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GetToSreppin t1_ja8j0vm wrote

I always see these articles about movies that are more relevant now than ever or how a movie predicted the future. It's always bullshit. These movies didn't read tea leaves it's just that the same bullshit that plagues us nowadays is still here and now people decide to pay attention to it.

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Lost_city t1_ja8oeka wrote

Actually reading the article, the writer gets it all wrong. The movie is based on gatekeeping which was huge before the internet. In essence, gatekeeping was a process where a handful of people could make your career / make you famous / etc. Think Harvey Weinstein in the 90s. With the rise of the internet, people don't need gatekeepers anymore. If you are a model, you just go out and gain followers on instagram, etc.

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zerg1980 t1_ja8qs42 wrote

This was my takeaway from the article as well. The entire plot of King of Comedy is reliant on pre-internet gatekeeping. Rupert concocts an insane kidnapping plot in order to bypass the gatekeepers and perform in front of a large audience.

Today, Rupert could just do his act on TikTok without committing any crimes, and millions of people could watch it if they wanted. It would be a lot easier than kidnapping Jimmy Kimmel to land a guest spot on a network show.

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Equal_Feature_9065 t1_jad23hp wrote

You guys are missing the point. Rupert is A) a psychopath stalker and B) wants a free ride all the way to the top. One of the defining things about that character is that he’s never performed his standup before. Yes the gatekeepers are keeping him from getting on TV, but he’s never even thought about going to the clubs — where there is far less to no gatekeeping — and working on material. He wants to be famous for fames sake, not because he has talent or passion or anything

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throwawaymamcadd t1_jad8unh wrote

Isn't there a part where he goes into a bar with people doing some kind of open mic comedy or am I confusing it with someone else? Ethier way I don't really buy the idea that it's some kind of metaphor for the modern era. YouTubers who have a big audience are usually really talented in a niche field and that comes from hard work rather than being delusional guys sitting around their mum's house all day.

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Equal_Feature_9065 t1_jadampj wrote

Pretty sure you’re thinking of Joker but I could be wrong

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throwawaymamcadd t1_jadbb05 wrote

It's quite possible- they could have merged into the same film in my memory somewhat. I actually went into watching the Joker with no preconceptions or hearing anything about it and I was surprised as to how blatantly it was a mix of Taxi Driver and King of Comedy.

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SecondCityMeatball t1_ja9ax7v wrote

Which is also hysterical because if there's one industry that has benefitted from the internet, it is stand-up comedy. There's a ton of great comics doing the work themselves. So while it is still a great movie, if anything, it's as irrelevant as its ever been.

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cbbuntz t1_ja9ae58 wrote

Somebody just posted that famous scene from Network saying they were surprised by how relevant it was. It's just a universal, evergreen sentiment about living in western society

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Equal_Feature_9065 t1_jad2h8a wrote

Yeah it’s usually just that the trends have accelerated. Now every cable newscast is Network

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FlashpointJ24 t1_ja9xj96 wrote

Someone said something similar about The Simpsons: it's not that the show predicted the future, it's just that we still have the same problems we had in the 80s because we haven't fixed any of them.

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highdefrex t1_jaa2fgq wrote

> it's not that the show predicted the future, it's just that we still have the same problems we had in the 80s because we haven't fixed any of them.

Spot on. It's wild that "Homer's Enemy" aired in 1997, almost 26 years ago this May, where Frank Grimes hated Homer for the latter's ability to coast through life and still have it all -- a wife, multiple kids, a nice house, a stable job -- while Grimes, despite working hard in all aspects of his life, still struggled to make ends meet.

Flash forward 25 years later to the season 33 episode "Poorhouse Rock," which aired last May, and the show straight up confronts Bart with the reality that he'll never have what Homer has even if he works hard -- that the dream of owning a home and having a stable job and multiple kids that was at least possibly attainable when the show started has now evaporated for newer generations. Even though he obviously wasn't in the episode, it essentially proves Frank Grimes was right in the long-term, that even if he existed now, still did everything he was told he was supposed to do by society -- go to college, work hard, etc. -- he'd still be just as pissed, if not more so, at Homer for having such (what is now) miraculous luck.

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Fokker_Snek t1_ja9ku25 wrote

Yeah I was watching a YouTuber talk about reading through 16th Century religious polemics and kept seeing them making comments that weren’t any different than him saying “I can already hear some of you commenting in the chat…” which is hilarious. Also in my own historical research I did about communists and nihilists in the 19th Century, I couldn’t help but imagine them getting into “you’re not a real fan unless…” kind of arguments based on the impression I got from some of them.

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MadeByTango t1_ja9p1x7 wrote

As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that a great many articles, like this one, are about thebaithor’s growth as a person, not the movie. So I read them for that, to see what in the film was transformative for the author. That used to be a common thing to read, it’s what built the New Yorker, but we get less of that now and not as well written. Still, these kind of articles have their place, even if thebaithornisbstill in a naive place about what it is they’re actually writing.

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AloneCan9661 t1_jabc192 wrote

The amount of times I’ve had to explain that The Joker was simply a mixture of this movie and Taxi Driver to my friends….

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Good_old_Marshmallow t1_jaanocu wrote

Yup, these media properties weren’t predicting the future they were satirizing their present and problems unaddressed eventually progressed to the point of satire

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AlanMorlock t1_ja98p1r wrote

Some things that were previously more niche concerns become more mainstream behaviors and problems. And a movie becoming more relevant is t bullshit, thst just, you know, happens sometimes.

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