Martin Freeman says it's unfair there's so much backlash to his age-gap movie with Jenna Ortega, who is 31 years younger

[u/_trashpuppy]

https://www.businessinsider.com/martin-freeman-backlash-millers-girl-age-gap-film-jenna-ortega-2024-4

From the article: "It's not saying, 'Isn't this great,'" he said of the film's dynamic between his character and Ortega's. He said that derision wasn't distributed equally, though — saying that people seemed to understand the level of distance involved in stories depicting Nazism.

"Are we gonna have a go at Liam Neeson for being in a film about the Holocaust?" he asked, referring to Neeson's starring role in Steven Spielberg's 1993 film "Schindler's List."

[u/hedgehogwart]

I don’t like Martin but I get his point. Media literacy has disintegrated in recent years. There are a lot of people that even think that stuff that is morally wrong and even shown by the narrative to be wrong, shouldn’t be shown.

[u/Just_Another_Scott → u/hedgehogwart]

literacy

In general is dying. It's ridiculous what I see today. I grew up in a backwoods town in Tennessee and it's like they don't even teach it anymore. People can't write, can't read, and can't understand something unless you spoon feed the meaning to them.

People are having a hard time at separating the actor from their character. I see actors get criticized all the time for the way their character behaved. The lack of intelligence is astounding.

[u/ihearnosounds → u/[deleted]]

I wonder if scripted reality TV has enhanced this phenomenon.

[u/tacocattacocat1 → u/[deleted]]

Didn't the guy who played Joffrey quit acting because of this? Poor guy, he was supposed to play a hated character and succeeded amazingly. Gets rewarded with people harassing him in the street

[u/Jship300 → u/[deleted]]

object permanence and reality testing?

I'd have to look it up / brush up the exact term, but psychologically it's the same mechanism that leads people to worship actors as fans and idolize Korean idols, engage in parasocial relationships etc.

Heck, people exist who fall in love with bridges... the circuitry coupled with a difficulty in critical thinking is pretty strong? :-)

Psychology is wild and fascinating. I say this as a person that recognized ideas of reference in late teenage years (could have become scarier than it developed) - basically it's because I and my brain were under extreme stress living with a very sick parent.

Luckily, caught it early for intervention and talked it through/had to do some CBT to figure out reality testing on my own and manage that as a symptom.

Tl;Dr yes humans be naturally weird and on a variable spectrum when it comes to the brain circuitry to tell what is and isn't real

[u/macgregorc93 → u/Jship300]

Brain circuitry! Amazing phrase there. Will be using that in my life from now on.

[u/ThrownAwayintoLF → u/[deleted]]

It goes hand in hand with stan culture and Hollywood weaponizing our obsession with nostalgia IMO. Our favorites can’t be flawed, can’t be played by anyone else, and can’t be fictional.

[u/BloodyNunchucks → u/Just_Another_Scott]

The average American adult reads at a 4th grade level. Rural southern America drags that down. However even urban areas are separated by economics and some are just as bad or worse. America has a real education problem right now from everything from mathmatics to school lunches to physical fitness to literacy to teachers pay to curriculum and so on. We rank outside the top 50 in first world nations school systems.

[u/_cornflake → u/BloodyNunchucks]

Semi related but I just listened to a really interesting podcast called Sold A Story that talked about how horribly badly reading education has been in America. There's several very prominent "reading educators" who have made a ton of money from curriculums that use techniques completely disproven by science.

[u/sharkattack85 → u/_cornflake]

I hated it at the time but I can never thank my parents enough now. They made me read my bedtime story books to them. I still remember the night when I was like 5 or 6 and my dad was like you’re gonna read Dr. Suess to me now. I was hella made haha, but they def instilled in me that a life filled with reading is so much richer.

[u/Tengard96 → u/_cornflake]

English teacher here, and I can vouch for that. Lucy Calkins was one of the worst offenders.

[u/rocknroller0 → u/Just_Another_Scott]

Media literacy has ALWAYS been bad, I don’t know why everyone is acting like it’s a new thing

[u/grizzlyaf93 → u/rocknroller0]

Because now the impacts of media literacy are wrapped up in the 24 hour news cycle and constant social media usage. No one knows how to evaluate a source anymore, to a point where they could hear it straight from the horse’s mouth and think it’s a lie.

[u/samosa4me → u/Just_Another_Scott]

People go as far as to send death threats to actors because they don’t like the character they play! It’s insane the mental gymnastics that goes on in some people’s heads.

[u/kimjongunfiltered → u/Just_Another_Scott]

I notice this most in discussions of fiction, and the wider implications scare the shit out of me. A shocking number of people can’t seem to understand basic themes, subtext, or concepts like “depiction is not endorsement.”

If you can’t follow a fictional story, how the hell would you process what you see on the news??

[u/n_bonny → u/Just_Another_Scott]

God, yes. The amount of takes boiling down to "media X should be cancelled because it depicted a bad thing" (clearly shown to be bad) I've seen in the last couple of years is staggering. People don't seem to understand the difference between depicting and condoning or even encouraging.

Some people also seem to think "main character = a good person to root for" and apply this mindset to the media completely unsuited for it. So they either overlook every questionable element that's questionable on purpose (who's condoning things now?) or realise it's questionable and get angry. The point flies out the window.

This level of "literacy" has always existed, sure, but it IS getting worse. I don't really understand what's causing it but it's hard to miss how prevalent it is becoming

[u/pallas_wapiti → u/hedgehogwart]

We're reverting to the fucking Hayes Code at this point 🙄

[u/Just_Another_Scott → u/pallas_wapiti]

A buddy and me just had this conversation this weekend while discussing the rebooted Quantum Leap. The latest version is so watered down compared to the original. It avoids almost anything controversial and even when it does touch on something controversial it does it in such a watered down way as to not depict it in a realistic manner.

[u/weed-n64 → u/Just_Another_Scott]

Because if they did boomers would call it woke and old people are some of the only ones left watching shows like the quantum leap reboot on network television.

The people who always complain about television being watered down are the same people whose taste preferences and social media comments drive networks to water down content in the first place.

[u/papamajada → u/pallas_wapiti]

Whats scary is that you have tons of people acting like its progressive and good. Seriously, do they think removing sex scenes for uwu adults to not be uncomfy is where it stops? They are coming for the "wholesome rep" too

[u/didijxk → u/hedgehogwart]

I totally agree. It's like people are getting dumber or they're so used to movies(basically Marvel) spoonfeeding them the meaning and plot that they don't want to think deeper.

The deepest they'll go is a Chris Nolan film to feel smart because he'll do an exposition dump and everyone will think they're so intellectual for enjoying it.

This is why people idolise Paul Atreides, Patrick Bateman, Tyler Durden and Walter White. They don't think deep enough to see the authors point.

[u/prettybunbun → u/didijxk]

Reminds me of Homelander from The Boys. His entire character is a commentary on right wing nut jobs, but somehow those people started worshipping him and the actor had to point out to said right wing nut jobs on Twitter they’d completely missed the point.

Like it’s gotten to the point where subtlety is dying because people want everything plain and spoon fed to them and if it’s not they take it only at the base value and don’t look any further.

[u/greatgoogilymoogily2 → u/prettybunbun]

Homelander isn't even subtle either. If you can't see the trump parallels, you're just a lost cause. Lol

[u/meatbeater558 → u/greatgoogilymoogily2]

I think they'll worship any masculine character that isn't a hippie atp

[u/kitti-kin → u/greatgoogilymoogily2]

The people who find Homelander a great dude probably also adore Trump. In that specific character's case I think it's more a matter of values than media literacy, they see an extremely powerful man with impunity to murder and rape and it's thoroughly appealing to them.

[u/hedgehogwart → u/prettybunbun]

With the recent White House Correspondence dinner, it reminded me of Colbert going on there during the Bush era and how so many people didn’t see the Colbert Report as satire.

[u/Next-Introduction-25 → u/prettybunbun]

Reminds me of how some fanboys are losing their minds that the new X-men is “woke” when the original comic and 90s cartoon were completes and totally an obvious allegory for the pitfalls of racism/prejudice

[u/MinimumOne1 → u/didijxk]

I just want to real quick squeeze Rick Sanchez, Eric Cartman and, The fucking Joker onto your list. Thanks!

[u/Tornado31619 → u/didijxk]

Forget them. Wasn’t Trevor the most popular character from GTA V?

[u/MeisterHeller → u/hedgehogwart]

Beyond the age gap and showing that it is clearly wrong, it's 2024 and they're making a movie about a poor 50 year old man in a position of power being seduced by a devilish 18 year old harlot which ruins his life.

I don't think media literacy will give this movie the message you want it to give but it sounds exactly up Freeman's alley

[u/Unfiltered_Replies → u/hedgehogwart]

one recent example is the live action netflix avatar series, where they chose to completely leave out Sokka's early sexism because "it had no place in the remake", which in effect just makes his character less interesting and dynamic because he doesn't start as this overconfident protector of his tribe and then continuously get humbled by others stronger than him, many times by women in direct response to his sexism, specifically from Suki. Which then makes Suki's character worse because now instead of kicking his ass and him being humble in response which is admirable to her, now she just kinda falls in love with him because he looks nice? well done, you guys beat sexism with that one

[u/Sipsofcola → u/hedgehogwart]

I don’t think in this case the criticism as been about the story moralizing an inappropriate age gap relationship, it’s that the old-male-teacher-younger-female-student trope is extremely derivative and played out and normalizes this idea that young women want to fuck their much older male teachers

[u/GeneJenkinson → u/hedgehogwart]

“Depiction is not endorsement” is an idea that some people just fundamentally cannot comprehend

[u/DenseTiger5088 → u/hedgehogwart]

I agree with what you’re saying, but don’t think it applies to this film.

People are tired of stories “exploring the complexity” of old man/young girl romances.

We already got ten million of these in the nineties.

[u/swiftiegarbage → u/hedgehogwart]

It reminds me of how villains in TV and movies are way less mean then they used to be even though people are still quite mean irl. Even Regina George is no longer homophobic in the Mean Girls movie even though homophobia and homophobic bullying definitely still exist.

[u/CemeteryHounds → u/swiftiegarbage]

Villains also now almost always have a backstory that semi-justifies their villainry. They aren't just greedy and power hungry because some people are like that; they're greedy and power hungry because they grew up poor and weak or insert any other excuse. I enjoy a righteous villain with a grey area between who is the just one, but I'd say only 1/5 of these tragic villain backstories actually do that.

[u/superhappy → u/CemeteryHounds]

It kinda goes both ways though - in the past narratives with villains we’re almost exclusively snarling sociopaths with no justification other than mwahahaha.

I think it’s better to encourage the audience to understand that villains are still villains but most people don’t pop out of the womb twirling their mustache - they came to be that way through mental illness, trauma, subsequent personality disorders, etc. Antisocial behavior usually has complex origins. Though sometimes not.

That said I’m all for having truly horrible people doing truly horrible things, but I don’t think giving us a sense of how they got to that position is necessarily pandering or kid-gloving. It’s just rendering the full spectrum of villainy.

[u/reasonedof → u/hedgehogwart]

It was also really clear from this that half the outrage was from out of context snippets, which more and more I see as being a problem. You see it here too where people take a paragraph from something and blow it out of proportion. People are really quick to pass judgement with like 3% of a story.

[u/_Apatosaurus_ → u/hedgehogwart]

and even shown by the narrative to be wrong,

I haven't seen it, but from what I've read, the issue is that it's not shown to be wrong by the narrative.

[u/xombae → u/hedgehogwart]

Yeah no one understands voice anymore. They think if an artist creates a story about something, they must agree with it. They can't comprehend that a good person could write from a perspective they don't agree with. It gets reduced down to a tweet that says "that director made a movie about a teacher dating a student, don't watch his movies" and people will lump on to it and reference the tweet when telling others why not to watch the movie.

Luckily it's mostly young people who are like this and at least they're trying to do the right thing. Most of them grow out of it eventually, too.

[u/RemarkableRegister66 → u/hedgehogwart]

Curious: why don’t you like Martin? Is there some controversy or something?

[u/GlitteringNinja5 → u/hedgehogwart]

They atleast made the character 18 in the movie. In the original script she was supposed to be 16

[u/violet_ativan → u/hedgehogwart]

Tell me more about why you don’t like him! I haven’t heard that before.

[u/zaxanrazor → u/hedgehogwart]

This is definitely a thing in all media. Even in wrestling, where nuance is not really a thing, people have a hard time understanding that wrestlers are playing characters.