Unpopular Entertainment Opinions • Page 230

I think the OP was poorly worded but I don't think it's a stretch to say that he gets infantilized a little by the public (i.e. on social media), but I've got nothing against him having a late career renaissance.

 

I don't have a narrative. There is a multi-million dollar narrative behind the awards push for Fraser. Whether it bothers you or not is a different matter.

 

Are we talking general public or extremely online weirdos? I think a lot of people could stand to remember that the vast majority of people don't have a clue what's going on on Twitter or whatever corner of the internet they frequent. To paint those things as general sentiment is usually not correct.

 

One of the reasons the push is so important is because The Whale isn't a very good movie. There is a reason why there is such a gulf between its rapturous reception at film festivals and the general consensus around regular film critics.

 

Doom Patrol is a comic book adaption that initially launched on the DC Universe app for reading comics, so I'm not surprised it wasn't on everyone's radar, lol.

If we wanna turn this into dunking on the Oscars and the nonsense around them, I'm all for that. It's always fun to see something or someone you like get positive attention, but when that Best Actor thing for the late Chadwick Boseman failed magnificently, I laughed and went on with my life.

The Fraser love bleeding into The Whale, which seems like a deeply miserable affair, is a bummer, but at least his next movie is Killers of the Flower Moon!

 

It seems like you're still ignoring the fact that people were genuinely excited about his comeback long before The Whale. Only you seem to care that that excitement that already existed is now being used to promote an Oscar push.

 

I am not ignoring anything. The vast majority of the conversation was created in order to get awards for people. The feelings of an individual or group of people on the Internet is a different story; I am sure you can find people eagerly awaiting the comebacks of Christian Slater or Chris Tucker.

 

...okay, bro

 

No it existed, and then exploited for an Oscars push. But hey, agree to misagree.

 

You won't get through to him, it's just not possible.

 

But we are agreeing.

 

The fact remains that it's just a cynical take to interpret genuine adoration and happiness for someone as infantilization. No one can genuinely like anything without irony these days without being shit on.

 

Whether the Frasnaissance began organically or not is immaterial. It’s a tool of capital now and it’s reasonable to ask why whenever your feels get poked by a consumer product

But it’s ok to have blinders on sometimes. Everything in our media is infected by exploitation. As long as you’re not fully consumer-pilled, it’s probably ok to be into things sometimes in order to live. You gotta be flexibly cynical

 

I'm just gonna say it

This thread is the worst.

 

Social media has made it easier to mask advertising in this way. You can easily push the narrative about Fraser, connect with those pre-established feelings, and then they will do the work for you.

I often think about a scene in Mad Men where Peggy is on a date with a guy who says advertising doesn't work on him but she just scoffs and says that you don't notice good advertising. I like to think I am immune to advertising too but I have that Whopper song stuck in my head even though I don't eat beef.

 

I mean the initial take was that admiration for Brendan Fraser = infantilization. That's just a weird wrong, cynical take all around. People can genuinely like him and be happy for him and if your cynicism only allows you to view that as infantilization, that really says more about you than anything.

 

Genuinely liking someone is coddling now. You can only like things with safe ironic detachment.

 

You are overestimating your importance. I believe you that you liked Fraser before the marketing push, but you are very small in comparison to a multi-million dollar Oscar campaign.

I wish I could Eternal Sunshine my knowledge of the Oscars and Oscar campaigns, but I have been a cinephile way too long. I have seen the machine time and time again. A few months or years after the campaign everyone goes back to acting normal, but the Oscar season (which is really year-round since it sometimes starts at Sundance) poisons genuine enjoyment of film.

 

I guess. But it really seems like you saw someone getting genuine admiration and it made you uncomfortable and you lashed out. When it seems like a lot people are interpreting your take that way maybe you should look a little inward.

 

Wow.

 

As I said before, some of it might have been how I worded it, but some of it is bad faith arguing.

 

No one is blind to the fact that there's a multi-million dollar machine behind an Oscars push. It's condescending to assume that. Regardless, genuine public adoration doesn't = infantilization as was your hot take.

 

I like how he's trying to tell us that promotion campaigns exist and that the entertainment industry is a machine for making money.

No shit, thanks for talking down to us, but that's not what we were talking about.

 

This is the bad faith I was talking about.

 

Anyway Fraser is cool and nice, I don't want to put him on a pedestal and we can all agree it's okay to like things and sometimes when things you don't like as much as others are getting praise it may come off as saccharin and obnoxious.