As anyone with even a smidgen of sense knows, THE LAST JEDI is toddawful. But then, the rebooting of the series was a bad idea motivated by nothing but greed and nastiness. Lucas obviously sold his visionary baby to Disney for big bucks. It’s difficult to think of anyone in the movie industry who betrayed himself more. Even though STAR WARS saga is about Luke Skywalker(as Lucas’s fantasy alter ego) who walks the straight and narrow path despite temptations to do likewise, George Lucas has betrayed himself time and time again. One noble thing he did was to collaborate with Francis Ford Coppola in aiding Akira Kurosawa’s comeback with KAGEMUSHA. According to Kevin Michael Grace, Lucas was also instrumental in getting Paul Schrader’s MISHIMA get funded. (Personally, I’m not so sure about that one as Schrader’s biopic is a rather artsy-fartsy mishmash of sterile stylizing.) Otherwise, Lucas has been a bust.
Not a financial bust, of course, as he became one of the richest man in the movie industry. We mean an artistic bust. Now, Lucas wasn’t the only person in cinema(or any other industry) who went with the money. When Mario Puzo couldn’t make a living as a serious writer, he mostly turned to pulp and gave us stuff like THE GODFATHER and THE LAST DON. Still, Puzo’s ‘selling-out’ was less grating because he never preached to us about Art and Integrity. Indeed, THE GODFATHER is mainly about Michael who is introduced as an all-American idealist and patriot but turns his back on all that and becomes the head of the family business, an organized crime syndicate. According to Puzo’s way of thinking, it’s a way of growing up. The world isn’t a pristine place that bends to idealism. Patriotism is often a publicity tool manipulated by the powerful and cynical. Just like the mafia uses violence to get its way, so do governments around the world. Politicians are as sleazy as gangsters. Even so, there is a reason why the Corleones want to go legitimate and gain respect because appearances and reputations do matter. But then, just how can Vice Industries go legitimate? Only by degrading society into accepting Vice as the New Virtue. (Look how gambling, drugs, pornography, and homo decadence have been legitimized in our society to serious detrimental effect.) For people like the Corleones to be ‘cleansed’, society must be muddied. In the end, it’s not so much about Vice Industry going virtuous but the Virtue Society being made more accepting of Vice. This is done not only by spreading vice-as-normal for the masses but by exposing the hypocrisy of the elites and the 'moral majority' who preach virtue but practice(or secretly long for) vice. After all, the respectable ruling elites have been leading muddied lives all along, and what has happened to society is really the popularization of elite vices. For example, Senator Geary in THE GODFATHER PART 2 acts like Mr. Clean in public, a respectable member of Anglo-American society, but he indulges in prostitution, alcohol abuse, and other vices. Look closely into the lifestyles of the rich and powerful, and their attitude is, "We can do as we please; morality and virtue are for the suckers." (The history of the Aristocracy has been one of infidelity and excess. Before there were capitalist neo-aristos like Michael Jackson, there were the likes of Emperor Ludwig II, the homo Peter Pan who spent outlandish sums on ridiculous fantasy palaces... though he must be credited with providing crucial patronage to Richard Wagner.) It’s all the more ironic in THE GODFATHER because the man who ferrets out the hypocrisies of others and uses them for blackmail remains, like his father, a straight and narrow guy in personal virtue. Just like Vito Corleone was true to his wife and a loving & devoted father, Michael is true to his wife and dearly loves his kids. (To be sure, one could argue he betrayed Kay by marrying Apollonia, but Michael and Kay weren't married, and true love struck him when his gaze fell on the Sicilian beauty. Ironically, Michael’s high standards of personal virtue and family loyalty rub some others the wrong way, thereby alienating certain members in the inner-circle. He conveys contempt for Tom Hagen having a mistress and cheating on devoted Teresa. And he said and did things that made Fredo resent and eventually betray him. In the end, Michael kills his older brother for having betrayed the family. But then, as revealed in THE GODFATHER PART 3, didn't Michael betray the family by killing his older brother? After all, Fredo was weak & pitiable, and whatever he may have done, he was also the son of Michael’s father and mother.)
Even though Puzo ‘sold out’, he was not a hypocritical moralist. He surely saw himself in Michael. After all, he’d spent ten yrs writing THE FORTUNATE PILGRIM as a work of serious literature, but it didn’t go anywhere apart from receiving some good reviews. He had a family to take care of, and he needed to make money. He needed to write a book that people would buy. And yet, he saw a kind of integrity in ‘selling out’ too. After all, a man doesn’t live by vanity of pristine integrity. And even if he could for himself, what about the family? What about others who depend on him? So, he must compromise with reality and cut a deal. So, in a way, Puzo ‘sold out’ but, in another way, found a new kind of integrity-of-pragmatism that put the interests of his family above his own self-worth as a serious artist. He became a success and was able to provide stuff for others near and dear to him. Likewise, Michael’s betrayal of Americanism is a both risible and redeemable. He chooses the crime clan over the American Way. But he is being a good son. Also, he comes to the realization that, whatever the merits of the American Way may be, power everywhere(in relatively clean America as in dirty Sicily) operates as much in the shadows as in the light. Of course, Vito Corleone knew this all along. THE GODFATHER begins with a man named Bonasera relating a story of how he’d put his trust in the Law that spat in his face. The boys who'd abused his daughter evaded justice because they are well-connected. Things may be more just in the US than in Sicily, but Justice is everywhere-and-always a matter of who has More Power. We know this from recent events of Alt Right people being shut down by Jewish Supremacism. We know of the sheer hypocrisy of Jews who’d bleated on and on about how communists, fellow-travelers, and progressives had been blacklisted and denied their Constitutional Rights & Civil Liberties under ‘McCarthyism’ BUT now use all their muscle in media, finance, law, and government to shut down voices, white or Palestinian, that dare to defy the Jewish Supremacist Narrative. We know of the Deep State conspiracy to bring down Donald Trump with the utterly bogus Russian-Hacking Narrative. We know of all the lies cooked up by Deep State to stir up more tensions with Russia and to expand Wars for Israel in MENA(Middle East and North Africa). Thus, what happens with Michael Corleone is both loss and gain of integrity. He chose the clan and ‘business’ over law & order of the American Way. But he also came to see and accept reality for what it is. While it’s true that clan-and-business stand in the way of law-and-order — an extreme example in Sicily where clan-and-business IS law-and-order(as in many parts of Mexico as well) — , it’s no less true that those with power of money & influence can redefine law-and-order. Indeed, look how Jewish money-and-influence has not only legalized ‘gay marriage’ but uses strong-arm methods of lawsuits and thuggery of PC-addled morons to destroy businesses that won’t cater to ‘gay marriage’. And even Conservatives hardly raise any opposition since they’d been bought off by Jews, fear being destroyed by Jews(who merely need to invoke terms like ‘racist’ or ‘homophobic’ to ruin reputations), or know their personal dirt are held by Jews for blackmail.
Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas were once like elder brother and younger brother. There was a kind of master-student relationship, and Coppola had the highest hopes for Lucas... just like Ben Kenobi thought Annakin Skywalker would be The One. Lucas began strong as an artist with THX 1138, one of the best science-fiction films ever and still his best film by far. He next made THE AMERICAN GRAFFITI, a rather thin work, but a labor-of-love just the same and one that showed promise for something greater. Initially, Lucas was slated to direct John Milius’ APOCALYPSE NOW in avant-garde style, and the result might have been something interesting.
But in the end, both master(Coppola) and student went the wrong way. Unlike Lucas who decided on an updated version of FLASH GORDON and made a pile of money, Coppola decided to stick to the artistic path and took on APOCALYPSE NOW as his grand personal project. If Lucas fell to the excesses of commercialism, Coppola fell to the excesses of artistic vanity. If Lucas lost sight of the mythic potential of his vision, Coppola sought to squeeze meanings that simply weren’t present from Milius’ comic book version of Joseph Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS. One of the virtues a master instills in his students is the importance of self-control and moderation, but it wasn’t long before both Lucas and Coppola fell into the morass of excessiveness. George Lucas became Lucas Inc., and Coppola became increasingly self-indulgent(like Federico Fellini), following the mixed-results of APOCALYPSE NOW(which has a stunning first 45 minutes and then grows increasingly confused and weary) with the totally ridiculous ONE FROM THE HEART(that bankrupted him) and gratuitously stylized nonsense like RUMBLE FISH. Meanwhile, Lucas, like Sylvester Stallone, came to rely on milking the tried-and-true formula of his cash-cows: STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES. He just cranked out more sequels. Whatever mythic promise STAR WARS may have held, it was gone with the sequels that essentially became little more than video-games on the big screen and commercials for toys and lunch-boxes. And yet, one may argue that super-success isn’t possible without excess. While Lucas did fail as an artist, he did succeed spectacularly as a businessman. Could such have been possible without excessive commercialism? And even though Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW isn’t a perfect work, its great moments couldn’t have been possible without madness of reach and vision. The most virtuous(in moderation) major American director in the past 30 yrs was probably Clint Eastwood, a professional who never lost his head in making his pictures. Even though Eastwood made some very fine films(and even a few, like FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, that deserve to be called Art), his sense of balance and limits never allowed for the fever-dream imagination that could result in something like the first third of APOCALYPSE NOW that is truly outstanding.
Now, it doesn’t make much sense to compare STAR WARS and DAS BOOT except that both are movies about war(and Lucas was inspired by WWII footage when making his space fantasy). STAR WARS was clearly meant to be escapist entertainment whereas DAS BOOT was conceived as a grim Art Film about the vicissitudes of war. (Some might call it ‘anti-war’, a term that has always been problematic. After all, if a film shows us the dark & dangerous side of nature, is it anti-nature? If it shows the problems of family life, as in ORDINARY PEOPLE, is it anti-family? A better term than ‘anti-war’ would be War-Realist. Most so-called ‘anti-war’ films are not pacifist or believe in a world without war. War is inevitable in history, and the real function of Art is to show us the truth about war. Furthermore, ‘anti-war’ movies increasingly fail to drive home the point that War-is-hell because graphic violence has become so commonplace in movies, TV, and video-games. Violence has lost the ability to shock and terrify. There was a time when graphic violence in movies had to be morally and artistically justified. Nowadays, most graphic violence function as ‘cool’ effects.) Because STAR WARS and DAS BOOT are so different in conception, execution, and intention, it makes little sense to argue as to which kind of movie is superior or should be favored over the other. While DAS BOOT is clearly a superior work to STAR WARS(or any of its sequels), there are serious War Films that aren’t so good, and there are mythological stories or fantasies that are truly remarkable. EXCALIBUR is a mythic legend and one of the greatest films ever made. THIN RED LINE is an interesting Art Film delving into man’s relation to aggression and destruction, but it’s not quite successful as a work of art.
In art, there is room for realism and mythicism. In the end, a great work is a great work regardless of genre. For example, while the horror movie is usually gross and trashy, the best works in the genre, like the recent BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER, are truly remarkable and reveal something dark about the human heart. So, I can live with apples-and-oranges attitude when it comes to works-like-STAR-WARS and works-like-DAS-BOOT. Cinema needs and is enriched by both kinds of works.
However, it is now useful to critique the STAR WARS Effect in relation to DAS BOOT because it has really come to affect how we view power, history, humanity, good-and-evil, and politics. When Lucas owned STAR WARS, it constituted a personal universe. It was about a set number of characters within a specific story arc. It was meant to have a beginning, middle, and end(even though the first movie began in the middle of the saga). With Lucas at the helm, STAR WARS was not what is called a Franchise. Lucas insisted it's his personal baby(despite its crass and outlandish commercialism). Also, even though Lucas’ STAR WARS was no great work of art(though awesome as special effects and remarkable in some of its design and vision), it was a genuine work of imagination imbued with passion and excitement of novelty and cinematic game-changing. Unlike the 007 movies(that were a franchise from the very beginning) that never had a central author(not even Ian Fleming as the movies deviated far from the novels), STAR WARS was clearly inseparable from Lucas... just like PET SOUNDS and SMILE were the musical dreams of Brian Wilson(and just like GONE WITH THE WIND was an epic of the South woven by Margaret Mitchell). Good or bad, STAR WARS belonged to Lucas, no less than the Dollars Westerns belonged to Sergio Leone and THE FOUNTAINHEAD & ATLAS SHRUGGED belonged to Ayn Rand. Others could not hope to replicate the Dream. Doing STAR WARS without Lucas is like the ridiculous act called Beatlemania that tried to replicate the excitement of the Beatles. Or, it is like the ludicrous ‘remake’ of SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND with the Bee Gees(which made little sense since the Bee Gees, at their best, were a remarkable act in their own right).
But Lucas sold his baby(along with all the bathwater) to Disney that embarked on turning into Bathwater that drowned the baby. What Lucas did was a ultimate betrayal of his entire career but then keeping with the spirit of self-deception that came to mark everything he did upon finishing the first trilogy. Lucas could be strong in imagination but weak in resolve and principle. His character grew so flabby and spineless that he always cooked up some lame rationale to justify his betrayal of what he said he would never do. After the first three films, he said he would embark on more daring and personal projects. He never did. He just cranked out more Indiana Jones movies. He produced the lame WILLOW. And he returned to STAR WARS with the underwhelming prequels. At the very least, he could have done the next three movies with less commercial pandering, but, as if Lucas had emotionally grown backward over the years, the later three movies turned out even sillier than the first three(though ATTACK OF THE CLONES has, by far, the most impressive special effects of all SW movies). Then, Lucas said he is finally finished with the series, and there would be no more. But, Lucas changed his mind. There would be More and More STAR WARS movies... but not even by him but by hacks hired by Disney that would try to squeeze as much profits from the franchise while also using it as globo-Jewish propaganda against whiteness.
Indeed, what has been most interesting about the critical reaction to the Disney STAR WARS is how utterly corrupt and ideological the critical community has become. By and large, the new batch of space junk from Disney has received many more critical raves than Lucas’ movies ever did(with the possible exception of the first one that was too WOW JUST WOW for critics to ignore). Now, anyone with even a modicum of sense would admit that the Disney STAR WARS series is far inferior to the original(though some reservations may be made of ROGUE ONE that has bears little semblance with the FORCE AWAKENS and LAST JEDI). At the very least, the original series was the work of ‘auteur’ vision. It poured forth from Lucas’ imagination and had personal meaning for him and cultural cachet for an entire generation weaned on Lucas-Spielberg. It was to the 70s/80s generation what Beatles were to the 60s generation. Also, for all their silliness and stupidity, Lucas’ movies were seminal and game-changing in the annals of cinema. Even though Lucas borrowed heavily from various mythologies, movies, and war footage, it was a genuine re-imagining of the Old and Classic with New Hope of fast-advancing technology in special effects and later computers. Just like the Renaissance didn’t merely repeat the old forms but re-imagined them with new techniques, methods, and materials unknown to the Ancients, Lucas ably used new tools in movie technology(first realized by Stanley Kubrick with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY) to reinvent the mythological wheel. In the end, he was no Michelangelo or Da Vinci of cinema, but he powerfully demonstrated how new formats can revitalize old narratives and ideas. If Lucas had recognized the real significance of what he’d unleashed and had the visionary reach of Kubrick, dramatic power of Kurosawa, and the dreamy fervor of John Boorman, there’s no telling what STAR WARS universe could have been. But apart from basic vision, design, and special effects, Lucas simply couldn’t expand on or enrich the material. In the end, despite all the impressive special effects and production values, STAR WARS is little more than escapist fantasy catering to an audience ranging from children to teenagers. For anyone older, it’s a painful reminder of how Lucas had so much but did so little. In contrast, BUBBLEGUM CRISIS 2032-2033 has the opposite problem. The makers had so little but did so much. One wishes Lucas had more creativity with story, characters, & plot while the makers of BUBBLEGUM CRISIS, who never lacked for ideas, had more money and material(to fully realize their concept).
Be that as it may, for all its failings and misses, STAR WARS is an impressive space fantasy and a work that simply could not exist without Lucas. (Even though Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle is a much greater work, it too has high points and low points. At any rate, surely the real Wagner is better than imitation-Wagner.) So, you’d think that the film critics would, at the very least, appreciate Lucas’ STAR WARS more than the bogus rehashing concocted by Disney. But no, the critics overall prefer the cloned STAR WARSOWICZ over the real one. Why? This is where ideology and corruption go hand in hand, though film critics are blind to this because of their ideological purity spiral. (But then, those with purist conceit tend to be most blind and unaware of the filth that surrounds them. So sure of their ‘virtue’ and correctness, they fail to see what foully compromised they really are.) Why do critics prefer the New STAR WARS? For superior stories, more interesting characters, and better use of special effects? No. Purely because it has more diversity, promotes interracism, and makes anti-white-bashing more blatant. It wasn’t enough that George Lucas has been a Liberal Democrat in politics. His great sin was making Fascist Imagery cool again. His movies, even with increasing Diversity in later ones, were Too White and Too Classic. Despite his political Liberalism, Lucas was an aesthetic fascist who even BLATANTLY paid tribute to Leni Riefenstahl at the end of STAR WARS. Even though the Evil Empire was presented in more obviously fascistic terms, the good guys were also part of an empire. Indeed, STAR WARS is really about clash of empires, like between British Empire vs German Empire vs Ottoman Empire vs French Empire. The ‘rebels’ are for galactic control as well. So, for the most part, the good guys aren’t a bunch of rag-tag guerrilla fighters but manage an empire of their own and have their own fleets of space ships that can blow up tons of stuff. For the longest time, Progressive types scoffed at such inhuman vision — Ray Pride of NEW CITY journal once described STAR WARS universe as a battle between ‘bad nazis’ and ‘good nazis’. But year after year, Hollywood scored ever bigger with pop-fascist nihilist spectacles. The biggest money-makers proved to be Fantasies of Unfettered Power. RAMBO made a lot more money than PLATOON. Liberals found it impossible to say NO to these box office jackpots. The audience wanted stories about ubermensch heroes blowing up the world. But how were these ubermensch spectacles to be made palatable to Progs and anti-fascists? The trick was to keep and even expand on the fascist aesthetics BUT add PC elements to give it a proggy flavor. So, instead of white ubermensch, add some non-white ones too. MATRIX movies are totally ‘pop-fascist’ in their ultra-militant fantasies of the superior breed kicking everyone’s ass. It’s like the anarcho-‘facist’ movie FIGHT CLUB. But because the Good Guys have lots of blacks and other members of Diversity, it’s supposed to be ostensibly ‘progressive’. How a bunch of neo-hippies could spend most of their time dancing & using drugs but then muster the strength to fight the Machine is never really explained, but I guess the Force has been rejiggered to be with Progs and Diversity.
TERMINATOR was typical of the Liberal appropriation of fascist aesthetics, as was ROBOCOP. Even though the Terminator was the bad guy in the first installment, he was the MAIN reason for the movie's success. He was ‘cool’ and ‘badass’. And in the second installment, the evil-fascist-robot was turned into a good-fascist-robot. And then, with vast improvements in computer technology, Hollywood found it possible to make decent adaptations of superhero comic books. Though creations mostly of Jews, the superhero comics were always a Judeo-fascist fantasy of having ‘Aryan’-type or All-American heroes fight for whatever causes that the Jews like. So, with the mega-success of superhero comic book movies, Hollywood totally fell in love with pop-fascism. Whatever trepidation they had about the pop-fascism unleashed by STAR WARS gradually vanished.
Still, STAR WARS represented a goy creation and ownership of a super-successful concept. Jews resented Lucas Films for the same reason they’d resented Walt Disney, the one super-successful non-Jewish company in the movie industry. So, imagine how Jews felt when they took over Disney and turned it into a factory for turning white girls into whores who promote Jungle Fever. And via Disney, they eventually bought STAR WARS as well. Lucas, for all his wealth, just couldn’t say NO to 3 billion dollars. Thus, Jews got Disney and STAR WARS too. And just as they'd Jewified Disney, they set about Jewifying STAR WARS. It wasn’t enough that Lucas had added more Diversity to his films. In the Jewish-Disney offering, Diversity would be at the front and center of the series. Also, the evilness of the Empire would be reiterated by showing how WHITE it is(though peppered with a few Asians). Now, even with such rejiggering, a decent movie could have been made. After all, ROGUE ONE has a female lead and more Diversity than Lucas’ movies, BUT it is half-decent and certainly no worse than the ones made by Lucas. But FORCE AWAKENS and LAST JEDI are just terrible on every level. They offer nothing new, the pacing is off, the jokes fall flat, personalities are dull, and plots are rehashes of the old. And there is no longer any sense of wonder. So, when critics hail the New STAR WARS, what is really going on? It has nothing to do with aesthetics or imagination and everything to do with PC scorecard. Gee, FORCE AWAKENS and LAST JEDI got Diversity in the leads!! That’s about it. When movies are graded in this manner, it’s a form of cultural corruption(though masked by ideological commitment). Not in the old way of taking bribes(in the form of junkets or favorable access to celebrities for interviews) from the industry and giving bogus favorable reviews. At the very least, the old kind of corruption is honest, and everyone, the bribe-giver and bribe-taker, knows what it’s about. The other kind of corruption is more dangerous because ideology blinds those who indulge in such corruption. It’s like the mentality that says objective truth is ‘racist’ because meritocracy in science and math tends to favor whites over blacks. In the name of ‘equality’ or ‘justice’, falsehood is favored over truth to allow for less qualified blacks to make the grade. This is obviously corruption, but Progs may not see it because they are so convinced of the Goodness of ‘equality’ or ‘diversity’, especially as favoritism for blacks. Likewise, the ‘good’ political message of FORCE AWAKENS and THE LAST JEDI means that they can be as crappy and stupid as can be as story and entertainment. The message itself redeems them. And how else can anyone justify how BLACK PANTHER got universal raves except for a SINGLE negative review? This is corruption pure and simple, like the bogus nonsense that says Ancient Egyptians were just a bunch of blacks. (They had some Negroid blood, but they were clearly distinct from Sub-Saharan blacks.) In NOT OUT OF AFRICA by Mary Lefkowicz, the Jewess-authoress recounts how her colleagues privately admitted that Afrocentric history is nonsense... but maybe blacks should be allowed to indulge in such fantasies for the sake of self-esteem. This is corruption of academics. It is a defense of lies based not only on condescension but fear and cowardice. Because academics fear being hounded by angry black students and activists, they rationalize their cravenness with show of compassion. The perverse contradictions of white perception of Diversity, especially blacks, have led to the weirdest kind of soul corruption. On the one hand, whites see blacks as poor and helpless victims, childlike and innocent, always in need of white compassion. Supposedly, black plight is all due to ‘slavery’ and ‘imperialism’. Thus, blacks are seen as inferior and pitiable folks so dependent on the good-will of noble whites. On the other hand, blacks are admired, feared, and worshiped as the superior race. Because blacks sing so loud, dance so fast, dominate sports(that decide the hero-idols of the nation), and have bouncy booties or bigger dongs, white race near-worships blacks as a race of Afro-gods. Of course, PC insists that ‘race is just a social construct’ and that there is no ‘inferior’ or ‘superior’ among the races, BUT on the subconscious level, whites are urged to see blacks as both pitiable dumb children and awesome badass mofos. Both modes aren't merely corrupting but 'contradictorily' corrupting. When whites see blacks as just dumb children, it means blacks must be treated as such and not be held up to normal standards. When whites see blacks as demigods, it means blacks are so ‘badass’ and masterful that they must be allowed to act like gods who don't have to live by the same rules of rest of humanity. And yet, PC also says that whites must see blacks as equals. But how can a people be seen as equals when they are also seen as both inferior and superior? When blacks mess up, PC suggests that they must not be judged by white/normal standards because blacks, as victims, deserve more pity. When blacks act like arrogant a-holes, PC suggests blacks deserve the license to act thus because they are the master-race who be rapping and winning in sports. And all these corrupting-contradictions came to a head in the Starbucks fiasco, or STARBUCKS WARS, aka The Negro Awakens and drives the Last White Barista crazy.
Now, there is a way out of such corruption by the way of Neo-Fascist National Humanism that simply states, honestly and bluntly, the real reason for all the troubles with blacks: The Occam’s Razor observation of BAMMAMA or Blacks-Are-More-Muscular-And-More-Aggressive(because they evolved that way), but our society has been too thoroughly corrupted by PC to admit and face such truths. And so, we go on and on with the lies of PC that keep corrupting us further. The critical fanfare over the New STAR WARS and BLACK PANTHER is all about ideological corruption. Aesthetics, artistic merit, and even entertainment value have been sidestepped just because a work happens to be PC. For many progs, the New STAR WARS was an occasion for celebration simply because it was safely out of the hands of Boomer-‘racist’ George Lucas(seen as ‘reactionary’ despite his Liberal politics) and in the hand of Jewish PC-peddlers to do as they wish. It was like radicals finally completing their ‘long march through the institutions’. Instead of destroying White Institutions, radicals decided to take them over. No sense in destroying the sword of your enemy. Just take it for yourself.
Of course, FORCE AWAKENS and LAST JEDI would have been awful even if everyone in it were white. On the Right side, ‘Trevor Lynch’(nom de plume of Greg Johnson) is a dishonest critic because, just like SJW-types, too much of his assessment of value depends on the Message. He panned FORCE AWAKENS, but it’s possible he might have praised it IF it had a mostly white cast. Take his review of the dreadful JURASSIC WORLD, a movie as cynical and useless as FORCE AWAKENS. Lynch-Johnson raves on and on mainly because the cast is mostly white and sends a 'healthy' message to White America. In fact, JURASSIC WORLD’s only goal was to just take more money from suckers still dumb enough to flock to inane ‘sequels’. JURASSIC PARK is a great movie because it was one-of-a-kind and full of wonderment and warmth as well as action and terror. Once the sense of wonder was gone, the sequels just turned into cat-and-mouse tricks between humans and dinos. As if LOST WORLD wasn't stupid enough and JURASSIC PARK III wasn’t dreadful enough, Hollywood concocted JURASSIC WORLD that makes believe that yet another Jurassic Theme Park has been set up to be foolproof only to be not so. Now, it may be pointless to be so harsh on Lynch-Johnson because the Film Criticism industry is totally dominated by Progs and globalists, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Pro-SJW criticism is corrupt, but so is Pro-white criticism. Now, the point is not that a film critic mustn’t have an ideology, political preferences, and/or identitarian perspectives. Everyone has them. Rather, the point is one mustn’t fabricate or deny artistic merit on the basis of ideology. In other words, an anti-communist has every right to bash the politics of Sergei Eisenstein’s BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN or Dovzhenko’s EARTH, but he has to be blind to assert that those are not formal masterpieces. Likewise, a Jew may have good reasons to hate Wagner the man, but he can’t be serious if he denies Wagner's greatness as a composer. I despise Quentin Tarantino but admit RESERVOIR DOGS, his first film, is a remarkable work. A Palestinian may have good reasons for hating Jews, but he would be foolish to deny the greatness of Franz Kafka or Bob Dylan. But what happens when ideology or ‘idology’(the mindless worship of certain races or personages) takes control of culture and discourse? We end up with nonsense like the purple-prose praise of something as obviously terrible as the Obama presidential portrait.
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| According to Vulture.com, this laughably embarrassing Portrait of Obama elicits praise such as this: "Seating the president lower this way, enmeshing him in an overabundant, highly colorful natural setting, sustains a much more mysteriously human presence, brooding, reconciling, not merely knowing, separate, but kindled with fiery curiosity, a simple inner elevation that brings us to the border of the ordinary and the extraordinary. It’s exactly the metaphysical place Obama embodied as president of all America. The pose and enclosing him this way will irk many who will see Obama being made too normal, small, not central, not in grandeur, not an imperial god. I think the picture is true to the way Obama carries himself. He’s clearly the central subject but not entirely central; there’s a lot going on around him to contend with, negotiate; he’s open to his surroundings, part of them, bigger than they are but not the only thing present. He’s still fighting for space." |
Still, the Cult of Power was a huge theme in Fascism. It was like political body-building, and this is why many homos were attracted to the movement. Homos, naturally narcissistic and vain, loved the aesthetic appeal of fascism. While communism seemed a bit dull and drab with all the stuff about common folks in overalls marching for justice, Fascist and Nazi aesthetics were more well-tailored, impressive, and stylized. So, even though Fascism and National Socialism were officially anti-degenerate, a good number of homos(and other sexual deviants) were attracted to the movement. In Germany, some of the fiercest street-fighters were SA fruiters who might beat up a bunch of communists during the day and then boof each other in the evening. While most homos preferred Weimarian capitalism to both communism and fascism, both of which were officially anti-homo, the homo sensibility was closer to the secular ‘far right’ than to the far left. Also, back then, communists could be trusted to be hardline anti-homo, and indeed, the Left tried to discredit Adolf Hitler as a fairy. The reason why homos became ‘leftist’ in the 20th century is an accident of history. Even though Nazis came to power with homo-heavy SA, Hitler turned hard against homos(though not against lesbians), and that left homos no choice but to be anti-Nazi. Also, even though communist nations remained resolutely anti-homo, the Western Left in capitalist nations eventually took up the homo cause as a means of minority justice and subversive strategy. Especially with the rise of Jewish Power, Western Leftism came to de-emphasize the needs of the working majority while diverting more resources to the issue of minority rights. Since homos, like Jews and blacks, constituted a minority, they came to be tolerated more by the Left than by the Right. Also, the Left figured that ANYTHING that might be subversive of the Order would be helpful to the Revolution. So, why not promote the vice of homosexuality to further degrade the capitalist order? But even as homos found a home on the Left, their hearts were not with equality or the Common Man but with elitism, privilege, vanity, wealth, celebrity, and whoopity-doo. Since homos gained more privilege and power than most groups and came to be favored by Jews(who also lost interest in Classic Leftism), it was only a matter of time before Jews and homos formed a pact to rewrite Leftism to the point where it became a globo-fascist ideology of hegemony, power, privilege, vanity, megalomania, egotism, celebrity, and haute-gangsterism. It’s no wonder the Jewish-Homo Axis is using the Deep State to wage War on Russia for saying NO to Homomania, a kind of SJC or Satanic-Jewish-christianity to replace Real Christianity. One thing for sure, most homos don’t have a humanist bone in their body... though it must be said some homos, such as Glenn Greenwald, seem to have a more principled view of right-or-wrong than most people do.
One of the most influential homo thinkers in the second half of the 20th century was Michel Foucault, and even though he was a man of the Left ideologically, it’s always best to judge a man by his actions than his words. Whatever Theory of Justice he may have cooked up, the fact is he indulged in extreme homo-power-‘sexual’-practices not unlike the ‘machomo’ revelries in the William Friedkin film CRUISING. All said and done and when push-comes-to-shove(up the ‘gay’ arse), Foucault was a celebrant of power and domination. He was a ‘shafter’ and an S&M freak. Though he was leftist and Yukio Mishima was rightist, both were obsessed with immersion in the dynamics of power as if life is all about greasing oneself with olive oil and grappling in the nude like the ancient Hellenic wrestlers did at Olympic games.
At any rate, there’s been a sea-change in the way we view Pop Culture as part of the larger culture. One could argue Pop Culture is the Only Living Culture remaining in our decadent and degenerate times. Most of 21st Century buzz is about the 2 PC’s: Pop Culture and Political Correctness. Culture is seen merely as an ideological instrument, and consensus trumps controversy. And contrary to Conservative Critique, the problem is NOT that the Left totally defeated the Right in the Culture War. Rather, both the real Left and the real Right lost out to Judeo-Homo-Globo-Capitalism that wages war on both Tradition and the Masses(especially of Workers). Even though we hear over and over of the predominance of the Left in Pop Culture, Media, Academia, and Deep State, what goes by the name of ‘leftism’ today would not be recognizable to True/Classic Leftists of yesteryear. The End of the Cold War led to the emergence and dominance of a hybrid of leftist savvy for subversion and rightist preference for privilege. Both political parties came to support a system that makes the Rich richer and undermines the bargaining power of the National Working Masses. Both sides of the official ideological discourse have been totally supportive of War State, Deep State, Neo-Imperialism, Wall Street, and etc. It only seems as though the Left won because labels have become so fluid in our globalized world. In an age when a black African or Pakistani is considered an ‘Englishman’ or ‘Swede’ simply by arriving in Europe and when a man is considered a ‘woman’ by donning a wig and dress, anything can be called ‘left’ or ‘right’. So, the Corporatist funding of ‘gay pride’ parades is called ‘leftist’, and some on the so-called ‘right’ says ‘gay marriage’ is really a ‘conservative value’. In fact, Homomania is neither ‘leftist’ nor ‘rightist’. It is Globo-Homo Cult of Privilege of the Elites who favor 'gays' for their neo-aristo flair, vanity & narcissism, and catering to the Rich.
Even though Pop Culture has gotten dumber, trashier, and more juvenile over the years, we have to take it more seriously because it’s just about the ONLY culture left standing. In our hedonistic age, what matters is the kind of culture that offers easy and immediate pleasure to the masses. This wasn’t always so. For much of human history, the essence of culture had little to do with entertainment value. To have a culture or be part of a culture meant being part of a religion/church, being an organic member of family & community, having a shared identity rooted in blood-soil-and/or-narrative, cultivating respect for or aspiration toward higher culture(usually literary and philosophical), and espousing strong moral values and sense of ethics. Indeed, consider the world prior to electricity, phonographs, radio, and cinema. Most of culture had little or nothing to do with entertainment. It was about being part of a family, kinfolk, community, history & heritage, religion/church, and pride of membership in an organic nation/civilization. To be part of a family wasn’t just about parents and kids watching TV together to lose themselves in escapism. Prior to electronic entertainment, there was little opportunity for escapism and fantasy. Much of life was about family interaction in work(especially on farms), conversation & hearsay(often about kinfolk), church attendance, and mutual support. Even when children heard fantastical stories, they heard it from parents or dear ones. Today, when a kid plays a video game or watches TV, his mind drifts from the family. In the past, when a kid heard fairy-tales or legends from his parents, he drew closer to them because stories, real or fantastic, were told among family members(instead of being outsourced to the Idiot Box, the programming of which is controlled by a handful of globo-corporations; it's interesting that people in the past called the TV the 'idiot box' but people today call the most ubiquitous device the 'smartphone'). Also, as mobility was far more difficult in the past, there was a stronger sense of kinfolks and community. It wasn’t so easy to pack up things and move to another part of the nation, let alone another part of the world. So, much of culture was about inter-familial interactions. And because the ideal was to have larger families(than is the norm today among modern folks), people had more uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, and nieces. And hearing about what’s happening with OTHER family members was part of the culture. And prior to electronic media that made it possible for every town/village in the US to hear and watch the same news-and-entertainment programs created by a handful of mega-corporations, each town had to have its own way of gathering and sharing news, discussing politics, and upholding commonly held values. This sense of local community was part of Culture. And prior to the rise of Youth Culture, the main expressions and themes focused on adulthood, and young people more or less consumed the same music and movies as grownup folks did. Thus, there was greater bridge between older folks and younger folks. And this sense of bond and continuity across generations was also part of the Culture. And religion wasn’t just a personal choice but the dominant cultural presence in many communities. Even with the guarantee of Separation of Church and State in the US, an Irish Catholic community took its Faith seriously. Church was a place where the people of a community gathered to reiterate and reinforce their sense of shared values and morals. And prior to globalism, the world thought in terms of nationalism vs imperialism. Most people aspired to be nationally independent. Indeed, even the US, despite having been created out of an empire and having expanded as an empire in its own right, defined itself in nationalist terms, i.e the Thirteen Colonies liberated themselves from the British Empire to form into a Republic, a Free Nation. The American Nationalist Way served as a template for other peoples yearning for national independence, and after WWII, despite its neo-imperialist hegemony, the US marketed itself to the Third World as a defender of peoples aspiring to be free from either European or Soviet imperialism.
Thus, patriotism was very much a part of a people’s identity and collective consciousness. Also, as white nations back then were overwhelmingly white or white-dominated, there was a clearer understanding of what patriotism meant. Surely, a Briton or a German is likely to be far more patriotic(and committed to its terms and obligations) if he belongs to an organic nation. (But in today’s globalized UK, what does it mean to be ‘patriotic’ when the Governing Ideology of the State says that white British wombs now belong to black Africans, Great Britain is a ‘nation of immigrants’[and has always been], and a newly arrived Pakistani who ogles young British girls is just as British as white Britons whose roots in the nation go back many centuries, even millennia?) There was a time when much of lived-and-practiced Culture had little to do with Mass Entertainment or High Art.
But with the rising tide of modernity, individuals gained greater freedom to move from their local communities and even from their nations. (The discovery and development of the New World tempted many in the Old World to sever their roots permanently in favor of material improvement in AMERICA.) The culture went from kinfolk culture to nuclear-family formation. Thus, new generations of kids grew up with mom and dad but without the larger kinfolk network. And the place they lived was more a neighborhood than a real community. In a rooted small town community, people knew who-was-whom. Even though richer folks lived in the nicer part of town apart from the poor folks, there was still a sense of all of them belonging to the community. In contrast, many urban neighborhoods and the burgeoning suburbs formed mainly on the basis of class. So, if a new suburb was forming in some area, its inhabitants would be decided on basis of income and wealth. Over time, a suburb could end up remarkably homogeneous economically. It could be all rich, all middle, or all lower-income. In contrast, even though there are rich, middle, and poor parts in Bedford Falls in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, everyone feels as part of a civic-local community. Or consider the Indiana town in THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS where rich folks, middle folks, and poor folks all feel as part of the community. And people's ears are pricked to what's happening in the community.
Today, even people in small towns are more interested with what's happening with globo-celebrities than in their own towns. Due to economic decline, family breakdown, spiritual dissolution, and moral degeneration, young people in small towns are much more likely to grow bored and dissolute. A people with culture and values are better able to cope with boredom and lack of stimuli because they have an inner fire and radiance. The find meaning in slow-and-steady things like family and reading. But lacking such mindset and values, people are likely to grow bored & weary and turn to any thrill out of sheer desperation. As such, they become far more likely to turn to drugs and degeneracy for excitement. This could be why a person in a decadent city may actually be less morally decrepit than a person in a small town. Even though cities are often alienating and trashy, there's so much stimuli all around that a person is less likely to grow bored and turn to dangerous thrills for diversion. This may be why so many drug addicts and sex workers come from small towns. It's like the porn-performer-wife in BIG LEBOWSKI.
Especially after the 1965 Immigration Act, the US began to form economic than cultural communities. Instead of Irish-Americans being part of Irish-America, Polish-Americans being part of Polish-America, and Chinese-Americans being part of Chinese-America, there was the formation of upper-class America, upper-middle-class America, middle-class-America, working-class-America, lower-class-America, and underclass America. And upper-class America came to be less about race or culture than about credentials, privilege, and money. Silicon Valley elites are mainly defined by Education, Money, and the right kind of connections. It’s about who-has-what than who-is-what. So, the elites are made up of whites, Jews, Hindus, Chinese, Persians, Armenians, Muslims, Mulattoes, and etc. And the upper-classes of all races and ethnicity marry and mate with one another. An upper-class white now feels closer to upper-class Hindu, yellow, or Jew than with other White Folks. If anything, he goes out of his way to show that he’s not ‘racist’ by berating unsuccessful whites as a bunch of ‘losers’ who deserve to be replaced by Hordes of Mass Invaders from the Third World. Even though Hindus, Arabs, and Asians aren’t under the same pressure as whites to reject or denounce their identities, they too abandon their own race, culture, and nation by coming to the West to raise their kids to be ‘Americans’ who are to assimilate and mix with Globo-Homo-World. As such, they are becoming deracinated as well. And even though Jewish Identity still has great prestige in the media and academia — unlike white identity, Jewish identity can be promoted and celebrated — , too many Jewish women are tempted to go with Negro men and too many Jewish guys are tempted to go with ‘shikses’ or yellow girls. Also, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Jews to defend Zionist treatment of Palestinians in the company of non-white peers who don’t have that ‘Holocaust Guilt’ that has been effective in paralyzing whites into obeisance to Jews.
As American community bonds weakened and unraveled, many people went their separate ways. And many married outside their ethnicity(and now even outside their race). When an Irish man married an Irish woman, they shared in common identity, history, and religion. Even away from the Core Irish community, they could retain something organic and deep. But if an Irish man married an Italian woman, they had little in common but being ‘Americans’, like the parents of Henry Hill in GOODFELLAS. Thus, their children grew up more as individuals and ‘Americans’ than as members of an organic culture. (Of course today, even the Irish in Ireland, despite marrying other Irish and living with other Irish in an Irish nation, have lost their sense of Irish identity, kinship, and patriotism because the Irish elites have been indoctrinated and/or bribed to sign onto Sorosian globalism and to use the full might of their media, academia, and entertainment to encourage young Irish to identify more with the World[especially the Black World & Third World] than with their own kind, culture, and history. So, all on their own, the majority of Irish voted for ‘gay marriage’ and elected some globo-homo ‘dotkin’ to be leader of the nation. Globo-Homo dogma instills Irishmen, Scotchmen, and Englishmen with the same mindset: "Your nation is a ‘nation of immigrants’, therefore, newcomers have More Claim to your nation than people like yourself with deep ancestral roots of Blood and Soil. And blacks must be especially welcomed because they are a superior race with louder voices, harder muscles, bigger dongs, bouncier booties, and greater flair for hustling self-pity.") As the shared culture of family, kinfolk, church, ethnicity, tradition, and patriotism faded, the culture came to be defined more by either high culture(serious literature and arts taught in colleges) or pop culture that ranged from simpleminded morality tales to escapist fantasies(of increasingly nihilistic nature). While high culture has great value, its main criterion is genius and excellence(both rare and universal), thereby devaluing the shared culture of common folks as ‘plain’ and ‘boring’. Artistic geniuses, though products of a nation-and-culture, belong to a world of their own. Thus, Shakespeare is both a great British writer and a world figure. Beethoven belongs not only to Germany but to the world. Same goes for science. A brilliant German chemist in terms of knowledge and ability has more in common with other renowned chemists regardless of their national origins. And surely, a great literary critic prefers the company of other literary critics around the world than that of philistines and ignoramuses of his own ethnicity. It's like a great white basketball player wants to play with the very best(even non-white players) than with inferior white players. Excellence and genius are natural traitors to kinfolk and race and prefer the company of comparable peers in talent.
At its extreme, high culture, in its admiration for genius and/or originality for their own sake, even favors brilliance in service of triviality(or immorality) over ‘common’ expression in favor of moral values. This is why high culture has been problematic to both the moralist right and the radical left. To the right, the elitism of high culture is about vanity over values. To the left, the aestheticism of high culture favors expression over the cause. After all, by meritocratic rules, high culture would have to praise even the genius of anti-leftist reactionary artists. As for pop culture, it generally caters to the lowest-common denominator. Though social pressures of lingering traditional mores and attitudes prevented an overnight degeneration of pop culture into nihilism and pornographics, the momentum of increasing libertinism and hedonism inevitably led pop culture toward higher levels of self-indulgence, narcissism, nihilism, and excess; and this became a universal phenomenon as pop culture in the US, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, and etc. all increasingly became trashier, shallower, more infantile, and more pornographic & shameless. With every new generation, more of the older folks with traditional attitudes and outlooks died off. Thus, the cultural tone became less moralistic, less inhibited, and less marked by spiritual & cultural taboos. And yet, at the same time, the new generations convinced themselves that they were advancing morally because the New Order was more tolerant, more diverse, and more empowering of minorities. In contrast, the older generations were more ‘racist’, ‘misogynist’, ‘xenophobic’, ‘antisemitic’, ‘homophobic’, and etc. To the extent that the New Order allowed more freedom and equality of opportunity to individuals of all stripes, one could argue it was more just. But freedom to do what? Empowerment in which direction? And it is here that the New Order failed morally. Among blacks, freedom meant the liberty to act like wild apes singing gangsta rap. Among women, empowerment meant dressing like hookers and acting like trash governed more by vaginal hunger than mental development. Among homos, emancipation meant having bathhouse orgies and spreading disease by buggering one another via fecal penetration. While allowing more freedom for more people seems just, it isn't sufficient for a good society because a people who use freedom to ruin themselves are worse off than people who are forced to live the good life. Of course, an ideal society is one where people are free and use that freedom to lead the good life. But that is not the Modern West.
Anyway, once people lost a sense of Common Culture — a culture that emphasizes family, ethnicity, roots, spirituality, and organic patriotism — , they sought meaning in high culture and/or pop culture. There was a time when cultural hierarchy provided and even enforced some measure of priority and higher value in the Arts. Thus, culture critics spoke of ‘highbrow’, ‘middlebrow’, and ‘lowbrow’. Lowbrow was the simpleminded, shallow, or crass culture for the masses. It could have entertainment value, but it wasn’t to be taken seriously. Middlebrow culture sought respectability and imparted some moral values & even exhibited a degree of cultural sophistication, but it was compromised one way or another. Middlebrow culture could be lowbrow culture aiming higher, or it could be highbrow culture watered down for a wider audience. Middlebrow culture favored respectability and morality over individuality and originality. It is what Toohey stands for in THE FOUNTAINHEAD. Even as Middlebrow draws ideas and prestige from High Culture, it curtails true genius and individuality that may be challenging and daunting to the masses who, being visionary-intolerant, can’t digest heavy doses of genius. (Or perhaps middlebrow critics and standard-bearers were envious of true artists whose genius played by no rules and ran free and wild. It’s like the envy that Salieri feels toward Mozart in AMADEUS. Salieri, unable to compete with the restless genius of Mozart, leans on on the crutch of respectability.) Highbrow culture was elitist in tone, meaning, and purpose. It was intellectual, uncompromising, serious, and meaningful.
But, there was a problem with the conception of High Culture in the 20th century as Modernism came to dominate. In the traditional order, there was a clearer divide between high culture and low culture. Middle culture barely existed. The aristocrats lived in a world of high culture. Their status wasn’t just about power and wealth but about prestige, honor, and dignity. There was an air of haute-ness in being aristocrats. They dressed in fancy ways, had fine manners, and were expected to have elevated tastes. Even the vulgar Mozart made beautiful music for monarchs and aristocrats. And painters usually worked on dignified portraits of noblemen, bishops, and other men & women of prestige. Or wonders of nature or objects of beauty. Both the themes and expressions had to convey something of meaning, depth, beauty, grandeur, transcendence, spirituality, holiness, respectability, and/or higher truth. But this began to change the rise of realism in literature(especially novels) and paintings(and the advent of photography). While novels could be serious in purpose, more and more of them told stories of common folks and poor folks. Consider the works of Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoevsky. If the old verses were usually devoted to noble knights, great men, and legendary figures, the modern novel shed light on the lives of little people. A mountain of pages could be devoted to a molehill of a man. The rise of realism in painting had the same effect as the novel. Paintings began to feature ordinary farmers, laborers, and even poor folks. As artistic expressions, they could be masterly works of brilliance, but the themes were no longer precious, lofty, or grandiose. And then, the coming of photography made it increasingly easier to capture and share the world of common folk in everyday life. After all, even with the rise of realism, paintings, by and large, still tended to favor the lofty and grand because it takes time and effort to create a painting. Thus, a painter is much more likelier than a photographer to be choosy in his choice of material. Thus, the line between high and low began to blur. A superb artist could use means of high expression to convey the world of the low-common folks. Indeed, one of the great uses of the novel was to spread a sense of Common Culture by telling the story of ordinary folks, as in works such as MOBY DICK, GERMINAL, GIANTS OF THE EARTH, and GRAPES OF WRATH. High culture used to be about high expression for high classes and high themes. No longer as the 19th century lent greater place and voice to the masses.
In a way, the cultural transformation made the Arts more meritocratic. In the Age of Aristocracy, a second-rate artist could gain reputation by using tired conventions to express High Themes. He had nothing new to offer and exhibited hardly any sign of originality or genius, but his style was respectable and devoted to images of God, Jesus, transcendent themes, or beauty. He could rest on the laurels of conventions and themes. But when high expression began to convey the world of the low, which was often ugly-brutish-gross-dark, it had to have genuine aesthetic merit, power of insight, and depth of understanding to justify and redeem the effort. One tendency was to ennoble the low, i.e. featuring farming folks as the salt-of-the-earth for example. So, even as the subject was low, the treatment carried on with the legacy of aristocracy and nobility. Most of high culture for most of history was devoted to paying tribute to Great Men, Spiritual Themes, Archetypes of Beauty, and Legendary Icons. Intrinsically uplifting and lofty, history of art mostly favored high themes to low ones. But with the rise of People Power, the Lofty Treatment was bestowed upon common folks. The effect was both true and false. It was true in the sense that true nobility of mind and soul isn’t restricted by class or station. After all, Jesus was a carpenter and mingled with common folks but preached noble truths. In contrast, even though Herod was a great builder and a man of wealth, he was a no-good punk(at least according to the Biblical narrative). Even a commoner could be a man of great courage, integrity, and purpose. And yet, in featuring the Common Folks as the New Nobles, there was a tendency to over-idealize the masses. This mental habit led to the sanctification of the Working Class by communists and, later, the habit of anointing the Wretched of the Earth, especially Negroes, as noble-souled saints. This has gotten so out of hand with Negroes and Homos that we are to assume even the stupid shit they do is somehow inspiring. So, even homos acting degenerate at ‘Pride’ festivals is to be cheered. And even when Negroes act like retards at Starbucks, it is TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD all over again.
In truth, while noble souls can exist among the Low, the fact is most People of Low, just like most Members of High, are shallow dolts, punks, or nimmies(or nincompoops).
Another problem arose with the arrival of full-blown Modernism and the Avant-garde. Even though changes in artistic expressions and styles had been accelerating all throughout the 19th century, there eventually emerged the School of Radical Transformation or Hyper-Formalistic Experimentalism. One school of the avant-garde favored the serving of a cause. Though committed to revolution in art, this school had little interest in artistic freedom UNLESS it was in service to the cause. Also, it was often violent and destructive in attitude and action to tradition and heritage. So, Soviet Constructivists had no interest in safeguarding the freedom-of-expression of all artists. Only those committed to the Revolution should have control over the means of expression and dissemination. And if the Revolution necessitated the destruction of countless Churches and Traditional Art, so be it. Let them be destroyed to end up in the dustbin of history. There was no room for liberal principles or sentimentality for nostalgia. There was only the Cause and the New Art to serve that Cause. Spanish anarchists had pretty much the same attitude. They destroyed many blueprints of the architect Antonio Gaudi.
A milder form of such mindset energized the Italian Futurists. But modernism didn’t just appeal to the Left. It appealed to certain figures on the Right who found it perceptive and useful in representing the uncertain mood of the times. When so much was changing so fast and nothing was sure anymore — when the center couldn’t be held — , modernism seemed the appropriate form to express the anxiety, confusion, and despair of the times. After all, while modernism could express the exhilaration of the radical and the new, it could also express the alienation and longing for meaning amidst ever-shifting uncertainties. Anxiety longs for truth, clarity, meaning, and order. Anxiety, in rejecting the old truths, can be ‘liberal’, but in longing for a return of order, can be ‘conservative’. It’s telling that some of the most important modernist poets were on the Right, the most famous among them being T.S. Eliot. And though Michelangelo Antonioni was a man of the Left, the sense of anxiety and alienation in his films use modernism to express trouble with modernity: The Old Truths are dead but New Truths have yet to be born... or maybe they've been aborted. Initially, Joseph Goebbels championed modernism and defended Expressionism as a legitimate form of German Art. Overall however, National Socialism represented neo-classicism and bourgeois tastes albeit hardened with neo-Teutonism and militarism, whereas the Soviet Union represented radical use of art as an instrument of Revolutionary Transformation. National Socialists claimed to preserve and promote what had been established and handed down as the best of the West, whereas the Soviets were tireless in their radical war on the Old to be replaced with the New... that is until Stalin tired of stuff like Constructivism(as too abstract, formalistic, intellectual, and elitist) and favored Socialist Realism that was deemed more democratic, populist, accessible, and meaningful to the masses. But then, the chances are that Constructivism would have fell by the wayside eventually even without Stalinism because radical schools in Art tend to run out of steam sooner than later. It isn't long before their ideas are either replaced by new fashions or survive only as dogma.
If the Soviets pushed a totalitarian form of Avant-Garde modernism, the democratic/bourgeois West favored a more individualist-oriented modernism that prevented the domination of any one school with backing of the all-powerful state to enforce its ideas and policies on the entire culture. So, there were many forms of avant-garde-ism in the West, and there was, for a time, a great flowering of Modern Art in Europe and then in America. But here was the problem. It was both anti-elitist and pro-elitist, indeed in some ways more elitist than old elitism. At the very least, old elitism was mostly about expertise, mastery, and inspiration. A figure like Michelangelo or Beethoven was one-in-a-million genius. Few could aspire to be so brilliant, powerful, original, and inspired. And yet, their themes are accessible to just about anyone. Even those untrained in the arts or music can appreciate the Sistine Chapel or the Fifth Symphony. What the old elitism and the new elitism of Modernism had in common was the admiration for genius, individuality, and inspiration. But if old genius stuck to the familiar, timeless, eternal, classic, and/or transcendental themes of beauty, grandeur, nobility, truth, and/or meaning, the new genius often navigated in a world of chaos, uncertainty, nihilism, madness, and/or degeneracy. And if old elitism was about the mastery of forms to express something real — representation of tangible reality or expression of recognizable human emotions and longings — , the new elitism was often about experimenting with forms to arrive at new possibilities. In rebelling against established conventions, modernist avant-garde could claim to be anti-elitist. But because the intellectual premise of modernism was so abstract, esoteric, and opaque, much of it made no sense except to those who’d been initiated into the movement and instructed as to the underlying principles.
Still, for a time, Modernism had an powerful and well-deserved presence in the Art World because genius, originality, and brilliance were genuinely prized. After all, even those who didn’t like Pablo Picasso could obviously tell he was tirelessly inventive. And even those who reacted violently to Stravinsky could tell he was onto something bold, new, and different. And because genius still mattered in the first part of the 20th century, even the non-initiated could, on some level, respond favorably to the works of certain modernists. But at some point, the SCHOOL of Modern Art overtook the ART itself, and modernism increasingly became a game of word construction to justify whatever than the aesthetic merit of the work itself. Furthermore, a movement based mainly on innovation, originality, and experimentation is bound to burn out sooner or later. After all, it wasn’t the power of the State that brought the French New Wave crashing and ebbing to an end. It just ran out of new ideas after a few exciting years.
But the bigger threat to the authority of Modernism was Pop Culture. The basic conceit was that High Culture had much to offer but was stuck in stuffy and tired formula of established subjects, themes, and expressions; also, it was too snobby and full-of-itself to be curious of matters and ideas outside perimeters of respectability and conventional seriousness. In contrast, Low Culture(or pop culture) was too base and vulgar, too crassly catered to the unwashed masses to serve up anything original, meaningful, or powerful. As for Middle Culture, it was philistine moralism, Low Culture pretending to be High, or High Culture brought down low.
In contrast, Modernism was the real thing because it was committed to originality/experimentation, openness to all possibilities & meanings, and serious/intellectual in principle. It neither rested on the laurel of highness nor wallowed in the bowels of lowness. And yet, things didn’t pan out as the elite-modernists had hoped. As it turned out, many artists and thinkers involved in Modernism and Avant-Garde were hacks, second-raters, phonies, charlatans, or dogmatists whose forgettable works garnered temporary fame/notoriety purely on the reputation of being ‘cutting-edge’ or ‘banned by the Nazis’. In a way, Avant-Garde-ism served as a convenient crutch for every third-rate artist who could always claim that his works weren’t sufficiently appreciated because they were too ‘ahead of its time’ or some such. It also meant their works shouldn’t be judged by any criteria because, well, they happen to be ‘ahead of its time’. Eventually, it turned into a game of who-knows-whom, and it wasn't long before the mounting cynicism as to what constituted 'art' favored celebrity over creativity. Especially as the Art World came to depend on lavish donations from the Rich, the kind of people who gained most influence were the kind of snakes who knew how to shmooze the vanity of rich folks. (A good number of these snakes turned out to be two-faced homos.) Once ensconced in the elite institution of the Art World as curators, traders, critics, and promoters, these slithering snake-people favored their friends, associates, ass-kissers, and ass-boofers.
If Modernism and the Avant-Garde, despite their conceits, came to be filled with lots of fakers, second-raters, dogmatists, and the well-connected, the other forms of culture, despite the mass output of mostly worthless trash, began to attract men of genuine talent and produce works that were outstanding, original, and seminal. As popular culture became bigger and more profitable, it was bound to more attract people of genuine talent. In the Age of Aristocracy, anyone who wanted to be somebody had to cater to the monarchs, aristocrats, or the church. As such, they had to make art that was lofty, noble, inspiring, or spiritual. In the Age of the Bourgeoisie, there was more freedom in the choice of styles and themes, but seriousness and respectability were still hallmarks of art and culture worthy of attention. After all, the bourgeoisie, lacking aristocratic pedigrees, sought to prove their worth with displays of elevated taste in arts & culture.
Also, prior to the arrival of electricity, the opportunity for profiteering from popular culture was limited. If you ran a circus, you had to go from town to town, like the troupe in Ingmar Bergman’s SAWDUST AND TINSEL. If you put on stage productions, again, you had to go from town to town for always uncertain live audiences. And if you were part of a musical act, you always had to be on the road to play to various audiences who might throw stuff at you. But with the advent of electronic media, a song or movie could reach millions and millions of people via radio or cinema. (And TV further changed the game.) Just like the mobsters couldn’t say NO to the lucrative dope trade in THE GODFATHER, people with artistic talent found it harder to say NO to profits from mass media. So, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Aldous Huxley, and others did their stints in Hollywood. Still, there was an idea back then that a serious writer expressed himself most fully through novels, plays, and poets. Writing screenplays was just something on the side. Hollywood wanted prestige by associating with famous authors, and the authors needed the cash. But over time, the borderline between the serious and the popular eroded.
Furthermore, the emergence of artists such as Sergei Eisenstein, Orson Welles, Luis Bunuel, Ingmar Bergman, and others in the most popular of art forms sent a loud and clear message that cinema was no longer just for creative moonlighting(for extra money) but a full-fledged art-form in its own right, indeed the one that, for a time in the 50s and 60s, attracted the most attention and excitement. Granted, there were many who’d recognized the great artistic potential of cinema from its incarnation. Still, even though the art-form was new and revolutionary as a piece of technology, the subject and treatment of most movies, even the best of them, generally trailed the other art-forms. Even a film as great as Fritz Lang’s M didn’t exceed in meaning and insight the great psychological novels about criminals. Sergei Eisenstein’s BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN was a work of genius that showed what cinema was capable of, but the story and characters were simpleminded and propagandistic at best. But then, especially beginning in the 1950s and then fully flowering in the 1960s, cinema emerged as a total art-form made by 'auteurs' who were fully up-to-date with modernist trends of the larger culture and, on occasion, even leading the avant-garde by exploring creative possibilities intrinsic ONLY to cinema. With works like Alain Resnais' MURIEL, Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, and Sergei Parajanov's COLOR OF POMEGRANATES, cinema went far beyond merely catching up with advances in the other arts.
As important as this development was, an even bigger one was the cultural recognition that certain Hollywood directors were great artists too. It didn’t matter that their sensibilities and works may have been middlebrow or even lowbrow. The proof was in the pudding. Even if the works of John Ford, Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges, Alfred Hitchcock, Raoul Walsh, and etc. were not necessarily ‘deep’, ‘profound’, or ‘revolutionary’, they were works of talent, craftsmanship, ingenuity, imagination, and resourcefulness. One of the gripes against cinema has been that its expense has always favored Industrial Entertainment over personal art. After all, while any writer could sit down and do his thing, one needed lots of money and production values to make a decent-looking film. As such, the film artist was owned by the studio and didn’t have the autonomy of the personal artist. And yet, some could see how this created opportunities for a different kind of creativity. While an author or painter has greater leeway to produce whatever he wants, he can fall into the overly self-regarding solipsism of taking himself too seriously or experimenting in ways that may make sense to him but no one else. In contrast, because a movie-maker has to be mindful of working with money-men and producing works that has appeal to the larger audience, there is less chance of falling into the purity spiral of the self-important artist. It’s like John Lennon was better as a Beatle than as a 'serious' member of the Plastic Ono Band. It’s like film-makers often make their best films in a state of compromise but then falter when given the opportunity to do as they please. Francis Ford Coppola’s greatest work is still THE GODFATHER movies. His great success led to opportunities to work on more personal projects, and the result was interesting(THE CONVERSATION) to outright stupid(ONE FROM THE HEART and RUMBLE FISH). Sam Peckinpah's greatest film is THE WILD BUNCH, a work he made under great pressure from the studio. Later, when he made a film exactly as he pleased, he ended up with the fiasco of BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA. And some of Robert Altman's most unbearable films are his most personal. THREE WOMEN and QUINTET are difficult to sit through. And Pier Paolo Pasolini got worse with more freedom to indulge as he pleased. And Federico Fellini was a good example of how an artist can lose his way by getting to do whatever he wants. It was because men like Hitchcock, Ford, Hawks, and Wyler couldn’t just do whatever they wanted that they were compromised as artists, but for that very reason, they were always under pressure to be professional, resourceful, ingenious, and responsive to the larger world. In the 20th century, Dmitri Shostakovich, who had to compromise with Soviet authorities, eventually loomed larger as an artist than so many full-fledged avant-garde artists in the West who got to do exactly as they pleased in total disregard to whatever others thought.
Anyway, once the critical attention shifted from Serious Artists to Ingenious Entertainers, there was greater appreciation for Talent-for-Talent-sake. Maybe John Ford or Howard Hawks was not the soul-searching artist like Ingmar Bergman or a brilliant experimentalist like Alain Resnais, but they mastered the cinematic form, told exciting stories, and created new legends and myths. And even though the lack of seriousness could prevent a work from being richer, deeper, and profounder, it could also remove the brakes from freer expression, spontaneity, and independence-of-spirit. After all, didn’t seriousness ultimately hamper Brian Wilson with SMILE. And looking back, wasn’t SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND weighed down by strains of seriousness? Seriousness is a great asset if an artist has serious talent and serious vision. But many artists have serious talent but not serious vision. They are better off using their serious talent to make good entertainment. And that was the great thing about the American Masters of Hollywood. They weren’t exactly Fyodor Dostoevsky or Eugene O’Neill, but they had talent to burn as movie-makers and made some of the most entertaining, enduring, and endearing works. And many of them only needed to be just-serious-enough without being weighed down by arch-seriousness that could easily kill a work without legs for such a load. Use a dog like a dog, don’t saddle it like a donkey.
There was also a sense that seriousness had run its course in the arts. All the great themes had been explored and dramatized time and time again: Family conflicts, spiritual crisis, tragedy, alienation, confessional soul-baring, etc. Indeed, for awhile ennui became fashionable as modernity seemed drained of meaning. Classic or Eternal themes not only lost their light but their luster. Worse, even the thrill of Novelty faded as Newness had become the Norm. The idea of originality, that had once seemed radical and revolutionary, came to be a capitalist brand to market more fashions and products of no real meaning or purpose. (If Andy Warhol hadn't existed, he would have had to have been invented, which he of course was.)
For a time, it had seemed as though Culture could have the best of both worlds. High Art and Avant-Garde Modernism could be appreciated for their demanding criteria and lasting value, but Popular Culture could also be appreciated for its contribution to creativity and inventions. After all, the most lasting and influential musical innovations of the 20th century came from Popular Culture. One could argue that Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington were more important than Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg. And in the end, couldn’t one argue that the musical numbers for THE WIZARD OF OZ are more enduring than the works of Alban Berg that may have impressed some eccentric intellectuals but are mostly grating to the ears? And even though songs like "She Loves You" and "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" impart no great meaning or depth, they were incredibly ingenious in streamlining the rough-and-tumble ride of Rock n Roll into smooth sliding. The fact that the relatively shallow genres of Pop Culture attracted so many creative talents was something of a loss, and yet, not entirely, because seriousness had run its course, even in the last great art-form of cinema. Does it make sense today to try to compose another opera like PARSIFAL or write another novel like BROTHERS KARAMAZOV? The culture no longer believes that kind of work is possible or authentic in the Current Year sensibility. Can people in the arts be excited by a new Picasso or Matisse? A new T.S. Eliot or even a new Bob Dylan? The general attitude is ‘been there, done that’. While remarkable artists still do emerge and make startling works — BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER is one such work made by none other than the son of Anthony Perkins and MOTHER! by Darren Aronofsky is another new masterpiece — , but our culture seems past seriousness and even past ennui. After all, even though ennui is associated with boredom and apathy, there is a sense of loss, a sense of anxiety and mourning that Modern Man can no longer feel the passions and convictions that had defined his forefathers. Thus, to have ennui means not only to feel numb but to be troubled by that numbness. It’s like feeling guilty for not feeling guilty, feeling shame for feeling shameless. But eventually, even that sense of anxiety vanished and made way for shameless indulgence in whatever was ‘cool’ in the moment. From top to bottom, that is pretty much the Way of Culture in the 21st century.
There is now only the School of Cool and the School of Tool. The School of Cool is all about the latest buzz and hype. So, even serious culture critics will engage in the latest discussion about some superhero comic book movie or something as silly as HARRY POTTER novels. Whatever happens to be Cool... that’s all that matters.
In contrast, the School of Tool just sees Culture as vehicle for ideological propagation. Of course, use of culture as ideological instrument is nothing new, but the New Way is different in the sheer amount of infantilism, adaptability, and appropriation. In the past, Left Radicals believed that their serious and consistent message should be conveyed through expressions and means worthy of the gravitas of the movement. Folk Music, for instance, was deemed a dignified, earnest, and sober genre for the promotion of themes about working folks and the common man. It is then no wonder that Pete Seeger and so many purist folkies were outraged by Bob Dylan’s electric performance at Newport. For several years, Dylan was booed at concerts by folkie purists who regarded his electric-approach as defilement of the movement that he was supposed to lead as the 'spokesman of his generation'.
Even though those on the Left recognized the usefulness of using popular culture to spread crypto-socialist/communist messages, they understood that their ideas and values stood apart from the capitalist system that was essentially about profits and ‘exploitation’. Therefore, they were choosy and discriminating as to how their messages should be conveyed through arts and culture. In contrast, today’s School of Tool has no core values, convictions, or criteria. In a way, the Current Tool shares something with Current Cool in the sense that both are all about fads and fashions. Unlike the Old Left that had an sincerely formulated core ideology that was to be disseminated by worthy genres of culture, high or popular, the Proglob(proggy globalists) is pathologically ‘fluid’ in their convictions. Of late, they seem to be most worked up about how feminists must overcome ‘transphobia’ and welcome men-with-wigs into women’s sports. Also, if the Old Left was selective(like the Catholic Church) as to which genres and formats were worthy of conveying their sacred message, the infantile and vapid Proglob is enthused about using ANYTHING to get its message across. Thus, if the Old Left was about socialists/communists using capitalism to destroy it, the Proglob’s agenda cannot be divorced from the decadence and degeneracy that are intrinsic to the logic of consumer-capitalism. Proglob’s values essentially arise from the inner-dynamics of consumer-capitalism than stand apart from it. Why is Homomania such a mania among the Proglob? It certainly has nothing to do with classic leftism. It’s because homos are big winners of consumer capitalism that is all about vanity, narcissism, celebrity, hedonism, and excess. Consumer-capitalism favored homo elites who worked with Jewish oligarchs to make Homomania the main theme of ‘new leftism’. Thus, it really makes no sense to speak of ‘Cultural Marxists’ using capitalism to spread socialism. Rather, we have a case of Cultural Capitalists who arose within the ranks of capitalism itself because the logic of consumerist profiteering, hedonism, and narcissism was bound to favor people who are most obsessed with stuff like fashion and celebrity. And such people happen to be homos.
We now live in an age absent of equilibrium, coherence, and proportionality. There is a lack of genuine morality that grounds people in the world of reality, responsibility, and limits. There is also the lack of irony that alerts us to the contradictions, paradoxes, and hypocrisies of the world. There is only sham-sincerity in the most absurd propositions(like 'gay marriage') and rabid hysteria about the most delusional threats(like Putin as 'new hitler'). How did the world become like this? One reason is the triumph of the US-West in the Cold War. The so-called ‘End of History’ filled the US with arrogance and hubris as the disproportionately self-appointed-and-anointed 'exceptional' and 'indispensable' lone superpower. Even more problematic was the rise of Jewish Power as the dominant controllers of the US empire. Jews, with their megalomaniacal, paranoid, and vengeful personalities, weren’t fit to be rulers of the world. Once on top, they wielded their ultimate power to tyrannize and terrorize the world. But because of the Cult of Shoah, they obnoxiously continued to pretend they constituted a ‘victim group’ deserving of sympathy and apology from all of humanity. As a result, we now live in a World Order in which the most powerful group cannot be criticized and challenged by the peoples of US and EU, the main centers of Jewish Power.
Because the Left lost the War of Ideas as capitalism totally destroyed communism at the 'End of History', it gave up on ideology & principles and turned nihilistic and just latched onto any cynical symbolism or ploy to gain power for certain ‘identity groups’ vying for Victim Status. As the Power of Money was king in the New World Order, every so-called ‘leftist’ cause became heavily financialized and celebritized. Lacking genuine theory and principles, the new ‘leftism’ turned into extreme displays of Virtue-Signaling about the latest fads and fashions hyped by globo-Judeo-Afro-Homo capitalism. In a world of fads and fashions, there was no more need for timeless truths, deep morality, real justice, or understanding of history. All that mattered was the Outrage or Celebration of the Moment.
Because real virtue requires depth, it became nearly impossible in the Current Year. So-called ‘virtue-signaling’ isn’t about upholding real virtues(as understood by the Ancients who strove for eternal truths) but about calling attention to oneself for having jumped on the latest bandwagon of morality-as-celebrity. It’s more ‘virtue-flashing’. As classic leftist ideologies turned into drab dogma and failed in their prophecies, the progressive radicals became less interested in ideas than in the game of power. They turned hipster Nietzschean. They began to appreciate capitalism’s advantage over communism by being more attuned to the nature of power. Capitalism motivates people to organize, invest, manage, lead, work, and/or follow on the principle of "what’s in it for me?" As Pier-Paolo Pasolini said of Consumerism, capitalism is about turning everyone into a ‘little fascist’. If classic Italian Fascism was about the masses revering Mussolini as the demigod-of-vanity, Consumerist universal-fascism was about turning everyone into a little-benito. Given human nature, vanity & narcissism are powerful incentives for many people to work, spend, borrow, work, spend, borrow. Of course, Pasolini understood that this applied to himself as well. Though his moral sense was rooted in Catholic-Marxism, he was also a fruitolini who drove fancy cars and used his fame & fortune to attract young boys to bugger. Still, despite those predilections, Pasolini’s sensibilities and values were still rooted in something deeper(Christianity) and more serious(Marxist theory of history and justice). He felt a degree of contradiction and shame in the fact that he led a privileged bohemian ‘bourgeois’ existence.
But there was no more need for shame, remorse, or repentance for those infected with consumerist little-fascism. They lived in brazen imitation of shallow pop stars and celebrities manufactured by the system of greed. Initially, the leftist intellectual class resisted this trend. But their kids grew up under its umbrella as the New Normal. Also, the intellectual class did humanity no favors by increasingly receding into a world of irrelevant theory that came to be the hallmark of academic post-modernism(that was justly mocked by Alan Sokal). It’s been said that the Right/Conservatism lost the ‘culture war’ to the Left/Radicalism, but in fact, only the cynical synthesis(or cynthesis) of power and vanity won. Whatever seriousness and sincerity that had once existed among radical theorists, critics, and scholars faded in the 'End of History' that turned into the Endgame of History. The Current ‘Left’ is NOT the continuation of the Classic Left or even the New Radicalism of the 1960s that still believed in the power of ideas or the dream. Rather, it’s globo-Nietzschean worship of power, greed, and vanity with the veneer of ‘progressivism’.
Indeed, the fact that ‘diversity’ has become such a buzz word gives the game away. After all, Diversity has always been the result of invasion, imperialism, and conquest. Also, Diversity has meant divide-and-rule for the elites. So, ‘Diversity’ isn’t about freedom from imperialism but about succumbing to imperialism and furthermore celebrating the loss of autonomy. And the latest slogans revolve around the idea of ‘Inclusion’, but it’s just a kinder-and-gentler version of Invasion. The Jew-run US certainly forces other nations to INCLUDE the intrusion of US military, money, and cultural imperialism. Jewish Globalism use international pressure to make every nation ‘include’ Homomania as the New Faith. Third World demographic imperialists mass-invade Western nations and demand that they be ‘included’ for freebies. And Jewish supremacists and Western globo-collaborator-elites find the Third World masses useful in weakening and ultimately destroying the power of the Native Middle. It’s all so cynical and outlandish. No real morality, no balance, no equilibrium, no sense of limits and accountability. Instead, the universal mentality among the globo-‘right’ and the globo-‘left’ seems to be much the same: Blowed Up Real Good. The sensibility of urban sophisticates is now hardly different from that of hicks whose idea of fun is to blow stuff up real good.
Dana Stevens was onto something when she said the concept of ‘guilty pleasures’ no longer spoke to a generation raised without a sense of cultural hierarchy or moral restraint. There was a time when serious people of cultivation were expected to immerse themselves in worthy culture and promote it to the wider public. Still, even serious people could find pleasure in lowbrow, vulgar, and even bad movies. Thus, the idea of the ‘guilty pleasure’. But when nothing much is expected of educated people and serious critics — indeed, when ‘serious’ is an unwelcome term in much of cultural discourse — , they can be guilt-free in enjoying and praising trashy, shallow, or idiotic movies. You could be in your 40s and 50s and still be obsessing over BATMAN movies, BLACK PANTHERS, or Disney’s cynical New STAR WARS cash-cow. Dana Stevens really enjoyed TWILIGHT: NEW MOON and called it a ‘juice-bomb’ than a ‘guilty pleasure’. It blew up real good in her mouth. (Personally, I think some TWILIGHT movies do have genuine merit in certain respects, especially in make-up, mood, and visuals, though the overall story arc is beyond ludicrous. Still, given the shaming culture of PC, I suppose politically incorrect works that are fun could still be constituted as 'guilty pleasures'.) But then, people don’t live on pleasure & excitement alone and crave meaning and justice. Since true morality and real virtue have been banished from society & culture, there is only the symbolic preening about the latest fads & fashions(such as #MeToo hysteria) or certain icon-ized Victim Groups, especially Jews, blacks, and Homos. According to Iconic Morality, it doesn’t matter what you do; all that matters is what you are. So, it doesn’t matter that Zionists gun down Palestinians in Gaza or possess 300 nukes and threaten other nations. Because Jews are symbolically the Holocaust People(though acting more like an Assholocaust People), they are always in the right. So, when it comes to Israel vs Iran, Israel is always in the right whereas Iran is always in the wrong even though Israel has been maniacally aggressive toward its neighbors, stole US uranium, has 300 nukes, and allows no inspections, whereas Iran has no nukes and has complied with all international demands for inspection. So, it doesn’t matter what Jews do. They are right simply because their identity has been icon-ized. Same logic applies to blacks. Having been icon-ized as the Eternal-Slavery-Jim-Crow-and-Civil-Rights people, their behavior is never called into account. Never mind they rob, rape, and murder the most. Never mind black students get suspended more for bad behavior. Never mind those blacks were arrested at Starbucks because they violated business policy. Never mind that the number of innocent blacks gunned down by the Police is minuscule compared to the number of blacks killed by other crazed blacks. Symbolic morality says blacks are always right because they’re black. As for homos, let’s just pretend that the HIV epidemic in the 'gay' community had NOTHING to do with degenerate homo-fecal-penetrative behavior. Let’s blame straight society for not having shown homos more love and tolerance. The sheer idiocy of Symbolic Morality can be seen in WAKANDA where blacks are noble because... they be black. And in new STAR WARS, certain people are morally superior because they are black, female, homo, or whatever. We are to believe the Resistance is morally superior because it’s led by Cyndi Lauper or "Beauty School Dropout".
The following exchange between John Simon and Ebert & Siskel in 1984 is indicative of the cultural changes that have taken place since then:
Back then, I would have thought Simon is being overly despairing of what STAR WARS movies portend. And contrary to his justification of viciousness on the basis that raves have been excessively extravagant, neither the first nor the second movie was greeted with near-universal praise. The first STAR WARS understandably generated a lot of buzz because it was really the first of its kind. Even Simon’s review was lukewarm positive. However, few people took it seriously. It was praised as entertainment, and that was about it. It’s like Ebert in this video calling it ‘pure visual entertainment’ and Siskel saying it’s like ‘pinball game for the eyes’. And even though some critics had higher regard for EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, few considered it a classic for the ages. Also, no one took the Politics of STAR WARS seriously back then. (Furthermore, Lucas had yet to be 'canonized' by none other than Joseph Campbell.) Indeed, RETURN OF THE JEDI was more ‘progressive’ and ‘diverse’ than the first two, but it got considerably worse reviews. So, at the very least, most critics weren’t willing to endorse a movie just for its ‘correct’ politics. In the exchange between John Simon and Ebert & Siskel, both arguments seem to miss the point. Simon dumps on the whole concept when, actually, Lucas’ vision was grand and spectacular, the stuff that could have been molded into great myth-making. In contrast, Ebert & Siskel pretend as if Lucas fulfilled his vision when RETURN OF THE JEDI, apart from its justly praised special-effects, is completely idiotic as plot and resolution. Though Simon was overly harsh on Lucas, he was onto something in his critique of the dehumanization of entertainment. The effects-driven universe had its own logic, eventually leading to the nihilism of awesomeness over all else. It’s depressing that Ebert and Siskel were totally blind to this aspect of STAR WARS despite the fact that their cinematic sensibilities had developed in the 60s and 70s when film became a full-fledged art form. Indeed, their list of the best films of the 70s feature many films made outside the Hollywood system. The problem with their exchange with Simon is not that they find something good about RETURN OF THE JEDI but that they’re so ecstatic about it. Fast-forward to today, and a Culture of Consensus prevails among Generation X and Millennial critics who feel COMPELLED to universally praise a movie in the most mindless ways simply because it has the ‘correct’ message or serves the current iconography. Take the lavish near-universal praise for Guillermo Del Toro’s pop-magic-realist movie about how humanity must overcome ‘racism’ by having sex with fish-man. Ebert and Siskel’s gushing about RETURN OF THE JEDI set a certain tone of ‘juice-bomb’ criticism where the primary role of critics and reviewers were to get all excited about the latest hype. It’s worse now because we can’t even have honest mindless entertainment anymore. We are supposed to see the new blockbuster movies as serious moral lessons and ideological sermons about Good vs Evil where good is mostly anti-white or cuck-white while Evil is just white(of course, non-Jewish white). There was a time when many on the Left felt it was beneath their dignity to get their messages out via something as lowly as Archie’s Comic Books. No longer. The new ‘left’, having grown infantile-shameless-impatient, now mostly indulges in Prog-duct Placement in TV shows and movies. Even in stories that have nothing to do with homos or Negroes, a holy homo or sacred Negro will be included for ‘sacramental’ purposes. It’s the proggy equivalent of religious paintings featuring crucifixes or angels. And it’s not just entertainment. Even space exploration has been heavely-gay-zed. But the utter infantilization and Manicheanization of Morality came from the Right as well. Even though John Wayne’s GREEN BERETS was a pretty sorry & simpleminded movie, it still featured people who looked and acted human. But Sylvester Stallone’s RAMBO was a form of insanity where the Soviets were not only evil but beyond evil. So evil in fact that it wouldn’t have bothered movie audiences if all of commie-sphere was blown up to smithereens like planets in STAR WARS. Whatever had been human about Sylvester Stallone in THE LORDS OF FLATBUSH and ROCKY was gone. Beginning with ROCKY III and RAMBO, Stallone began to look like some narcissistic homo-body-builder whose mission was to defeat evil by triggering new World Wars. This new aesthetic was neither conservative nor liberal. It was crass-consumer-capitalist, but it was sold as Reaganesque, culminating in dumb movies like TOP GUN. As the Cold War was still on, the Soviets made convenient movie bad guys, and besides, Hollywood that had once sheltered its share of commie-sympathizers had grown staunchly anti-Soviet once Jews in the USSR were perceived as ‘persecuted’. As Reagan stood for capitalism and free enterprise, much of the 1980s came to be associated with Conservatism: MTV, yuppies, hedonism, Spring Break, Hollywood action movies, and etc. In fact, they were essentially nihilistic and materialistic than conservative and moral. But because of the association of 1980s nihilism and vanity with Reaganesque capitalism, there was still some degree of criticism and push-back from Liberals and Radicals against the globo-capitalist trends that seemed to really take off under Reagan. Upon closer inspection, however, many of the rising new stars of capitalism were not social conservatives but Liberal or apolitical boomers who were more than eager to say goodbye to Old America. Also, many of them were Jews, and they were looking for new opportunities to grab as much loot as possible. Few among them were cultural conservatives, let alone white identitarians(as only Jewish and black identities were to be celebrated in post-60s America). Liberal boomers pushed ever-morphing ‘progressivism’, Jewish boomers pushed Zionism & Jewish-supremacism, and apolitical boomers either turned ‘liberal’ under media influence OR made ‘liberal’ noises because they wanted to be accepted by the right-kind-of-people. Still, the association of New Capitalism with Reagan-Bush compelled Liberals and Jews to continue making leftist-sounding noises about Greed and etc. After all, Bill Clinton ran against the Reagan-Bush Era as being one of unfettered greed. With the aid of the media, the mild recession of 1992 was blown up to be the new Great Depression. But in fact, Clinton’s real agenda was to appropriate the New Capitalism for the Democrats. That the Democratic Convention was staged like a Rock Concert was sign of things to come. And the newly dominant Boomer business class loved this arrangement because they could have the cake and eat it too. Under Clintonism, they could have globalism, ‘free trade’, and get richer than ever... but because of the symbolic status of the Democratic Party as the home of the working class and historically oppressed minorities, it could also keep sailing with the ‘progressive’ banner. And of course, it was especially useful to promote Homomania as the new center face of ‘leftism’ because vain & narcissistic homos were so servile to the Rich class. This arrangement lived on through the Bush II era and Obama era for two reasons. Even though Bush II carried on with Clintonism, as the symbol of ‘Christo-fascist reaction’ he provided Progs with the opportunity to play the role of anti-greed opposition when, in fact, they were the main beneficiaries of New Capitalism under Clinton and Bush II. And then, the presidency of Obama added sacro-Afro-luster to New Capitalism. Even though many proggy types were denouncing Bush II policies for having brought upon the economic crisis of 2008, gee, maybe New Capitalism wasn’t so bad after all since Obama was continuing with it and rewarding the banksters with bailouts. Indeed, Obama could even extend Neocon wars without opposition from the ‘left’ because he was a ‘historic black president’. And since he associated Holy Homomania with Wall Street, Las Vegas, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and other giants of New Capitalism, maybe Greed wasn’t so bad. After all, it was draped with homo colors. The Clintonian New Capitalism where Yuppies could finally come out of the closet as Social-Degenerate-Progs-of-Greed may have finally come crashing down with the rise of Donald Trump, another perverse political creature trying to synthesize a new kind of hyper-politics.
Power tends to corrupt those who have it, and that is why the dehumanization of Popular Culture is so dangerous. It’s like money or guns. When the Bad Guys have lots of money, the Good Guys may denounce the power of money and greed. The Good Guys say they are not for money, or if they themselves had the money, they would not use it like the Bad Guys do. But when the Good Guys get the money, they eventually fall under the temptation to do whatever they please with the money. They end up just like the Bad Guys. Same with guns. Good Guys with no guns or fewer guns either profess to be anti-gun or pledge that they will not use guns like the Bad Guys do. But once they have the power of the gun, they can’t help using it like the Bad Guys. Consider how Jews used to denounce militarism dominated by the Anglo-American right-wing military elite. But once Jews became the ruling elites of the US, they couldn’t resist using the Power to wage Wars for Israel and begin ‘new cold war’ with Russia. And remember how Jews used to say they were for the Rule of Law and the Constitution and civil liberties for free speech? Once they got the power, they’ve been using Lawfare to shut down entire peoples and violate the civil liberties of individuals, such as Unite the Right participants who gathered at Charlottesville and did nothing wrong on legal grounds.
Likewise, in the realm of Popular Culture, the Liberals used to be critical of the warmongering mentality of the American Right, White America, Western Imperialism, Christian Triumphalism, and etc. So, they denounced the ‘racist’ violence of THE BIRTH OF A NATION. They condemned Hollywood Westerns where Indians were often little more than target-practice. They were critical of anti-communist right-wing militarism. And movies like SPARTACUS, though exciting and impassioned, didn’t celebrate violence but saw it as necessary sometimes and always tragic. Even the Liberal excitement for BONNIE & CLYDE was tempered by showing the ugliness and brutality of violence. Also, the violence was among recognizable individuals and humans, not a mash-bash of entire populations. Movies that did feature mass destruction were careful to point out that hyper-violence isn’t fun-and-games. So, the original WAR OF THE WORLDS is a sad tale of Martians waging a terrible war on humanity.
The destruction wasn’t featured as fun spectacle as in INDEPENDENCE DAY and PEARL HARBOR where the audience roared with approval. Indeed, it is telling that Charlton Heston didn’t want to be part of Steven Spielberg’s 1941 because he found it to be disrespectful to the memory of those who’d served in WWII. And John Wayne declined the role of Harry Callahan because he found it overly violent. Even so, the first DIRTY HARRY is still about a cop going face-to-face with a recognizable villain. It laid out WHY we should want Harry Callahan to blow his ass away. Still, films such as DIRTY HARRY, STRAW DOGS, DEATH WISH, and THE FRENCH CONNECTION stirred up controversy among Liberals as to the rising ‘fascist mentality’ in cinema. In their defense, they spelled out why violence is necessary at times. Scorpio in DIRTY HARRY is a real menace to society. The character of STRAW DOGS is pushed to defend turf and honor. DEATH WISH is about revenge against thugs who prey on innocents. THE FRENCH CONNECTION is about cops who play loose with the rules in a corrupt city mired in drugs and criminality. TAXI DRIVER later explored the psychological dimensions of cosmo-fascism that emerges among alienated individuals who are bewildered and frustrated by the soulless and degenerate libertinism of big city life in the post-spiritual, post-ethnic, and post-moral (dis)order. Travis Bickle creates his private Tribe-of-the-mind as an attack on soulless NY.
In contrast, STAR WARS introduced something truly dangerous, and the critic who was most keen about this was Jonathan Rosenbaum:
https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/excessive-use-of-the-force/Content?oid
"There was something that happened to many people in their late teens and early 20s when they first saw it," muses Star Wars: Special Edition producer Rick McCallum in the press book. "It was a turning point where you actually realized that almost anything was possible and realistic at the same time." Even, one might add, a new form of mass annihilation experienced as a spectacle... I won't bother you with the plot in any detail, since you've been living with it for years even if you've never seen the movie. Suffice it to say that an earnest farm youth on a remote planet, son of a vanquished Jedi warrior, meets another former Jedi who trains him in the mystical ways of the Force; finds his aunt and uncle burned to cinders by minions of the evil Empire (in homage to The Searchers), which occasions about 15 seconds of tragic reflection; hires a hardened mercenary with an exotic, nonhuman servant to pilot him and his guru and accompanying robots to save a princess captured by the Empire; then blasts the Empire's Death Star to sparkling, bubbling, and extremely satisfying smithereens."
In the STAR WARS universe, it’s not about one man killing another as in DIRTY HARRY. Whatever one thinks of Callahan — saint cop or ‘fascist’ henchman — , the violence is limited to the object of outrage. And even if one finds Old Westerns distasteful with their use of Indians-as-target-practice, the violence unfolds between specified rivals caught in cycles of attack and counter-attack over land and honor. In contrast, the hyper-technological world of STAR WARS means the battle on the galactic scale. Worse, because of their awesome weaponry, the various powers have the means to blow up entire planets. World War I and World War II were total wars, that is to say wars between entire nations and populations. Not just armies but entire populations were targeted for mass destruction. In WWI, millions of Germans were pushed to the brink of starvation. In WWII, all sides targeted entire cities for mass bombings. Still, it wasn’t until the end of the war that humanity had come upon a technology that could conceivably wipe entire cities, even nations, off the map. Atomic bombs totally devastated two major cities in Japan, and 10 or 12 more nukes were ready to go if Japan didn’t surrender. This took the notion of Total War to the next level: Total Destruction. And it was this understanding between US and USSR(and few other nuclear powers) that led to the consensus that nuclear weapons should never be used again and can only be justified as deterrence. WWI and WWII showed how horribly tragic Total War could be, killing tens of millions of people and devastating entire nations. It was hard to remain human in such a conflict, and all sides acted in inhuman ways to win and wreak vengeance. But imagine a Total War with nukes. That was the nightmare scenario of DR. STRANGELOVE. The prospect was so unimaginably horrific(on the human scale) that it was done as satire. But STAR WARS presented Total-War-with-Nukes as far-out entertainment. The Empire blows up an entire planet, and then the Rebels blow up the entire Death Star. The planet blown up by the Empire is soon forgotten. And we cheer for Death Star blowing up real good. Now, if Lucas’ point was that hyper-technological warfare that blows up entire worlds can have no place for morality or humanity, that would have been one thing. After all, when galactic warfare amounts to levels of destruction where entire planetary systems and space-based civilizations(with countless workers) are blown up without much thought, how can moral sense survive? It'd be like counting raindrops.
But Lucas insisted on the Morality Tale aspect of his vision. Even after Darth Vader has committed mass-holocaust against entire planet systems, he can be forgiven and redeemed by his son. And because the Death Star is central command of the Evil Empire, we should just rejoice when it blows up and kills everyone in it. But what about all the minions who were just taking orders? After all, even if we were to say the mass bombing of Dresden or nuking of Hiroshima was justified, we wouldn’t rejoice over the destruction and horrific loss of innocent lives.
But then, suppose one were to say STAR WARS is just a movie and not to be taken seriously, i.e. we should regard it like GODZILLA movies where the big lizard from the sea knocks down buildings and terrorizes Tokyo. That argument might have worked had there been no sequels and no pretension, by Lucas and others, that STAR WARS is a meaningful, beautiful, and inspiring tale of good vs evil. How can Lucas and his defenders(and extenders) justify the morality of his vision when the series(original and Disney) continue to feature endless spectacles of mass destructions(where presumably millions or even billions are killed) as ‘cool’ and ‘awesome’ entertainment? And the Good Guys seem to be just as mindlessly destructive as the Bad Guys are. Indeed, the Manicheanism of STAR WARS universe provides easy justification as to why entire worlds must blow up every so often. The Bad Guys are totally Evil, so naturally they try to blow up lots of planets and people for the hell of it. And since the Bad Guys are so bad, the Good Guys are totally justified in blowing up countless numbers of Bad Guys. With such ‘political’ logic, how can there be any moral sense? Bad is just Bad, and because Bad is just Bad, the Good is justified in anything to defeat the Bad... even if what the Good does is hardly any different from what the Bad does. The STAR WARS universe isn’t really about a humble rebellion opposing an Evil Empire. It’s really about Empire vs Empire, not unlike British Empire and German Empire in WWI or US empire vs Soviet Empire in the Cold War. When power clashes on the imperial scale, it’s easy to lose sight of morality. The stakes are too huge. BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI is about empire vs empire, and it takes real struggle for some of the characters to maintain their sense of humanity in all that ‘madness’. While the war among mafia clans in THE GODFATHER is ugly and brutal, at the very least, they have a personal stake in the bloodshed. It’s about revenge and ‘business’. But in the wars of empires, faceless armies and mercenaries are pitted against other faceless armies and mercenaries. In DR. STRANGELOVE, it is difficult for the character of Mandrake to maintain a semblance of human scale in a global conflict where madness, ideology, technology, and complex systems all conspire to bring about Armageddon engulfing all of mankind, even those in neutral nations who have no skin in the game.
Such a system was devised to protect mankind from human error, but that means the human factor/element must be further eliminated from its Cold Logic. But then, Logic follows a code and has no innate sense of right or wrong, no sense of moral limits. So, the logical systems in both DR. STRANGELOVE and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY can be ‘led’ to deviate from moral service to humanity. General Jack D. Ripper manipulates the logic of the system to trigger WWIII, the very thing the system was supposed to prevent. And HAL computer follows the same logic even as it goes from protector of humans to their executioner.
Anyway, the scale of ‘apocalyptics’ and the conceit of ethics simply didn’t gel in the STAR WARS universe. Given the levels of destruction, the STAR WARS universe could only be an amoral one where power was the only justification. In a war where entire planets and civilizations are destroyed by both Good Guys and Bad Guys, where does the individual fit in? Why should we care so much about the biographical arc of Annakin Skywalker and his redemption when countless billions have been destroyed all across the universe? Because STAR WARS couldn’t make us care for everyone of the countless victims, all the emotions of the story are invested with a handful of characters. So, what happens to Leia or Solo(or even Chewbacca or C-3PO) weighs more heavily than the fate of billions. Now, this is true of any story in which we care more about the fate of main characters than anyone else. Still, STAR WARS is about the clash of entire civilizations, and therefore, fixating on the rather quixotic stories of a handful of characters seems like moral autism. When so many peoples are either destroyed or made to suffer, does it make sense to make us feel happy and relieved simply because our favorite characters manage to squeeze through tight spots? While every story of war concentrates on a handful of characters — Consider WAR AND PEACE, the mother of all war stories — , the characters are archetypal or iconic representatives of others of their kind going through similar experiences. By focusing on just a handful of characters, David Lean gave us a sense of the larger experience in BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, and DR. ZHIVAGO. In contrast, the heroes of STAR WARS seemed detached and aloof from the larger struggle. Solo is like a cross between a cowboy and 007. He rides the war like a rodeo. Luck is on his side, and he always lands on his feet. As for Luke and Leia, we eventually learn that they possess the Force, therefore they travel to the beat of a different drum from everyone else. So, even though they are in the fight, their struggle unfolds in a bubble all its own. Because the heroes are ‘special’, their fates will somehow decide everything, and everyone else is just cannon fodder, distraction, or space wallpaper. The problem with STAR WARS is Lucas tried to have both moralism and nihilism. His story is about Good vs Evil, but the real appeal of STAR WARS comes from the sheer scale of wanton destruction by awesome machinery of death. But unlike in video-games that come without characters, stories, or meaning, STAR WARS pretends to have meaning and message. But in a world where it’s justified for all sides to blow up so much and kill so many people for either ‘evil’ or ‘good’ and when the destruction is featured mainly as awesome popcorn-munching spectacle, how can any real moral sense be sustained? Imagine a WWII story where we are shown the massive clashes between Nazis and Soviets as just ‘cool’ and ‘awesome’ stuff while hoping that Good will triumph because some hero on the side of the Good is learning magical kung fu from a Tai master. Again, the problem of STAR WARS isn’t fantasy or escapism. Rather, it’s the scale of destruction presented as increasingly mindless entertainment while pretending that it's all part of a moral message.
Prior to advancement in special effects, massive destruction on the big screen had only limited appeal. The best of its kind for a long time was God’s wrath in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. He sure could kill. Still, the wrath was presented as fearsome and terrifying, not fun-and-cool. STAR WARS rock-n-roll-ized the screen entertainment. The thrills were more akin to that found at a Rock concert than in classic Hollywood movies. It was a blast... which may explain why some Rock concerts were played to the screening of AKIRA the famous apocalyptic Japanese anime. Speaking of AKIRA and others of its kind, they have the same problem with STAR WARS. They turn ‘apocalyptics’ into a matter of style. AKIRA begins with modern Tokyo blowing up in WWIII, to be quickly supplanted by Neo-Tokyo. The death of millions is just an afterthought, followed by A-CLOCKWORK-ORANGE-like rock-n-rolling.
And yet, in some ways, AKIRA’s amorality is less troubling than STAR WARS because AKIRA is brazenly nihilistic, cynical, and nasty. It’s a hopeless world of corruption, greed, vanity, materialism, and power-lust. Kids hardly have families and form their own tribe. It’s a soulless world with worthless humanity, and it doesn’t matter if they live or die because nothing matters anymore. It’s an ugly pathological vision but a consistent and honest one. In contrast, STAR WARS is nothing without moralism, nostalgia, and sentimentality. Lucas clung to the themes of David Lean, John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, and other classicists and/or humanists. And yet, he was enthralled with fantasies of nihilistic displays of power and massive destruction & apocalypse. It was as if he wanted to make OLD YELLER and TRIUMPH OF THE WILL in the same movie. But when entire worlds blow up, is there any place left for sentimentality? No, said Stanley Kubrick whose DR. STRANGELOVE satirically said we must stop worrying and love the Bomb in case of WWIII. And Taylor finds out that humanity means for naught after WWIII in THE PLANET OF THE APES. And yet, Lucas decided to give us both Armageddon and For-the-Love-of-Benji.
Interestingly enough, the film that Lucas was slated to make after AMERICAN GRAFFITI was APOCALYPSE NOW that wrestled with the very issue of destruction and meaning. Eventually directed by Francis Ford Coppola, its justly famous helicopter attack scene demonstrates the power of spectacle. When the air cavalry raids a Viet Cong village to the music of Wagner, followed by the napalming of the jungle by US jets, we just revel in the thrill of destruction. Sure, we do see an American casualty screaming in pain and Vietnamese women being gunned down, but the Wagnerian overdrive overwhelms any moral consideration. It’s just ‘outstanding’. And then, Colonel Kilgore, emerging from his helicopter like Darth Vader, gives a magnificent speech about how napalm ‘smells like victory’. It almost gives you goose bumps. And yet, the spectacle of destruction is merely one facet of the film. As the story progresses, we are made to experience death-down-below more than death-from-above. We are made to see death up and close. And finally, the hero Willard encounters Kurtz the warrior-poet-philosopher who seeks a synthesis of meaning between mayhem and morality. It is difficult, that is to be a ruthless warrior yet retain moral sense. We can tell that the contradiction is eating away at his soul.
But in the STAR WARS universe, mass destruction is presented simply as entertainment. Never mind that millions or even billions may be perishing. Just be awed by the wantonness of the destruction. Or don't worry because all those countless people blown to bits are of the Evil Empire.
Furthermore, despite the immensity of the conflict, we are also to believe that Destiny will be decided by a handful of special individuals who duel with laser swords.
Worse, STAR WARS is venerated more than ever among film critics because Jews at Disney totally rejiggered it to function as propaganda for Social-Justice-Wars. THE LAST JEDI, for example, got nearly universal raves because it is supposedly about Hillary-as-Beauty-School-Dropout waging war on Donald-Trump-Vader. So, never mind the wanton spectacles of mindless destruction, the tired cliches, recycled formulas, and the greedy cynicism of Disney. May the Critical Force be with it because it’s useful as propaganda. Who knows? Maybe even Jonathan Rosenbaum the Jew loves the latest version because it’s anti-Trump. In other words, ‘fascist excesses’ are ‘cool’ as long as they are directed against ‘fascists’. But who’s the real ‘fascist’ when Pop-Fascist Aesthetics are now owned and used by Jewish Hollywood? It doesn’t even seem to occur to most Progs that Hillary was a super-warmonger working at the behest of Jewish globalists who are like the Emperor in STAR WARS. And Obama restarted ‘cold war’ with Russia simply because Jewish globo-oligarchic-emperors hate Russia. Jews are truly a perverse people because, even with the power of the New Emperors, they pretend they are still of the Resistance. In fact, Trump has been most admirable in winding down Wars for Israel(especially in Syria) and most despicable in supporting Jewish Supremacism(especially against Palestinians in Gaza and against Iran, a nation that did nothing wrong).
Given the American Right’s mindless support of the War State under Reagan & Bush(I and II) and given the American Left’s embrace of neo-imperialism under Clinton & Obama, we’ve had governments and pop culture that have been overwhelmingly anti-humanist on both the Right and Left. During the Bush II years, there were some mildly anti-war movies from Hollywood to embarrass Bush, but most TV shows and movies have been pro-military, pro-war, pro-deep-state, pro-destruction, and even pro-genocide(especially against Syrians and Palestinians). And the proggy enthusiasm for the mindless, heartless, and soulless New STAR WARS movies simply because they happen to be about Diversity against Whitey signals the moral corruption of the cultural commentariat. Both sides are willing to wallow in the sheer nihilism of mass destruction and the dehumanization of the Other Side to feel good about themselves.
And by ‘dehumanization’, I mean down to the very last person. It’s one thing to see the Other Side as the enemy that stands for an Evil Cause, but it’s quite another to believe that everyone on the Other side is subhuman scum that deserves to be blown away. For example, a movie like ENEMY BELOW roots for the American Navy against the German submarine. Still, the German crew, as individuals, are presented as humans.
But in PAN’S LABYRINTH, even such modicum of consideration is missing in the New Proggy Sensibility. The Other Side comprises monsters that have no claim to humanity. It must be wiped out clean. Indeed, Jews have spread such vile and murderous hatred about the white race along with the Palestinian people. (Ironically, whites who've been targeted for destruction by Jews have a genocidal hatred of Palestinians who've been similarly targeted. Why? Jews have spread anti-Palestinian murderousness among whites just as they've spread anti-white hatred among People-of-Color. One can do awesomely evil things with monopoly of the media. The recent Schwarz Wars in the Middle East are the result of campaigns of ultra-hatred by hegemonic Jews who simply won't leave humanity alone.) As for venal Latin Whites like Guillermo Del Toro, they pretend they are members of People of Color even as they settle in the most privileged communities that happen to be overwhelmingly white or Jewish(but then, Jews also pretend to be not-so-white when inconvenient). Del Toro also promotes eradication of borders and mass movements of peoples when it was just those factors that led to the Conquest and Destruction of indigenous civilizations in Mexico and South America by Latin Europeans who looked just like the ugly and hideous Del Toro.
This is why, in this day and age, we need to revisit films like DAS BOOT again. In a sane and sound world, there would be no need to mention DAS BOOT alongside STAR WARS. One could appreciate both on their own terms: Art Film and Escapist Entertainment. But ours is not a sane and sound age. It is one where film critics and culture commentators who should know better go out of their way to promote the New STAR WARS as an inspiring, empowering, and consciousness-raising propaganda against Evil. These people aren’t bothered by the cartoonish Manicheanism of the New STAR WARS where the Good Guys are so good that they are permitted any amount of wanton destruction and Bad Guys are so bad that they don’t even deserve the recognition of humanity: They are evil pure-and-simple and should be incinerated down to the last man without pity.
Perhaps, such hatred is an indication that there is indeed a war going on among the races, especially Jews and their minions against whites. After all, it is during wartime that there is most intense dehumanization of the enemy. As long as WWI raged, British propaganda featured Germans as subhuman degenerate Huns. And Germans and Japanese viciously dehumanized their enemies in WWII. And after Pearl Harbor was attacked, the US totally dehumanized the ‘Japs’. And in the current conflict between Zionists and Palestinians, neither side is willing to see the other side as ‘human’. It was only after WWI that British began to see Germans as humans. And it was after WWII that Americans began to recognize the humanity of Japanese as well. So, maybe the sheer hatred directed at whites by Jews and their minions is a sure sign that, contrary to what naive whites think — "We love Jews who are our friends!" — , Jews are in Wartime Footing against whites. Then, it is no wonder that the New STAR WARS movies are so vitriolic in their anti-white-ness. And it’s no wonder that just about every other Jewish-run Ad on TV pushes for sexual warfare that features ACOWW or Afro-Colonization of White Wombs. The Jewish Sexual War Propaganda is clear: Black guys need to kick white male ass, turn white men into white boy cucks, and conquer & colonize White Wombs. Jews are engineering White Genocide by using black fists and dongs as ammo against White Manhood that stands as the Wall between Blacks who holler "Where da white women at?" and White Women. White Manhood is the Jericho Wall that must be brought down. And that is why Jews purchased the rights to STAR WARS, the most successful movie series, and are using it to promote interracialism between a white girl and a gorillian Negro.
At the very least, however you may feel about the Other Side, humanism dictates that everyone on every side of the conflict shares in the basic qualities of humanity(though, to be sure, humanist principle tends to break down with Negroes because they are most different from all other races). For too many Negroes, it comes naturally to act like a bunch of shameless & uninhibited wild-ass ‘boons, made worse by the 'sacralization' of the Negro by Jew-run media and sappy-suck sentimentality.
While all peoples and races can act brutish, ugly, murderous, and evil, under normal conditions most peoples can act civilized and learn to cooperate with others of their kind. In contrast, Negroes tend to act wild and crazy even when there’s ample opportunity for acting normal and sane. They got bongo in their genes that makes them overly jiggity and antipathetic to humanism.
Still, let’s give even the Negroes a benefit of a doubt in the spirit of humanism. Now, humanism doesn’t say every individual is decent, nor does it say every people, community, or culture is good or on the side of angels. There is a sappy and naive kind of humanism that says most people are innately good and, if not for distressing socio-economic straits, would be a capital fellow. But there is a sturdier kind of humanism that recognizes humanity as coming in all shades of good and bad. Still, apart from serious psychopathic types(like Jeffery Dahmer, Son-of-Sam, and Lars von Trier), most people have a basic humanness with the same range of emotions and the chance of self-actualization with proper training and encouragement. It’s same with dogs. While dogs come in many sizes, abilities, and temperaments, they all have a basic dogness that makes them emotionally rich and loving creatures(if raised and trained properly). Just like dogs can be made crazy, humans can be made crazy. And humanism recognizes that people can be made bad. Humanists would agree that Nazism turned many Germans into evildoers who did horrible things. But humanism also believes that it was not inevitable that those men ended up doing evil. They were trained and indoctrinated to do inhuman things. But even when acting inhumanely, they were still humans with basic human emotions that could be salvaged and redeemed under better circumstances. So, even as humanism understands the need for necessary wars and the inevitability of having to kill many on the Other Side, it still doesn’t deny the basic humanness of the enemy. It is this sense that is missing in the STAR WARS universe, especially in the New Ones where the Bad Guys are made far more hateful and contemptible than in Lucas’ movies.
In contrast in DAS BOOT, we come face-to-face with the humanness of the U-boat crew. Yes, they are Germans fighting for the Nazi cause. Sure, they are assigned to wreak havoc on the Allied Navy. Yes, they can be ruthless and determined in the fight. But, they are also recognizably human: stoic, courageous, supportive, anxious, fearful, and even mournful when the enemy is killed unnecessarily.
They may be fighting for a monstrous political movement, but they are also soldiers like any other soldiers of any nation. They are about camaraderie, team work, sacrifice, and toughness. At the very least, we can’t take that way from them.
Furthermore, the submarine setting intensifies the sense of what it means to be a soldier. Unlike men in the battlefield, there is no chance of desertion, no chance of escape. Everyone from top commander to the lowest crew member must share the same spaces, face the same dangers, and accept the same fate if the submarine were to sink. The sheer claustrophobia and abject terror when a submarine descends to the ocean bottom has to be the worst terror that can befall men in war. It’s like being collectively buried alive. Because the often monstrous conditions inside a submarine can easily drive men mad, the resolve to maintain one’s balance becomes a true test of one’s character. And DAS BOOT powerfully depicts what it takes to remain human in a most inhuman struggle. Kathryn Bigelow made a comparable film with K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER.
In STAR WARS, we don’t care what happens to the crew of a ship when it blows up in space. We may cheer when it’s the Bad Guys’ ship or sigh when it’s the Good Guys’ ship, but in either case, the only real response on our part is ‘cool!’ Special effects make the collisions and explosions look spectacular and awesome. And even war movies based on real historical events can be made this way. Consider the awful PEARL HARBOR(by Michael Bay of course) that turned the tragedy of the Japanese attack into a trashy amusement park ride. Special effects even followed the trajectory of one ‘Jap’ bomb from the plane to the target. It was all very ‘neat’ & ‘cool’ and hardly made us care about the sailors who sunk into the sea. In contrast, Christopher Nolan’s magisterial DUNKIRK — one of the noblest war films — prioritizes the human element instead of turning people into props to be blown up by ‘cool’ and ‘awesome’ gadgets.
Anyway, we never have to think about what happens to any of the crew in a ship in STAR WARS. As long as the main characters and their robot scouts are safe, we feel good and secure. It’s like the scene with the dog in INDEPENDENCE DAY: Space aliens are blowing up the entire city and killing countless people, but it’s all just ‘cool’ spectacle. And our sole 'moral' involvement is with the family dog than with all those strangers getting blown up. The dog makes it, and we breathe a sigh of relief. All is well cuz doggy lives. Our sympathy becomes totally subjective, comfortably restricted to a few characters and even a dog we’ve been introduced to.
Now, our narrow emotional response is just part of human nature. After all, any of us would react more strongly if a dear one was in a minor car accident than if a bunch of strangers died in an airplane crash. Every family grieves more for its departed than for countless dead of other families. Objectively, we know a plane crash is a much bigger tragedy than, say, one’s son or daughter getting hurt in a car crash(or one’s dog getting hit by a car). But emotions are essentially subjective and care most about the objects of one’s sentimental attachment. This is why Jews use the power of academia and media to attach white emotions to Holy Jews, Magic Negroes, and Homo Angels and to detach white emotions from fellow white folks; this conditioning has gone so far in some white people that they care more about mythical holy Jews-Homos-Negroes while hating on their own white family members. Consider all those white feminist bitches who hate their own fathers despite all the things their dads have done for them.
Anyway, even though emotions are subjective, there is something perversely callow about making us feel relief over a dog when an entire city is blown up. It’s almost as if the message is we shouldn’t worry anymore since the dog is safe and well. There’s a difference between hoping that a dog would make it and feeling the day has been saved because the dog survived(while the city didn’t). This is the problem with all these big blockbuster movies. They’ve greatly amplified the scale of violence and mayhem but then narrowed the range of audience sympathy to just a few characters who remain mostly detached from what is going on. They are like Teflon heroes who keep joking, jostling, and having fun while the world around them burns down. And since our sympathies are attached only to them, we feel good as long as they are safe, and rest of the world, despite or especially because it’s blowing up, is just fun-house props for the heroes to romp around in. It’s this detachment that may be most troubling. It doesn't matter if millions of 'lame' folks perish as long the 'cool' idols keep cruising along having the time of their life.
DEEP IMPACT, though no great masterpiece, is rather moving unlike most blockbuster movies with mega-mayhem. Many people die in DEEP IMPACT, and of course, the movie cannot feature all of them. But because the key characters are so emblematic and representative of many who will not make it, they stand for the millions we don’t see. But in many mega-mayhem movies, the heroes seem to operate by some 007-like logic that keeps them safe-and-sound no matter what happens. Our attachment to their glibness disassociates our sympathies from the rest of humanity. We feel the main heroes are ‘cool’ and ‘blessed’ while rest of humanity are just loser-suckers who don’t stand a chance... so, why should we care about them? They lack the Force.
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