Hacker Cinema
Manhattan
1979 · Film · 96 min
Directed by Woody Allen
Manhattan explores how the life of a middle-aged television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.
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> Games are doomed by femininity. Across media, genres marketed toward women are deemed lesser than their masculine counterparts: romance novels are trashy, chick flicks are shallow, and pop idols are embarrassing
This idea is trotted out but is really blatantly false when you think of it. Jayne Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility. These books have all withstood the test of time and are considered fine literature but are absolutely feminine. Romance novels are considered less than because they are not good books, just in the sense that Conan the Barbarian is also considered not fine literature despite being dripping in masculinity.
Manhattan, Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally. There are tons of "chick flicks" that are considered great films. Some directors like Catherine Breillat are extremely feminist in their works and well regarded directors with well regarded films in cinephile circles.
Manhattan. Pretty sure I saw a documentary on this once.
Actually, the comic itself has more recently become more political and has been accused of being racist/bigoted. If you haven't been reading the strip since its heyday in the 90s you'd probably be none the wiser.
For example, it introduced its first black character for the sole purpose of wading into identity politics: https://boingboing.net/2022/05/08/dilbert-creator-introduces-first-black-character-with-a-trans-joke.html
Separating art from artist is something that is easier or more difficult to do depending on the artist.
For someone like O.J. Simpson, the separation is quite clear. His football career predated and had no relation to his alleged infractions in his personal life. Plus, there's no real way to financially support a retired player. Going to the Buffalo Bills game today or watching old highlight clips doesn't financially benefit O.J.
For someone like Woody Allen, it's hard to ignore that his art that he directs and writes happens to include some pretty gross plot-lines, like in one his most critically acclaimed movies Manhattan where his 42 year old character dates a 17 year old.
Another "fun" fact, Woody Allen hit on the actress who played Tracy and invited her to stay with him in his hotel room: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariel_Hemingway#Personal_life
The fact that the general population was just sort of ignorant of how problematic this was doesn't really change the fact that Woody Allen is very obviously attracted to minors and that his actions were never okay.
So, really, for some of these people there is not much separation between art and the artist. Some are more of a blurred line. For example, arguably, the art of Harry Potter doesn't include much damning content, but many people have made connections between some details of the Wizarding World and the way the author's voice portrays them, and how problematic they might be in the context of her public opinions. I think this is why there's such a split on opinions on whether to continue to consume Harry Potter content amongst fans of her work.
For Scott Adams, it's clear to me that the artist is intruding on the art much more than J.K. Rowling ever intruded on her art. Adams has joined the right wing white nationalist cult and it leaks into the comic strips all the time. It's very much a political strip.
Let me finish off on the topic of "cancel culture." Let's say you walked into a candy store and the owner called you a shithead. You probably wouldn't buy candy from that candy store, right?
Well, Scott Adams did that to all Black people just now. You walk into his candy shop and you look a certain way, and he categorically dislikes you before you even say hello.
Scott Adams categorically called an entire group of people shitheads based on the color of their skin alone, not thinking twice about whether that group of people might be in charge of editorial decisions at newspapers or whether that group of people might be customers of his product.
The truth is, it's not very hard to treat everyone with respect and dignity regardless of their ethnicity or personal background. It's not hard to treat people the way you would like to be treated.
People like Scott Adams are actively going out of their way to hurt people's feelings, so they can't act like it's an injustice for their feelings and bank account to be hurt in return.
If boycotting assholes is cancel culture, long live cancel culture.
I am a Gainsbourg fan. When he pushed the boundaries he was both clever and artistic about it. The rest of the people you mention have no artistic integrity? I don't care anything about them, really.
I don't know, I am on the fence about Woody Allen so I'm probably hypocritical. I grew up liking his stuff and so find it hard to despise him now. "Manhattan" might (now) be his most cringey film but it has one of the best closing lines of any film ("You gotta have a little faith in people.").
There's a brief footnote about their REVES volume rasterizer used in Soul World crowd characters. They simply state their render farm is CPU based and thus no GPU optimizations were required. At the highest, most practical level of abstraction, it's all software. De-coupling the artistic pipeline from underlying dependence on proprietary hardware or graphics APIs is probably the only way to do it.
https://graphics.pixar.com/library/SoulRasterizingVolumes/paper.pdf
On a personal note, I had a pretty visceral "anti-" reaction to the movie Soul. I just felt it too trite in its handling of themes that humankind has wrestled with since the dawn of time. And jazz is probably the most cinematic of musical tastes. Think of the intros to Woody Allen's Manhattan or Midnight in Paris. But it felt generic here.
That said the physically based rendering is state of the art! If you've ever taken the LIE toward the Queensborough Bridge as the sun sets across the skyscraper canyons of the city you know it is one of the most surreal tableaus in modern life. It's just incredible to see a pixel perfect globally illuminated rendering of it in an animated film, if only for the briefest of seconds ;)
> Does Howl advocate child rape,
There is a lot in there of which I am not intimately familiar but I don't believe it does. It seems to me that contemporary claims of depravity of Howl centered around depiction of consensual homosexual acts, or drugs, or simple use of swearing, all of which are less shocking today than they were in the 50s. If you can find a specific example do tell.
> Woody Allen doesn’t advocate for marrying underage relatives in Manhattan
There is a creepy relationship with an underage girl (played by Mariel Hemingway) in that film. The amount of seeming autobiographical material in his work of the time make this hard to dismiss.
What are the most important Woody Allen movies?
I'm thinking:
1977: Annie Hall 1979: Manhattan 1986: Hannah and Her Sisters 1989: Crimes and Misdemeanours 1992: Husbands and Wives 1993: Manhattan Murder Mystery 2005: Match Point 2008: Vicky Cristina Barcelona 2009: Whatever Works 2011: Midnight in Paris 2013: Blue Jasmin
Have I missed anything?
It does. I believe both DVHS Demo reel and Cowboy Bebop film opening were influenced by opening sequence of Manhattan (1979). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrPedKkNsh4
I don't think that's enough. If this is a fight, which it is, the cockroaches are going for your throat, and this approach amounts to a light sparring session.
It reminds me of the film Manhattan, where Woody Allen's character is at a cocktail party, and a group is ruminating about what to do with a group of Skinheads that popped up in NY. His party acquaintances suggest they use satirical literature in the paper. Allen's character, dismayed by their solution, suggests baseball bats. He had the right idea.
As long as we let cockroaches hide behind legal technicalities, as they do MAJOR damage, they will continue to do so, and the damage will continue.
"...if I'm on the treadmill and I'm surfing the channels and suddenly Manhattan or some other picture comes on, I go right past it. If I saw Manhattan again, I would only see the worst. I would say: "Oh, God, this is so embarrassing. I could have done this. I should have done that." So I spare myself."
I'd probably say the same thing if, at the age of 44, I made a film starring myself as a guy in a relationship with an underage high-school kid. Of course if it were Mariel Hemingway (who was 18 darnit!) my biggest regret might have been not filming steamier sex-scenes...