Talk about overthinking it! This thread highlights the recurrent conflict that arises because my Myers-Briggs personality type is INFJ, but most programmers are not.
To me a Christmas movie is a movie with the spirit of Christmas running through it, however weakly. Another definition I have is this. A Christmas movie is a movie that is fun to watch around Christmas. Die Hard meets both of these definitions.
Die Hard is not, however, a typical Christmas movie. It's a movie more for people who are sick of the normal Christmas movies and want a break. Because of this special status, people who think of Die Hard as a Christmas movie feel a greater camaraderie than people who think, say, White Christmas is a Christmas movie. For example, at a Christmas party one of my friends wore, as his "Christmas sweater," a gray sweatshirt with the words "Ho ho ho" written in red.
Another thing that makes Die Hard special is the thought and care that the director put into it, https://vimeo.com/76739972
>Talk about overthinking it! This thread highlights the recurrent conflict that arises because my Myers-Briggs personality type is INFJ, but most programmers are not.
Meyers-Briggs has a number of issues[1] and is frankly, unscientific. But because it uses a survey, it evokes feelings of rigor. Sometimes I feel that engineers are so obsessed with rigor, they'd rather use a solution that is wrong but "goes through the motions" than a simpler solution.
For example, whether something is a a "Christmas Movie" is at it's heart, a matter of opinion. To answer it, simple polling a diverse sample of the US population could answer the question. But that's not a "sexy" answer - we want to buy into this idea of One Ground Truth that if we only framed our experiment perfectly, we can uncover.
The real truth is that qualitative research is messy. Doing a "good" job is easy, but doing a "great" job is a still unsolved problem... and sadly all to often we choose the appearance of rigor over actual useful research.
I think the correct answer is: depends on what Christmas is to you. Is Christmas the american generic holiday or the Christian holiday celebrating the birth of the Christ? That definition makes a big difference on answering whether or not something is a Christmas thing.
Yeah, and there are a large number of americans that watch Christian/Biblical movies and consider those to be more Christian. Otoh,there are also a lot of people that think hallmark movies are Christmas movies while some disagree.
It's a celebration,societal consensus is not needed to determine how smaller groups of people want to celebrate it. Lets not force our celebrations on each other. My definition is the latter but I don't care one bit if others watch die hard and home alone while I watch the Gospel of John or something that has nothing to do with Christmas.
I didn't downvote you, I've never been able to, and wouldn't have even if I could. I just wanted to point out this MB chart is essentially the programmer's version of 'I'm high strung because I'm sagittarian'.
Eh, I think that's discounting it too far in the other direction.
MBTI is a mostly arbitrary and limited categorization system with very shaky psychological/sociological grounding, but it still is grounded on parts of personality / who people are to some degree. There are tons of misuses of MBTI from trying to gain personal predictive insight, adhering to a single "type" because you tested as it once, and the written descriptions of the types themselves on many sites do indeed use tricks used in horoscopes.
However, when you take it for what it is, an arbitrary classification tool with very light social science backing, there are insights you can learn from when it comes to how people interact or at least how they approach different problems/ideas/situations in a broad sense, as well as a few other actual practical but limited applications.
You would never be able to use it to say "I'm high strung because I'm INTJ", but you can use it to the point of "Oh hey person X and Y are having issue Z communicating, perhaps it's explained because one is an S and the other in an N. Not because one is S and one is N, but because, if properly categorized (big if), it would make some general statements about communication that could be applicable to a situation.
All this said, I know MBTI comes up in some offices and I have never once heard of a proper/successful use of it, so it's wide misuse and misunderstanding of its nature probably does make it the programmer's version of astrology. Just wanted to point out that astrology and MBTI, as much as people love to compare them, are quite different.
Why the assumption? I'm very much a proponent of INTJ's developing their feeling side and tbh I prefer INFJ's to INTJ's personally. It doesn't change that the difference is in only one category, and not in one I would say drives the professional world as much as say N/S when it comes to working together. I'm not sure where such s strong conflict would come from, especially given that every category is a spectrum and very few are 100% T or F. To assume there is such a radical difference in one categorization is precisely a flaw of MBTI's use.
> It's a movie more for people who are sick of the normal Christmas movies and want a break.
Wat? For me it was just the constant TV reruns at Christmas that did it, like with Trading Places and Groundhog Day. It just does not feel like Christmas until Hans Gruber falls from Nakatomi Plaza and Billie-Ray Valentine sells OJ futures.
Would you say the extroversion or introversion of the population is normally distributed, with most people in the middle of the range, and a few on the extremes? If so, how do you reconcile that with the Myers-Briggs approach of binning people into the A or B extremes, with no one in the middle?
Although I've read a lot about Myers Briggs, I still am no expert. Also there are a lot of articles out there with differing interpretations. I need to go to the original writings, by Carl Jung.
But one thing I can say about Myers Briggs is that it allows for variation between introversion and extraversion. First of all, an INFJ will usually seem more extroverted than an INTP. Furthermore, one INFJ might seem more extraverted than another INFJ. So I think Myers Briggs allows variation, not only among all whose type begins with I, but even between two people of the exact same four-letter type. In the end, Myers Briggs calls them "preferences."
Myers Briggs for many years seemed to me simplistic. Actually introversion and extraversion was the only thing that I could put a firm finger on, whether I was one way or the other. I consider it a binary trait, maybe even more so than Carl Jung, Myers, or Briggs. Certainly more than you, it sounds like. But that may be because I use the more narrow definition of each, that it's only about where you recharge.
Anyway, the other letters in Myers Briggs seemed to me naive. Am I intuitive or sensing, thinking or feeling, judging or perceiving? Well, I am each of them. It sounded like caricature, not real people. As I read more and more, I found that Myers Briggs meant those words in narrow ways. Thinking doesn't mean thinking, and feeling doesn't mean feeling. Last but not least, not only does the last letter not mean perceiving or judging in the everyday senses, but it doesn't even mean whether you are mainly one or the other. It means which do you extravert? Do you extravert judging or extravert perceiving? Yes, even if you are an introvert, which one do you extravert? And if that's the one you extravert, then the other side is introverted inward, and that's the side therefore that you actually feel is more truly you. Confused yet?
Myers Briggs now seems like some fractal, the more you read about it, the deeper the complexity. There is a whole layer underneath the surface, about "cognitive functions," which is a requirement for even an intermediate level of understanding. It may all end up to be quack science. About the only thing I'm sure of is that we are not blank slates, that at least some of our personality preferences are genetic, and that Myers Briggs tries to nail that down. Whether it nails down too much or not enough or just the wrong parts is another matter.
This is only an argument because of different ways of defining what a "Christmas movie" is, which aren't mutually exclusive:
a) Whether the movie is unambiguously set during Christmas, and if so whether that's clearly an artistic choice, or as much of a coincidence as a movie that has nothing to do with the weather being set in the summer or winter.
b) Whether the movie is aimed at the "Christmas movie market". I.e. released around Christmas, this'll usually coincide with a movie being more Christmas themed.
The article weaves between criteria that'll fall under one or the other, without ever really acknowledging the difference between the two.
Die Hard meets a) but not b), but the article doesn't mention whether or not skipping b) was intended.
The studio had a hard time casting the protagonist. Was it initially meant for a Christmas release, but ended up slipping into July without the script being changed to de-Christmas theme it?
More importantly, is there a reason to avoid b) without a)? Do mildly Christmas-themed movies such as Die Hard (it's not integral to the plot) get penalized in the market as a result? Why don't we see more of them?
This is the correct answer. It's why people look for chocolate eggs left by a rabbit when they are supposedly celebrating the death and resurrection of the son of god, or why kids get gifts from a old obese man when they are supposedly celebrating the birth of that same godly spawn - rationalisations were innested on activities that people already enjoyed for one reason or another.
People turn things into traditions simply because they like doing them with some fixed cadence. The rationalisations tend to flow in later.
In Poland, this makes Home Alone and Die Hard both Christmas movies. Ever since I was a kid, I remember both being on TV during Christmas days. Hell, people actually made quite a large uproar couple years ago, when the TV station showing Home Alone decided not to show it on Christmas, and AFAIR they eventually changed the programming to keep it.
C) Christmas movies can also be a theme where some moral achievement occurs that is in the spirit of Christmas. Scrooge realizes being an asshat is not a good way to live his life, or realizing that your presence in the world has definite impact on the lives of other people a la Miracle on 34th St, etc. Kids movies usually involve being good so Santa will bring presents. There's also the family coming together (whether that's good or bad, but still overcomes to good).
The conversations I've had about this with people that do not think Die Hard movies are usually based on this more than a release date or a winter time setting using Xmas deco in the movie. They don't know that's what they are getting at, but it's what I've come up with to explain it.
The plot would have to change, but very little of importance. Instead of an evening Christmas party, it could have been an evening party celebrating the opening of the building. And don't write ho ho ho on the terrorist you put in the elevator. Done.
Those are excellent points, but keep in mind that a lot of people define christmas movie as something that both adults and children can watch together. So that makes die hard a hard sell for a lot of families.
For me, any movie set in or around christmas qualifies as a christmas movie and my favorite christmas movies are "die hard", "home alone 1 and 2" and "scrooged". They all represent the redeeming christmas spirit in their own unique way.
> Those are excellent points, but keep in mind that a lot of people define christmas movie as something that both adults and children can watch together
Rare Exports is undeniably a Christmas movie. One that you should definitely watch, but only after the little ones have gone to bed.
Aha. A local bar was playing 1948 Rudolph the RNR followed by Die Hard, and I thought it was just a hipster ironic incongruity. Now I’m understanding some consider Die Hard a Christmas film.
My initial sense is it's not a Christmas movie because the typical example of such is a movie that has something like "the joy of Christmas" as its core message or theme. But I'm hardly the most buff of film buffs, so I wonder: are the any movies with something of a negative message, or just any counterexample that is clearly a Christmas movie that doesn't meet this criteria of "joy" etc.?
"Bad Santa" is absolutely, unironically, my favorite Christmas movie of all time. And while Billy Bob Thorton's character does have a measure of redemption at the end, it overall is a dark comedy that is clearly the opposite of what you describe.
Same here. I could just watch it on a loop. Some channels used to even show it like that during Christmas.
Now that we have kids they are too young for the humor and don't find it as funny. We tried Home Alone but it just doesn't feel right. So I think we settled on Elf as a compromise.
I wasn't aware this was even an argument. Is this a joke or an American thing? I must admit my initial reaction was bof but now I'm slightly intrigued. Maybe it's a meme?
I had this very argument two weeks ago at a party and I was in the "it's not a Christmas movie" corner. After reading the (beautifully researched) article, I have now changed my mind. I now think it's a Christmas movie -- mostly because the writers intended for it to be one :D
The author lost me when he said that “Last Action Hero” is not a great movie, so I wouldn’t take anything he writes about movies as serious. John McTiernan is a genius.
I never understood why that movie bombed. 1993 was a huge year for blockbuster movies, so I think it just got lost in the shuffle. Anyway, underrated flick.
It's a Hollywood story cliche. There are so many continuity problems in that movie, but if I recall, they were designed to be that way. Here's a decent write up about the whole preposterous nature of the movie: https://film.avclub.com/why-last-action-hero-failed-and-why-...
It's definitely also a meme, whatever else it is. As an American, I haven't heard much about this debate before this holiday season. Definitely enjoying it, though.
Die Hard being regarded as a Christmas movie has been growing in popularity in the culture for many years now. I did however first hear about it being discussed in a TV show, although I can't remember which.
The article also touches on another meme that has been growing for the past few years, Thanksgiving and its lack of associated songs. I remember first noticing that due to Bob's Burgers mentioning it constantly in their Thanksgiving episodes, but have now noticed that SNL has been bringing up the fact there are no Thanksgiving songs for the past couple years as well.
The joke was popularized by an American TV show. It’s become one of those things people know they can trot out for easy upvotes, likes, etc. Most Christmas movies are family-oriented but Die Hard is an action movie so saying it’s one’s favorite Christmas movie is meant to demonstrate the distinctiveness of one’s personality. It’s like how people made jokes about sporks and “le earth”. Maybe in a few years it’ll come full circle and big data will help us to determine if sporks are closer to spoons or forks.
A corruption of "but i am le tired." A line from a flash video from a site called Albino Blacksheep. Called 'THE END OF ZE WORLD' by Jason Windsor in 2003. ABS was known for flash videos/animations (occasional theft of content from other creators) and attracting a juvenile/college audience
Several discussions of Die Hard being a Christmas movie happen in the show Brooklyn Nine-Nine, as Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) is obsessed with the movie.
To me a Christmas movie is a movie with the spirit of Christmas running through it, however weakly. Another definition I have is this. A Christmas movie is a movie that is fun to watch around Christmas. Die Hard meets both of these definitions.
Die Hard is not, however, a typical Christmas movie. It's a movie more for people who are sick of the normal Christmas movies and want a break. Because of this special status, people who think of Die Hard as a Christmas movie feel a greater camaraderie than people who think, say, White Christmas is a Christmas movie. For example, at a Christmas party one of my friends wore, as his "Christmas sweater," a gray sweatshirt with the words "Ho ho ho" written in red.
Another thing that makes Die Hard special is the thought and care that the director put into it, https://vimeo.com/76739972