MisterSwig

Where are these statistics? The top ten strongest men in the world are all white.

The soldier who's still fighting a war he's already lost in any way he can find. The person who can endure any manner of insult, except to be called an Alliance sympathizer, and looks out for his own best interests except when it comes to the Alliance or Inara. But why is he still fighting the Alliance? Because his ideal is independence. And that independence comes from his strength as a man who protects his family. The whole show is about him rebuilding his family unit on Serenity. He is the father figure who heads out into the frontier looking for work and a family. Zoe is his loyal best friend from the past who accompanies him, but she represents the feminine frontier warrior to his masculine frontier warrior. You need male and female to form a family. Mal is a traditionalist in many ways, he is the male protector, and Zoe is the female nurturer. They go out into the unknown space, like Old West pioneers heading to California, seeking adventure and family. This theme is reinforced when he adopts brother and sister, Simon and River. They are the reflection of Mal and Zoe. You can't make Mal a female without changing Zoe into a male. And you can't make Mal gay because that doesn't fit with the theme of rebuilding family the traditional way, which by the way is probably one reason why there is such great chemistry and conflict between the sexes aboard Serenity. It's rooted in a natural family unit.

Did you see it? Why do you say it was badly written?

What is the identity of Mal? We're talking about swapping out a straight male for a lesbian, so do you mean that Mal's identity is straight male? If not, who are we swapping out? It's not just about Mal's given sex and orientation, it's about how those traits are used throughout the plots and character interactions. They are essential to the story Joss Whedon created. I could probably find many more examples if I rewatched the show, but I don't want to hear the words "innie" and "outie" again, so I think I'll rewatch John Wick instead.

It's been ages since I watched True Romance. This must be the scene though. That's a good action scene. I feel like I need to rewatch the whole movie to understand some of it. Why does she scream "you look ridiculous"?

I knew it would come to me eventually. I don't know how far back this sort of "cocky intimidation from a vulnerable position" trope goes, but it was masterfully applied in Princess Bride. Not so much in Charlie's Angels.

Enter the Dragon is a classic martial arts movie so the fighting is top notch. The context is narrowed to a martial arts action movie, you go expecting to see epic hand-to-hand battles. Also, the men were trying to kidnap her, so not really going all-out. Good example of well-done female fighting.

To whYNOT's point about females beating men, maybe the clip below is a better example of both a female ridiculously beating up several men and also cultural parasitism. The fight is silly (she clearly sucks on the wire). It's also highly derivative (her dialogue about how she's going to beat them imitates dialogue from some other movie that I can't remember exactly). And then you have the issue that this is a franchise reboot from the classic TV show, which, if I remember correctly didn't have dumb fight scenes like this and was one of Rand's favorites.

First, let me correct a couple things about your transcription, so that we're on the same page. After "the method" Peikoff added, "the logical, objective method of thought." Also, instead of "originally" I heard him say "volitionally." And after "you can specify your conclusion" he added "contextually." Other than that I agree with your transcription of what he said here. (Art of Thinking, part 6, 1:10:13) That said, have you tried applying Peikoff's conclusion in that quote to the conclusion itself? If it's possible that he's wrong about the possibility of being wrong, then it's possible to be infallible.

In some cases, I think you're right about the women beating up the men. There is an egalitarianism applied to the sexes, and this philosophy probably inspires some of the worst nonsense. But in less ridiculous cases it might be driven more by male sexual fantasies. I like movies about beautiful women. And I like an entertaining action flick. Really, it's not rocket science. There's a formula for luring men and their girlfriends into the movie theaters. Sometimes such films cross the line into absurdity, but they don't just do this with female asskickers. They do it with the males too. John Wick killed something like 160 people in Parabellum. But it's awesome because we understand it's not intended to be realistic. The action genre has been mixing with other genres for a long time now. Buster Keaton was mingling action and comedy in the silent film days. And John Wick is part fantasy. So I think the "unreality" that you're noticing often comes from this blending of genres. You might expect more realism from a standard action movie, but once it's blended with comedy or fantasy, the action will tend to be sillier and less realistic.

I've never seen the Fast & Furious movies. They look dumb. But I found the scene you mentioned. She's a super spy-type, I guess. If so, that's a part of her character used to help the audience suspend disbelief in her ability to beat up these men. She's highly trained in physical combat. But notice what the writer must do in order to make this scene semi-realistic. The CIA men have to be incompetent. They didn't properly restrain this dangerous woman. The guard is told to shoot her in the face if she moves. But he's immediately caught off guard by her lame insult and then she easily and brutally beats him up with a chair. Ooookay. Not even the movie can take this seriously, intercutting the beatdown with a scene of Dwayne Johnson's character joking with his daughter on the phone. Finally Johnson's character gets off the phone and sees what's happening. Does he immediately shoot her? No, he's also incompetent and she promptly gets her legs locked around his massive neck, like she's some professional MMA fighter and he was born yesterday. So, what have we learned? Clearly this is a comedic action scene, and the ridiculous fight is being used to establish some sexual attraction/flirtation between the spy girl and Johnson's character. It might not be so bad if the men didn't have to be incompetent. Is this the CIA or some Podunk police station that doesn't know who they've arrested?

If you return tomorrow, here is one concrete example to consider. When Mal and Wash are being tortured together, not only is that scene about male bonding, it includes dialogue that wouldn't make sense if Mal were a lesbian. At one point Mal says to Wash that he must be wondering if Mal ever slept with his wife. Now why would Wash wonder that if Mal were a lesbian? His wife isn't a lesbian. It's this sort of straight maleness that defines Mal's character and contributes to his style of dialogue.

Can we drop the race? I've already agreed it's not that relevant to the character of Mal. What you seem to be saying is that it's a nonissue to swap straight male Mal for a gay female Mal, because a gay female can have the same sort of mind as a straight male. What exactly does that mean? How are they of the same kind? Because they're both humans?

Yes, I own the box set.

You're funny. You said it wouldn't affect movies set in the modern day. So I picked a modern mafia movie. You picked Firefly/Serenity. Call me sexist for pointing out that lesbian Mal would not have the level of masculinity that straight male Mal has, but you're just looking at mere interactions and actually ignoring character and personality. Is lesbian Mal going to crack the same jokes as straight male Mal? You'd have to rewrite much of the dialogue too. I don't think his skin color would matter. Race isn't a particularly important aspect of the show. But Mal's sex definitely is.

Well, it's straight white male, but I can say with certainty that a story about a black female will not be the same story as one about a white male. Obviously they will be different races and sexes. But beyond character traits, the rest of the story would have to be very generic in order to successfully swap out a white male for a black female. Pick a movie and let's see how easy it would be! One of my favorites is Godfather. What if we do a remake and replace Marlon Brando's character with a big fat black actress? Wouldn't that be something! We would need to change the title to Godmother and turn a serious gangster movie into a parody. While we're at it we might as well make her a lesbian too. Why not, right? I'd say skin color might be the most easily swappable trait, but even that will affect many movies that have an important racial or cultural element.

What????? Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat???????? Hey, are you drunk? What are you listening to? Warning: This video contains explicit lyrics about dirty sex.

Thinking about this some more, we could probably discover evidence of how a parasitic remake (or version) affects the original. If it doesn't outright kill the franchise, I bet it drastically devalues it. Checking this theory properly might require inside knowledge of sales figures and property values. Did the Ghostbusters remake increase or decrease the value of the franchise? Are more people buying the classic movies and merchandise because of it? Are fans more or less likely to buy a ticket to see future Ghostbusters movies? I stopped watching Star Wars movies, for example, when I realized that Force Awakens was a "woke" version of New Hope. Sometimes I hear about franchise-killing movies. People make lists of them. Some on that linked list, like Annie and Catwoman, include race-switched roles. A couple, Ghostbusters and The Mummy, include sex-switched characters. We could debate whether or why these films killed (or wounded) the franchise. Maybe it was due to the character alterations, or maybe that didn't matter much and the remakes suffered from poor scripts, terrible acting, bad timing, etc.

Hot dog, I found one! Well, almost. A Splash redo has been in the works for years now. The twist? This time it's a woman who falls in love with a merman. I guess this could work because lots of girls would want to see Channing Tatum as a naked fish.

If you're looking for unrealistic female fighters in movies, I could name several, but here's the thing. It's not really about the fact that there's some woman kicking the asses of a bunch of males. Depending on how it's written that could be a well-integrated aspect of a well-done movie. Trinity in The Matrix comes to mind. And Selene in Underworld. To make that work Trinity is fighting in a computer-generated world where her "action" depends more on programmed skills and mental power than raw, physical strength. Selene is also in an abnormal (supernatural) realm. She's a vampire assassin with special training and royal blood that gives her superpower. I can also buy Wonder Woman, because she's a superhero character from a warrior tribe. Also, these characters are very fit, athletic women, which helps us suspend disbelief and accept that they could pull off the action fighting necessary to defeat large men. I've read that Queen Latifah's The Equalizer requires unsatisfying jump cuts to mask her limited action abilities, which seems likely from the way they put that trailer together. But even if Latifah looked like the ebony goddess of martial arts, The Equalizer is still set in a normal world where it's harder to believe that a lone woman is going around like Batman crushing evil male gangsters. Such one-on-many action is already very difficult to accept when done with a male hero. It's nearing absolute absurdity with a female one, and so many convenient plot gimmicks are required to help it along.

Can anyone think of examples where an originally female character was remade as a male, or a non-white was remade as a white, or a gay was remade as a straight?

One of my favorite actors is Denzel Washington (the reason why I suffered through the Magnificent Seven remake). He's the star of The Equalizer movies, which are pretty good action flicks. Washington plays a man of mystery who rescues a young woman from a bad situation. Well, they turned it into a TV show now, starring Queen Latifah as the badass hero. I can't get through the trailer without laughing at and lamenting the debasement of the franchise at the same time.

It's been awhile since I saw Eraserhead. Isn't it more surrealist than postmodernist?

Do you mean what should be the goal for a conservative? I don't think we should focus on what other people's goals should be. That's up to them. Maybe they want to know Rand's views on a particular topic, maybe they want to study her whole system, or maybe they hope to enjoy a good novel. It depends on the values they have. As advocates for Rand's philosophy I think we should focus on what we want to teach others about it. And that might differ from person to person. Doesn't mean one has to be wrong. There's a lot of points to make about Objectivism. I thought you meant what was Rand's goal.

Don't know, that was whYNOT's line. I can't speak much about the Ghostbusters remake because I have only seen the trailer, which didn't do it for me. Aside from it being unfunny, I didn't appreciate the obvious attempt at pandering to a female audience, as if Ghostbusters isn't essentially about funny dudes fighting ghosts. It makes sense that four crazy guys would want to start a business fighting the paranormal. Making them all female is ridiculous. Out of curiosity I asked my girlfriend who she'd want to see on the team. She said Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, Jim Carrey and Drew Barrymore.