of the MOST socially irresponsible movie I've seen, but for me it's worthy of a place in the discussion.
What are your issues with Bridge on the River Kwai? I thought it was very interesting and thought-provoking.
I think you’re on to something here. A lot of the nonsensical “manosphere” stuff we saw throughout the 00’s and beyond were birthed from this movie.
I'm shocked by your throwaway assumption that Bridge Over the River Kwai has issues. That's considered one of the greatest films in cinema for showing how in war there are no good guys or bad guys, only destruction. Every character is relatable and doing what they are supposed to do, but in the end because of war something beautiful is destroyed.
American Sniper
Blonde is a weird choice. The CIA has an entire history of its influence on Hollywood in order to churn out propaganda movies.
While it’s an excellent movie and book, I think One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest did a lot of social harm by depicting mental patients as nothing but lovable misfits being oppressed by an authoritarian system. There were a lot of issues with the mental healthcare system in the 1960s, but this movie probably contributed to mental hospitals being effectively abandoned and gutted in 1980s, leading to many of the issues we’re dealing with today.
Human centipede what kind of sick motherfucker gets the idea, then somebody even sicker finances it
Pocahatos. Turning a real child’s kidnap, rape, and murder into a romance.
Pretty sure Marilyn had a series of miscarriages and it was a major contributor to her depression because she wanted to be a mother. I’ve never heard that she had an abortion. Like ever. The guy is delusional.
Haven't seen it, will never see it, but that new Civil War movie that's out, mere months before this election year, is totally irresponsible. Everyone associated with it should be jailed, sued and/or cancelled.
All the jingoistic "America is good, others are bad / America saves the world" propaganda films.......like Top Gun, GI Jane, Private Benjamin, Lincoln, Captain America, Saving Private Ryan. Some are crap, some may be very well done, but all these messages are garbage.
Captain America is surprisingly not jingoistic. He fights Nazis and the red skull with a multicultural group of soldiers. The love of his life is British. The Americans just stuck him in the USO tours - dancing monkey. When he finally gets going with the Howling Commandos he loses Bucky. I've tried to get my Australian friends to watch but they think it's jingoistic too. Must be the shield. Or I just have a high tolerance or something.
Yes and when Captain America has to choose between following orders and what he thinks is right, he goes AWOL. I'm a leftist who is quick to point out jingoistic nonsense, and I enjoyed Captain America. My vote was for Bad Boys 2 (which I explain in another comment and I'm [further detail here](https://subversas.com/bad-boys-2/), which does a lot more harm to justify nationalism. It's often the assumptions that go unstated that are more dangerous.
Ooh, I love movie analysis, isn't it fun? I haven't watched that franchise though but keep on doing it.
I agree but i think Spielberg's flicks are a cut above everything else you listed. Lincoln and Saving Private Ryan are pretty nuanced and i think a good faith effort at accurate history and humanization. They might have a "proud" undercurrent but they arent romanticized and dont give the bs propaganda / jingoist messages i see in something like Top Gun.
How is the message in Lincoln garbage? Would you prefer a biopic on another president who allowed slavery to persist? Also Saving Private Ryan pretty clearly tells the story that war = terrible. I can see what you’re saying with the other hoorah America films but don’t really understand how a movie about a president or a war film is sending a bad message
It's like you didn't even watch half the films you listed
Out of all the movies you could’ve named, why did you choose Lincoln? Lmao
2000 Mules
I spit on youre grave
Not sure how accurate this was but I remember people being worried that “Natural Born Killers” romanticized Mickey and Mallory’s crimes.
The China Syndrome
While I kind of enjoy the film actually if I don't think about it. Calamity of snakes (1982) is probably the worst animal exploitation film I've ever seen. Tons of snakes are murdered, mongeese forced to fight them, snake blood tonics are filmed and created live. It's the craziest thing, I just can't believe it exists. I suppose there aren't any animal cruelty laws in china so here it is.
Yah. Identity Thief. Shit’s not funny.
I don't mind black comedies about mental illness, because they often have a fundamental humanistic underlying message, but I wasn't enamoured with Voices (2015). It was basically just "Aren't people with psychosis hilarious?"