The Other Worlds Shrine

Your place for discussion about RPGs, gaming, music, movies, anime, computers, sports, and any other stuff we care to talk about... 

  • Incorrect analogy, or something

  • Somehow, we still tolerate each other. Eventually this will be the only forum left.
Somehow, we still tolerate each other. Eventually this will be the only forum left.
 #169699  by Don
 Wed Jan 25, 2017 9:55 pm
So in the Now Watching thread Seeker asked me why I don't like Miyazaki's works and whether it's the environment or the community it spawns, so I thought about it and decided to figure out why. I looked up the Wikipedia entry for On Your Mark, which is my favorite work out of Miyazaki, and right away it's quite apparent that I hate the community. Here's a snippet on On Your Mark:

"McCarthy highlighted similarities to different works and real life found throughout the film, remarking that the opening city sequence could be an homage to Akira or Blade Runner"
"...and the rescue scene is reminiscent of Princess Leia in Star Wars."

Now this is from someone who wrote a book on Miyazaki, and while I don't particularly view that as some kind of incredible credentials, this isn't some random guy's opinion on the Net. Without going into too much details, this is a standard Miyazaki film. It does not take place in a dystopian where the world's gone to hell like Blade Runner or Akira. The opening city sequence is a futuristic city and it's dark because it took place in the night. More than half of the film was in daylight. The protagonists rescued the standard looking Miyazaki girl in a cell, and she didn't ask if they were too short to be a Stormtrooper (and both protagonists were there, not just one). Now I've been through college humanities to know that if you want to sound cool just reference to Blade Runner or whatever and that ensures your essay will definitely pass even if you're just randomly making stuff up. But that kind of stuff should've ended when you step out of college. Of course this is hardly the only case you see something like this. For example you can see someone say something stupid and racist and they'd say it's satire or humor. Ignoring that humor isn't a free pass to be a jerk, usually whatever's being said isn't actually funny anyway. Saying exactly the opposite of what you believe in and exaggerate isn't sarcasm or satire, or at least not a good example of one.

Heck, I see people say when Trump says something stupid he's trying to do something from Sun Tzu's Art of War which is why we need to be careful and not fall for this threat to democracy. I'm very sure Trump is not secretly taking a page out of Sun Tzu or Machiavelli's playbook. I'm not even sure what's the proper term for this. I put analogy on my title, but it's more like 'incorrect usage of Iwin button', as it is usually quite obvious that whoever made the argument think saying this is related to (whatever) offers some fundamental truth of the universe and thus makes the argument unassailable. At least that's all I can think of because some of these comparisons are just nowhere near correct, and even if they are, the fact that Trump is pulling a strategy out of Sun Tzu's Art of War doesn't make whatever he's doing any more or less threatening.