Strangers in a Strange Land
I think I have been away from my country for a long time, though not too long. I do not refer to my brief visit to Rome in the first half of January but to the sense of strangeness I experience every time I turn on the evening news or look at the stories on The Drudge Report or Google News. The past two days, I was completely caught off guard by the front-page reporting on the death of someone I honestly had never heard of: Heath Ledger.
As I have learned from ABC News and The New York Times, Mr. Ledger was an Australian-born actor who made a series of films I had never heard of, except for Ang Lee's tribute to cowboy love, Brokeback Mountain. He was not, it turns out, homosexual, which makes him even more disgusting than most actors, and on the set he contracted a liaison with an actress by whom he had an illegitimate child. According to the police, his apartment was filled with tranquilizers for which he had prescriptions, and, according to rumors, he abused illegal drugs and had been treated for heroin addiction.
At its gushing worst, the Times compared Mr. Ledger with James Dean and mourned the premature loss of a great talent. Admirers have been dropping off tributes--candles, flowers, photographs--outside his apartment building, and a grieving nation is seeking comfort for this tragic death.
It is not news that Americans since the 1920's have gone gaga over film stars, pop singers, and athletes, but I do not recall the deaths even of James Dean or Elvis, genuine pop idols that they were, creating so great a stir. In watching Charlie Gibson recite his ungrammatical and mispronounced platitudes on the nation's loss, I thought of George Orwell, both of how right he was and how wrong he was: right in sensing that the totalitarian states of the future would manipulate their citizens through propaganda but wrong in overemphasizing the role of political propaganda.
Nothing so clearly indicates the servility of most Americans as these manifestations of concern for celebrity life-styles. Leftists apparently know what they are doing since more and more of the reporting on NPR is taken up with pop-cultural inanities. This morning, they wasted a good 10 minutes on an LA group of Beatles imitators, "the Fab Faux," who are performing the later material that the Beatles never actually put on in public.
The least depressing conclusion I draw from all the coverage of Britney, Lindsay, OJ, and now Heath is that elections mean nothing. People who care who the next American Idol will be or who will win Dancing with the Stars could not be trusted to elect the board members of the Parks Department, much less the temporary dictator of an empire of 300 million people. One small detail. We Americans laugh at the people of India and Pakistan who choose party leaders on the strength of their last names, and then a significant number of us run out to vote for George W. Bush or Hilary Clinton. Benazir Bhutto may be as crooked as Hilary Clinton, but she spoke far better English and was a fine-looking woman, which makes her superior to every female I know in American politics. And, while on this low topic, what man would not follow a pretty air hostess like Sonia Gandhi? Good looks, charm, and an impressive demeanor have always played a part in human affairs, but here in America even our screen idols are monkey-faced women and epicene males. To restore the republic, we should have to undertake a massive program of disenfranchisement, beginning with people who work for or receive benefits from government, moving on to unmarried women, and finishing off with anyone who has seen three films starring Heath Ledger or Brad Pitt.
Celebrity eats up reality, the TV and film cameras suck out the souls, both of the actors and of the watchers who live through the actors. George Garret's brilliant book, Poison Pen, may be the single most important commentary on the people we have become. It is not easy to get a hold of--and uses language not suitable for women and children--but it is horrifyingly true. In any kind of republic or democracy, the electorate must consist of people in touch with everyday reality. The wonderful thing about pop culture is that it alienates a majority of people from reality, persuading them that the criminal class consists of middle-class white males, and that brain surgeons and nuclear physicists and judges are, typically, people played by Will Smith and Samuel L. Jackson. In a free society, stereotypes and prejudices are somewhat false conclusions drawn from experience; in the servile state, the stereotypes are almost always the opposite of reality.
If popular government of any kind could ever work, it would be in periods when hard-working men were sufficiently concerned about their local community and their personal self-interest to support the side that pandered to them and then to hold the politicians' feet to the fire. Athenians, who lived in a powerful state about the size of metropolitan Rockford, subjected outgoing officials to a scrutiny that assumed they had abused their office. But even with every safeguard, they felt into mob rule followed by tyranny. However, in acting like the suspicious peasants that most of them were, Athenians showed themselves more capable of self-government than any generation born after 1860.
This morning my wife asked me in a choice between Hilary and McCain, which (if either) would be worth voting for. On foreign policy, I suggested, Hilary might be less dangerous--though she is so ignorant of foreign affairs, she would have to turn to Holbrooke and Albright. anyone really thinks that Huck or Mitt really is able or willing to do any good, let me suggest that he vote for Heath Ledger. What harm can a dead foreigner actually do?
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@101
Faith is also loyalty, troth.
And with a certain knowledge of God, one trusts that as things get materially worse, one nevertheless keeps to his mission.
Thus faith is also courage, hardiness.
PcH if you say so re: this 'certain knowledge' - i'll give you a pass since it made you not 1/2 bad... and so more good.
But more the goodness... who accepts 'certitude' is God's domain Alone He alone his Holy He alone is Lord etc. and that we only belong to him, no?
think about it, kid. you above God... ? if he has a bad day? and where's his privacy... if you're Sure he's who You think he is?
what if he's in love with the ugliest girl in the world? i kid. that would probably be a good thing. no i take you seriously, you exist.
After having come to this particular forum, I was clicking through German, French and Russia news sites. One of them, I cannot remember which, asserted that Mel Gibson and Heath Ledger had become friends during the shooting of "The Patriot," and that Mr. Ledger often went to Mr. Gibson for advice. According to the source, Mr. Ledger asked Mr. Gibson's advice about taking the role in Brokeback Mountain and Mr. Gibson advised him against it, on moral grounds, primarily. Apparently, this moment of discord did not necessarily end the friendship but it ended the fellowship of the friendship.
As a sidebar, I wish that Mr. Gibson would direct and take the leading role in a film on the life of General Richard Taylor, with a focus on the Red River Campaign.
Dr. Fleming's challenge was to come up with people who are "technically competent at what they do and have an overall positive influence," and so far the ensuing comments have failed this challenge. Clint Eastwood, Johnny Depp, and Celine Dion have been named, which serves to prove Fleming's point. Really, a metrosexual pirate? We are stretching for answers. I'm in my late 20s, have paid good attention to pop culture in the last ten years, and can think of almost nothing that fits the criteria above.
Brad Bird--with Iron Giant, the Incredibles, and Ratatouille--is a possibility. Maybe Shymalayan with Signs and The Village, though George McCartney didn't care for either of those much (but those are still major releases that millions saw that praise the local and the rural). Who else has had an impact?
Sorry, Coppola's done nothing lately. Scorcese has not had a "positive influence" by any stretch. Eastwood has been lousy lately -- Million Dollar Baby and those two WWII movies. TV's most popular shows have been a karaoke contest (American Idol) and four nihilists talking about sex and nothing else (Seinfeld).
Any other suggestions?
"overall positive influence"
Okay, perhaps I misread it in naming Céline, then... I was thinking "any positive quality" rather than on balance being an asset to our culture. Perhaps it's because I've grown up in some rather desperate times, but I'm inclined to think that a culture whose mainstream includes Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Steven Spielberg would be worse off without Céline. Then again, I'm setting my standards awfully low.
On American Idol: it's not a show that's worthy of elongated attention (nothing on television is), but in a society where non-singers become rich musicians (i.e., most of the
I would never go out on a limb and say that there is nothing wrong with the commercial "pop" genre as a whole. We would be better off without it. But let's be existential for a minute. Given that it exists, the best of it is that which is unpretentious about its essence and is just lightweight fun.
Not, mind you, that there are not healthier forms of mindless fun: give me a folk music-slash-binge-drinking session at the tavern with some good friends over a pop concert any day. However, sometimes it does get rather tiring being an alien in one's own society, and throwing onesself in and indulging with all the rest of the mutants is a good reminder that we are, after all, human (i.e., corruptible). We are not of this world, but we shouldn't be walking six feet above the ground, either. The next time I go to confession I don't think I shall say that I played four Céline Dion songs and three Daniel Bedingfield tracks when I was mindlessly pining over my lost love.
And I forgot to finish the first paragraph. I was going to say that in a society where non-singers become rich musicians, it is certainly entertaining--and not altogether worthless--to hear a foreigner remind us that good singers must be... well, good singers. Granted, the judges' interpretation of what makes a "good singer" is open to discussion.
The ending of "Million Dollar Baby" was shocking and nihilistic. Imagine it. Instead of helping her achieve a new life as a paraphegic -- something that would have shown real courage on both sides -- he kills her for "mercy." She was not only his fighter; she was his surrogate daughter. I thought that this movie was scandalous, and the fact that it ws acclaimed only shows how depraved we have become on the idea of "mercy-killing." This was part of the ideological softening-up process to prepare the proles for the killing of the old -- a real prospect given the size of the "Baby-Boomer" generation -- and the sick and the young and the handicapped. Think about the future when we move beyond believing that people have a "right" to end their own lives to the idea that certain people "ought" to end their own lives, especially when it can be made to appear like going into surgery and painless. At some point, when Hillarycare has been implemented, old people will hear that they are monopolizing scare medical resources with their "selfish" desire to remain alive after their time is done.
The Passion of the Christ ?
One more thought on Clint Eastwood (who I want to like and admire): He split "Flags of Our Fathers," a patriotic book, onto two anti-American movies. He took the most celebrated moment in American history -- the flag raising on Mount Seribachi -- and drowns it in the cynicism of advertising and war-bond drives. He then produced "Letter from Iwo Jima" that incredibly saw the battle from the Japanese viewpoint! He actually made American troops THE ENEMY. The whole movie was sympathetic to the Japanese (who had to be dug or blasted out of caves because the refused to surrender), even to the point of showing Japanese troops sharing their scarce water with a captured American. I never thought that I would live long enough to see a Hollywood movie in which American troops are portrayed as the enemy. How can anyone think that our nation will survive when one our foremost popular filmmakers is comfortable showing American troops as the enemy? What is next -- a movie in which the Islamic insurgents in Iraq are the heroes? Wait a minute, I think that movie has already been made.
I would suggest Steve Vaus and some stuff of Daryll Worley.
He actually made American troops THE ENEMY.He actually made American troops THE ENEMY.
Well, yes, by definition they were the opposing forces that the Japanese had to face, and the movie was done from the Japanese pov. But that does not mean that Mr. Eastwood thought the U.S. was in the wrong, etc. (I haven't read Flags, so I don't know if it is as anti-war as Letters, but I do think that the the point of the movie was to humanize the Japanese and show that not all of them were monsters or equally culpable in the injustice of the war.)
It might be wrong to make such a movie during WW2, but 60 years later perhaps we could be a bit more "objective" at looking at the conflict and those who participated in it?
oops--that should be "watched," not "read" Flags
I am thoroughly in agreement with Clyde Wilson that Clint Eastwood is a nihilist and that is much to be regretted because he is an extraordinary talent. There is no one who can equal Eastwood on both sides of the camera other than Mel Gibson and thank God Gibson's vision is heroic and Christian. I have heard that Eastwood pressured his one time girl friend into getting an abortion. This doesn't surprise me. I do find it rather scarry how much I have liked some of his movies - Unforgiven for example - the very title of which seems anti-Christian. As was said by the anti-Christian nihilist Nietzsche, "Gaze not too deeply into the abyss lest the abyss gaze into you."
Mr McNulty, your concern over Eastwood's two war movies is justified. In fact, I had the same reservations before seeing the movies. However, I agree with Mr Chan. I think that Eastwood actually showed the truth about the war bond drive and the realities of the time. The bond drive was cynical and was a big act of fakery, and and I think Eastwood nailed it on the head. That movie should be looked at from the human perspective of the marines and sailor involved in the whole mess, as Eastwood intended.
As for 'Letters', the same applies. Eastwood wasn't trying to make American soldiers look bad, rather he was trying to get at the human experience of the Japanese soldiers. I thought it was a very good movie. He showed some Americans sympathetically, and if he showed an American murdering Japanese prisoners who had just surrendered, well, that happened as well. It was realism.
That said, there is some question as to why Eastwood would wish to be cynical with his own country and sympathetic toward the Japanese. On the other hand, had he been cynical toward the Japs and sympathetic toward his own country, could the films ever have been made, and if so, would the media have treated them like they did Gibson's 'Passion'?
I should have added that the Marines and the sailor were good American boys who were being used and manipulated by the powers that be for cynical ends. The shame of this is well captured in the film, and to me, the accuracy of this portrayal rings true.
I am always proud when a celebrity dies and I have never heard of them. This guy's death, therefore, brought me a moment of pride. Frankly, it was good when Anna Nicole Smith died. She is a celebrity, like so many others, who never did anything worth being known for - no loss there. Beyond that, her death sent the message that her kind of lifestyle is not healthy.
http://www.culturism.us
Allen Wilson,
I suggest actually read the book and you'll realize what a travesty, and anti-American piece of Agi-prop "Flags of our Fathers" was. The movie would have been much better if Eastwood had shown the Americans with the same respect he showed the Japanese in "Letters from Iwo Jima".
I've read the book and a lot others on WW II, and can tell you that the movie was not only unhistorical (is this a word?) it deliberately twisted facts to make the USA and Marine Corps look bad.
And ( Not addressed at Allen Wilson) its rather pathetic
the way that Christians and Conservatives, instead of attacking and mocking Hollywood take the latest Hollywood piece of anti-western sewage and try to convince themselves thats its really "conservative" or supports Christianity. When someone like Speilberg or Reiner make a movie they ARE NOT trying to uphold Christian/Western values. Ninety percent of the time they are trying to subvert them. Band of Brothers was a Tom Hanks production, and SPR was was full of cartoon characters and made from a Jewish perspective of painting the Germans as the bad-guys and supporting the US military. And to make money.
I believe one of the most under rated actors over the last decades has been Kurt Russell.
"Reagan beat Mcgovern????" Nothing like trying to make a brilliant point and coming up with ignorant facts.
Bromhead @121
Yes, it might have been poor Walter Mondale instead of Senator MCGovern. In any case, I assure you that Dr. Fleming has suggested to me in private and on numerous occasions, that with my combination of brilliance and factual ignorance that my true talents might be better employed or utilized with the neo-cons over at the Weekly Standard or NRO. I have assured him, however, that I wouldn't think of such a thing. I simply admire all of you paleo-cons too much to ever put my sword at the service of another.
By the way, if you research my posts even more devoutly you will find graver errors -- ecco, for ECCE and HOMO, instead of Hey, Ho the Holly!!and other such inventions. Fear not, I know my place in the world and it is right here with all of you !!! I wouldn't hear of any other arrangement. As that great English historian , Mr. Belloc, once noted --there is not a better time to write history than in an age such as ours, where one can say anything he pleases about Napoleon provided he dutifuly footnotes that the Battle of Waterloo was actually fought on a Monday instead of Sunday. Cheers
Dr. Wilson or some other contributor to these fora can correct me if I am wrong, but my best information is that General Robert E. Lee, who was quite willing to send the men of the Army of Northern Virginia into the jaws of death and who was quite willing to kill as many of the enemy as necessary in order to win, nevertheless did not see his men as fodder but loved them and did not dehumanize his enemy, even prayed for them, wishing not to destroy their home and hearths but wishing only that they would go home and leave his beloved Virginia in peace. This, to my understanding, is the mark of a Christian soldier.
I have read none of the books on which Mr. Eastwood's movies, mentioned in posts supra, were based. I have also not seen the movies discussed above.
The flip side of dehumanizing one's enemies is quickly appropriated by and subsumed into the Marxist narrative: enemies do not exist; they are merely the products of our biased and prejudiced imaginations. Using dehumanized enemies as dialectic leverage, the Marxist turns the admonition of the Christ, to love one's enemies on its head, namely to love an enemy, according to the Marxist, is to declare that one has no enemy - that race does not exist, that ethnic and cultural frictions are fictions and that intra-specie rivalry is not a part of human nature.
I took my first lessons in this from my Uncle Charlie, who served in WWI in Europe and in WWII - wounded near Casablanca and spending the rest of his life, until 1976, in a V.A. Hospital, and my father who fought his way across France and into western Germany along with thousands of other Americans. Both of them fought and killed Germans. Both of them saw friends die horrible deaths in the crucible of war. Neither of them hated Germans. My father often spoke of young German soldiers - Papa was an old man of 26 - which he encountered dead or severely wounded. He knew that if he had his druthers he would be back at the confluence of Sandy Creek and Big Creek, where is home was, and nowhere near the mess he and millions of men were in. He supposed that the young Germans would have rather been there where home was to them as well. My Uncle Charlie, during the years in the V.A. from 1943 to 1976, saw maimed men from WWII, Korea and Vietnam, maimed in body, in mind and in soul. Once, among the several times, on medication, he got out for Christmas, I recall his talking about WWI and then North Africa in WWII. His words were, "Poor boys, all of us, Americans, French, English, and German; so scared and so far away from home!" Maybe that is not what he felt in 1943; I do not know, but that is what he came to understand as meaningful life slipped away because of those events and that is what he said to me.
Sometimes it seems to me that paleoconservatism, like liberalism, is just another species of effete snobbery-- its adherents turning up their collective nose at aesthetically unpleasing things-- strip malls, fast food restaurants, pop culture outlets, and what-not-- and treating them and those who frequent them as if they were moral abominations. Posts like this one, as well as the self-congratulary tone of the responses to it, tend to reinforce this suspicion on my part.
I mean, look, Heath L. was a movie star who died at a young age. What is so horrible about news outlets reporting the fact that he died? And yes, he played a homosexual in one movie. Even if we can agree that homosexuality is not healthy or morally permissible behavior, why slag the dude for playing a part in a movie? How many other actors have played mass murderers, rapists, tyrants, etc.?
As for Mr. Fleming's distinction between "folk" culture and "pop" culture-- the first good and healthy, the last inherently bad, apparently-- I again suspect that mere snobbery is at play here. "Folk" culture, if I am correct, would equate to "things that I and my fellow paelocon snobs approve of," i.e. bluegrass music, Celtic folk songs, etc., and "pop" culture encompasses everything paleocon snobs reflexively dismiss, up to and including just about every movie made in the last 30 years...
123
Yes, with Letters from Iwo Jima at least, while the Americans have been "dehumanized" from the Japanese perspective, and are not readily distinguishable from one another, their faces not being clear to the audience and so on, the Japanese do learn the lesson that the Americans are human just like they are, and thereby gain some measure of sympathy for them.
Cormac McCarthy partially qualifies with Cities of the Plain (1998), No Country for Old Men (2005), The Road (2006), The Sunset Limited (2006), and other recent works, but he's not coming up today so much as established and still working.
I like Neal Stephenson as more of an up-and-coming author.
The coverage of Ledger's death is perhaps the quintessential example of self-perpetuating media hype. Dr. Fleming is probably under the misapprehension that Ledger was regarded as a big star among the younger set before his death, but he wasn't really. Most of his movies were neither big box office successes nor critical favorites. The accomplishments of Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp, like those of Mr. Ledger, are negligible at best and pernicious at worst, but they genuinely are big stars in the public mind; Ledger was not. The modern media, however, feel the need to inflate the death of a minor celebrity into an epochal event so they can have some sleaze to feed off for a few days. (This is a disservice to Ledger as much to the public; many of the early claims about the manner of his death - although not, as far as I know, those repeated by Dr. Fleming - have turned out to be false or exaggerated.)
Dean and Presley were also partially media creations, of course, but there was enough normality left in those days (or so I understand; I wasn't alive then) that one could not become a posthumous icon without striking some kind of genuine chord with the public. This appears to be no longer the case. If Ledger is still being revered a decade or two from now, he will the first pop culture legend (or perhaps the second, after Princess Diana) whose cult is completely divorced from the natural opinions people had formed about him.
Mr. K, Lincoln's cult "is completley divorced from the natural opoinions people had formed about him" while he lived, and he has been a legend for a century and a half.
I've tried to carry on Dr. Flemming's assignment without success. Restricting myself to American movies & TV I draw a blank. However, I can think of several good movies from say 1978 to 1998,
Band of Brothers, is the only American TV program that comes to mind.
@ Mr. Nowicki (124 & 125),
What you forget is the possibility that strip malls, fast food restaurants, and pop culture outlets actually *are* moral abominations.
One distinction between folk and pop culture might be that pop culture is not in fact popular. That is, it is not derived from the life of ordinary people, but rather imposed from above by marketing executives who occupy the elite class of this country.
The reason I detest "pop music" is because I have populist tendencies, not elitist ones. I resent the prospect of rich advertising moguls poisoning the minds of the people I love.
@ Mr. H (119)
While I was initially impressed by SPR when I saw it in the theatre, the last couple years have led me to agree with your assessment. Not so much because it is some sort of conspiratorial demonization of Germans, but because of the theme expressed in Tom Hank's little "why we fight" speech:
"You know, if going to Rumelle and finding him (Ryan) .... if that earns me the right to get back to my wife, then that's my mission."
Over time I have come to realize that there are few things more disgusting than this implicit assumption -- that a man has to "earn" from the modern superstate his "right" to go home.
I haven't seen any of Eastwood's latest, but I would agree with Dr. Wilson's assessment of the man as a nihilist -- as well as Mr. Higdon's assessment of this nihilism as an unfortunate misdirection of talent.
Mystic River struck me as simultaneously well-executed and warped.
I would reiterate my wife's suggestion of the science-fiction film "Gattaca". If one can get past Jude Law, Ethan Hawke, and Uma Thurman, it's a highly original and redemptive piece of work.
Glancing through the original script (a copy of which is online) it turns out that it initially carried even more pro-life subtext than what was translated onto the screen.
I would also highly, highly recommend the (1988-1999) television series Mystery Science Theater 3000, which adds supplemental, comic commentary to low-grade B-movies.
Not quite P.G. Wodehouse, but definitely *not* Seinfeld either. In some ways MST3K really does have a worthwhile message -- when the pop culture gives you lemons, make satiric lemonade.
The series' premise is that of a man being held prisoner by a mad scientist who seeks to destroy the prisoner's mind by forcing him to watch really bad movies -- with the man's only means of survival & fighting back being his biting & erudite sense of humor.
@25: "The reason I detest “pop music” is because I have populist tendencies, not elitist ones. I resent the prospect of rich advertising moguls poisoning the minds of the people I love."
It really says a lot about the last century that the influence of these moguls is so pervasive that any sort of truly "popular" character in the sense G.S. describes practically has to go through shadow state apparati to gain any sort of recognition (i.e., Frank Sinatra and the Mafia connection).
There are actively culpable players, though the very existence of mass media has not helped our culture (to say the least). I wonder if a truly conservative movement would shun the T.V. and the Internet altogether, but then, being a product of modern culture, I would never have found Chronicles without the latter. Really sad.
"Not quite P.G. Wodehouse, but definitely *not* Seinfeld either. In some ways MST3K really does have a worthwhile message — when the pop culture gives you lemons, make satiric lemonade."
On this front, depending on how much you want to factor decency into your choice of "good" popular culture, Mad T.V. would occasionally qualify, as would the French music group Paral & Piped (whose rather appalling parody of Britney Spears [the original song was only slightly less explicit, but hardly any more subtle or tasteful] is an excellent guilty pleasure).
On the other hand, the cultural drawbacks in the advancements in information technology have an important but seriously undertapped counter-advantage: the easy storing and access of archival works. If today's material is unacceptable, we can step back as many years as we want to and immerse ourself in the cultural treasures of the past. And those with sufficient artistic and literary talent can thereby immerse themselves in this wonderful culture and resurrect it.
In brief, while I admit to indulging in the satire culture myself, I have to admit that there is no genuine excuse for indulging in parodies of ridiculously self-parodying material when there are so many good works of art, music, literature and even film so readily available, if only I take the time to look.
G.S., strip malls, Walmarts, and fast food restaurants are only moral abominations if one conflates tackiness and evil. Which is just what many paleocons, such as most of those chiming in on this thread seem to be doing.
This, in turn, is why I am hesitant to embrace paleoconservatism wholeheartedly, though I share many paleocon tendencies. Self-righteous snobbery and scorn those with "bourgeois" (Sp?) sensibilities is no more attractive among proclaimed rightists than it is among liberals.
A River Runs Through It, Legends of the Fall, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: three Brad Pitt films that are entirely paleo-defensible.
Music: techonology has cut into the power of Corporate Music with high speed internet, and cd burning, and an entire category, Americana, has been created by 30-something consumers.
Movies:Joyeux Noel. Mr. Scallon is rigt on with his Wes Anderson films.
To the critics, consevatives and (real or paleo) libertarians are anti-egalitarian, and it is well true, smoothing out the difference with a capable and disciplined Right-populism remains a challenge.
"Self-righteous snobbery and scorn those with “bourgeois” (Sp?) sensibilities is no more attractive among proclaimed rightists than it is among liberals."
The bourgeois has been criticized for its materialism and banality since it existed and long before leftism existed; see Molière. The bourgeois supported the American and French revolutions in large numbers. The aristocracy and ancient loyalties were the biggest roadblocks to them coming out on top with their mechanical technocratic regime.
As for leftists, I've noticed the word "bourgeois" is more a bogeyman for any institution a Marxist wants to do away with, up to and including the patriarchal family. And it's ironic, because an ideal Marxist society would be a faceless industrial technocracy through and through--bourgeois par excellence. Nowadays it is used concurrently with "racist," "religious bigot," "homophobe" and so forth as the whipping boy of the libertine left.
Joyeux Noël was indeed a good film, if unintentionally so (I've met the director, an atheist with rather ambivalent views on religion).
@133 "This, in turn, is why I am hesitant to embrace paleoconservatism" With your attitude toward things that have helped to create a secular western world full of radical individualist, I'm not sure why you are even reading this blog at all.
"Fight Club" is another Brad Pitt movie that could easily be seen as paleo-friendly in its critique of materialism and corporate consumerism. But it is vulgar and shockingly violent, which doubt turns up the noses of the paleo-snobs who happen upon it.
(These, of course, are the same paleo-snobs who extol the fiction of such writers as Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, replete as they are with depictions of violence and moral squalor! Once again, I detect rank snobbery.)
Back to Heath Ledger: if you're inclined to assail him for playing a homosexual in a movie, I hope you're also willing to condemn anyone who ever played MacBeth or Claudius in "Hamlet" for playing vicious murderers. Murder is a worse sin than sodomy, I think.
Mr. Moses;
I think that is what makes it work, though thank you for the insight on the director--I had no idea, if it makes sense. Who else could set aside 500 years of Church fratricide by employing the Latin Mass. It was a liberal film, for "white nationalists" and "libertarians" , strippped of traditional nationalism, and it did challenge "conservatives" to reject the Law and Order and recognize the essential Truth. As a viewer, I felt challenged. So while a gimic, it, as you say unintentionally, revealed a truth about our experience in this time.
I didn't meet the director, but I have walked that battlefield, some 12 years ago. It's impact on popular imagination is only just begining, apparently.
@Andy Nowicki (133):
"G.S., strip malls, Walmarts, and fast food restaurants are only moral abominations if one conflates tackiness and evil."
Not at all. The problem with all of the above is the role that they play in destroying local economies and culture.
Mr. Richert is right-on.
Mr. Nowicki, consult *Fast Food Nation* by Eric Schlosser -- hardly a journalist who could be accused of being a "paleo-snob", I should think.
@139: Don't get me wrong; I agree with you. I wrote rather quickly last night. In spite of his atheistic inclinations, Christian Carion was at least perceptive enough to understand the world as it was in 1914 and to sympathize with the characters as well as with their faith, and decent enough to avoid overt modernist preachiness. In spite of the film's technical weaknesses (hammy German actors and terrible lip-synching), he was so successful that he undermined the presumably intended leftist connotations and instead gave us a brilliant celebration of a truly unified Europe, bound together not by bureaucracy and human rights ideals, but by a common religion and ethno-cultural heritage.
@137: I've never seen Fight Club, but on the whole I've noticed that "mainstream" critiques of modernism and materialism these days are typically every bit as insipid, alienating and corporate as the targets of their ire. This is certainly true in the field of architecture, where postmodernists heap scorn on the alienation wrought by faceless modernist buildings and then proceed to replace them with gawdy, esoteric space-wasting shrines to their egos forced upon an "unsophisticated" populace. Have a look at the new Scottish Parliament. And don't even get me started on the crystal dome above the Reichstag.
one small note to Mr. Moses. One can distinguish between the talents of Copola and Scorsese and their ethnic resentments of WASP America. Who but a WASP-hater could put Dianne Keaton in anything, especially in contrast with Apollonia? Or, from the same series, consider the portrait of the Nevada senator, or the portrayal of ordinary American life in Goodfellows. One can easily multiply instances. I cheerfully concede the merits of these directors and do not feel particularly offended by their attitudes, but in the context of this discussion I wanted to point out that Jews are not the only resentful immigrant group.
It has been off the air since 2002, but I would nominate the "X-Files" as an excellent TV series. Not only were the writing, acting, and special effects consistently first rate, the show had a subversive conservative sensibility, featuring a skepticism toward the federal government and other large institutions, leftists often appearing as villains (e.g., an episode where a "tolerant" leftist minister is revealed to be a minion of Satan, as his fundamentalist opponent had charged), an avoidance of multiculturalist cant, and a fondness for traditional American institutions, including religion. Indeed, the final episode was unabashedly pro-Christian.
Mr. Nowicki:
I can't say I like Wal-Mart, but I do enjoy fast food in moderation. So there is at least one Chronicles contributor who likes McDonald's. (Although I think the best fast food chain is Wendy's).
I do think the quality of American movies has declined, particularly in the past decade, but Hollywood still manages to produce a handful of decent movies each year. "Joyeux Noel," mentioned by several commenters, was excellent. I did enjoy "Fight Club," except for its absurd ending, and agree that it did have some paleo-friendly themes. I can't say much for television, because the X-Files was the last TV series I watched.
Mr. Paitak,
Wendy's is my personal favorite fast food chain as well (in moderation, of course, as you note), although Chick-fil-A also has its merits.
The creator of "X Files," Chris Carter, had another lesser known show called "Millennium" in the late 90s that I suspect you would also enjoy. (It's available on netflix, which you should be able to tolerate if you don't automatically get haughty when someone mentions the idea of having McDonalds for lunch)
It shares most of the merits of "X Files" that you enumerate, and it also takes the phenonenon of evil very seriously. Good acting, good writing, good everything. It's quite criminally underrated.
Mr. Nowicki:
Thanks. I was given the entirety of "Millennium" on DVD as a gift, but have yet to watch it. Your recommendation might prompt me to do that.
You might be interested to know that the late Sam Francis was a huge fan of the X-Files. It is a shame that Sam never wrote about the series.
@144: I see what you mean, although in your post supra you discussed "the Anglo-American Christian culture they were radicalizing," and perhaps I'm blind, but I've never really seen either director as much of a "radicalizer," whatever their cosmological faults.
Mr. Piatak, good call on the X-Files. I'd held such a grudge against TV for so long I was blocking out the fact that there have been good TV shows (though on balance the medium is decidedly evil). And I agree with you and Mr. Nowicki: when I'm in a pinch, Wendy's and Chick-fil-A are far preferable to basically any other fast food chain. (Although, when I'm in Europe and everything is closed, I take KFC over McDonald's.)
Hey Tom - You are right on with the X-Files!
It also introduced me to Frank Black and Millennium, which is a terrific series -- you should enjoy it...I, too, received the complete series Christmas 2006, and found it worthwhile. Lance Henrikson is excellent as Frank Black. Let me know.
You may also want to check out the "Lone Gunman" series, which was another short-lived 1013 production.
I was thinking about enter the fray and highlighting the production work of Chris Carter - creator of the X-Files, Millennium, and Lone Gunman. In trotting through the swamp, I have always enjoyed Carter's work. He was heavily influenced by the Kolchak: Night Stalker program, starring a worthwhile actor in his own right, Darren McGavin. Regards, Michael K.
To Nowicki and Piatak: I agree that Wendy's is the best fast food chain, though I noticed a big fall in the quality of the meat in their burgers three months or so after the death of the founder. That made me mad, so I dont generally eat there any more. I never eat at McDonald's, but they have the best fries and coffee of any fast food chain, so sometimes I indulge. You'd be surprised how well coffee and fries go together if you salt the fries down well.
To all: I have only just begun to look into Podcasts oriented towards music. There may be a huge potential here for alternative music that is ignored by big media, and it covers every genre imaginable.