[HN Gopher] Streaming subtitled box sets is the new Eurovision
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Streaming subtitled box sets is the new Eurovision
Author : doener
Score : 208 points
Date : 2021-04-05 07:59 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| dankerr wrote:
| Pay wall
| PJ_Maybe wrote:
| Try this: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
| or https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox
| the_biot wrote:
| That is hardly the point.
| peteretep wrote:
| > That is hardly the point
|
| What is the point?
| thepangolino wrote:
| OP has JavaScript enabled by default.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| The firefox addon is now also maintained in the former repo
| :) It's a great addon indeed, it makes the internet still
| function.
| andreareina wrote:
| https://archive.is/20210401021541/https://www.economist.com/...
| simion314 wrote:
| Seems to work with JS off , I suggest to have JS off by default
| and whitelist websites that actually need it.
| [deleted]
| chmod775 wrote:
| This is absolutely ridiculous.
|
| There were actually three full paragraphs with about 300 words
| here, but then I realized that would just be dignifying this
| pretentious drivel.
| f6v wrote:
| Common European culture is enabled by dirt-cheap Ryanair and
| easyJet tickets(Berlin-Milan is 30 EUR round-trip) and open
| borders. Just hop on and explore your neighbour's thousand year
| old history.
| kazen44 wrote:
| Also, erasmus and similair programms which makes it possible
| for (young) people to exchange.
| nicbou wrote:
| Many Europeans have studied, worked or otherwise lived abroad,
| not to mention all of those who benefited from those dirt cheap
| flights.
|
| It's quite amazing that you can drive from one end of the EU to
| the other without showing your passport, learning new road
| signs, exchanging currency (with some exceptions), getting a
| new SIM card, or waiting at a border crossing. If you live in
| Berlin, driving to Warsaw is no more of an inconvenience than
| driving to Frankfurt.
| asdff wrote:
| I don't know what we get out of the U.S. border situation.
| People who have to commute between the countries hate it.
| People who work these posts probably hate it. Trucking
| industries hate it. Tourists hate it. And yet, based on what
| I see in my city, the cartel has no issues getting drugs in
| for cheap enough that someone with no income can be high for
| every waking hour of their life. I just want to be able to go
| to Tijuana without the traffic jam. I didn't ask for this
| damn wall (well, sturdy fence, really).
| ketzo wrote:
| That's what happens when elected representatives from
| Wyoming and Tennessee have a congressional majority over
| the control of a border 1,500 miles away from them.
|
| Stoke fear of immigrants to get yourself elected, then make
| legal immigration impossible so that illegal immigration is
| the only option.
| patrickaljord wrote:
| Quick reminder: co-Founder of Netflix, Marc Randolph, is directly
| related to both Sigmund Freud and Edward Bernays. Both historical
| figures of psychology and propaganda...
| https://i.imgur.com/u9OyyOp.png
| bibinou wrote:
| grand-uncle is not "directly related".
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Death by association?
|
| So what if he is related. I don't know about you but I have
| completely different opinions and beliefs to my direct family
| members.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| >Streaming services, however, treat Europe as one large market
| rather than 27 individual ones, with the same content available
| in each.
|
| Lol, they don't even treat one country as one market. I need to
| change the language of the Netflix interface to be able to access
| all content in my country.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Across countries in the EU, there exists a gap in the available
| shows.
| coldtea wrote:
| As a European, this article is the degree of pretentious, market-
| driven, and shallow, that fits perfectly with the Economist.
|
| "Streaming subtitled box sets" are not "the new Eurovision", and
| Eurovision itself meant and means squat when it comes to "common
| European culture". (If anything Eurovision is something most of
| us watch for laughs, and more often than not we take sides and
| vote for countries we already knew and liked for other cultural
| and historical reasons).
|
| We have had and have a quite good understanding of other European
| states and their cultures, even more so when they share the same
| borders (as it's often the case in Europe - to have 2, 3 or more
| countries sharing your borders and have millenia of interaction
| with them and their culture, plus "shared" areas of mixed
| culture, e.g. Strasbourg).
|
| It's not the lack of Netflix's European programming or watching
| each other's shows that prevented a "common European culture".
|
| Not to mention, we have had something like that, both in the
| high-brow sphere (for centuries), but also in the pop-culture.
|
| E.g. non-artsy Italian and French cinema from Alain Delon to Bud
| Spenser was big all-over Europe until the 80s when Hollywood
| dominated with emphasis on impossible to meet big productions and
| vfx. European pop music frequently travelled all over Europe,
| from Al Bano to Roussos and from Nina Hagen to Kraftwerk. Comics
| too, French, English, Italian, Belgian, Spanish (to namedrop some
| that were published and loved all over Europe: Asterix, Tin Tin,
| Mortadelo y Filemon, Lucky Luke, Blek, Judge Dredd, the Smurfs,
| Manara, Corto Maltese, and so on).
|
| And as somebody mentioned, Interrail and Erasmus have been going
| strong for 3 to 4 decades now or more... (I've done the first,
| and have had many friends doing both the first and the second.).
| paganel wrote:
| Spot on. I think that nowadays Champions League football (and
| European football in general) has done more to create a common
| European identity/culture than all the top-down measures
| implemented by various institutions, you can have a Romanian
| and a Swede both saying they're a Madridista or a Scouse while
| having no other interest in the Spanish and British cultures.
|
| Re: Italian music, I still have a couple of Ornella Vanoni and
| Mina CDs in my car, it's the only thing that I listen while on
| road-trips (am Romanian).
| coldtea wrote:
| Huh, football of course. I only forgot it because I'm not a
| big fan, but as far as "common European thing / knowledge of
| each other countries aspects" comes, it has historically been
| huge!
| fireattack wrote:
| What is "high-bro sphere"? I googled and didn't find anything.
| coldtea wrote:
| Sorry, high-brow (I'm a notorious typo-ist). There's a high
| culture European dialogue that's been going on for a
| millenium at least, and even more intensely in the 18th and
| 19th and 20th centuries...
|
| Both in the social scene (upper-middle classes and above
| travelling around Europe), and in the explicit and implicit
| exchange of influences and ideas between philosophers,
| writers, poets, musicians, painters, and so on.
| hectorlorenzo wrote:
| Although I really like the idea of 18th century
| aristocratic Bros. Bumping gloved fists, downing full kegs
| of claret, and quoting Thomas Hobbes instead of Simon
| Sinek.
| coldtea wrote:
| Well, I'd say romantic poets and enlightenment
| philosophers kind of were :-)
| tim333 wrote:
| I think he means highbrow as in opera, Dante etc.
|
| I quite like the article and found it interesting. I'm a Brit
| and you have to realize British publications like the
| Economist tend to take the piss out of Europe a bit,
| especially the Eurovision song contest.
| walshemj wrote:
| Quite a few countries do that as well not just the UK.
|
| In the past Italy sent its B team - and TBH san remo has
| much better strike rate for good songs.
|
| The main point of watching (UK perspective) is for the
| cometary, The late Terry Wogan and now Graham Norton ) and
| to see how few points the UK gets
| oblio wrote:
| > I quite like the article and found it interesting.
|
| Well, you're British and this is a British publication
| targeting you :-)
| ascorbic wrote:
| Most readers of the Economist aren't in the UK. It's not
| even its biggest market.
| midasuni wrote:
| High brow
|
| Opera, music, art, literature etc
| edeion wrote:
| Thanks, I learned a new word :)
|
| I thought OP was referring to the fact European upper noble
| families were all blood related and shared the same
| interests.
| asplake wrote:
| The word's origins are more dubious unfortunately:
| https://www.brainpickings.org/2011/08/23/the-myth-of-pop-
| cul...
| slavik81 wrote:
| > The terms 'highbrow' and 'lowbrow' come from phrenology
| _notreallyme_ wrote:
| I guess it's "elitist circles". There were no enforced
| borders before WWI. It was common for people who could afford
| it to travel between big European cities. So there is a big
| chunk of shared culture actually.
| lqet wrote:
| > There were no enforced borders before WWI.
|
| What do you mean by that? There were of course borders, and
| they were certainly enforced.
| coldtea wrote:
| Not in today's sense:
|
| Until the late 18th century travellers were more likely
| to be monitored at the district or parish level. During
| the French revolutionary wars the Jacobins began to issue
| foreign travellers with a carte de surete on arrival at
| the French border, but these early 'passports' were
| dependent on the ideological affiliations of the holder
| rather than their nationality and subsequently fell into
| disuse after the Napoleonic Wars.
|
| For much of the 19th century border control was sporadic
| and often non-existent, as millions of people migrated
| from Europe to the New World or within Europe itself
| without any passports or documentation. In 1942 the
| Austrian writer Stefan Zweig recalled the amazement of
| young people when he told them he had travelled across
| the world without a passport before the First World War.
|
| The situation had started to change following the global
| economic slump in 1873, when governments began to
| introduce immigration controls based on nationality and
| ethnicity for the first time. In 1882 the US government
| passed the first Chinese Exclusion Act in response to
| racist 'Yellow Peril' lobbying from California
| politicians. In 1885 Bismarck ordered the expulsion of
| 40,000 Polish workers from Germany to prevent the
| 'Polonization' of Prussia. In 1897 the South African
| colony of Natal introduced a language test for
| immigrants, which barred entry to anyone who could not
| fill out an application form in English - a test that was
| specifically intended to eliminate 'coolie' labour from
| India. The 'Natal formula' was also introduced in
| Australia in order to keep out Chinese migrant workers.
|
| https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-
| matters/beyond-...
| neither_color wrote:
| That's fascinating. I was recently reflecting on how in
| 20 years Ill be telling young people "with a western
| passport, you used to be able to just book a flight and
| fly to almost any country you want and stay at least 30
| days, but then covid happened." I'm so glad I got to do
| some nomad-ing for 2 years in my mid 20s. That level of
| openness is gone, and no the vaccine isn't bringing it
| fully back. The borders between The US, Mexico and Canada
| used to be a lot fuzzier too only 30 years ago. While
| there was SOME control, it was a lot more lax and after
| 9/11 it never came back. Once you give up some openness
| for security it never returns.
| Veen wrote:
| There were borders and they were enforced, but during the
| 19th and early 20th Century, it was quite normal for
| artistic elites to move around, especially to cultural
| hotspots like the Paris of the high-modernist era or
| Vienna in the late 19th C. etc.
| buran77 wrote:
| Indeed but the view that survived from so long ago isn't
| coming from the "regular folks" but from a selection of
| people closer or fully a part of the elite. They're the
| people who could pass their ideas and experiences through
| the time. It's more or less like reading Bezos' journal
| two centuries from now and imagining that it's probably a
| representative way of life for the early 21st century.
| _notreallyme_ wrote:
| I meant that passport were ot required for traveling
| inside Europe before WWI. Crossing borders didn't require
| to obtain a document beforehand.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| I think he's referring to this guy:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAhM0nds2UY
| effie wrote:
| Wow, how does he make that ball and coin levitate. Is this
| a CGI prank?
| wombatmobile wrote:
| The "high-bro sphere" is a circle of Europeans who are so
| culturally advanced they are not even a circle - they are a
| sphere.
|
| They sit around in their special sphere saying things like
| "The Economist is pretentious, market-driven, and stupid,
| like Eurovision."
|
| Then they say "Yeah bro, high five!" like Borat.
| coldtea wrote:
| Not sure what you mean here, but there appears to be a lot
| of resistance to the idea that, god forbid, anybody
| anywhere in the world might have a higher education and/or
| appreciate something more than pop culture.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| I like opera, renaissance art, pop culture, rock music,
| Impressionism, jazz, and kitsch, amongst other things.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by "more than" pop culture.
|
| There is good art and bad art in all genres, which are
| just mediums of cultural communication that reach
| different audiences.
|
| I didn't understand the reductionist criticism of The
| Economist, which I have found to publish numerous
| examples of good criticism and bad criticism, about a
| range of topics, mostly to do with economics, and
| occasionally culture.
|
| I don't think culture is The Economist's forte. They
| probably don't either, except when cultural platforms
| have measurable economic consequences.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I'm not sure what you mean by "more than" pop
| culture._
|
| Basically that aside from there being "good art and bad
| art in all genres" there are is also more substantial and
| less substantial forms and artistic cultures.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| How do you measure "substantial"?
| medicineman wrote:
| He is making the racist claim that there is objectively
| superior forms of art to others.
| pera wrote:
| > As a European, this article is the degree of pretentious,
| market-driven, and stupid, that fits perfectly with the
| Economist.
|
| Almost every time I read an article from The Economist I see
| that many of their arguments are founded on false premises
| which are (usually) trivial to fact-check. I really don't get
| why this publication gets posted here on HN so often.
| varispeed wrote:
| The seem to be publishing what most people want to hear and
| as such it is pleasing to many people, regardless whether it
| is true or not. They just want to feel good for a moment and
| escape the reality.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| The Economist has a variety of types of article. It has a
| World news round up. It has short opinion pieces (like the
| ones that get shared here) and longer form in depth analysis
| sections. It finishes with Arts and culture science and
| obituaries.
|
| I have only ever seen the short (1/2 to 1 page in the printed
| version) opinion pieces shared here. I think most
| publications could be judged unfairly by reading the only
| those parts. Usually the magazine is themed on one subject
| for the week and publishes a range of angles on the same
| thing. Again sharing one part of it rather destroys the
| beauty of it. I think that is why I can't get on with the
| digital editions.
|
| I was a subscriber to the paper edition, but it is supposed
| to arrive Saturday morning in the mail, but often didn't. I
| found thay if it arrived on Monday I was only finding time to
| flick through it.
| willyt wrote:
| This happens with other papers as well. It's always the
| opinion pieces that get shared because they press people's
| buttons. Then everyone piles on with 'Oh this isn't
| journalism' obviously! of course it's not, it's usually not
| written by a journalist and it's not meant to be
| journalism. I can understand how people that didn't grow up
| with the print editions can get confused though as I've
| noticed that Apple News puts lots of opinion pieces in my
| 'news' feed and because of the diversity of sources it's
| not always easy to tell as there are no strong visual clues
| and each outlet's conventions for opinion pieces are
| different and I think they call them something different in
| America, I forget the word, (editorial?).
| sprash wrote:
| The Economist is nothing but a mouthpiece for propaganda
| pushed by IMF, Brookings (a.k.a Rockefeller), Rothschilds,
| Goldman Sachs and further globalist swamp organizations.
|
| They get posted here as often as any other shoddy trash. But
| their crap seems to "stick" more at the frontpage than the
| others (probably because of better writing skills).
| ketzo wrote:
| From my limited experience, their finance writing (as the
| publication's name might suggest) is actually pretty good; I
| appreciate the skill it takes to write about financial
| markets in a way that's understandable to someone with very
| little financial knowledge.
|
| Almost every other thing I've read from them is 1) total
| horseshit or, worse, 2) deeply right-wing conservative
| propaganda veiled behind a thin veneer of "we have a study
| that we cite!"
| schnevets wrote:
| Yeah, when I had a commute I would devour Economist
| magazine, and I still consider it an even-keeled
| international news source for English-speaking readers. I
| can tell it has a neoliberal, "we have everything under
| control" underpinning, but I'm curious what people suggest
| as an alternative.
|
| That said, their culture section can be sloppy. After
| noticing numerous errors in topics I care about and being
| disappointed in multiple book recommendations, I think I'd
| sooner try a cooking recipe from PC Gamer than accept their
| entertainment opinions at face value.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I've been reading the Economist for more than 15 years. I
| couldn't disagree with you more. This publication gets posted
| here so often because it is excellent IMO. It has a great
| balance of humor and rigor, they have great insights based on
| data, common trends, public opinion, government stance, etc.
| Weekly, I read a hard copy of it usually on Sunday mornings.
| Perhaps, I am biased of off habit.
|
| They admit their mistakes openly:
| https://medium.economist.com/mistakes-weve-drawn-a-
| few-8cdd8...
| hencq wrote:
| I completely agree with you. I've been a subscriber for
| over 12 years, so maybe similarly biased. A good test case
| for me is whenever there's an article about something I
| have in-depth knowledge about it's rare to find grievous
| errors. A reverse Gell-Mann amnesia if you will.
|
| The articles that are posted here are usually from the
| Leaders section, which are in effect opinion pieces. For
| every Leader article there's also a more in-depth article.
| If your only experience with the Economist is through their
| Leaders I can see how you would come away with the idea
| that all their articles are biased and lack detail.
| mycologos wrote:
| I'm curious, can you cite some examples? In my experience The
| Economist has a definite bias toward "market reforms" (which
| some people might instead describe as "gutting the state" or
| something), but "trivially false" seems a lot more extreme.
| blululu wrote:
| I realize that this ask is standard on HN but it's a bit of
| a pain to comb through a publication to produce the imputed
| litany of minor inaccuracies. I share the OP's sentiment
| that the economist is a lousy source for opinions (it is
| however great for total coverage of world events, but you
| take this with an ideological spin that free trade and
| deregulation will make everything good). In general the
| economist is written as a series of anonymous op-eds.
| Articles will bring up specious comparisons 'the amount of
| natural gas reserves in Bolivia is greater than the oil
| sands of Alberta' and use these to support opinions that
| are unrelated. They will make bold forecasts from scanty
| data 'more subsidies for domestic industry will reduce GDP
| growth', 'restricting access to Qualcomm chips will cripple
| Chinese Mobile Manufacturers' and never validate their
| success rate. In general it requires a lot of critical
| reading to not get sucked into believing that they know
| what they're talking about.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| They won't be able to supply any examples beyond the
| opinion pieces, which are like most opinion pieces in all
| publications: click bait OPINIONS. The Economist does a
| decent job of reporting when reporting.
| the_duke wrote:
| In general I agree, but I also have a counter point.
|
| I enjoy the European shows on Amazon and Netflix, much more so
| than the tiring Hollywood garbage.
|
| Netflix does bring a decent budget for more Hollywood
| competitive production value to shows that feel distinctively
| less "US", which is a good thing for Europe, or at least
| provides a distribution platform to increase revenue for local
| shows.
|
| Of course many of those shows also are produced for selling to
| a global audience, and French or some other local productions
| are more valuable for a European culture.
|
| But the contribution is not zero or negative.
|
| German shows were especially horrible (no, really, horrible)
| until very recently.
| the_af wrote:
| > _to namedrop some that were published and loved all over
| Europe: Asterix, Tin Tin, Mortadelo y Filemon, Lucky Luke,
| Blek, Judge Dredd, the Smurfs, Manara, Corto Maltese, and so
| on_
|
| Many of these were loved in Latin America as well. Lucky Luke
| and Asterix are my personal favorites, though there's a special
| place for Corto Maltese (Hugo Pratt is revered in my country)
| and I also liked Manara for erotic comics.
|
| To this day I consider European comics way superior to American
| comics, where superheroes tended to dominate. Yes, I do love
| Sandman and Robert Crumb, of course.
| runarberg wrote:
| A Donald Duck fan here: It is funny to mention that Donald
| Duck is way more popular in Europe then in his place of
| origin in North America. Several European publishers had
| (have?) authors on staff and share stories with other
| European publishers. Se we got (get?) stories that the
| Americans don't get. Also in the nineties the translation in
| my home country was exceptionally good.
|
| When I talk about Donald Duck with Americans they don't get
| it, but when I talk with other Europeans there is a long and
| fun conversation ahead.
|
| I always think it is cute when a work of art travels from the
| place of origin and shines in a different part of the world
| in this way.
| berkes wrote:
| I try to pick up a Donald Duck weekly in every country that
| I visit. It is fun to see how different Kalle Anke is from
| e.g. the Dutch Donald Duck.
| kergonath wrote:
| Depends on which Donald Duck comics, to be fair. A whole
| bunch of them are utter garbage, not everyone is Don Rosa.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > E.g. non-artsy Italian and French cinema from Alain Delon to
| Bud Spenser was big all-over Europe until the 80s when
| Hollywood dominated with emphasis on impossible to meet big
| productions and vfx.
|
| It's not _impossible_ to meet Hollywood 's financial power,
| also its artistic power... Germany alone for example has
| producers (Constantin Film), studios (Bavaria, Babelsberg), VFX
| shops (Scanline, Stargate, Pixomondo) or tech rental (ARRI),
| and not to mention all the locations which _many_ US
| blockbusters regularly use.
|
| The core difference America has and what makes Hollywood so
| dominant is that everything except locations is pretty much
| concentrated in Hollywood (with Vancouver and Toronto offshoots
| in Canada), whereas in Europe everything is splintered -
| Germany alone has Cologne, Berlin and Munich. That makes it
| harder for all parties involved in a production (please don't
| get me started on the disgrace that is high-speed internet
| connectivity here) and, crucially, we don't have the informal
| "network effects" resulting from having everyone drink at the
| same bars in one town.
|
| If anyone, be it a billionaire or a government, in Europe were
| to fund a "cinema town" modeled after Hollywood, inter-European
| infighting would kill the project before it even had a chance
| at getting started. We can't even get our heavy industry
| companies merged so that they're sizable enough to fight
| against Chinese and US companies - how are we supposed to
| successfully do that for a industry that doesn't have much
| economic relevance?
| corty wrote:
| Well, there are attempts, especially in France, to pick
| national champions in different industries and concentrate
| public funding on them to build up companies that are
| relevant on the international stage. This has also been tried
| on a (somewhat) European (but still French-dominated) scale
| with Airbus and Arianespace. But I think most other European
| governments view these kinds of activities rather
| suspiciously.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Yes, for example the grand tour which many young upper class
| people went on in the 17th and 18th century. With the explicit
| goal to expose themselves to as much culture and other elite
| people around the continent as possible.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour
| pjc50 wrote:
| Far more recently than that, Interrail and the Erasmus
| scheme.
|
| The UK withdrew from the Erasmus scheme as part of Brexit
| seemingly for no other reason than to discourage cultural
| integration.
| [deleted]
| krona wrote:
| The Turing scheme will probably be more attractive to UK
| students because it will likely include more countries that
| UK students are actually interested in experiencing.
| rover0 wrote:
| Does not look that good https://twitter.com/maxfras/statu
| s/1368913490308702208?ref_s...
|
| The missing tuition support is really harsh, especially
| if Turing is for the US
| KaiserPro wrote:
| supposedly, students don't pay tuition fees, because
| universities are expected to partner to waive fees.
|
| I don't see this working in all honesty.
| vinay427 wrote:
| This tuition agreement which is often implemented as a
| waiver (so the student pays at most their home rate) is
| already the case for many exchange programs which have
| existed between innumerable university-pairs for many
| years. I don't see why the Turing program approach
| wouldn't be feasible.
| JetSetWilly wrote:
| > The UK withdrew from the Erasmus scheme as part of Brexit
| seemingly for no other reason than to discourage cultural
| integration.
|
| I think it was because of two reasons. First, the sort of
| people who go on Erasmus and Interrail tend to be the sort
| of people who could have afforded it anyway - it is a
| subsidy for the well to do.
|
| And secondly, far fewer people go from the UK to other
| countries, than come from other countries to come here, so
| it is a financial drain.
|
| You could argue that it was a good idea for soft power
| reasons for the UK to do, but it doesn't seem to have built
| up a lot of European good will so far and perhaps the
| government has reasoned that the money is better spent
| elsewhere.
| spzb wrote:
| > so it is a financial drain.
|
| Only if you subscribe to the zero sum idea that there is
| a fixed pot of money which must be shared out between
| competing claims on it. Unfortunately our current and
| recent governments have propagated that notion for their
| own gain.
|
| It neglects the fact that foreign students in the UK
| spend money in the UK economy thereby propping up jobs
| and economic activity. When my daughter did a year
| studying abroad in Germany the funding she got was
| nowhere near enough to cover her rent and other costs. So
| something like 10 grand of British money ended up getting
| spent in the German economy to keep her going.
| watwut wrote:
| > First, the sort of people who go on Erasmus and
| Interrail tend to be the sort of people who could have
| afforded it anyway
|
| Absolutely not in my experience. They don't tend to be
| super poor, they are college demographics. But among
| social classes that do go to college, it actually enables
| people who could not pay for it. These programs are a way
| how students for whome it would be expensive go abroad
| for few months.
| Veen wrote:
| I stream a lot of French and other European shows, and it's
| primarily because I'm bored with American and (especially) BBC
| TV. But, as you say, it's nothing new. I've read translated
| French and German literature all my life. I've long enjoyed
| French, Polish, and Hungarian cinema. So have most of the
| people I know (including those who were pro-Brexit).
|
| I enjoy it precisely because, although Europe shares a fair bit
| of culture, these works are not the product of a homogenized
| Mid-Atlantic or "common European" culture, but an expression of
| the particular culture, xplace, and time in which they was
| made.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Yeah, these sorts of "arguments" are typical of either those
| who wish for Europe to have a common culture (like EU
| federalist extremists) or people who don't have a genuine
| common culture like Americans, but think they do. Both fail
| to grasp the reality of culture and end up trivializing it to
| great detriment for everyone (the Soviets tried the same and
| it all came crashing down as Soviet Man led to the return of
| the repressed ethnic identities of the Russian Empire). The
| former trivialize it, thinking they can magically manufacture
| some kind of common identity (What the heck is "European"
| identity? Common cultural features or foundations, much less
| the suppression of diversity, do not suffice to magically
| produce an ethnic or cultural identity). I suspect EU
| federalists think they can replicate the kind of rootless
| Americanism that was produced by identity theft and makes
| people vulnerable to manipulation (the dissolution of
| European ethnic neighborhoods was largely the product of
| social engineering that attempted to assimilate these people
| into a manufactured, imposed, and ultimately vacuous "white"
| identity and you can see this because most European
| immigrants weren't white until much later in American
| history. I mean, what the heck is "white" identity? It's
| ultimately meaningless and allows those in power to fill it
| with any content they like, like "person who drinks Coke,
| watches Hollywood movies, and buys tons of crap he doesn't
| need, oh, and accepts abuse from a usurious oligarchy that
| uses debt and compound interest as an instrument of power and
| enrichment"). This is part of the reason why Americans are so
| confused about such things because they have no real culture.
| Why would you want to inflict something like that on Europe?
| Besides, ethnic difference is interesting and need not be a
| source of hatred or conflict. You need some way to
| simultaneously keep your ethnicity and transcend it. Every
| attempt to go to the extremes, to exaggerate ethnicity or so
| suppress it, always lead to disaster.
|
| All of this is not to say that TV cannot be used as a
| powerful tool for social engineering. It can and it is.
| Television and Hollywood have, in concert with the education
| system, caused enormous changes in society. It's just harder
| to accomplish without first demoralizing and robbing someone
| of his identity first. Solve et coagula.
| medicineman wrote:
| Whoa, cool it with the antisemitism.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Not having a common culture is because the goal mounted on
| greased maglevs - anything common is declared
| "cultureless".
|
| The "rootless" line by the way is itself an absurd
| dogwhistle of antisemites amounting to "They are not
| trustworthy because we repeatedly robbed and kicked them
| out - ergo they must have deserved it!" Along with all of
| the feudalist anti-merchant and anti-banking cliches to
| assure literal serfs that military dictators. While
| whitewashing all of the considerable hatred and conflict.
| You unironically repeat ancient self-serving lies of long
| dead strongmen and yet you think we're the ones confused
| and manipulated?
| eisa01 wrote:
| Eurovision may be more for laughs today, but I believe it
| historically had a different position?
|
| From watching it in the 90's as a child, I don't remember it
| being near as crazy as today, and they started in the 1950's
| hencq wrote:
| It's been pretty camp for a long time though. As a European
| living in the US I got a good laugh when my American friends
| watched the Will Ferrell movie "Eurovision". Especially when
| I got to explain to them that it wasn't even all that
| exaggerated and some of the characters were actually real-
| life former contestants.
| BjoernKW wrote:
| It perhaps doesn't influence European culture at a larger scale
| (yet) but what I really appreciate about Netflix is that the
| shows and movies they offer are almost always available in the
| original language version alongside with dubs and subtitles / CC.
|
| In Germany, where I live, you otherwise almost exclusively get
| German-only versions of movies (due to a mixture of licensing
| shenanigans and there not being a sufficiently high demand for
| original language versions in the German market).
|
| In my opinion, the biggest obstacle standing in the way of closer
| integration between European countries today is language or
| rather the lack of a common language.
|
| For that matter, Brexit could be a blessing in disguise because
| it might allow EU countries to embrace English as a common
| language - in addition to their native ones - without any of the
| more dominant EU members having the "advantage" of that language
| as its native, official one anyway.
|
| This idea probably is a pipe dream, though. Realistically, I
| don't really see France, Germany, or Italy, for example, adopt
| English as an additional official language any time soon.
| nicbou wrote:
| You don't promote a culture by assimilating it to your own.
| lurtbancaster wrote:
| This comment has nothing to do with this article whatsoever but
| just something to keep in mind https://itep.org/pandemic-profits-
| netflix-made-record-profit...
| koonsolo wrote:
| Netflix contribution is really minor compared to real life
| interactions between Europeans.
|
| When I was a kid in the 90's, people might have some minor
| connections with someone from a neighboring country, but it was
| very limited.
|
| Nowadays, businesses are more international, people move move
| within the EU, people marry internationally, etc. This has WAY
| more impact than any foreign show that you can see on TV.
| felixfbecker wrote:
| One thing that Netflix is absolutely terrible at is dubbing. As a
| German, I grew up with the luxury of all movies shown on TV
| (Hollywood or European) being dubbed (this is not true for many
| of our neighboring countries). In Germany this means that there
| are actually really good voice over artists that dub so well
| (sync with the actor's lips so well) you can barely tell the
| audio is not original. And certain great voice over artists being
| as recognizable as great actors across movies, and sometimes even
| commonly used for specific actors.
|
| But Netflix's dubs are absolutely TERRIBLE. The voice is out of
| sync with the lip movement, there is barely any emotion in the
| tone like in the original audio, the translations are sloppy and
| don't work for the dialog.
|
| I also grew up with the luxury of having learnt English well
| enough from young age to a proficiency that I can watch movies in
| English just as well as in my mother's tongue. This is definitely
| not true for my family members or even some friends. So when I
| have a movie on Netflix that is English I chose to watch it in
| original audio, when it is German (like Dark) I can watch it in
| original audio, but any other show they produced in Europe I
| usually give it a try and have to stop watching it because the
| terrible dub just ruins the experience.
|
| I know there are a lot of people that are fine with subs, but
| Germans are used to enjoying their movies dubbed. And similarly I
| heard some American friends who really wanted to watch Dark but
| were just turned off by the terrible English dub.
|
| So, as far as I can tell, they're very far from creating "common
| European culture".
| schrijver wrote:
| > One thing that Netflix is absolutely terrible at is dubbing.
| As a German, I grew up with the luxury of all movies shown on
| TV (Hollywood or European) being dubbed (this is not true for
| many of our neighboring countries).
|
| Being from one of those neighbouring countries, it's hard to
| understand what's so great about dubbing, and I guess back home
| people kind of feel sorry for the countries where dubbing is
| the norm.
|
| Only television for young children is dubbed, because usually
| they can't read or read fast enough yet, and growing up reading
| subtitles becomes a second nature. Once you're used to them,
| it's hard to understand what added benefit dubbing would then
| bring... Except from an accessibility point of view--I know not
| everybody can read, and I know there are dedicated dubs for the
| visually impaired.
|
| The benefits of subtitles are many though--of course first and
| foremost you get to enjoy the sounds and atmosphere of another
| language while still being able to understand it. And then
| being confronted with a language often enough will be a massive
| help in learning it. English of course is the main language
| people learn this way, but when I learned French and German in
| high school the French and German spoken movies on TV and in
| the cinema definitely helped.
|
| So I guess what I mean to say--of course it's simply the result
| of the economical reality of living in a smaller linguistic
| area, but subtitles feel quite the luxury to me!
|
| It's interesting to hear that Netflix's dubbing is subpar
| though, and I see how that could hurt their bottom-line since
| in most bigger countries dubbing is the norm.
| thiht wrote:
| > In Germany this means that there are actually really good
| voice over artists that dub so well (sync with the actor's lips
| so well) you can barely tell the audio is not original.
|
| I seriously doubt that. In France we also have dubs that are
| considered extremely good (Back to the Future is a big one),
| but you stil can easily tell it's not the original audio. And
| it absolutely loses a lot compared to the original. I wish I
| grew up with subtitles instead of dubs wherever possible.
|
| Dubs only make sense for cartoons and animation (South Park and
| The Simpsons come to mind as having better dubs in French than
| in the original version).
| efrafa wrote:
| Same here. I grown up in Czechoslovakia where everything is
| dubbed with high quality. Netflix dubbing sounds to me like
| somebody just reading the script. What I slso hate when englisg
| dubbing and subtitles doesn't match.
| koonsolo wrote:
| As a Flemish person, I really hate dubbing. And so does anyone
| who grew up reading subtitles instead of dubbing.
|
| I'm also certain that this is the main reason why the average
| person in a subtitle country (Flanders, Netherlands, Nordic
| countries, ...) speaks way better English than in the dubbing
| countries.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| If some young person, maybe here, could figure out how to dub
| seamlessly, and realistically; they could make a fortune with
| the technology.
| V-2 wrote:
| I guess this would require deepfaking updated lip movements
| into the actors' faces - so that they're not out of sync
| anymore - and I don't think we're that far away. (Personally
| I'm not a fan of dubbing, but that's another story).
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Well, you could make a very modes fortune, possibly. Dubbing
| isn't exactly a high margin high volume market.
| luckylion wrote:
| > In Germany this means that there are actually really good
| voice over artists that dub so well (sync with the actor's lips
| so well) you can barely tell the audio is not original.
|
| It's weird how perceptions can differ. I found that German dubs
| are pretty bad, you lose pretty much all emotion in it and if
| you don't know the language spoken in the movie, using
| subtitles is preferable over German audio.
|
| > I also grew up with the luxury of having learnt English well
| enough from young age to a proficiency that I can watch movies
| in English just as well as in my mother's tongue.
|
| Chicken and egg, really. You get much better at understanding
| English if you watch movies. My reading comprehension shot up
| when we were offered a subscription of Time magazine at very
| affordable rates (for secondary school students).
|
| > So, as far as I can tell, they're very far from creating
| "common European culture".
|
| Hopefully. But if anyone does, please don't do it by
| translating it into any and all languages. Let's just settle on
| English and slowly fade out traditional European languages to a
| heritage thing that you learn for fun and use on special
| occasions with your grand parents.
| vidarh wrote:
| > It's weird how perceptions can differ. I found that German
| dubs are pretty bad, you lose pretty much all emotion in it
| and if you don't know the language spoken in the movie, using
| subtitles is preferable over German audio.
|
| German dubbing, and really dubbing in general, is a regular
| subject of mockery in Norway where we're used to sub-titles,
| as a thing that makes anything unwatchable whether or not you
| know German. I think peoples ability to deal with dubbing is
| strongly dependent on whether or not you grew up with it.
| luckylion wrote:
| That's likely, yeah, though I know some people (including
| me) that grew up on pretty much German-only, at some point
| transitioned to English for movies and shows and now won't
| go back. It's probably not just a dub-thing as pretty much
| all of them prefer English over German in general.
| mgoetzke wrote:
| Some dubbing was and is also quite bad. Several examples come
| to mind where I was forced to acknowledge I should rather watch
| everything in the original if I could due to the huge number of
| translation mistakes .
|
| There are some notable exceptions though. Animated movies in
| particular, like Ice Age where you just could feel the
| difference between B-Level US actors/comedians vs A-Level
| German voice overs and comedians (Otto).
| doikor wrote:
| This is also not 100% voluntary by Netflix though for some of the
| bigger languages like French and German it totally makes economic
| sense too (as mentioned in the article). A few years ago EU
| mandated that a certain % of content on streaming services
| serving EU has to be produced within the EU. There is only so
| much English language content you can pump out in Europe so
| making (or just buying existing stuff like in the case of Finnish
| content for example) it in the other languages.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/26/eu-third-...
| simion314 wrote:
| This always made sense to me, for example a profit driven TV
| station would have never put any money into creating say a
| children show based on national culture(Romanian children
| stories) when they could just get almost free stuff from
| Disney(because Disney also sells toys and other products they
| gain a lot if a new product is published in new markets).
|
| When my child was very young I found only a small number of
| cartoons with Romanian content and most of that is stuff before
| 1989.
|
| Off topic, for Romanian audio only stories I found this youtube
| playlist that grabbed the old vinyl tales we grew up with, I
| suggest you have a look and maybe backup them too, who know how
| much time they will be up
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2rQVK1ig8g&list=PLFO3TQ182_...
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| This seems like a fairly impossible quotum to meet for
| streaming services that for instance serve nothing but Japanese
| content. -- are they simply not allowed to operate within the
| E.U.?
| daniellarusso wrote:
| Canada has a law requiring promotion of Canadian culture in
| tv and film, of which Netflix accommodates.
|
| It is an interesting responsibility of government
| stewardship/preservation of culture, I think.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| I simply know many streaming services which obviously don't
| comply with such protectionism, yet are allowed to exist.
|
| Does _Youtube_ count as a streaming service? What of
| _last.fm_ which does need to often comply with radio laws I
| believe.
|
| The way I see it; if such laws were really consistently
| enforced then many things that exist would not be allowed
| to exist, and it seems to be more a matter of deciding not
| to enforce them based on the rather arbitrary criterion of
| " _Do we want this service to stop existing or not?_ ".
|
| And who is to decide what "Canadian culture" is, and when
| it is "promoted"? -- the way I see it, such laws must be
| incredibly inconsistently enforced.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| What? Are you saying youtube and last.fm doesn't host
| music made in Europe?
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| The law pertains to access, not to hosting.
|
| How _last.fm_ works in it 's streaming facility is that
| it creates a personalized radio station, if one will,
| based on past listening habits; it actually cannot allow
| users to select tracks, as that would not conform to
| radio laws.
|
| It is thus entirely possible that no European music
| plays, based on past listening habits.
| lksaar wrote:
| > 1. Member States shall ensure that on-demand audiovisual
| media services provided by media service providers under
| their jurisdiction promote, where practicable and by
| appropriate means, the production of and access to European
| works. Such promotion could relate, inter alia, to the
| financial contribution made by such services to the
| production and rights acquisition of European works or to the
| share and/or prominence of European works in the catalogue of
| programmes offered by the on-demand audiovisual media
| service.
|
| I would assume that falls under inpracticable. Stuff like
| crunchyroll is exists in the EU aswell.
|
| Article 13: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| If it's impractical in this case because a streaming
| service offers continent from outside of Europe; then the
| law is fairly useless. It's essentially a circular escape
| route of saying that it's impractical for a service to
| offer content produced in Europe, because the service does
| not offer content produced in Europe.
|
| _N.b._ that the law speaks of Europe, not the E.U.; that
| 's a particularly material difference with respect to the
| U.K. leaving the E.U..
| buu700 wrote:
| I assume that they would have to be prepared to explain
| their case to the satisfaction of a human regulator.
| Crunchyroll being an anime streaming service is easy to
| understand. On the other hand, to my knowledge Netflix
| has never advertised itself as a platform for exclusively
| American content.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| So all one needs to do is advertise oneself as such to be
| exempted?
|
| I doubt that, and I, frankness be, suspect there's
| probably going to be some very dubious standard that will
| no doubt even consider race and other similar tribal
| nonsense when deciding to allow it or not.
|
| _If one deliver U.S.A. content one must deliver European
| content as well, for they are white, and thus they are
| like us, but the Japanese are not white, they are not
| like us, so we don 't compare themselves with them, so
| one can offer their content without our egos feeling
| hurt._
| vidarh wrote:
| And also, where both private and public broadcasters in most
| European countries certainly would like to sell their series
| abroad, they need to find a buyer. Netflix "just" needs to
| ensure their contracts allows them to target all their markets
| and provide translations, and see if it sticks. The threshold
| for Netflix to make e.g. a Norwegian series available across
| Europe and subtitle or dub it in a handful of languages is far
| lower than for a Norwegian production company to find buyers
| willing to _both_ translate it _and_ pay a fee to license it in
| each of the same countries.
|
| So when Netflix are forced to produce some series in these
| countries _anyway_ , they have a very strong incentive to
| recycle their investment in as many countries as possible if
| it's even somewhat plausible that it'll do ok.
| africanboy wrote:
| isn'it a bit of an exaggeration to claim that Netflix is creating
| a common European culture?
|
| First of all Netflix productions are not great in general, there
| are a few very good ones, the rest is just mediocre.
|
| Secondly, Netflix is not the only streaming service offering the
| same content.
|
| Last, but not least, in Europe we have been watching European
| shows since forever on national and private television networks.
|
| Two of the most popular shows ever in Italy are Fantomas, which
| is French, and Derrick, a German crime series started in 1974
| that lasted ~~14~~ (TYPO! it was 24!) seasons. We've always
| translated and dubbed foreign content, Netflix hasn't really
| changed anything in that regard. We also watch a lot of national
| productions, like for example in Italy Gomorra is very popular
| and highly rated (there are many others)
|
| European movies in theaters have also been quite popular over the
| years, it used to be more popular until the 80s, but French
| cinema for example is still producing great movies (I think
| everybody knows who Luc Besson is).
|
| The Italian actor Carlo Pedersoli (Bud Spencer) was so popular in
| Germany that when he died German Post offices released a series
| of ten stamps as a sign of gratitude and respect.
|
| Besides, some popular American productions are remakes of
| European content:
|
| Forbydelsen (Danish) -> The killing
|
| ~~Humans (Sweden) -> Real humans~~ (not American)
|
| The Returned (France) -> The Returned
| anthk wrote:
| Also, Komissar Rex.
| africanboy wrote:
| Of course! It was never as popular as Derrick, but it became
| so popular in the 90s that in Italy a remake of 8 season was
| produced.
|
| Also Der Alte (different seasons had different names in
| Italy) with over 400 episodes.
| starfallg wrote:
| >isn'it a bit of an exaggeration to claim that Netflix is
| creating a common European culture
|
| It's the Economist after all. I mean, I loved reading the
| Economist when I travelled every week as it's always available
| on flight and trains. You just have to accept the pretentious
| tone as a part of its "brand". It's extra funny when you
| consider dodgy track record in actually predicting things
| correctly.
| vidarh wrote:
| I think the difference is the _volume_. Previously locally
| produced content had to be sold into each market, and was
| limited by the broadcast schedule of relatively small numbers
| of channels. Sure, I grew up with childrens programming from
| across Europe - including East Bloc countries - and some shows
| like Derrick were popular in Norway too, but the limited
| broadcast schedule meant there was only ever going to be a
| small number of shows from most countries.
|
| When Netflix produces content itself, or contracts it, the cost
| of putting it into other markets is reduced to translation, and
| they have a strong incentive to maximise the value of their
| investment by making the content available more broadly, and
| they don't have the same limitation of broadcast schedules
| limiting what they can make available.
|
| I'm Norwegian. I've lived in the UK 21 years. I've seen more
| Scandinavian content pop up on my UK Netflix subscription in
| the last couple of years than on the regular UK TV channels for
| the last 21.
|
| To what extent people get _shown_ or find content from other
| European countries is another matter - my Netflix homepage is
| still very much dominated by US and UK series.
| africanboy wrote:
| Not to disagree with what you said, but my point was that
| Netflix is not "creating a common European culture" it's
| simply broadcasting content, more than it was possible
| before, but it wasn't something unheard of in Europe and it
| doesn't really spread "culture" (us Italians are not like the
| characters of Gomorra and German policemen are not like
| Derrick, that's simply entertainment)
|
| I think Schengen and herasmus program were much more
| important for the common European culture and to build a
| sense of belonging to a shared sovra national space where we
| are all Europeans.
|
| Also most western Europe has been in close contact since the
| end of WW2, developing those relationships that led them to
| the first treaties in 1957 and us where we are today.
|
| We don't need Netflix for that.
| vidarh wrote:
| That Netflix isn't intending to, and that we don't need it
| doesn't mean it isn't contributing to it.
|
| I don't see what Schengen had to do with anything - lack of
| passport checks is a nice convenience but that is all.
| Freedom of movement, sure, but that is separate from
| Schengen.
|
| And I think dismissing light entertainment as not being
| culture is pointlessly elitist. A whole lot of culture is
| light entertainment, and often what spreads to the most
| people.
|
| Most of Western Europe has close ties going back much
| further, but close ties does not translate immediately to
| the extent of shared culture diffusing through populations.
|
| Not least because there is a stark difference between ties
| that are confined to a subset of the populations vs. those
| that are more widely shared.
|
| I live in the UK, and have done so for 21 years, but come
| from Norway, and one of the first things I realised on
| moving here was how superficial cultural exchange often is
| - most people have no conception what it's like to live in
| another country. Even one they in many cases have often
| been to as a visitor.
|
| And e.g. shared entertainment is part of that. Growing up
| watching different things, talking about different things
| etc. contributes to cultural differences even decades
| later. I still experience people bringing up cultural
| references that they share that I don't for that reason.
|
| I agree with you regarding Erasmus for that reason, but I
| also think that seeing more shared programming will matter
| more than you think in giving more people shared reference
| points because it is a lasting and ongoing part of people's
| lives.
|
| Irrespective of Netflix' motivations.
| africanboy wrote:
| > Freedom of movement, sure, but that is separate from
| Schengen.
|
| True, I meant Bosman not Schengen.
|
| > And I think dismissing light entertainment as not being
| culture is pointlessly elitist
|
| I am sorry if it came out that way, what I meant is that
| entertainment is more tied to personality and familiarity
| than culture as "the customary beliefs, social forms, and
| material traits of a social group" because those things
| are usually misrepresented in a fictional show made to
| entertain the general public.
|
| I love Southpark because I love that kind of harsh
| sarcasm, but I know it's not a perfect honest to god
| representation of the US society and I usually also don't
| get all the references, because you can't spread pop
| culture to other cultures or generations by simply citing
| or mocking them. you have to go deeper than that.
|
| > but close ties does not translate immediately to the
| extent of shared culture diffusing through populations
|
| I think it does on a basic level.
|
| All of the countries on the west side share very similar
| views about worker rights, welfare state, public
| education and healthcare, women rights, minorities'
| rights, democracy, etc. etc.
|
| French is the language of diplomacy because French
| invented modern diplomacy when they were an important
| global empire and imposed their language on everybody
| else (and the reason why until the 80s in Italian schools
| French was the primary foreign language - I had to study
| it in elementary school from 1982 to 1987)
|
| For the same reason German is #1 mother tongue language
| in Europe, beating English.
|
| Think about religion in Europe: 75% are Christians,or at
| least they claim to be.
|
| I am an atheist so I have no horse in the race, but that
| happened through centuries of close relationships (and
| wars)
|
| Think about Europe before and after the USSR collapsed.
|
| If we compare western Europe to former eastern block
| countries we will find fundamental differences and that's
| completely normal (and sometimes scary), because we have
| been separated for a long time and we are still
| compensating for that time.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| > First of all Netflix productions are not great in general,
| there are a few very good ones, the rest is just mediocre.
|
| What you describe is _much_ better than the average situation
| where 80% of everything is shit.
| africanboy wrote:
| I like to be polite in public, but what you described is the
| unpolite version of what I think of Netflix lately.
|
| In other words: primevideo is cheaper and has a much better
| catalog. My ISP also offer the same things I can find on
| Netflix for free with the subscription.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| Just a quick nitpick, the Swedish series is _Real Humans_ (Akta
| Manniskor) and _Humans_ is a British production. There was also
| a (much dumber) Russian action series on the same topic called
| _Better than us_ on Netflix. To anyone who hasn 't seen
| _Humans_ I 'd like to recommend it. Purely subjectively
| speaking, it was one of the best sci fi series I've ever seen.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I have to disagree with the evaluation of _Better Than Us_ -
| it 's problem isn't that it was dumb, it's that it was too
| long. _Humans_ was the dumb one. _Humans_ literally had a
| robot grappling with lesbianism. In that one, the androids
| were just awful middle-class British people, and they cast
| based on the actors _looking_ like the actors from _Akta
| Manniskor_ , which is the surest sign of a bad remake.
| africanboy wrote:
| Thanks for the correction!
|
| I got the copy/paste backwards.
|
| I've watched Akta Manniskor and loved it even though I've
| watched it in Swedish, without subtitles. Highly reccomended.
| wdb wrote:
| In my opinion Netflix only cares about the bigger countries. For
| example, it's nearly impossible to get Dutch subtitles for any
| shows. It's always English, French, German, Spanish, Polish.
| Sometimes I am just too tired to read subtitles in English and
| want to read them in the mother tongue.
|
| I don't know if this is just an issue with Netflix UK or the same
| happens on Netflix in the rest of Europe.
| smalltalks wrote:
| Netflix is moving into European production because governements
| subsidies it. It's a pure commercial move , Netflix doesn't care
| at all about the respective culture of 20+ country of UE.
|
| I'm From France , my country back movies with hundreds of
| millions of funding every year. New European laws are forcing
| governements to open those fundings to "Foreign Institutions",
| that's why they are making this move.
|
| This law enable Netflix to make content much cheaper using public
| funding while using each country culture to improve customer
| retention.
|
| As a French coming from African descent I'm absolutly terrified
| of what they are going to do with character like Napoleon or
| Charles de Gaulles...
|
| Lupin show a clear tendency to override history fidelity toward a
| much more political narrative... It's frightening because they is
| literally THOUSANDS of story that do contain French coming from
| African Descent or Foreigners soldiers who decided to fought for
| France[0]
|
| Seeing Big tech taking over everything with a political agenda is
| deeply saddening.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senegalese_Tirailleurs
| pjc50 wrote:
| > As a French coming from African descent I'm absolutely
| terrified of what they are going to do with character like
| Napoleon or Charles de Gaulle
|
| Could you elaborate on this?
| f6v wrote:
| They'll get cancelled, or worse, a modern-day makeover.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Napoleon was ""cancelled"" within his lifetime by being
| sent into exile. In Britain, his name used to be used as a
| shorthand for dictatorial behaviour, especially from short
| men.
|
| De Gaulle was again subject to what you might call the
| ""woke mob"" during his lifetime:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_68
|
| People have to learn to cope with accurate presentation of
| what historical figures did, a lot of which was very bad
| especially for the losing side.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| What's with the double quotes? Of course we want an
| accurate portrayal of the character, the good and the
| bad. The worry is it won't be so accurate coming from a
| contemporary American perspective.
| walshemj wrote:
| I think going to the barricades is a much older French
| tradition and labeling it with the modern "woke" label
| -does tend to indicate your politics.
| pjc50 wrote:
| That's what the sarcasm quotes were for.
| watwut wrote:
| You know, he is not celebrated in places where he brought
| destruction with him. As in outlook on foreign army in more
| informed by pillaging then by glory.
|
| That is how countries typically interpret history - from
| their point of view.
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| While I've read a bunch of critical media of de Gaulle,
| much of the media I've read of Napoleon seems to be tinged
| with his glory - I'd actually love a more critical review
| of historical Napoleon given his influence on modern Europe
| and the West at large.
| kazen44 wrote:
| Napoleon is kind of a.. controversial character in
| history. let's not forget that the late 18th century was
| a bloody period in european history with massive societal
| change. It saw the removal of old medieval systems and
| them being replaced by more modern ideas.
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| Oh, all the more reason for a more critical review of his
| legacy, I'm sure it'd be very interesting with a more
| objective/modern lens.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Absolutist monarchy is an (early) modern phenomenon, not
| a middle age one. Middle ages ended with the conquest of
| Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453.
|
| In fact, wouldn't Napoleon be part (and the end ?) of the
| absolutist monarch phenomenon?
| williamdclt wrote:
| White Frenchman perspective:
|
| Napoleon and De Gaulle are characters that are usually viewed
| positively in France, they were important figures that did
| big things for the nation (such as freeing it from the
| nazis). But you don't need to scratch the surface very deep
| to see the dark side: imperialism, colonialism, racism,
| despotism...
|
| I don't particularly trust Netflix not to whitewash these
| leaders. It'd be easy to gloss over the not-so-shiny stuff
| and present them as one-sided heros to the French people, who
| are not always taught the dark side of their own history.
| rsynnott wrote:
| For Napoleon, I suspect there's not _that_ much danger of
| that, because if Netflix is developing a show to be shown
| all over Europe... well, Napoleon is somewhat less popular
| elsewhere in Europe. Just a bit.
| V-2 wrote:
| Of course, but not universally so. Eg. Napoleon's
| perception in Poland is very positive (including a
| favourable mention in the national anthem).
| watwut wrote:
| When I went to France first time, I was surprised Napolen
| was celebrated. I was around the time people start high
| school.
|
| Here, he was basically mocked (over size etc). Because he
| went in, brought war with him, history books have people
| flying city when his army is comming and he blew the
| castle. So basically the history is only the negative,
| because foreign army matching through country means hunger
| and violence.
| filoleg wrote:
| > he went in, brought war with him, history books have
| people flying city when his army is comming and he blew
| the castle. So basically the history is only the
| negative, because foreign army matching through country
| means hunger and violence.
|
| Not just that, but you also gotta remember his failed
| invasion of Russian Empire.
|
| He got cocky, went all-in, didn't realize how brutal
| winters there were, and didn't expect that Russian
| generals were more than willing to set their own
| cities/towns on fire just to not let Napoleon capture
| them. So in the end, he had to retreat back to France
| during winter. Which not only marked his invasion as a
| complete failure, but also humiliated him on top of it by
| making him lose a ton of his soldiers on the way back due
| to the weather.
| watwut wrote:
| Napoleon army lived off land (as historical armies often
| did). It means that everything soldiers eat was stolen
| from people living there. In those times, it meant
| starvation for locals - marching army eats basically
| everything there is to eat. It obviously also involved a
| lot of violence against them.
|
| Not that Russian generals would care about people that
| they diaplaced. But emptying those places of supplies was
| not just preventing capture in abstract. It was
| meaningfully weakening ennemy army, the same way shooting
| at them does. Logistics makes it breaks wars in general.
|
| In a way, it is interesting that these realities are
| mostly lost from contemporary stories about wars. We like
| to paint heroic fights in past, but don't like to show
| where the food soldiers eat comes from. When we do talk
| about it, we use euphemisms like "living off the land" as
| if they were hunting and collecting berries.
| filoleg wrote:
| >Not that Russian generals would care about people that
| they diaplaced. But emptying those places of supplies was
| not just preventing capture in abstract. It was
| meaningfully weakening ennemy army, the same way shooting
| at them does. Logistics makes it breaks wars in general.
|
| Absolutely agreed. My original reply wasn't meant to
| paint Russian generals as stupid for setting their
| cities/towns on fire. In fact, I believe that if it
| wasn't for that, then Napoleon would have been way more
| successful in his invasion, as he was pretty much
| stomping the Russian military up until it got to point of
| capturing major cities.
|
| In fact, Mikhail Kutuzov[0] (Russian Empire commander-in-
| chief at the time who was responsible for coming up with
| the plan to burn down Russian cities rather than giving
| them to Napoleon) is remembered as an exceptional
| military commander and a hero to this day. He let
| Napoleon occupy burned down Moscow, so that Napoleon army
| could be starved and then driven out using guerilla
| warfare.
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Kutuzov
| johncessna wrote:
| As an aside, he probably wasn't short for the period.
|
| The French inch was longer than the English inch at the
| time and the press either didn't know this or knew it and
| thought it'd be funny to miss-characterize.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Lupin show a clear tendency to override history fidelity
| toward a much more political narrative.
|
| As someone who is english, what am I missing? Its a modern day
| rebrand of a 30's crime novel no?
|
| I imagine i'd understand more if I could differentiate french
| accents.
| [deleted]
| jsjsbdkj wrote:
| > Lupin show a clear tendency to override history fidelity
| toward a much more political narrative...
|
| Lupin wasn't about recasting Lupin, it's about a modern person
| who is inspired by the stories. I'm not really sure what that
| has to do with historical fidelity? I really enjoyed it, it's a
| fun modern crime show that deals earnestly with issues of race
| in contemporary France.
| walshemj wrote:
| What do you think they might do? to De Gaul or Napoleon.
|
| And which political agenda do you exactly mean
| oblio wrote:
| I haven't watched Lupin, what does it do? From a political
| point of view.
| nottorp wrote:
| Well I tried, and half of each episode felt pretty fresh.
| Probably less Hollywood cliches. The action part, that is.
|
| However, someone decided that half of each episode should be
| the main character's miserable childhood. He's a poor
| immigrant's child whose father is blamed by the local white
| rich for a crime he didn't commit and dies in prison, leaving
| our main character an orphan. We're getting shown that in
| excruciating detail.
|
| They basically spliced together a pretty good action-
| ish/heist movie and a depressing festival movie designed to
| take golden globes or something.
|
| At least for the first 4-5 episodes, because afterwards i
| simply stopped watching. It was either that or skip all
| childhood scenes, i.e. half of each episode.
| schemathings wrote:
| My favorite synopsis of Napoleon is from the City of Men TV
| Series where the teacher explains European politics in terms of
| favela gangs to make it relevant
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rByBefzeY98 the meat is at
| around 22:47
| culturestate wrote:
| _> New European laws are forcing governements to open those
| fundings to "Foreign Institutions", that's why they are making
| this move._
|
| They're making this move because the EU mandated[1] that
| locally produced content comprise at least 30% of their
| catalog. The subsidy expansion is a byproduct of that
| regulation.
|
| 1. https://www.engadget.com/2018-09-04-netflix-amazon-
| european-...
| tim333 wrote:
| Maybe Africa could follow the EU example and twist Netflix's
| arm to make some African centered content? I'm in Egypt at the
| moment and you could do quite a lot of interesting stuff beyond
| the usual mummies coming to life and attacking people that
| Hollywood seems to like.
| txdv wrote:
| Mummies with machine guns?
| ketzo wrote:
| I really hoped that Black Panther (the Marvel movie) was
| going to be the start of a new era of mainstream Afro-
| futurist fiction. Such an amazing genre/setting/aesthetic
| (depending on how it's used) that is so tragically
| underexplored. I've yet to see that really manifest, although
| I know there are sort of rumblings at the fringes -- the
| newest Magic: The Gathering set is explicitly paying homage
| to African cultures and peoples, for example.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I understand that Netflix and the corresponding enforcement laws
| may be a great thing for movie and series makers because they
| finance local productions. That's good for the local film and TV
| business but unfortunately they are mostly just copying US
| productions and "culture."
|
| As a German living in Portugal, I'm in a special situation in
| that respect and find Netflix offerings lacking a lot anyway. As
| you'd expect from an American company, they seem to be under the
| impression that Portugal is part of Spain and constantly
| advertise Spanish TV series. I don't like them. For some reason
| there are also Turkish TV series on Netflix, which are pretty
| much unwatchable crap. German series are also not very good,
| except for "Dark" which had an interesting aesthetics.
|
| Another thing is that while Netflix series are sometimes okay in
| quality, "Netflix movies" tend to be absolutely horrible. Some of
| them seemed to be based on the idea of taking Hollywood movie
| scripts and putting them through a blender. I've never seen more
| plot stereotypes than in Netflix movies and stopped watching them
| entirely. They are essentially just really bad copies of bad
| Hollywood movies.
|
| I'd rather see old BBC series, rare Hollywood movies and French
| movies from the 60s and 70s, but in that respect the offerings in
| Portugal are extremely limited. Netflix seems to optimize for
| minimizing costs as much as they can while still _just about_
| keeping existing subscribers.
|
| In any case, I'd say that the influence of foreign series on the
| US audience is higher on Netflix than vice versa, because people
| in the US barely watched foreign series with subtitles before. In
| Europe, people were used to it already before Netflix.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yep, you are better off watching the channels available on the
| Meo and other similar TV services, I do have Netflix in
| Germany, but don't miss it when back home.
| rocknor wrote:
| Agree with the point about quality of Netflix flicks. Most of
| them are cheap, cater to the lowest common denominator,
| optimized to maximize profit. IMO it also negatively affects
| society, because that's what most people consume. It's bad.
|
| With all the content moving to streaming subscription services,
| the only way forward for me to not get ripped off is to buy
| physical copies of film/music I like (if available, pirated
| downloads if not) and digitally archive them.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| Even if you did not like them, you still watched them, and did
| not cancel your subscription, right?
|
| It has been a less than optimal time for tv and movie
| production for over a year, so that may be contributing, as
| well.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| Yes, at least the first episode or the first thirty minutes
| was often watched, that's why I said: "Netflix seems to
| optimize for minimizing costs as much as they can while still
| just about keeping existing subscribers."
|
| It's not a sign of quality. I basically didn't cancel my
| subscription so far because my girlfriend wants to watch some
| series...but wouldn't pay for the subscription herself.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I just cancelled Netflix. I agree on the lack of quality.
|
| Some shows with a good premise, like Shameless, regress into
| ridiculousness. It's almost like the writers know the drill.
| Meaning pull out every plot twist in the book, and mangle it up
| terribly. It seems like the acting actually gets worse too?
|
| I heard so many good thing about Netflix, but just had to
| cancel.
|
| I thought they would have more classics, but it seems like
| their business model is catering to people who just want new
| material regardless of quality?
|
| That said, I did enjoy having access to Star Trek, and The
| Twilight Zone.
|
| If I didn't want to limit my media viewing, I would have kept
| it for those two shows.
| asimovfan wrote:
| I always though similarly about 9gag. Its the foundation of the
| real global culture. The real common denominator.
| Toine wrote:
| Don't feed the troll
| asimovfan wrote:
| I'm sorry i didn't get it? Dont people from all cultures and
| countries laugh at the same jokes in there? I didn't mean to
| troll at all.
| morelisp wrote:
| 9gag largely plagiarizes content from creator-focused
| community forums such as SA, newgrounds, ytmnd, and the
| more tame parts of 4chan; later also reddit and IG.
| asimovfan wrote:
| how is that at all relevant? most people still see them
| on that website..
| morelisp wrote:
| It can't be a foudation if it's plagiarizing, and it
| can't be a culture if it's consumption rather than
| participatory.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Fair point for the last, but what did Picasso say already
| about stealing?
| morelisp wrote:
| 9gag is not plagiarism like "did not acknowledge major
| inspirations" or even "did a remix but didn't credit
| anyone" but "copied, [sometimes] filed off serial
| numbers, and pasted".
| ignoranceprior wrote:
| It's a YC company.
| anoncake wrote:
| Lowbrow culture is still culture.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| I believe the proper term is "low-bro".
| coldtea wrote:
| It's not necessary to respond with knee-jerk ready-made
| phrases for everything...
| ignoranceprior wrote:
| How is it trolling? 9GAG is a YC company.
| timdaub wrote:
| I have a Netflix subscription that I've not actively used since
| half a year now.
|
| It's because I know that when I use Netflix, all I get is some
| over the top and dumped-down-for-the-masses content.
|
| Like, I completely given up on Netflix documentaries. The last
| one I watched was this stupid one on Minimalism. It was terrible.
|
| Movies: Well, I have total Hollywood 0815 movie fatique[1]. If
| there's yet another good looking hero just barely being able to
| save the world and their family, it's definitely not me that is
| surprised.
|
| All I watch now is Youtube or even German ARD and ZDF mediathek.
| There, at least, I know what I'm getting is somewhat grounded.
| Amazon Prime video has had some good content too recently.
|
| - 1: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/08/15_(Redewendung)
| Causality1 wrote:
| There are a few foreign-language shows interesting enough for me
| to watch but it doesn't stop it from being a major downside.
| Subbed is an inconvenience but dubbing makes me feel like there's
| something wrong with my eyes or like I'm watching a desynced
| video file from 2005. I can't do it.
|
| A couple things like Kingdom eventually get watched but I can't
| imagine getting really excited for a new episode like I was with
| Game of Thrones or Chernobyl. It's simply not immersive enough
| for me.
|
| One also wonders which is happening faster, streaming services
| making Europeans more like each other or making Europeans more
| like Americans.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I prefer watching foreign shows in their native language, not
| dubbed in English. English subtitles are fine.
|
| But yeah, the world is homogenizing, and there's no way to stop
| it. Germany, England, etc., become more like the US every time I
| visit.
| Daho0n wrote:
| English subtitles would be awesome but Netflix for some reason
| want to force users to use closed captions. There's always a
| long list of subtitle languages and then one in English with
| closed captions.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Aren't subtitles and closed captions the same thing?
| IlGrigiore wrote:
| There are two types of subtitles: for the hearing impaired
| and normal subtitles. English subtitles are usually for the
| hearing impaired, which means that they also add
| information about the sounds of the scene, like the phone
| is ringing or the music is playing.
| nonninz wrote:
| I think closed captions include description of noises,
| music cues, etc.
|
| CC subtitle tracks often show up with the name "English
| (SDH)" (Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of hearing).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_captioning
| WalterBright wrote:
| Thanks, I wondered what that implied. Though I don't
| really understand what the point of [music] would be to a
| deaf person.
| AnonC wrote:
| Usually there tends to be a description connecting the
| music to a specific kind of emotion, but it could also be
| a generic music symbol that leaves the person to imagine
| something in its place. Deaf people can still feel a
| subset of the vibrations that sound creates (usually the
| low end bass frequencies played with a higher power
| output). So a subset of such deaf people may be able to
| relate to certain sounds with certain emotional content
| too. The number of humans who cannot hear is a union of
| two sets - those who were born without the ability to
| hear and those who could hear but lost it at some point
| in life. The closed captioning indicators for music leave
| it to the imagination of the person.
| vbsteven wrote:
| I'm not deaf but I watch a lot of video content with no
| sound and only CC captions. Usually with my own music
| playing instead.
|
| When the CC is good it can communicate the mood of the
| music that is playing, sometimes it even shows the
| lyrics.
|
| [ominous music], [workout montage music], [knocking on
| door], [Rachel clears throat], [music: Comfortably Numb
| by Pink Floyd]
| [deleted]
| vidarh wrote:
| Netflix to their credit does let you switch audio language and
| subtitling to any version they have available for the most part
| as far as I can tell (with some hilarious results, as for some
| shows the dubbing and subtitling does _not_ always match well -
| my son noticed this with anime shows where the English audio
| and subtitles often say entirely different things)
|
| Though I also wish they'd let me set better defaults. They let
| you give a list of languages you prefer, but that's too
| simplistic. E.g. I'd prefer to always get original audio, but
| subtitles matching the audio in a handful of languages I know
| well enough to follow if I can read but not only by audio, and
| falling back to English.
|
| Instead you need to check for each series what is available, or
| set it broad and change it per program accordingly.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| > for some shows the dubbing and subtitling does not always
| match well
|
| It is very common for languages other than English. I'd say
| most Netflix content has the French audio and subtitles not
| matching each other. They have the same meaning but not the
| same wording.
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| Sadly depending on which country you're in, some shows on
| Netflix won't have all the audio/subtitles available. No idea
| if this is Netflix's fault or yet another unfortunate result
| of copyright hell.
| bstrand wrote:
| Globalization for Me and Not for Thee, S36E571
|
| This happens fairly often on German Netflix. When the
| program's language is neither German nor English, often
| there are no English subtitles available.
|
| International licensing is obviously complicated, so it's
| hard to say whose "fault" it is, but my suspicion is that
| some rights owners will only license the service to use the
| local language to prevent end users doing digital geo-
| arbitrage.
|
| For example, the Swedish series "The Bridge" is available
| on German Netflix, and the trailer has English subtitles,
| but the actual episodes only offer German subs. AFAICT in
| the US market this show is only available for streaming as
| a purchase from Amazon.
| schrijver wrote:
| I've found that with the plugin
| https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/ I tend to get a
| longer list of options both for audio and subtitles. It
| also let's you do fun stuff like displaying two sets of
| subtitles simultaneously--although that didn't really work
| for my brain.
| bstrand wrote:
| +1 for LLWN! Fantastic Chrome extension, especially for
| language learning. They also have one for YouTube.
|
| However, the language options offered beyond those
| already provided by Netflix are machine translated. This
| is good enough to follow along or fill in gaps in your
| knowledge of the officially subtitled language, but is a
| subpar representation of the program.
| simonh wrote:
| Give us up the bomb!
| coldtea wrote:
| And the US, sadly, becomes more like the developing world,
| every time I visit...
|
| Public infrastructure, decent wages, national health care,
| public transport, and such ain't "beyond the pale" guys...
|
| Though, to be frank, European politicians are influenced by
| this and want to bring more of it here faster. Private profit
| of the few above people, and let the suckers believe in wealth
| "trickling down"...
| rbanffy wrote:
| Capitalism extracts work from wealth gradients the same way a
| Stirling engine extracts it from temperature ones. The higher
| the gradient, the more efficient it becomes.
| hoophoop wrote:
| > extracts work from wealth gradients
|
| That's an odd way to describe worker exploitation.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Is it a pro and anti capitalism point, i cant tell.
|
| By that logic it was most efficient with slavery? And the
| next best thing with serfs?
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's not pro or against. It's an observation. Slavery and
| serfdom is not as efficient because the motivation to
| work is extrinsic and needs work to maintain.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's worse than that. Slaves will actively sabotage the
| work, even at the risk of execution when caught.
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| Haha, I wish this wasn't such a STEM-y analogy so I could
| mention it to my friends, it's great and describes so much
| in so little.
| f6v wrote:
| > And the US, sadly, becomes more like the developing world,
| every time I visit...
|
| But Biden has the "once in a generation infrastructure plan"!
| neither_color wrote:
| So visit a different part of it. As someone whose parents
| grew up without electricity in their home that's nonsense and
| tone deaf. We don't need an "America bad" melodrama on every
| thread, especially one about European culture. Turn off the
| news and talk to real people. You have no idea how positively
| we brown 1st and 2nd gen immigrants view America, and the
| pages I could write on how far ahead of the "developing"
| latin and South/Southeast Asian world it still is. And yes
| Ive been to 20+ countries I'm not missing "perspective".
| Europeans have certain benefits explicitly defined by law and
| we don't because the US is rooted in a libertarian
| understanding of what a "right" is but we get them anyway and
| to keep it brief I will say that the recent hyper-focus on
| the US' flaws and fixation on what other countries "promise"
| their citizens make people myopic to how it actually plays
| out in the real world. I've met many entrepreneurial Spanish,
| Dutch, Norwegian, French, and Australian friends abroad on
| the nomad circuits who start their own cafes and training
| centers and studios in other countries and tell me about what
| they lack back home and went in search of outside of the EU.
| I'm much more appreciative of the opportunities the US still
| offers after having traveled.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _So visit a different part of it._
|
| With this mindset soon there wont be any left.
|
| > _As someone whose parents grew up without electricity in
| their home that 's nonsense and tone deaf. (...) You have
| no idea how positively we brown 1st and 2nd gen immigrants
| view America_
|
| It's easy to view the current status positively if you
| start from a low bar.
|
| But sure, the US has electricy AND running water. I'll give
| you that. Well, mostly (
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/26/how-texas-tough-winter-
| expos... ).
| vinay427 wrote:
| Second-generation Americans almost universally didn't
| start from a low bar themselves. Many first-generation
| Americans didn't start from a low bar, either, but that's
| maybe a different point.
| varispeed wrote:
| Wealth is not "trickling down" mainly because of high taxes
| in Europe. Corporations have incentive to transfer profits
| outside and spend it only when absolutely necessary,
| otherwise any bigger project wouldn't be economical. So not
| only those corporations act like a hoover of funds, the void
| that is created has to be filled with something - and here
| comes progressive tax, that ensures middle class cover what
| otherwise those big corporations would have to pay and also
| ensures that if someone comes from a poor background they
| almost never go up in the class ladder. This will eventually
| create a society where everyone cannot afford anything to
| buy, but they will be able to scrap money together to pay for
| subscriptions and big corporations will become de facto
| governments and all parliaments will focus on protecting that
| status quo rather than serving the public.
| unionpivo wrote:
| > Wealth is not "trickling down" mainly because of high
| taxes in Europe
|
| it's not trickling down anywhere.
|
| While it might be in most corporations best interest to
| have consumers that can afford to buy all the thing they
| are selling, it's also in their own immediate interest to
| squeeze as much money as they can, and keep it for them
| self.
|
| And each year laws get passed (or reverted) that help
| corporations , and they get better and better at squeezing.
|
| Look at the trends, middle class is disappearing, and more
| and more wealth is captured and kept at the top.
| (corporations are getting bigger and bigger, and rich
| people are getting richer)
|
| and it's happening in USA even faster than in most of
| Europe. Pretty much the only place where middle class is
| growing is China (and other developing countries), but that
| is because they are still catching up.
|
| So it can't be just the EU taxes.
|
| Trickle down is nice theory, too bad it doesn't work in
| practice.
|
| And no I don't even pretend to know what the solution is.
|
| I just think that lowering taxes for corporations, will
| just make even more money for corporations, make them more
| powerful and not really help anyone else.
| rsynnott wrote:
| While there are obviously major problems, if you rank
| countries by the social mobility indexes, or by GINI
| (income inequality) indexes, the top ten or so are all
| high-tax European countries.
|
| Mind you, there's more to it than that; just setting the
| high-income-band taxes high won't do it. Efficacy of
| taxation and control of corruption is also important.
| Ireland's an interesting case; in the 80s its income tax
| was quite high (and it was a substantial net beneficiary of
| EU funding) but its GINI index was the worst in the EU (it
| was actually worse than the US for part of the decade).
| Today, income tax is still quite high (though not as high),
| and it's a donor of EU funding, but the GINI index is
| middle of the road European, far better than it used to be.
| The main thing that changed, beyond overall economic
| development, is reduction of corruption; there's no point
| in having big high-income-band taxes if no-one pays them.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Corporations have incentive to transfer profits"
|
| They will always have incentive to movw money into a tax
| heaven, their rate is zero
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Only if the money can be freely moved.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The homeless crisis in Seattle parallels the progressive rise
| to prominence in the city politics. All the city positions
| are occupied by progressives. Nobody else even bothers to
| run.
| asdff wrote:
| LA has had every flavor of mayor over the last century, and
| Skid row has been Skid row ever since it was first named
| such in the early 1900s.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Skid Row's origin is from Seattle, where the logs were
| slid down "skid road" to the boats.
| weehoo wrote:
| Skid is another word for shipping pallet and it's called
| skid row because it's next to the freight train lines
| into downtown. Pallets would get stacked high along the
| streets, hence skid row. There are plenty of cities
| across America with their own area called skid row. The
| name has nothing to do with the current homeless
| population.
|
| It is common for poor industrial areas to end up with
| large transient populations, but that's a case of
| convergent evolution.
| asdff wrote:
| It's not named after homeless people, I'm saying the
| character of the place has been the same since like the
| 1890s. That part of town has always been full of
| transient and destitute people no matter the flavor of
| local government, is the point I was trying to make. The
| OP comment was implying some false correlation between
| homelessness and progressive government. Lest we forget
| it was progressive government initiatives that ended the
| great depression and both peace and wartime public works
| projects, not private corporations, that finally got
| people back to work decades ago.
| WalterBright wrote:
| That is indeed the progressive interpretation of those
| events. The other interpretation is FDR's progressive
| policies extended the Depression into by far the longest
| in US history.
|
| The banking runs were caused by the fixed exchange rate
| between gold and fiat money - in 1929 one could double
| one's wealth by buying gold from banks at the official
| exchange rate. This naturally caused endless runs until
| the banks either collapsed or FDR (correctly) suspended
| such sales. The banks remained crippled for lack of money
| because the Federal Reserve Bank (not a free market bank)
| failed to understand what the problem was.
|
| The country came out of the Depression late in the 30's
| because of vast quantities of money flowing into the
| country from foreign countries buying arms.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| If you're going to correct someone, isn't it worth
| spending just a few minutes doing due diligence? Skid row
| comes from logging roads where the logs were skidded down
| the road.[0]
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid_row
| [deleted]
| pessimizer wrote:
| And the larger the safety net holes get, the more
| progressives will be elected, hopefully.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| That's a pretty dubious implication of causation.
| tim333 wrote:
| Homogenizing geographically but dehomogenizing in some ways
| both iffy such as alt right vs woke and also into specialist
| groupings such as HNers I guess.
| Longhanks wrote:
| > Germany, England, etc., become more like the US every time I
| visit.
|
| As a German: In what ways?
| Semaphor wrote:
| QAnon comes to mind ;) More serious: The unquestioned total
| power of intelligence agencies.
| WalterBright wrote:
| 1. McDonald's everywhere. These were non-existent in 1970.
|
| 2. I recently was in a shopping mall in Stuttgart. The
| design, parking garage, mall exterior, interior, looked
| exactly like an American mall. The displays and signs inside
| were nearly all in English. You could not tell you were in
| Germany.
|
| 3. Germans have by and large quit smoking.
|
| 4. English everywhere.
|
| 5. More American style clothing. Less Lederhosen (in fact, I
| can't recall seeing any Lederhosen after 1970).
|
| 6. American brand names everywhere.
| anthk wrote:
| The Lederhosen are the American equivalent of the hick bib
| in the South.
|
| Those are just form Bavaria and nowhere else.
|
| You woudn't see a cowboy dress in NYC.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I lived in Wiesbaden in the late 1960s. It was
| commonplace to see boys and men in Lederhosen on the
| street, and not just as a costume during Fasching. They
| wore them like jeans (not with the suspenders).
| labatyd wrote:
| Just to address your first point - You can't visit a major
| American city with out finding an IKEA or even two. The
| world globalized, it didn't americanize.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Step into any IKEA in America, and there's no hint it's a
| European company. Step into a McDonald's in Germany, and
| it's like you stepped into America.
|
| Besides, McDonald's are _everywhere_ in Germany. I even
| ate at one at Checkpoint Charlie. An obvious triumph over
| communism :-)
|
| I'm sure there is an IKEA around here somewhere, but I
| don't know where. I know where all the McD's within 10
| miles are!
| GordonS wrote:
| > 3. Germans have by and large quit smoking.
|
| Eh? How is stopping smoking a "US thing"? Surely it's a
| result of public health campaigns and regulations slowly
| introduced over decades?
| WalterBright wrote:
| The US was about 20 years ahead in pushing smoking to the
| margins.
| thirtythree wrote:
| And these laws were passed in some European countries
| before the USA introduced them
| Semaphor wrote:
| Re 2 & 4: All signs here (pop 200k city) are in German.
| Only some very rare exceptions are in English (and other
| languages as well), like Corona behavior signs. The only
| English I normally see is the atrocious Denglisch
| (Portmanteau of Deutsch (German) and English) like "Back
| Factory" (Baking factory...) or single words like "sale".
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| >3. Germans have by and large quit smoking.
|
| I'm not sure how long ago you were in the US, but it was
| ubiquitous here a couple generations ago, and the shift
| away from smoking seems to be a global trend associated
| with wealth - in Mainland china, I see much less of the
| younger generation smoking nowadays.
|
| I was in Berlin recently and can attest to the English
| signage anecdote though, even if your experience seems to
| be an exaggerated version of mine.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| As a Brit who went to Amsterdam a couple of years ago, I
| was really surprised at the number of smokers on the
| streets. It's definitely regional.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Germans smoked heavily everywhere in the 1980s. This all
| vanished by the 2000s.
|
| Smoking largely ended in the US by the mid 70s. Not
| completely, but in the 1960s I recall every office
| building stunk of stale smoke. This disappeared by the
| mid 70s.
| syl_sau wrote:
| I know it is the crux of social validation among the journalist
| class to see everything that "crosses borders" as inherently
| exciting and beneficial, but I fail to see how having a handful
| of giant american companies organizing the broadcast of a
| streamlined worldwide culture while exercising its subtle (and
| not so subtle) influence is a good thing.
|
| If anything, this line of reasoning is (for lack of a better
| word) "reactionary": cultures and nations are not built top-down,
| they are built bottom-up. Culture is decentralized by essence,
| that's part of why the internet can be so great. It could even be
| argued that culture is the very first thing that may still be
| attached to someone's immediate reality.
| luckylion wrote:
| This. Made more terrifying by the idea that it's television
| that's supposedly creating the culture. I'd prefer not to live
| in a place where the culture was created by people optimizing
| for engagement and customer retention.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| But there's no question that television had a huge impact on
| culture - especially when everyone watched the same unique
| channel.
| Layvier wrote:
| Having a stronger shared culture is the basis to a stronger and
| more unified Europe, and we've been lacking initiatives to do so.
| Erasmus worked pretty well for the educated class, but
| entertainment is the best approach to reach the masses. Netflix
| is a good start but we need much more than that, regular tv
| should also be partially european channels.
| kristianc wrote:
| My first response to this really is why on earth would you want a
| common European culture? Especially one predicated on watching
| American shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine?
|
| Monnet saw an imminent threat of a Third World War and was trying
| to bind Europe together to prevent one. It bears little relation
| to the situation we're in today.
|
| The great thing about Europe is that you have so many great
| individual national cultures and traditions. This need to create
| "Europeans" seems utterly bizarre to me.
|
| Amusing the idea that Eurovision creates 'Europeans' though - the
| voting every year is a hilarious tangle of countries swapping
| votes en masse with the cultures they have the greatest
| similarities with.
| vinay427 wrote:
| I think this would be fine if one could disentangle political
| and cultural unity. However, I'm not sure that's sustainable,
| particularly in the hard times when "pan-governmental"
| identification seems essential. Given the growing political
| unification of at least western and central Europe into
| institutions such as the EU, I think it's reasonable to expect
| at least some shared values and interests to arise. This has
| already happened in places like China (or, more organically,
| India) which until recently were effectively separate
| civilizations with strong cross-pollination, much as the
| regions within the EU have been.
| kristianc wrote:
| > This has already happened in places like China (or, more
| organically, India) which until recently were effectively
| separate civilizations with strong cross-pollination, much as
| the regions within the EU have been.
|
| China and India would be an unfortunate direction for the EU
| to evolve into imo - both increasingly monocultural with
| increasing levels of repression against minority groups.
| vinay427 wrote:
| That's definitely fair. I think I tend to see at least a
| small move in this direction as something of an
| inevitability, although the India-style approach still
| tends to respect regional cultures and languages with
| repression of minority groups usually not based on regional
| affinity (which obviously doesn't make it better in any
| way). France also went along a path more similar to China's
| with its minority languages and communities, but that's not
| necessarily a sign of what will happen to pan-Europeanism.
| kristianc wrote:
| Maybe - the early signs don't augur well. There's been a
| pretty long-standing cultural divide between Northern
| European economies and a supposedly profligate South
| (particularly Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal).
| Culturally, you could trace this back to Weber.
|
| You could almost say that there are separate cultures in
| Europe - a culture of Western European economies, a
| culture of former communist states, and then the Southern
| European countries. I'm not sure you could ever develop a
| coherent single European culture without one culture
| dominating.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| There is nothing preventing unique cultures to feel united as
| part of a whole. This is something that has been historically
| lacking and was very much "us vs them", although attitudes have
| been changing with events like Brexit or Trump getting elected.
| They made people feel like Europe as a whole was threatened.
| lucasnortj wrote:
| NO. We didn't gain our freedom from the Brussels bureaucrats to
| put up with this nonsense
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| One thing I like about the European shows is that they feel
| 'fresh' and more connected to life here.
|
| American shows tend to focus on American themes that feel a
| little alien to us Europeans. So many military / intelligence
| team shows, or police shows set in megacities where everyone
| carries guns.
|
| When I grew up in the 80s/90s, American shows were better than
| local ones because European actors were very bad at acting. I
| think this was mainly because they were being trained at schools
| that still trained for stage plays, with exaggerated
| pronounciation and gesturing.
|
| But now European shows are also excellent. Thinking of the German
| DARK, the Spanish casa de papel ("money heist"). It's indeed the
| translation but also the quality that makes it watchable.
|
| Netflix did indeed boost this partly due to that law mandating
| the 30% local content but I don't think it's the only reason.
| kuu wrote:
| Just a "fun fact" of "Casa de Papel": it was a national series
| from Atresmedia and later it was bought by Netflix who reedited
| and redistributed it, making it much more popular
| ivanhoe wrote:
| I think it's the case for the most of series coming from
| European countries, not just on Netflix, but HBO, Amazon,
| etc. Usually there's a season or too on the national level,
| and then they're bought by big distributors.
| input_sh wrote:
| I mean, Netflix in the Anglosphere isn't much different. A
| sizable chunk of the "Netflix originals" are just licensed
| (Snowpiercer, The Good Place) or bought after gaining
| attention (Black Mirror).
| kzrdude wrote:
| I'm happy there is some diversity in which companies are
| producing these. Watching too many netflix series, they can
| start to feel a bit too cookie-cutter in how the drama is
| laid out over an episode or series.
| odiroot wrote:
| > One thing I like about the European shows is that they feel
| 'fresh' and more connected to life here.
|
| That's an interesting insight. I very much prefer US (or UK)
| shows to the continental ones. The production is just better
| and they feel less pretentious (to me).
| mrtksn wrote:
| I think the whole success of the Hollywood is based on their
| ability to create films that cut across all the cultures. They
| tend to be simplistic and yet in a way can actually go very
| deep, probably because of tapping on the human nature instead
| of the culture. On the other hand, locally produced films
| usually tap on the local culture which leads to amazing
| German/Finnish/Italian/Turkish/French etc. shows making sense
| only in that culture, thus not gaining traction outside of
| their locality.
|
| At some point we had Brazilian soap operas, now we have Turkish
| soap operas gaining large traction on TV and probably will be
| followed why some other ecole.
|
| However with Netflix, something different is happening in my
| opinion. I'm sure that Netflix looks into statistics when doing
| new shows, EU pushing for a single market on these services
| could mean that the Netflix shows are indeed optimised for
| common European consumption instead of local one.
|
| Saying that Netflix is the new Eurovision is comedy gold :) I
| mean, Eurovision is definitely a spectacle but no one(maybe
| with the exception of Lars Erickssong of Iceland) in EU
| actually takes it seriously and definitely it's not the
| cultural event that brings nations together. Eurovision is the
| show where we accept to be vulnerable for a day, get out there
| and remember our favourite neighbours by voting for them.
|
| If it was a serious thing, the Brits would have won most,
| sharing it with the Spanish summer hits occasionally. UK is a
| music and culture powerhouse with extremely poor Eurovision
| track record.
| walshemj wrote:
| Likewise you would expect Italy and France to do better.
|
| Eurovision is not about high quality song's otherwise Amy RIP
| would have one for "Love is a losing game" (it did win a
| novello) and the Beatles should have won several times
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Iceland is not a EU member. And the UK just don't send very
| good acts to Eurovision.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Eurovision is not limited to EU. Even Australia is
| participating now. Israel, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia
| are other non-EU members with strong track records in the
| contest.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| >"[holywood is] tapping on the human nature instead of the
| culture"
|
| I am wondering what makes you think so, when you are not from
| US or especially if you are not western a lot of whats going
| on their looks terribly unnatural.
|
| I particularly dislike the way police is portraid in the US
| shows, in the show I was watching the main character
| regularly points a gun at random guards and passerbyes and
| threatens them. They depict torture as mundane business.
|
| I mean, even in russian shows we dont portray this as right
| and proper behaviour.
| Shorel wrote:
| Hollywood depicting an universal culture?
|
| Far from it. At first I was thinking high school bullies were
| something Stephen King always added to his books. Then I
| realized high school bullies were something Hollywood always
| added to plots, even when it had no reason whatsoever to be
| there.
|
| Sadly, this has become more like culture contamination. In
| highschool I never saw bullies. Now they are more common,
| because of that Hollywood influence.
|
| So, how much of that universal culture is a reflection of the
| world, and how much is just Hollywood pushing their own
| culture over the world?
|
| The same with racism. As someone from South America, I find
| the racism in USA extremely pathological and not at all
| similar to what I experience in real life.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Also the idea that depicting guns and violence is normal,
| but nudity absolutely isn't, is very Hollywood.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yes, luckily this isn't as bad in European cinema and TV.
|
| Though the ratings boards have become a lot stricter here
| too, sadly. Some movies that were made in the Netherlands
| in the 80s would fare pretty badly now :P Like
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105999/ In those days
| pretty explicit (but not actual!) sex in movies was so
| prevalent it was almost a trope of its own. Exposed
| breasts at the very least :) I don't think that would fly
| now without an 18+ rating.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| > I find the racism in USA extremely pathological and not
| at all similar to what I experience in real life.
|
| Are you saying that the obsession with racism in the USA is
| what's pathological? Or that USA's portrayal of it in media
| is pathological?
| Scarblac wrote:
| (I am not the same person as the one you replied to)
|
| The racism debate in the USA is mostly centered on two
| groups, "blacks" and "whites" (and "asian", but I'll
| ignore them for now). Jim Crow laws said that a child of
| "mixed" (one black, one white) parent themselves count as
| "black". So you have people with quite light skin who are
| considered "black" and experience racism directed at
| "black" people. I consider seeing everything through that
| black/white lens to be pathological.
|
| There is a huge amount of racism elsewhere in the world,
| probably even more than in the USA, but it's not along
| the same lines.
|
| Which is why it was so jarring when the "black lives
| matter" protests spread around the world. In the
| Netherlands there is quite some racism, but it's directed
| at Moroccans, Turks, Eastern Europeans, Chinese, and
| black people, usually of Surinamese descent, all in
| slightly different ways. The division in black/white
| makes no sense. The term "people of colour" got imported
| from the US but racism here is also directed at Poles who
| are as white as the Dutch are.
|
| The result is oversimplification of our own racism
| problem, along American lines that aren't relevant here.
| mgoetzke wrote:
| The bullies example seems spot on. I do not know why, even
| if it were true, it always and predictably needs to be
| portrayed in TV/movies. It normalizes bad behavior and will
| move people towards a world were this is deemed normal. It
| is not, and never should be.
| imilk wrote:
| > The same with racism. As someone from South America, I
| find the racism in USA extremely pathological and not at
| all similar to what I experience in real life.
|
| I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here. But if
| you're saying racism in America is overblown, you couldn't
| be more wrong.
| hoophoop wrote:
| > Hollywood is based on their ability to create films that
| cut across all the cultures
|
| Hollywood is widely caricatured outside of the US for its
| disconnect from reality. Flat characters, childish good VS
| baddies dichotomies, bombastic action movies...
| Scarblac wrote:
| > I think the whole success of the Hollywood is based on
| their ability to create films that cut across all the
| cultures.
|
| Good time for Rammstein's _Amerika_ video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr8ljRgcJNM
|
| Their point is that the USA _exports_ its culture to the rest
| of the world, and Hollywood is one of the main ways in which
| it does that.
| grecy wrote:
| > _and Hollywood is one of the main ways in which it does
| that_
|
| Hollywood is the greatest marketing department ever built.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| > When I grew up in the 80s/90s, American shows were better
| than local ones because European actors were very bad at
| acting. I think this was mainly because they were being trained
| at schools that still trained for stage plays, with exaggerated
| pronounciation and gesturing.
|
| Tbh, it's still like that in some countries. Norwegian actors
| (where I'm from) have felt quite stiff/wooden since forever,
| and they all have the same backgrounds - i.e classical theater
| schools, play actors before working on TV, etc.
|
| I'd say that it's just in the past 10-15 years that we've
| gotten a somewhat fresh breath of air, from actors that seem to
| embrace method acting.
|
| But you see it in other countries here as well. It's easy to
| spot a script and dialogue that's been written by "academics",
| with little to zero exposure to the real world they're trying
| to depict.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Why would stage actors be worse at this?? I would have
| expected them to be better!
| akiselev wrote:
| Stage actors are acting for a large audience, screen actors
| are acting for a camera. It's far harder to communicate
| subtlety to a bunch of people in the back of a theater than
| it is to a camera that's right up in the actor's face, so
| they both necessitate different acting styles. The
| exaggerated style of stage acting does not translate well
| to screen.
| slim wrote:
| It's far harder to communicate subtlety to a bunch of
| people in the back of a theater
|
| actually it's a different job. you use your body in space
| to communicate. nobody sees clearly your face expressions
| unless accentuated by dramatic lighting. it's a team
| work. your own personal performance is a team work.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Worked pretty well (in fact better than your random
| tv&movie-only actor) for Patrick Stewart..?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| He needed some time to grow into his role too. He was
| clearly still getting into it in Season 1 of TNG :)
|
| One example that comes to mind is the end of the first
| double-episode encounter at farpoint. Where he's like
| "Let's see what 's out there! Engage!". That really
| looked like stage acting.
| 8note wrote:
| Some hardware developers can also make nice single page
| apps. That doesn't mean hardware developers generally
| make better single page apps than anyone else
| 3v1n0 wrote:
| Not to mention that who grew up with American shows and
| eventually visited the US noticed as nothing was real or
| connected to reality.
|
| All pure drama and advertising a non existent American dream
| society.
| danjac wrote:
| > When I grew up in the 80s/90s, American shows were better
| than local ones because European actors were very bad at
| acting. I think this was mainly because they were being trained
| at schools that still trained for stage plays, with exaggerated
| pronounciation and gesturing.
|
| So that would include Patrick Stewart, Lawrence Olivier, Helen
| Mirren, John Gielgud, Ian McKellen, Ian Holm, John Hurt (all
| European theatre trained actors) ?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah I was mainly referring to the ones I knew in those days,
| so Dutch actors as I'm from there, and in those days we
| didn't get a lot of international TV.
|
| I was watching Jumpin' Jack Flash just a couple days ago and
| I thought Jeroen Krabbe was pretty bad in it there also.
|
| But good point. Europe is bigger than what I know from those
| times.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| British actors, not European. I know that sounds
| nationalistic but I don't know any British person who has
| referred to themselves as European.
| thirtythree wrote:
| Most Europeans will say they are French, German, Italian,
| etc. "European" means very little to us except not-american
| danjac wrote:
| OK, here's one British person who refers to themselves as
| European. As that's probably not enough for you to win
| Today's Dumbest Comment on Hacker News, here's one of the
| above actors who definitely considers herself European:
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/helen-mirren-brexit-
| trump_n_5...
|
| and here's another:
|
| https://time.com/4354959/patrick-stewart-brexit/
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Hah - well you made a point with your links that I didn't
| want to bring up, but since you did: the only people
| calling themselves "European" are people who really
| detest the idea of Brexit. But let me ask you something,
| what possible question could you be asked about yourself
| that would result in the answer "European". Here let me
| try:
|
| Where are you from? > "Europe" is too vague, people want
| country or city.
|
| What would your cultural heritage be? > Again, "European"
| is far to vague. Mine's English and Irish.
|
| I'm really struggling here...
|
| Again, if I didn't make myself clear: the use of the term
| "European" is entirely political (pro-EU).
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Huh, really ?
|
| Well, I guess this explains the Brexit...
|
| I suppose that Scots might be excluded?
| danjac wrote:
| As well as some 48% of voters in the Brexit vote. They
| are talking nonsense. Furthermore however much the Brexit
| fanatics may wish otherwise, the British Isles are still
| part of the continental landmass of Europe.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| So is the most populated part of Russia, this doesn't
| prevent them from "trying to find their own path".
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > police shows set in megacities where everyone carries guns.
|
| This is a weird concept; megacities are easily the most gun-
| hostile locations in the US.
| j4yav wrote:
| I think even the gun-hostile places in America are (in
| relative terms) way more gun-loving than you'll find in
| Europe.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Why would you think that?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Probably because nobody except police carries guns (in
| particular pistols) here at all. Whether concealed or
| not. You just can't get a carry permit. There is no such
| thing.
|
| The only way you can get a pistol is for sports shooting
| and you must carry it in a closed case all the time, and
| it must be to/from the shooting range.
|
| Rifles are easier to get for hunting but of course this
| is not what people carry regularly in the US.
|
| But more generically: In Europe we have nothing like the
| second amendment. This is what makes even the gun-hostile
| places in the US less gun-hostile than Europe, because
| they still have to abide by the constitution.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Probably because nobody except police carries guns (in
| particular pistols) here at all. Whether concealed or
| not. You just can't get a carry permit. There is no such
| thing.
|
| That is also how US megacities work.
|
| > In Europe we have nothing like the second amendment.
| This is what makes even the gun-hostile places in the US
| less gun-hostile than Europe, because they still have to
| abide by the constitution.
|
| That depends on jurisdiction. Compare
| https://reason.com/volokh/2021/04/01/ninth-circuit-holds-
| the... :
|
| > The en banc Ninth Circuit last week held that the
| Second Amendment does not extend to open public firearm
| carriage. The new [decision] in Young v. State of Hawaii
| complements the Circuit's en banc from five years
| earlier, Peruta v. San Diego, which held that concealed
| carry is outside the Second Amendment.
|
| > By statute, Hawaii has a restrictive "may issue" carry
| licensing system. If an applicant proves "sufficient"
| "urgency or need," then a police chief "may" issue a
| permit.
|
| > In practice, Hawaii is "never issue."
|
| Notionally, they are obligated to obey the constitution.
| But there's no one to make them do it, so they don't.
|
| You also find things like New York passing a law which
| allows possession of a gun outside the home in only two
| circumstances: if you are bringing it from your home to a
| firing range, or if you are bringing it from a firing
| range back to your home. Notably, this "accidentally"
| banned transporting a gun from the store where you
| purchased it to your home.
|
| The idea that the most gun-hostile places in America are
| more gun-loving than what you can find in Europe is self-
| evidently insane; the claim is that a bunch of people who
| largely define themselves by their opposition to guns are
| nevertheless more gun-friendly than a bunch of other
| people who rarely think about guns at all.
| majormajor wrote:
| Laws on the books aside, are there big cities in Europe
| where there are more shootings than in American mega-
| cities NYC, Chicago, or LA? If so, they don't make the
| news here in the US much.
|
| I think you have the causality reversed: the reason gun-
| hostile politicians and activists are so vocal in the US
| is _because_ the country has so many guns in so many
| members of the public, both in an out of cities. I haven
| 't seen their vocalness successfully eliminate the guns
| and shootings from their cities.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| Its also worth pointing out that all large American
| cities aren't equal in terms of crime stats - NYC is
| (surprisingly, to many people) among the safest. I can
| remember reading headlines within the last decade about
| London notably reaching a higher murder rate, despite
| London presumably having something closer to total
| prohibition of firearms.
|
| TV shows here love to portray NYC as a Gotham-esque
| hellscape because that makes for good police procedurals,
| but in reality I'd bet if you invented some kind of
| metric comparing TV portrayals of violent crimes against
| actual violent crime stats NYC would have the largest gap
| between fiction and reality.
|
| Don't get me wrong, horrific stuff happens here. There
| are millions upon millions of people, some of them awful
| to others. But by the numbers its safer than almost every
| other major metro in the country, and solidly middle of
| the pack among comparable global mega-cities.
| yokaze wrote:
| > When I grew up in the 80s/90s, American shows were better
| than local ones because European actors were very bad at
| acting.
|
| What I've heard, the difference in quality is mostly one of
| budget.
|
| In US series, they do much more takes from a scene, while in
| European (or Japanese) TV they don't have the budget to do so.
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| >When I grew up in the 80s/90s, American shows were better than
| local ones because European actors were very bad at acting.
|
| I don't know where you grew up, but this is demonstrably
| untrue. Maybe you're referring to some low-budget domestic
| "shows", but French, Italian, German, Polish, Scandinavian,
| etc. cinema was on par with Hollywood in terms of acting
| talent.
| corty wrote:
| I'm not quite sure about most other European countries, but
| German cinema is famously bad. There is the occasional comedy
| that is at least watchable to pass the time if nothing else
| is on. But other than that, formulaic, badly acted drivel
| that is just produced to grab state film subsidies. The only
| German production I would call good is "Das Boot", and that
| is decades old by now. With lots of squinting maybe "Lola
| rennt".
|
| As for German TV shows, there is a bunch of bad soaps and
| "Krimis", badly acted, formulaic criminal investigation
| stuff. Usually with the police as universal good guys working
| through some tough midlife crisis problems, a token dialect
| actor from the region that episode is supposed to be set and
| a story that makes your brain bleed. With a raised finger
| moral point du jour to educate the stupid plebs out there as
| to how they are misbehaving. You would have to go back to
| "Raumpatroullie Orion" to even get science fiction, not to
| mention any other genre that is popular with non-old-people
| (Yes, Netflix is definitely an improvement there).
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| True!! We did get some German police shows and I know
| exactly what you mean. Like Derrick and Der Alte.
|
| But maybe it was also the way that there was always this
| bleakness in it. Whereas US series had the opposite thing,
| they were more colourful. Thinking of Miami Vice with their
| neon lights and blue skies at night.
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| Ok, here are some good German movies just from the top of
| my head:
|
| - The Lives of Others
|
| - The Tin Drum
|
| - Goodbye Lenin!
|
| - Downfall
|
| - The Edukators
|
| - Berlin Calling
|
| - Benny's Video
| kazen44 wrote:
| die wende could be added to that list aswell.
|
| Der untergang and Unsere Mutter, unsere Vater are also
| highly recommended in my opinion.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I grew up in the Netherlands... Most shows from my youth were
| pretty poor, I thought. Very strong overacting (especially
| the older actors), very poor decors etc.
|
| All the old actors have this "toneelschoolstem" (acting
| school voice) which is horrible for realism.
| koyote wrote:
| This might just be my personal opinion but I feel like a lot of
| European shows avoid many of the common Hollywood tropes, which
| is another reason they feel 'fresh'.
|
| Most US shows are quite predictable if you've watched similar
| shows of the same genre and I often find myself guessing the
| plotline or a plot tool while watching.
|
| This did not happen with DARK; in fact, that's how I realised
| that it avoided many of the tropes because they just did not
| eventuate when I tried 'guessing'.
| seabird wrote:
| I think it's important to note that Dark is "engineered." It
| has a comparatively short runtime, and the major points of
| the plot were written before the show even began production.
| This is something even some of the most widely acclaimed
| series didn't do, but up until streaming services started
| dumping whole seasons at a time, it wasn't really viable;
| leaving open ends meant more opportunity for big viewer
| numbers and ad revenue. La casa de papel (mentioned in the
| grandparent) wasn't planned to the same extent, and it shows.
| It's not bad, but the writing is nowhere near as strong as
| Dark. It's possible that these European Netflix series that
| started to get made largely for the sake of hitting the 30%
| domestic content number are inherently advantaged in that
| regard. They just need to exist in the catalog, and don't
| need to drag on and on (which has ruined plenty of American
| series) to fulfill their business case.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| True, Dark is great in that way. The story is really
| intricate. I came across it by fluke and I really liked it
| a lot.
|
| Indeed the dragging on bit of some series is very familiar.
| Like LOST :) I also notice that many of the 'villain of the
| week' series have many eps in each season, and all the good
| shows are much more sparse.
| buu700 wrote:
| _This did not happen with DARK; in fact, that 's how I
| realised that it avoided many of the tropes because they just
| did not eventuate when I tried 'guessing'._
|
| Not to get too off-topic, but if you liked DARK then I'd
| highly recommend the 12 Monkeys series. If I had to pick one,
| I'd say 12 Monkeys may be a bit better.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I hadn't heard of that one, thanks for the tip!! I will try
| it.
|
| From the writeup it sounds a bit like Travelers, which I
| also liked (sad that it was cancelled, but at least they
| finished their 'iteration' of the story!)
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| (The 12 Monkeys series is very bad compared to the original
| Terry Gilliam movie.)
| hinkley wrote:
| The 'original Terry Gilliam movie' was inspired by a
| French short, La Jetee [1962].
| stuaxo wrote:
| It's sort of terrible, but gets better.. it has many
| moments that seem like they will be so bad you will stop
| watching but then it will turn it round somehow. It got
| more interesting after the first series, and then the
| last series is just not available in the UK which is
| annoying.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| When the Danish series _The Killing_ was first shown in the
| UK it was acclaimed by both critics and audiences. Since
| then, there has been a boom in European dramas shown on UK TV
| screens, particularly thrillers. (Dramas from Italy, Germany,
| France, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, Iceland are just some
| examples.)
|
| However, what seems "fresh" at first soon becomes familiar.
| This is particular true of Scandinanian thrillers. Once you
| watch a few, you realise they swap one set of familar tropes
| with their own set. For example, for thrillers:
|
| - Many red herrings in the murder case (often not making any
| sense but carefully planted by the writers to keep audiences
| guessing).
|
| - The death of at least one major (likable) character usually
| after the audience has warmed to the character.
|
| - At most a "bittersweet" ending is provided. A 'happy'
| ending is never executed: some distress or anxiety must
| always accompany the main character at the end of a series.
|
| Sounds familar?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yes very familiar. I watched The Bridge ("Bron Broen") and
| it had all these. It was still OK, but too much of it won't
| be.
|
| And the later seasons were a bit contrived so I stopped
| after the second one.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Another recommendation: Deutchland 83/86/89, fast-paced spy
| thriller about the relationship between East and West Germany
| before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Thank you also, this sounds great too! I really like cold war
| stories.
| GordonS wrote:
| Another recommendation from me - I just finished watching
| '89, and this was a great series!
| apabepa wrote:
| This is a rather pretentious take. Not sure I agree that a
| lowest-common-denominator i.e. violence and sex TV-drama counts
| as common culture. The setting could be whatever, it would still
| sell using the same tropes. I guess it is in a way similar to how
| McDonald is European "common food culture"..
| [deleted]
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/AuKz9
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