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MisterSwig

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6 minutes ago, human_murda said:

You're the one making the claim that White men, as a collective, are assaulted and victimized everywhere on the planet.

To be fair, the converse is the general thrust of basically every intellectual thing in modern America.  It seems like he's just picking up on the general trends.

It's a bad thing for anyone (of any race or either gender) to pick up and run with, but I think it is understandable.  Which is why I simply pointed out that he's been thinking in the racist and sexist terminology of such intellectuals and invited him to stop.

 

There is a unique kind of ideological barrage about such things going on here and now.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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7 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

I haven't read the rest of the thread yet (as I just said above) so I'm sorry if you've answered this already, but the statement that 'whether the lead actor is a White Male or not would change the entire story' confuses me greatly.

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.

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33 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:

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!

Alright.  Let's REALLY concretize it.  Let's replace Mal (the Captain of Serenity in the TV show Firefly) with a black lesbian.

 

Most of her story would revolve around the oppressive government she lives under, despises and finds every opportunity she can to undermine.  She "wouldn't even get along with normal criminals" because in a certain sense she still felt like she was a rebel soldier fighting a war that she'd already lost.

This would not change her relationship with Simon (the doctor), his sister River, the mechanic Kaylee or the preacher Shepherd Book, since the act of sex (or its possibility) simply isn't a part of those relationships ... like the vast majority of normal human interactions.  It might change her relationship with her black female war buddy Zoe but probably not much, since Zoe is quite clearly straight.  It would change her relationship with her soul mate and the resident prostitute Inara but not by much, since Inara was always clearly bisexual.  If anything it might improve their dynamic.  Ironically, the only person who would definitely treat her any differently would be the ship's pilot (Wash) and only because he has an openly-stated preference for strong black women like his wife, Zoe.  But if this female captain Mal was anything like the male one then that would be subdued and forgotten very quickly.

So all things considered it really wouldn't change her interactions with any of her crew by much.

 

Now, you might ask if having black skin and a different set of genitalia would change who she was as a character, but that actually would be the racist/sexist thing to ask.

Neither of those things dictate who anyone is as a person.

 

And if we take that out of it and look at what the only logical changes would be (the things that'd actually make sense to change if we actually changed Mal's race and sex) then all that's left are whether the other characters would treat people differently based on such superficial characteristics.

 

In Tsarist Russia this would've been significant.  I can't quite see that society just accepting a black-skinned person as just another person, because that is literally not what that society actually did in history.

In modern America (where such things mean very little to most people) it would make total sense.

 

Now, if someone were to reboot Firefly I would expect some new and exciting ideas to get into that reboot.  If all they did was change the race and gender of the captain then I'd be pretty pissed off about it - BECAUSE it would basically be precisely the same story, retold for extra cash!

 

But your position implies both racism and sexism and whatever ism there is for heterosexuality (because I do not permit myself to think in the SJW's terms) and the sooner you see that and reject it, the better it'll be for you.

75% drunk and a little bit high now.  Get wrecked son.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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3 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

it's a picture of an individual Chinese boy who happens to eat this way

It isn't. It's an abstraction. Which Chinese boy (in reality) does it refer to? It could be anyone. "A picture of an individual Chinese boy who happens to eat this way" would have to be a literal photograph of a Chinese boy. It is an individual copy of that drawing though.

2 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

So if the people involved in these decisions were actually aliens from another world who had no idea what race or gender or anything like that meant, and were casting exclusively for the purpose of who can play the part best, I would expect most of their picks to be straight white people.

That's not how Math works (unless you're just talking about the US).

2 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

He specifically said that he doesn't see this as a racial thing; in India (where he said he lives) they don't care about race nearly as much as Americans do.

I actually live outside India now (for studies), although that's only been two years. However, I've seen the "We wuz kangz and shiet" memes, debates about race and intelligence, how White people are going going extinct, how Australian Aborigines are not human and all of those things while in India (and not on Stormfront, but on sites like Reddit and YouTube. It's mostly coming from Americans but also from South Africans, Australians, Canadians and British people who cared about American politics and are trying to "defend America"). I was raised in a small town of 16000 people in a lower middle class family (although we're more upper middle class now). I normally wouldn't have to listen to all of this BS but access to the internet (and knowledge of English) is enough, without which I wouldn't have encountered Ayn Rand anyway (I saw her on an online booklist).

Edited by human_murda
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26 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

75% drunk and a little bit high now.  Get wrecked son.

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.

Edited by MisterSwig
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2 minutes ago, human_murda said:

That's not how Math works (unless you're just talking about the US).

I am.  Sorry, but most Americans only really care about America, and that actually seems to be true of most non-Americans as well.  Since Hollywood is in America I would naturally assume that the racial, sexual and whatever else makeup of its actors (along with everything else) to reflect the proportions of those people in our wider culture.

 

Which is not to say it'd necessarily be bad if Hollywood violated that expectation now and then.  I'd expect a few violations, too, if all they were worried about was the quality of their finished product.  But that's not really what this thread is about.

6 minutes ago, human_murda said:

It isn't. It's an abstraction. Which Chinese boy (in reality) does it refer to? It could be anyone. "A picture of an individual Chinese boy who happens to eat this way" would have to be a literal photograph of a Chinese boy. It is an individual copy of that drawing though.

Precisely.

 

Draw me a picture of the racial stereotype that white people cannot dance.  Seriously; just try it.  That's not how pictures work.

If you were to make a video of the genocide of all White Males I think it'd be easier (you could look at the camera inbetween pleas for mercy and say "and after this we'll get the rest of them") but if that were put into a movie it'd be very obvious that it was there.

I do not believe a picture of such a thing can ever be drawn.  You can even photograph a bunch of Jews being led into the gas chambers, but even then you haven't photographed "all Jews"; just a certain tragic group who're about to die.  Without some sort of words beneath your picture there simply is no way to express that concept.

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7 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:

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.

I'm sorry.  I've never personally seen any of the Godfather movies, and when you said "let's make him a lesbian, too!" it sounded like the non-answer of someone who has no real answer, to me.  But since I've never actually seen those movies for myself I assumed I was just missing some critical plot point and tried coming up with something I know off the back of my hand.

 

I really should've asked if you've ever seen Firefly, too, and I am sorry about that.  Have you?

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10 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:

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.

Yes.  Because women can have basically the same personalities as men.  I know that they usually don't (statistically speaking) but when I said "X character only a black lesbian" I thought it was obvious that I meant the same PERSON with the same sort of MIND, only in a slightly different sort of body.

11 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:

You'd have to rewrite much of the dialogue too.

Have you actually seen Firefly?  The only two episodes that might need some adjustments are the ones involving that saboteur woman Mal accidentally married, and only then because she used most peoples' usual assumptions about women as her own weapon against them.

 

Have you seen Firefly???

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13 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:

But Mal's sex definitely is.

No; neither to his soul mate nor to himself.

 

And if his sex mattered to anyone other than his soul mate or him self then I'd immediately suggest they fuck off and mind their own business - precisely as he would!

Would he not say precisely the same thing if he had an innie rather than an outie, by definition?  If not then I'll need to hear a few of your definitions because they cannot be aligned with my own.

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5 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Yes.  Because women can have basically the same personalities as men.  I know that they usually don't (statistically speaking) but when I said "X character only a black lesbian" I thought it was obvious that I meant the same PERSON with the same sort of MIND, only in a slightly different sort of body.

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?

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I won't be able to carry this on tonight because of the sleeping pills I took about an hour and a half ago, because I work tomorrow morning. Sorry to everyone unnamed who's probably waiting on a response from me. I can ensure the same state of intellectual impairment when I respond tomorrow if you ask for it (but unless you do I'm gonna assume you don't care).

Until then - here's something exceedingly relevant to remember me by!

 

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38 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Sorry, but most Americans only really care about America, and that actually seems to be true of most non-Americans as well.

Non-Americans only care about America?

39 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Draw me a picture of the racial stereotype that white people cannot dance.  Seriously; just try it.  That's not how pictures work.

Okay, you probably can't show every abstraction with a still image, but you can show some abstractions (including stereotypes) with still images. Do you think there's any difference between the following two images?

had.thumb.png.a8b511ac2b1fd584f0b53294e46143e5.png

 

 

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1 hour ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

I won't be able to carry this on tonight...

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.

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On 3/25/2021 at 4:58 PM, Eiuol said:

I don't doubt what you saw. But since you can't even remember the name of any movies, literally unable to remember, all you have to refer to are probably some vague memories of emotions that you had. Or if not that, then the concept or idea you're dealing with is a floating abstraction in your mind detached from reality. 

When I say many, I meant many. I randomly switched on the TV as I'd left the computer and there was a scene of a slim, pretty girl taking on a guy and besting him. Dwayne the Rock Johnson came to his rescue and she had her legs around him in a neck lock in a second. And he was struggling to get free, despite a build like a buffalo. Give me a break! This was a Fast And Furious episode (?) with Jason Statham. For any regular movie goer, the repetitive meme of women overwhelming men has become a given. This is by design, intentional, and thinkers who are interested in societal movements should ask why, without fear or prejudice. Where did this unreality come from? It is obviously a metaphysical view of existence that much of the audience shares with the filmmakers.

Edited by whYNOT
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17 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

He specifically said that he doesn't see this as a racial thing; in India (where he said he lives) they don't care about race nearly as much as Americans do.  I see that as a good thing: in America we truly do have a racial problem nowadays, and the problem is that nobody will ever shut up about it.

You actually sound like the White Male stereotype that the SJW's are always screaming about, there.

1442501503_TheWhites.thumb.jpg.e1362b424ff6aad359bc1c833a78e7a4.jpg

 

You need to stop thinking in the SJW's terminology.  I'm not trying to be an asshole (for some of us it just comes naturally :P) but it shows that you have been doing that, and it's not good for you.

It's not good for the rest of America either but what you should really care about is that it's not good for you.

 

I'm not gonna reply to anything else you said yesterday; partially because of my blood pressure (which is something I need to start paying attention to) and partially in the hopes that your next post might be better.  IDK; maybe yesterday was a particularly rough day for you, and if when tomorrow came you felt like renouncing a few of the things you'd said then I'd do my best to forget about them.

 

Good luck!

Well, I believe my next post will be no "better". I do not renounce a thing. I call it as I see it and I've been seeing for several years. The West is sick with self- immolation and guilt and the hint of an Objectivist saying this growing white/male sacrifice and self-sacrifice is wrong - and no better than whatever transpired to the previously repressed - gets the treatment.

For fear of the label 'White Supremacist', even once good and brave thinkers tread carefully nowadays.

I've had to get acquainted with SJW's (et al) premises, not from idle curiosity, but to find clarity, to be able to conceive of what is going on and where this is all headed. The least of it: what is bad in America will be worse in South Africa (8% whites). Mentioned before, things between races were quite stable and amicable until that sweet, loving bunch Black Lives Matter infected a disaffected portion of the population here, too. Saying which, above all I care strongly for your country's future.

HD. Be careful not to slip into apologism for the Left-progressivists-pmodernists-socialists, in your endeavor to be balanced and humane.

This is an ideological power struggle, and rational, independent people are losing. The vile ones on the Left eat decent people for breakfast.

 

Edited by whYNOT
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1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

This is by design, intentional, and thinkers who are interested in societal movements should ask why, without fear or prejudice.

Maybe, maybe not. Without the context, I would guess that the action scene that you are mentioning has a completely sensible justification, even if surprising. And if there is no justification, it can easily be bad writing - no ulterior motive but definitely failing to account for how a character can fight. If that's true, I would bet that many of the Rock's action sequences were just as ridiculous and overblown. Actually, that might be the point: Fast and the Furious isn't supposed to be remotely realistic and is often wildly exaggerated.

I've seen more bad writing on the face of it than any attempt necessarily to make a political statement by means of bad writing. 

 

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2 hours ago, whYNOT said:

...there was a scene of a slim, pretty girl taking on a guy and besting him. Dwayne the Rock Johnson came to his rescue and she had her legs around him in a neck lock in a second. And he was struggling to get free, despite a build like a buffalo. Give me a break! This was a Fast And Furious episode (?) with Jason Statham. For any regular movie goer, the repetitive meme of women overwhelming men has become a given. This is by design, intentional, and thinkers who are interested in societal movements should ask why, without fear or prejudice. Where did this unreality come from?

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?

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2 hours ago, Eiuol said:

 

Maybe, maybe not. Without the context, I would guess that the action scene that you are mentioning has a completely sensible justification, even if surprising. And if there is no justification, it can easily be bad writing - no ulterior motive but definitely failing to account for how a character can fight. If that's true, I would bet that many of the Rock's action sequences were just as ridiculous and overblown. Actually, that might be the point: Fast and the Furious isn't supposed to be remotely realistic and is often wildly exaggerated.

I've seen more bad writing on the face of it than any attempt necessarily to make a political statement by means of bad writing. 

 

Of course there's "a justification"!  Scriptwriters have to have a coherent plot. Conflict, cause and effect, tension - the baddies stole her child, she's a trained assassin, she fights an enemy agent. Etc.

Who said "a political statement" was made? This is ideological symbolism, woman getting her own back - whether she, the character, is good or evil, has your sympathies or not - we basically all like to see the supposedly weaker, abused or oppressed person get revenge. That's an old technique by movie producers.

And woman brutally (or comically) defeating man is being done over and over ad nauseam in movies, so we know it is deliberate. But you need to see what is implicit, and connect to the identical narrative which Hollywood and the media have been pressing and exploiting for many years, a manipulated division of, and tension between the sexes - and every grouping they can come up with, like race.

Edited by whYNOT
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3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Where did this unreality come from?

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.

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1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

And woman brutally (or comically) defeating man is being

That was brutal? It was a comedic scene emphasizing how he is attracted to her because he doesn't want to hurt her apparently. I'm not going to say that it's well-written comedy, but it still is comedy. It points out an absurdity, and that's about it. I'm just saying that these things are definitely not driven by some implicit woke attitude. If anything is bad writing, it is bad writing that has existed forever.

That's where parasitism comes in. When we get a huge market of movies that we have now, there is more opportunity for the second handed writers to just be derivative.

 

Edited by Eiuol
Reversed negation
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11 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

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.

All that is noticeably true. There is a certain amount of acceptable "unreality" at the base of most movies and artworks. And a variable amount of dramatic license the viewer allows, according to their personal levels of suspension of belief. Total fables, fantasy and science fiction, and so on, are good and believable when one recognizes their premises.

The classical formulae still hold, entertainment, sexual allure, action, and so on.

But always one needs to relate back to reality.

(Without going into naturalism as opposed to romantic realism and the general breakdown of much art into post modernist self-irony and cynicism). 

The mixing of genres is also interesting. It's like writers are short of fresh ideas to stir up emotions, and need to combine e.g. humor with violence - for one genre, often seen, dark comedy. Something used extensively by stand -up comedians in the last decade or two, making us writhe while we laugh.

I'm not a fuddy-duddy about movie violence, but who can't eventually find it boring as a repetitive formula, the lingering over every gory detail in slo-mo that is regularly/monotonously done in films? That isn't a healthy sign if that's what filmmakers have identified about audiences' wishes and cater for. Like parallel mirrors which reflect each other, the existing culture is reflected by the films, the film reflected in the culture ... etc. - ad infinitum.

 That's when all movie violence was perpetrated by males on males.

Why can't females get in on the act - one could validly ask? Once one barrier has been broken, of one guy unrealistically beating several others in a highly choreographed fight scene, why can't women come in also? They are allowed to express themselves violently too, y'know, as much as are men... So, yeah, let's have gender equality in violence, let's empower the woman. Sometimes but uncommonly, we see a female character fighting one of her own sex. By far, it's men, bigger, sometimes numerous, more muscular and as skilled, she beats up or kills. Now those movies have left any semblance of reality.

What's that about?

Has the moral zeitgeist of this era gone way past necessary and established emancipation and equality of rights among all individuals into the general wish for "supremacy", by specific 'tribes'?

Edited by whYNOT
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11 hours ago, Eiuol said:

That was brutal? It was a comedic scene emphasizing how he is attracted to her because he doesn't want to hurt her apparently. I'm not going to say that it's well-written comedy, but it still is comedy. It points out an absurdity, and that's about it. I'm just saying that these things are definitely not driven by some implicit woke attitude. If anything is bad writing, it is bad writing that has existed forever.

That's where parasitism comes in. When we get a huge market of movies that we have now, there is more opportunity for the second handed writers to just be derivative.

 

I actually specified "brutally (or comically)". I didn't stick around to see the context - and anyway there was another man she beat up.

"...are definitely not driven by implicit some woke attitude". Why, because there's some absurdity and attempt at humor?

"Too often humor is used as the camouflage of moral cowardice". [AR - Bootleg Romanticism]

Over and above that this film's fight scene was perhaps not as typical as scores I've seen, the abiding impression left in people's minds is not the context, it's the visual message: woman beating up man.

More, when you see self-mockery in art, laughing at the art form and ridiculing the human needs for art, you can be sure of the effects of post-modernism. "Don't take me seriously! I didn't mean it". That's Woke - and deconstructionist.

Edited by whYNOT
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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.

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