A great 'paper' (really it was a speech delivered in 1994) on this topic is Margret Atwood's 'Spotty Handed Villanesses'. Here's a link for an online copy: syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/assets/global/files/margaret-atwood-speech-2019-2023-english-prescriptions.pdf
When you mentioned how Orson Welles was exploring what he could have become when making Citizen Kane, I remembered a video I saw of Paul Schrader talking about how he wrote Taxi Driver as a way to exorcize himself from the anxieties he had at the time. Like he created Travis Bickle as a way not become him. Which makes me wonder if this isn't the same thing Nolan does with his movies: creative deeply obsessive people who may bring damnation to the people around them.
The algorithm brought me here and I am surprised I had never seen any of your other work before. Multiple hours-long video essays on film, literature, pop culture and random tangents are my jam. Definitely checking out your Roger Rabbit and LA Mass Transit video since I'm also a nerd about urban planning. Also thank you for listing out your sources in the description.
Both movies produced by Universal, easily my favorites, I''m a classical music expert and already knew things about Oppenheimer, so I was the target audience. Btw, Focus Features is my go-to film house for quality films, never dissapoints me (except the 50 Shadows trilogy, ugh), same with Searchlight Pictures.
your videos remind me of a more cinema-centric version of philosophy tube with your own incredibly charming personality!! I see you blowing up very soon because you're truly a gift to the youtube video essay niche!!!
1:00:15 Thanks for this ❤❤❤ I've never seen Hamilton as an endorsement but as an examination of our own society through the framing of history and at the same time making a musical that kicks ass. Is great to hear someone going deeper into that aspect in a nuanced way.
i've always hated hamilton but when he framed it this way i did change my mind a little bit. that doesn't excuse the fact that lin-manuel miranda supports fracking and enriches himself through the exploitation of other people though lol. i still hate it but i can appreciate the commentary from his (this channel's) perspective.
@@soupstoreclothingHaven't been able to find anything on him supporting fracking on Google; could you point me in the right direction to get informed?
@@soupstoreclothing he isn't though? Contrary to popular belief Hamilton was the creation of him, the rapper black thought, and Questlove. He very much work with a variety of black artists and producers to make the play a reality, and it's not like he's trying to make the statement that the founders were indeed good actually
Literally a combination of my favorite movie this year, the last 2 books I studied and annotated in English, and a link to some of my favorite musicals this essay had some very interesting connections
Dang, feel like I'm getting in kind of early on a channel that is going to really pop off. The writing, the editing, everything. This is top-tier stuff, thank you for putting it out there!
Fantastic and thorough essay that really engaged with the material at hand. I have been saying The Wind Rises is a mirror to Nolan's Oppenheimer since the latter's release and I'm glad someone else noticed this as well. Earned my sub for sure and this is one of my new favorite film essays!!!!
Yes, this is excellent! I love how you have woven so many significant works of art into this essay, some of which I'm going to make sure to watch next. Thank yo❤
This is incredible!! The amount of research! the level of depth and nuance! The cited works! Also lowkey wanna read this novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez now. Phew that was mindblowing. Thanks for your time on this. Also, really love this take on Hamilton btw.
Awesome work as always. I've recommended your channel on my social several times. I hope you get more subscribers because your content is on par with the largest creators in this genre.
No esperaba una mención de Simon Bolivar, exelente trabajo. Ojala un dia puedas hablar de el, pq suena facinante la forma en la que contaste esta historia
Oh, you may already know this through your research, but the reason Ankhenaten's name and Visage were erased was because in the ancient egyptian religion it was thought that if you erased all references and depictions to someone they would literally become undone in the afterlife. Similar tactic was taken to erase Hatshepsut, the only female pharaoh (Not queen).
Glad to see a fellow Colombian on YT. I now know whom Sarah was referring to in the harm and justice video. Anyway thanks for detailing the context of Citizen Kane, making me eager to learn about Bolivar and make me rewatch The Wind Rises
The very idea of greatness is a trap. The problem is not that these films fail to punish these great men for their bad deeds. The problem is they convince us there's any such thing as greatness - even when they make the entire point of their story, as in Citizen Kane, how empty greatness is. We should turn our attention to other stories not because less great people are less problematic, but just because that's the truth of human experience.
This is such an excellent video essay and is a total attention grabber. Aside from the actual content your costumes and set changes were a great addition.
i'm so happy this came up on my recommended - thank you for all the work and thought you put into this!! now i'm excited to go listen to more of what you've created :D
ya siento que te amo❤ que buen video chinooooo. This video was in my watch later list for days and I’m so glad I finally watched it❤❤❤ who knew 2024 would bring me a video where both Simon Bolivar and Oppenheimer would be mentioned? Jejejejeje
Wait I just noticed you've got 3k subs??? This is first vid from you that I'm watching and you, didn't even look at views and subscriber count and assumed it's like a milion. Sir you got a new fan, literally so underrated
i thought the same! i was so surprised at the production value for such a small channel. maybe this indicates some privilege on his part, access to the wealth necessary for the quality, but i'm still impressed.
I was unsure about watching the movie, although Nolan is one of my favorite directors. I'm not anymore, I'll definitely watch it. Your perspective open my eyes and I thank you for that ❤
Por cierto, me encanta ver a más latinos haciendo video essays. Una parte de mi todavía se emociona cuando alguien en un video en inglés menciona a García Márquez o Bolivar 😂
i like this video so much that i'm gonna go through the comments and reply to so many of them to boost engagement and make it more popular. i hope this works and that i will go down in the history of these comments as a great (wo)man.
Just led here from Calem’s recommendation; sooooo good! 👏👏👏👏. Subscribing ASAP, telling others, & I look forward to more video essays. TY for this great work you do
Idk, I disagree with the criticism of Oppenheimer that it didn't do enough to touch on the consequences of the bomb. Sometimes less really is more and for me, just hinting at it the way the film did through interspersed frames was very effective - if just a few frames of the effects on human bodies is enough to evolve disgust and horror, then the true scale of it is rendered incomprehensible - which in my view is an authentic depiction of what the bombings did. That being said though, I had already read a bunch about the bombings before watching the film so I wasn't really going into it as somebody who needed to be educated on it, which most audiences would be - so my perspective might be skewed
To me it is not so much a matter of demanding long-vanished great and terrible men are punished in a narrative- how would one even do that in a biopic? It's more that I wish the Oppenheimer movie had shed light on the consequences beyond what it ment to the man's conscience. There are still a fair number of people who think that "dropping the bomb" was worth it and I think that perspective deserves to be challenged. I'm not convinced the movie actually did enough to explore that and it would have been a good place to do so.
yes! though i would have to argue that the truman scene where he calls op a crybaby is really important. "you think anyone in hiroshima or nagasaki gives a shit who built the bomb? they care who dropped it. i did." and yet i feel like people came away from the movie condemning oppenheimer more than truman. op claims he has no regret in creating the bomb, but did he feel regret about how it was used? yes, i believe so. but he had little control over that. truman would have dropped the bombs regardless of if oppneheimer had tried harder to get him to not. i think it's the fact that op is such a pussy about standing up for what's right that's really the point here. consider if the bomb had been developed before germany was defeated and instead was used against nazis. immediately there's a difference in the optics of the situation because the nazis were evil. japan was already going to lose the war; the use of the bombs was unjustified entirely. but against nazis? i think we would be having a different conversation tbh. oppenheimer's argument is that people need to see the effect of this great weapon to understand it, but would he have had to say the same thing if it were used against the nazis? would he have had to justify his actions? i don't think so. i think he would have said that the nazis were evil and that the atomic bomb had to be used to stop them. considering that the death camps where all the innocent people being genocided were far away from the main german cities, it could even be said that it is more justifiable to use the bombs against the nazis because you wouldn't even be killing the victims of the holocaust. you'd be killing nazis and citizens too cowardly to stand up against the nazis, purveyors of the status quo. not to mention the fact that you'd be killing white people over asian people and inflicting decades of nuclear radiation upon european soil instead of japanese. make of that what you will. my point with all that is to ask the moral question of if it was correct to drop the bombs due to the nature of their devastation versus the people who were killed by it. many moderate types who lack critical thinking because they only watch disney movies believe that it is never morally justified to kill someone. i think it's more important to discuss the way in which people are killed and for what reasons and through what material means. is it morally okay to torture? is it morally okay to kill a nazi? is it morally okay for the government to be able to kill convicts? these are more important questions than, is it okay to kill? the sixth of the ten commandments has really set our civilization back if you think about it. lmao
@@soupstoreclothing had Germany been the target the conversation afterwards would probably have depended on whether it was a military or civilian target, tbh. It def would be a very different conversation, because LITERAL NAZIS, but we might be able to look at the complicated thoughts around the bombing of Dresden for an inkling. But in the end, that didn't happen. It was Japan that was hit twice. It was hundreds of thousands of civilians- men, women, and children- that paid the price of political grandstanding in a horrific war crime. I suppose my thought is that the US public at large has not grappled with what happened and so may not be able to discern between what Oppenheimer as a character rationalized to himself and what actually happened. I still often hear the old story that says "Japan wouldn't have surrendered and this saved more lives by cutting the war short." Like, I hear that a LOT. So a lot of the public don't know the history fully enough to be able to have context for the movie. In which case it would be easy to see Op as a flawed, complicated man, but not the full ramifications of it all. I would have liked this to be a joint US and Japanese directed movie, honestly.
@@robinm1331 i definitely think racism contributes to that argument, "Japan wouldn't have surrendered and this saved more lives by cutting the war short." not only the racism of killing asian people, but the racism in justifying it because of this mythologized understanding of their culture. it's argued that japanese people are too honorable, too proud, too arrogant that they would not have surrendered. but they did surrender. after they were hit with 2 atomic bombs that killed 226,000 people. so the argument that japan would not surrender is erroneous. they did surrender. they're countering their own argument without even noticing, exemplifying the cognitive dissonance necessary to justify the act.
@@robinm1331 oh but on the note of how the movie handled it. on the one hand, this movie is about oppenheimer, not the history and context of world war 2. on the other, you're correct; many people do not have the historical knowledge necessary to understand oppenheimer's moral conundrum. you could argue the movie is already very long, but i do think they should have included the fact that japan is still dealing with deaths and complications related to the nuclear radiation today. there's an entire modern segment showing op in his later years where he tried to make up for his actions. they could have added more commentary about the lasting effects of the bombs and the state of the war at the time they were dropped. i think it was negligent not to do so.
I generally agree @@soupstoreclothing But i have far cruder reason that the bomb was always going to be used - the US spent a 1B dollars in 1940s money to create the bomb, there was no way it wasn't going to be used. Add to that that FDR had just passed and Truman needed to prove himself, and Hiroshima was inevitable. And if by some miracle it didn't get used in WW2 - well, lets just say Korea would have had a far different narrative. Its also worth realising that the horror of the bomb's effect was not really understood - most scientists actually thought it would just kill everything quick and it wasn't until the demon core accidents that they had a glimpse of what acute rad. poisoning really did. So until it was dropped it was just a really big powerful bomb - in a world with fire-bombings, not really that different in terms of human cost and suffering. its only us modern folk with the benefit of hindsight that see the bom as a thing of horror. In-fact the military honestly though they just had a new weapon they could use at will - Truman was pissed when he heard about Nagasaki, and thats when they started to figure out things that eventually become the nuclear football. As for Oppenheimer, I have not seen the film, but, well, he was a complicate conflicted figure and truth is he far less bad overall than Napoleon, but seems to get so much more blame - he created the bomb but it wasn't his to use - the conundrum of the scientist. I htink he was in many ways pitifully normal and human - not a paragon of humanity, and we tend to crucify those who attain greatness but fail to be great. The Bomb was going to be made - and then it was going to be used - anyone who believes otherwise simply doesn't know the history or the human nature.
This is the first video I've seen of yours and I'm impressed, I like how you tied most of my favorite subjects: The Great Gatsby, Citizen Kane (thanks for including clips from Mank, I loved that movie), Oppenheimer, García Márquez and Bolívar (I'm from Venezuela, thanks, I think Francisco de Miranda is more of a latin american George Washington, even Washington admired Miranda) and Tar, loved the use of classical music throughout the video. You dealed with a subject in which I'm interested, I'm someone who is seeking for greatness and recognition, but I'm affraid of what people is going to say about me even after I die, there are parts of my life that I want to erase, I'm just entering adulthood and I know I did stupid things as a teenager, but it's probably a sign of grow. Btw can you do a video about why d'you thought that Napoleon was a good movie, maybe after the extended cut release? Can't say I didn't like it, but I felt cold and it lacked much more.
What a noirish delight! Part one: raffishly open shirt. Part two: nipple-revealing slinky toga draped appealingly in chains (and also partially exposing a curious red tattoo...) Part three: Covered up in a snazzy suit. Aw. You excite our imaginations, José María, but fail to deliver fully on the promise ;) Very well-produced work, visually appealingly and engagingly presented - what a fine package of charm, clever insight, varied sources and beardy comeliness. As for 'apotheosic' - ahh, a man after my own obscure-word-loving heart (though I think you'll find it's 'apotheotic') ;)
Thanks for making sure to include a scene from the Met performance of _Akhnatan_ under the relevant portion of your essay. For anyone who has never seen it, it's an experience like nothing else I've ever encountered. Definitely worth seeking out.
Incredible video! Mostly commenting for the algorithm so more people see it. Tiny nitpick though: I noticed you capitalized "bell hooks". It's very specifically not capitalized for future reference.
Very good video. Despite videos getting longer and longer on RU-vid, this is a topic that actually warrants it and I appreciate the effort you must have put into it. I appreciate your cinematic style and I will now definitely take a look at Sunday in the Park with George, though this comment will probably be buried by RU-vid and never seen since I posted it more than 30 minutes after the video came out. It's difficult in today's age to actually think critically about this topic because we are caught between two loud, obnoxious extremes: those who want to simply brush away or try to forget about the bad deeds in order to continue to idolize someone, and those who reflexively want to condemn someone because of any imperfection. For anyone who enjoyed this video, I greatly reccommend the video "Fake Evil Walt Disney" by Dreamsounds. Too much of the "conversation" for the majority of people can boil down to what you showed near the start of the video: Twitter people who want to feel morally superior, like life is a trashy reality show. Things get especially bad when it becomes "If you like __ that means you're a bad person!" History is something to learn from. I don't think that it's a given that you have to be evil to be a "great man". I feel bad for those that do; they may have been betrayed by someone very important to them. There are many important people in my life who have achieved great things without throwing away their humanity. However, I think it's easy and quite understandable why so many great men are evil; when you are powerful, so many opportunities are given to you on a platter (including really illegal, reprehensible things), and it's easy to fall for them due to your own weakness and self-centered selfishness. I think that power doesn't corrupt (though it can), but power most certainly reveals. I appreciate that you recognize that Oppenheimer is isolated in its perspective because Oppenheimer was isolated in his perspective, or at least tried his hardest. Every person does this to some level. After all, the machine you're reading this comment on is made thanks to slave labor and conflict minerals. That's not meant as a "gotcha" or some blanket statement to absolve all hypothetical wrongdoing that could ever happen; someone may have valid reasons as to why they make their choices, but there are points when reasoning for one's actions can be used as a shield for one's actions. I think that, along with your example of Hayao Miyazaki, the Metal Gear Solid series is a great commentary both on the manipulation of science to create weapons of war and how "good men" (though not always so good) with good intentions can decay as history unravels. I will say, though, that your idea that we should "hold historical figures accountable" in fiction seems rather obvious. In any work of fiction, a protagonist without some kind of flaw or acknowledgement of the ugly side of the message that they (and/or the work as a whole) believe in is uninteresting and unengaging. Though I'll admit I can't think of one, I do wish you used a word other than "accountable", as that word exists on a scale and very lax to very extreme treatments of someone's flaws can all apply under that one word and still fit its definition. At the end of the day, I think we all look up to "great men" in history, be they famous historical figures, our favorite artists, or even members of our family, (including examples of those we DON'T want to be like) and there is a human tendency to either completely deify or demonize these figures. Ultimately, we have to be mature enough to not discount either their flaws or their accomplishments. We have to see people as they are.
I don't know if you did it on purpose but I think you managed to make a pretty poignant commentary on the g***cide going on in Gaza, and the palestinian people and how they have and have not been remembered. I'm too tired right now to extract any coherent ideas from my mind but I can feel them in there. Anyways fantastic essay, will watch the rest of your work later and already thinking of a few people to recommend this one to. Finally, Neil and Sarah already sent their regards.
Why does recounting the story of creation mean reliving it? I didn't understand that part. How can you embody a story by telling it? Also, didn't history exist before writing through oral traditions? Weren't the names and stories of great individuals past on orally? Not criticism, actual questions that came to me watching this.
What a thoughtful and entertaining video, I’m so happy you appeared on my YT feed! Also: surely OnlyFans for the classical era would be called OnlyFauns? 😁
With contrapoints mostly retired and Abagail Thorn on Nebula making movies, we’ve badly needed more video essays with mood lighting and costumes. Fantastic work. Thank you. Followed
Makes me wonder.... Do you think there was ever born a great man who, using his talents discovered a way one might destroy the whole world... and then just decided to keep his mouth shut about it?
So this is the first time I’m seen one of your videos. I turned this on for something to listen to while I did my evening skin care routine and waited for my sleeping pill to kick in… and here I am hours later still awake after watching this all in one sitting, fighting against the sleeping medicine to make sure I finish this video essay and type up this comment so I can make sure I share my appreciation. This was a fab video and I have no choice but to subscribe to your RU-vid account (and heck maybe your Classical OF if that ever happens.
Firstly, the video was immaculate. But I don't even know how you could talk about 'A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte' without comparing it to it's twin piece 'Bathers at Asnières' especially in the context of this video!! It is one of my most beloved artworks (which is why I was passionate enough to write this post) and I have yet to see it brought up in any discourse that its twin in Chicago is brought up within. Wikipedia article for 'Bathers at Asnières' for any curious: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathers_at_Asni%C3%A8res
