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I just finished watching the film.
To me it was obvious that the Fletcher's entire purpose in life (as he sees it) is to push musicians to become the next great. Almost no one can meet that standard which is why he's so frustrated and abusive. Whether or not this technique actually works in real life is another matter.
If you've ever seen B.B. King play (I haven't live but I've seen videos) you'll see how the instrument appears to be an extension of himself. The music just flows naturally. That's a great musician.
Fletcher wants to create the next Charlie Parker, the next B.B. King, the next great. In the ending scene Andrew became a great drummer. Both of them achieved what they most want in life.
3 POC gangbangers getting shot on the subway likely wouldn't have made the news in 1980s NYC. Also they were Wayne Enterprises employees which is part of the plot - the Joker's movement is against the rich & powerful and 3 yuppie businessmen getting shot fits right in.
Funny, I had the exact opposite reaction. When I saw her my first thought was wow there is an actual female agent I could see working at the FBI as opposed to the usual stick figure supermodel.
Q: Why did Michael Jackson like twenty-nine year olds so much?
A: Because there's twenty of them!
It's going to be tough to ever bring Ducky back as the actor who portrayed him, David McCallum, died aged 90 on September 25, 2023.
It doesn't actually solve anything. Europe's population was reduced by an estimated 40-60% during the black plague and today more people live in just Germany than in all of Europe back then.
A fertility level of slightly above 4 means a halving of the population is reversed in just one generation.
For reference, the fertility level of Niger is almost 7.
A better "finger snap" would be for intelligent species to voluntarily keep their population numbers at a sustainable level.
I provided basic facts (which can easily be verified online) to back up my claims you're operating on pure emotion and anecdote. Which one of us is the one devoid of pragmatism?
There are people who will become & remain homeless drug addicts no matter how much you help but I'm not talking about that group.
I'm talking about the fact that it has become much harder simply to live in this society compared to decades ago. That's going to take a toll on people who are barely making ends meet and for some that will result in life spiraling out of control when that could have been prevented in the first place.
Addendum: I have personally helped "save" someone like Alan. I don't mean in the way Thomas wants to "save" Charlie.
I'll just call him Alan even though that is not his real name.
I met Alan in college. He was a very devout Mormon. He never swore or drank alcohol. He left on a two year mission in a distant foreign country even though his father was dying from cancer at the time.
He was also, just like Alan, a gay man.
He eventually left the Church. He met someone and has been with his husband for 25 years now.
He told me one thing that convinced him to not end up like Alan in the film is that he saw his friends (like me) living full happy lives without religion and realizing it was not, as his Church taught him, an absolute requirement to live a happy & full life.
2/2
You're going to say but God blah blah blah.
There are plenty of Christian sects that welcome and celebrate same sex unions. If you can ignore the parts condoning slavery in the Bible then you can ignore the parts condoning same sex relationships as well.
So many religions have traditionally been opposed to same sex love because it doesn't usually produce more followers. Just like the Catholic Church opposes contraception. They want as many babies made as possible. The babies will more likely than not follow the same religion as the parents which means more followers, money & power for the Church.
It's easy to change the above though. Just look at what the Mormon Church did in 1978. The Mormon Church taught that having black skin was a curse from God. Black people could not join their priesthood.
After the Civil Rights Era, that racist belief became more and more untenable and a threat to their power & money so they received a "revelation from God" that they can stop believing that black skin is a curse from God and welcome black people into their Church.
1/2 It's a testament to the skill of the filmmaker that you can interpret "The Whale" in this fashion.
Let me give you an alternative view from someone who doesn't share your belief system.
This film shows you how much pain & misery conservative religion inflicts on people.
You take that one element away and you don't have a story any more, but every character ends up much happier.
Charlie is not a bad person. He spends the entire film helping others. If he's attracted to men why would he marry a woman and produce a child with her? Because society (driven by conservative religion) pushed him to. Take that away and he would have found someone like Alan and been happy. He wouldn't have killed himself with food and felt so much guilt and shame.
Charlie's wife Mary could have married a straight man who didn't have to hide his true nature and she also would have been happy. She wouldn't have had a gay man leave her to take care of a resentful & angry daughter.
The bitter & angry Ellie would never have been born, or Mary would have had an "Ellie" with another man who wasn't secretly attracted to men and they would have been happy.
Liz wouldn't have lost her brother to suicide.
Alan wouldn't have killed himself.
Thomas could have done something useful in life other than trying to inflict more pain & misery on people.
The answer is yes. He is handicapped since his condition matches the dictionary definition:
"having a condition that markedly restricts one's ability to function physically, mentally, or socially."
The fact that his voluntary actions gave him this condition doesn't change the fact that he's in this condition any more than if he had been racing motorcycles in a dangerous fashion and become a paraplegic after an accident.
I remember reading about domesticating an elephant (this story may be an urban legend but that doesn't matter for the point) where initially they use a thick chain to restrain the powerful animal but once he gets used to captivity all that's required is a thin rope.
By the time these souls arrive at the camps they've already been thoroughly broken. Resisting is not what they think of, only survival.
I think the scene works either way. If the girl tells her father Sophie tried to steal the radio, Sophie's life is over.
So she may have fainted for real or faked it. Either way, she uses it to draw attention away from the radio and towards other things which works.
It's not just that it would take "X money" to "fix it," it's that US society (and many others) is engineered to benefit the rich at the expense of everyone else.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out if rents & housing prices keep going up faster than wages that eventually you end up with homeless people.
In 1985, when many baby boomers were entering their peak earning years, it took 30 weeks of median MALE worker pay (female was 45) to pay for the median basic living costs (housing, education, transportation & healthcare) for a family of 4.
That's before any avocado toast or a cable TV bill.
In 2018, that increased to 53 weeks. The median female worker needs to work 66 weeks to earn enough to pay these expenses. There are 52 weeks in a year.
I remember I worked part-time in college and full time during the summer in the early 1990s to help pay for my education. I couldn't cover 100% but I could cover quite a bit. In the 1970s it was possible to cover 100%. It's virtually impossible today.
It's foreshadowing the fact that pi is an unreliable narrator.
Actions speak louder than words.
The other reason is a bit sad. She probably heard that word so regularly it didn't affect her like it would someone today. I remember growing up in the 1980s in the Southern California and hearing that word. I imagine it was much worse in the 1960s.
So that's $4 billion a year when a lot more is needed. Also much of the money spent is to deal with the effects. It costs $106,000 per year to imprison someone, a lot less to house, feed and clothe them outside of prison.
It appears obvious from the way Ditchwater Sal acts once she realizes who she's dealing with that Lamia is a VERY powerful witch and is vastly more powerful than Ditchwater Sal.
During the nuclear testing literally hundreds of atom bombs were exploded in the atmosphere. And nuclear weapons have gotten less powerful since back then since they are far more accurate today. Since those ICBMs would be detonated in their silos, away from population centers, the amount of fallout would be limited.
I'm all for more inclusiveness in films but not for clumsily inserting characters into films - that's just bad storytelling.
I hate that cringing feeling when you see this. And not just when introducing LGBT characters either. For example the "romance" between Padme and Anakin in Star Wars was atrocious, one of the worst ever depicted IMHO.
For an example of an LGBT character (in this case pansexual) done RIGHT, see Deadpool. The way Deadpool constantly hits on Colossus totally fits with the character and is introduced organically in the film.