#*hypnotizing you* oooooooo you wanna go read csm and watch nope SOOOOO BADLY

[marchingbandtshirt]

I think the reason why Chainsaw Man and Nope both occupy very similar spaces in my brain regarding overall themes is how they take their basic premises and worldbuilding structures and turn them into a commentary on something pretty much completely unrelated

Like, csm operates within a world where devils are physical representations of the fears or humanity, with stronger fears equating to stronger devils. On that note alone, you’d likely expect some sort of philosophical argument on the nature of fear and basic instincts vs inherent humanity as a theme, except fujimoto doesn’t take that angle. It’s instead an exploration of a hypercapitalistic society with an individualistic culture and the subsequent dehumanization and exploitation at every social level of the people operating the cogs in the machine but have no control over said society themselves (oh hey look [spoilers redacted]).

Likewise, Nope features what looks to be an homage to alien invasion stories and a mystery that turns out to be that said alien is actually A Creature, which you’d likely think would be primarily a “man vs nature,” “tame the untamable” type of conflict (which unlike csm it does contain to a certain extent), but jordan peele instead uses that premise to explore the nature of viewership and tragedy and the exploitation thereof, the violence of spectacle in today’s age where people can’t help but look at and film and capture on camera truly horrific events for self-recognition.

And they both do so incredibly, extremely well in my opinion so there’s also that