Talk:The American Dream (film)

I am confused both by this entire post and in particular, it's inaccuracies which I tried to fix, but continue to get changed back. First off, it's fine if you disagree with the 95%+ positive reviews this film gets over millions and millions of views on you tube and other sources. I am assuming the authors of this review have never seen South Park or must hate that as well???

That is ultimately fine, but what is less fine is you allow people to start throwing around the film somehow promoting anti-semitism? I thought this was "rational" wiki? How does one guy's op-ed article stand as reference for anti-semitism? It's not rational or factual whether you like or hate the film to start..

There is a big difference between snarky dissent and trolling..
 * Ok, Look at this page from the film's website. Do you see how lines like "Bauer choose the old symbol of his ancestors, a hexagram red shield, and changed his name to Rothschild ("Red Shield"). Symbolically, the Red Shield character represents the cartel of the global banking elite and the secrets of the Federal reserve." promote the idea of an international Jewish conspiracy?


 * Edit: Also, please sign your posts on talk pages with four tildes TiaC (talk) 23:20, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Not really.. It doesn't promote it anymore than using Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan or any other massive powerhouse as a foil to explain how the modernized global banking machine rose and works... The idea that because you use Rothschild as a representational foil means you are anti-semetic is ridiculous... I think the film is an equal opportunity critic, the idea that someone is off limits to criticism or satire because they are of a certain descent and work in a certain industry is kind of silly. Also because someone or some people who are anti-semites say something or use something as a focal point of their misguided world view does not mean that that focal point is now off limits because its further critique means you are backing anti-semitism...C'mon


 * Even setting aside the racial issues, it's a conspiracy theory relying on dubious economics. I suggest you go read our pages on the Rothschilds, Fractional-reserve banking and The Fed. TiaC (talk) 00:15, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Hold on, that is the entire point of contention here, the so called "racial issues" or really accusations of them... You don't like Austrian economics, you think Fractional reserve lending is great.. but if someone disagrees then it means they don't like Jews?! What kind of rational is that???? BTW, just because someone wrote a page on a topic on rational wiki doesn't mean it's correct or representative of reality... It's just kind of crazy given that this site says how factually sound it is yet it so easily allows misinformation and conjecture as its support?
 * Conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds controlling the world via a hidden banking monopoly are widely noted as an antisemitic canard.   It may be possible to hold such views without being an antisemeite - in the same way that it may be possible to doubt President Obama's US citizenship without being a massive racist - but there's enough of a common correlation to raise eyebrows, especially when you throw in tropes familiar from anti-Jewish propaganda like the greedy octopus imagery (see elsewhere in the same Wikipedia article).
 * And none of your comments explain why you keep removing a paragraph about Alex Jones liking this animation. 01:37, 15 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Actually, unlike your "Obama not having US citizenship point", The Rothschild's did in fact build a significant part of the basis for modern banking, government lending and the global information trade. Many legitimate agencies discuss this, such as this Business Insider article, http://www.businessinsider.com/the-early-rothschilds-built-a-fortune-2014-8?op=1 There is a vast amount of historical fact about their very significant influence on global banking and many legitimate discussions on the topic. They did infact play a KEY role in the evolution of banking. Bringing up the Rothschild's doesn't link to anti-semitism and is not even close to the same thing as the Obama Birth place issue, which has a very limited concrete information basis. It's a poor comparison. There is zero doubt that the Rothschild's did build a global finance juggernaut, I don't know of any place that it's disputed that this is the case. You are saying that referencing this historical fact raises eyebrows of anti-semitism? How is that? Because some actual anti-semites have brought up this fact for their mis-guided end? That isn't really a fair and founded argument. The octopus imagery you mention is also a weak connection, the machine that is pictured in the film and on it's website does have tentacles with tools on the end, it's not an octopus and even if it was the idea is to convey sprawling influence, hence why tentacled creatures are frequently used for conveying the same notion ... Is the US global surveillance rocket also anti-semetic? See here, it's logo as pointed out in the following Forbes article is actually an octopus.. Are tentacles off limits too?  http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/12/05/u-s-spy-rocket-launching-today-has-octopus-themed-nothing-is-beyond-our-reach-logo-seriously/  I was actually taking off the part that references "the good guys section" on the website, which isn't there and had no proper footnoting. The link to Alex Jones liking the film is fine as that is indeed the case. I don't think links like the one made by referencing unknown blog posts to bring full circle a conspiracy theory about an animated satire being stealth anti-semitism belong on a site that claims to be so into debunking links it claims are weak and built on conspiracy theory.


 * Love your comments, it seems there little use arguing the use of "canards"--or so it seems to me. I have yet to find a public wiki with even a hint rationality, clarity of mind, aufenklaring, enlightenment. Nope, "deep" thoughts and politics rules our tribe. Dotmpe (talk) 12:10, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * If not being convinced by the sheer volume of assertion means people aren't deep to you...then I endorse having that label proudly. Since Wiki's are free to make and cheap to host the complaints kind of fall on deaf ears that a stranger hasn't done this for you.  To me this was answered by the first reply, but adding more and different evidence to try to shore up an unsound conclusion seems like chasing ones tail.  -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 14:15, 3 May 2016 (UTC)


 * While it is true the Rothschild's expanded on banking, government lending and, global information trade those things were already in place by the time they came to power.  The Bank of England for example  was founded in 1694 well before Mayer Amschel Rothschild was born in 1744.  The financial bubble that was the South Sea Company (little more than a way to finance the debt of England burst in 1722 and governments running on debt was demonstrated in the late 1400s in Burgundy (as well as how it could all go wrong)  Global information had been made easier thanks to the printing press but its improvment had more to do with innovation than anything the Rothschilds did.--BruceGrubb (talk) 03:28, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Backdrop of sophisticated popular culture
For my money, to not read this as antisemitic, you really need to be blind to the prevailing conventions of narrative story telling.

Viewed from that level, this work is quite sophisticated, and would a lot of effort to fully deconstruct.


 * Lindsay Ellis: On Michael Bay framing Megan Fox — 23 September 2017

0:55 Given that over the last decade these movies have become an emblem of all that is backward and misogynist in the world, people have forgotten that the first movie is weirdly sympathetic to its female characters ... on paper. But this sympathy to the female characters in the screenplay is undermined by the way the women are framed by the camera and the framing gives the audience a different take-away than what we see on the page.

Concerning American Dream, problems with the script itself are legion, but you can argue (as someone did, above) that the script treats the Rothschilds no better or worse than numerous other topics. (Worst of all are the script's faux assertions about the governance and ownership model of the Federal Reserve, which is weird and complicated and entirely unlike any private corporation which has ever existed).

When you go beyond the script to the framing, the initiated—but slyly unfinished—implication that the Federal Reserve is hoovering money to a dark, invisible nexus of greed is essential to the main story line wherein American taxation equals theft (the penalty for which was previously established as a Levantine lynch mob, wielding an actual noose—from a strangely modern gallows—in a spirit of macho frontier justice, with no remorse).

The federal government sets the salaries of the board's seven governors. The federal government receives all the system's annual profits, after a statutory dividend of 6% on member banks' capital investment is paid, and an account surplus is maintained. In 2015, the Federal Reserve earned net income of $100.2 billion and transferred $97.7 billion to the U.S. Treasury.

The framing in this film is that the insectoid, octopoid, Matroid Rothschild progeny made the trek to America, where they are still pulling the strings, and continuing to hoover up all the wealth pouring into the Federal Reserve, which is swallowed whole and never seen again by the good American people.

The Red Shield imagery had me on high alert within seconds of its first appearance. That imagery is effectively sustained throughout the entire third act, when it has no business lingering around on a purely symbolic basis, of an strain explicitly Jewish (and insectoid—precisely the kind of insect that whistles when dropped into boiling water in a register that only dogs can hear).

The last refuge of the desperate is to defend this script in a spirit of naive literalism. If people want to defend the film, defend the whole darn thing, including the many sly cultural references, the symbolism, the pacing, what it misrepresents, what it leaves unsaid, and the narrative conventions it cleverly manipulates and invokes. (Sometimes it's a surprisingly thin line between good story telling and slick propaganda.)

Because it's not rational concerning a brisk, visual form to presume that the script alone is driving the expressive bus.

Back in the days of Mork and Mindy, Robin Williams was a disciplined comedian and stayed entirely within the script as written (though never in rehearsal), and the studio still had to substantially upgrade the live censor sent to police the set to one with a much faster brain, because Williams was still slipping too much NSFW subtext underneath his neverending stream of frantic facial expressions.

Let's not be naive. This film is of a piece, and of a piece, it's darn hard to defend as an unsophisticated populist exercise in objective monetary theory.

Ask yourself this: what would Jordan Peterson say? Peterson—whose own home is filled with Soviet propaganda, who has studied propaganda most of his adult life (and the dystopias which ride shotgun), who takes archetypes very seriously (sometimes almost to a point of appearing unhinged), and who is highly attuned to the back-and-forth subtext of narrative form—would not blithely read this as the Rothschilds making an unproblematic, objective appearance, or I'd eat far more of my wardrobe than merely my beloved, aperient hat. — Auntie Fra (talk) 01:37, 19 December 2018 (UTC)