Charm City Slicker (56-32)

TW @twesq.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 23:20 UTC

Oh yeah, these are going on the stop signs in the neighborhood

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 03:07 UTC

People already wanted him gone before the debate even happened! And the debate made it worse. You can think the best thing to do is to stay the course, but people need to be honest about the reality that Biden is deeply unpopular and that was the case before the debate as well.

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 03:05 UTC

This, and, crucially, his poll numbers were bad beforehand, and his approval rating has been underwater for 3 years. He already was an unpopular candidate and the debate made it worse. 45% of Dems and 72% of independents in the NYT poll before the debate said Biden should be replaced.

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 23:15 UTC

Still ultimately think the "british officers are smarter than Japanese ones" aspect is fruitless, but I guess it does put an exclamation point on Nicholson et alia being pointy headed twits more concerned with their smarts and honor than their duty to not help the enemy

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 23:10 UTC

And of course the point is that the enlisted men don't want to build the bridge because it's abetting the enemy, it's the officer corps that becomes obsessed with doing the job properly regardless of what the job actually is. Rule of law might get better acute results but in pursuit of what?

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 22:52 UTC

Yes and in that way it's very good commentary on class that the enlisted men see exactly what is going on and that Clipton even tells Nicholson when he visits him in the oven that the men are doing everything they can to hold things up and as soon as the officers are free they sabotage the sabotage

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 22:42 UTC

Of course he does the same thing with his casualties as well. They "volunteer"

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 22:41 UTC

It's a great example of him not seeing the forest through the trees. He justifies it to himself on the basis that he asks the officers if they'll do it and they agree to volunteer. But as Holden says near the beginning, when a man like Guinness makes a suggestion, it's an order

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 22:37 UTC

Yeah I think one of the obvious morals of the story is that whether you are a totalitarian, a legalist, or an anarchist, none of that matters because war is hell

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 22:33 UTC

Of course you could make a story about how totalitarianism punishes the most intelligent members of a society and makes people fear admitting mistakes, leading to collective ruin. but that's a different movie, and would have nothing really to do directly with Guinness making a stand about the rules

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 22:30 UTC

Saito releases Guinness because he needs the British officers to go command their troops so that the bridge can be built. But the point of rule of law triumphing over totalitarianism is undermined if the real reason the bridge gets built is that British officers are just smarter than Japanese ones

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 22:19 UTC

Interesting. To be honest I do think that sex subplot with the nurse helps to develop Holden as the third party American rogue out for himself (which he later subverts in typical storytelling fashion by refusing to leave Warden behind)

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 22:15 UTC

In fact the entire scene where the British officers sit in Saito's office and spend like 10 hours talking about how inept the Japanese are at bridge building really felt superfluous and a bit off to me, because again the bridge could be lagging because of morale rather than a lack of British genius

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 22:11 UTC

Saito is a man who believes in totalitarianism and Nicholson is a man who believes in the rule of law, and if one of the themes is that rule of law is better because it allows for specialization relative to brute force, that can be expressed without the Asians being so hapless they put piles in mud

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 21:56 UTC

I think there is a way to tell this story where the bridge isn't being built properly because the men have a communication barrier with the Japanese engineers and have fallen out of discipline with their officers locked up, but I think the film does British Ingenuity/Bumbling Asian stereotyping

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 21:52 UTC

One thing I do think about THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957) is that it plays a little fast and loose with the reasons the bridge isn't being constructed properly while Alec Guinness is in the oven, in a way that feels tropey to me.

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 21:34 UTC

THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957) almost feels like a film it's not even worth having deep opinions about, because it's so much a part of making film what it is as a medium. It's like having strong opinions about Hamlet or 'Roll Over Beethoven'

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Charm City Slicker (56-32) @sprawlhater.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 16:41 UTC

Baltimore feels like the Sri Lankan jungle today

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