Anyway, ATLANTIC CITY makes for useful comparison with MURIEL because both deal with themes of deception and, more crucially, self-deception. And however the story may have originated from John Guare’s pen, it was sealed with Louis Malle’s indelible Franco-centric stamp. While watching the mature male character in MURIEL, I was reminded of Burt Lancaster’s character in Malle’s film whose entire life has revolved around a lie, indeed so much that even his personal resolution comes by way of confronting the myth on its own terms; he doesn’t so much reject it as ‘fulfill’ it.
Everyone is marked by history differently(especially during the formative years of youth), and nothing seems to have affected Malle more deeply than what happened during the German Occupation of France. (If not for that small but significant moment, the Occupation may have passed by like the wartime for John Boorman as depicted in HOPE AND GLORY: eventful but not unpleasant. Especially as the his family was wealthy and connected, Malle avoided the deprivations of war.) Francois Truffaut was of the same age as Malle, but his films don’t leave the impression, direct or indirect, that the German Occupation meant much to him. Even his film LAST METRO, which is set during the Occupation, is rather staid and complacent, with little hint that the period left any lasting mark on Truffaut, whose most crucial years were those after Liberation, when he became immersed in the dream of American movies then flooding into French theaters. In contrast, there’s a number of Malle films that allude to or deal directly with the German Occupation. There is the German tourist in ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS. Though the story is set in postwar Europe of friendship between France and Germany, the murder of the tourist hints at darker undercurrents. LACOMBE, LUCIEN is about a Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis during the Occupation, BLACK MOON begins in a world run amok with militarist terror, MY DINNER WITH ANDRE has a Jew yammering endlessly about how New York is under Occupation of inhuman modernity(despite the fact that New York is Jew York, which goes to show that Jews feel exiled even in Jew-town), ALAMO BAY portrays the plight of Vietnamese refugees persecuted by Texan ‘rednecks’, and, of course, his most celebrated film AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS is a semi-autobiographical remembrance involving a Jewish student seeking sanctuary in a Catholic School. If Akira Kurosawa kept drawing lessons from Japan’s trauma in WWII, if Oliver Stone reinvigorated radical themes of the 60s around war and rebellion, if Steven Spielberg often harked back to childhood idyll & fantasy of Suburbia, and if Ingmar Bergman repeatedly struggled with themes relating to trouble with his father and his youthful enchantment with National Socialist Germany, Malle could never make peace with what had happened during in his childhood during the Occupation. And it was especially a single moment that stuck to him like an immovable thorn lodged in the heart. It became all the more troubling over the years because the full or fuller implication of the moment could only be realized in later years. It festered like a wound that never healed, like the scar on Pike Bishop’s leg in THE WILD BUNCH or the cut in the abdomen of Lancelot in EXCALIBUR. And yet, it didn’t feel like a wound or a wrong in the moment. It could be passed off as a chance moment like any other. It was not like Peter who blatantly denied Jesus and three times too.
In a sense, the young Malle hadn’t done anything wrong in the technical sense. If AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS is an honest account of what really happened, the chances are that the Jew kid would have been found out one way or another, and there wasn’t anything Malle-as-kid could have done to save him. In the film, when the Nazis enter the classroom looking for the Jew kid, Julien(as alter ego of Malle) momentarily turns his head to the Jew, and the Jew stands up and is taken away. Technically, Julien didn’t finger the Jew kid or rat him out. All he did was slightly jerk his head toward him, and it was the Jew kid who then gave himself up. And yet, Malle remembered this episode as something akin to Judas giving up Jesus to the Romans — and of course, this fits into the narrative of Holocaustianity where gentiles are the Judases and Jews are the Jesuses. Even if Julien didn’t rat on the Jew kid — Jean Kippelstein — in a technical sense, perhaps he did betray the Jew kid in the matter of the heart. Based on Julien’s turning glance at Jean the Jew kid, one can read any number of motives: panic, sympathy, fear, and etc. As the two boys had become friends, those feelings were surely there. But as the Jew kid Jean academically bested Julien, who’d previously been doted upon as the best student in class, there was also an element of envy and resentment, not unlike in John Knowles’ novel A SEPARATE PEACE. Emotions of friendship equalize the relations between superior and inferior or ease the tensions between superior vs superior, and so, any sign of differences betrays the spirit of camaraderie between friends. Julien admired and sympathized with the Jew kid and was glad to be friends with him — not least because he could have more interesting conversations with him — , but he couldn’t help sensing that the Jew kid was better than him, at least in intellect and perhaps in soul, and that mattered in France that took great pride in ideas and scholarship.
Au Revoir Les Enfants
Perhaps, it mattered more to Malle since he was born to a rich family. Truffaut was born into a modest family with nothing of pride or prestige to uphold. He later found out that his mother had planned to abort him, had problems of delinquency in his youth, and lost himself in the escapism of cinema. Despite his intellectual aspirations under the tutelage of Andre Bazin, Truffaut was really defined by excitement and sentiment, and in a way, he had something in common with Spielberg, which perhaps explains their chemistry in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. (Truffaut shared in the excitement of greeting Space Aliens. Jean-Luc Godard, in contrast, became like a creature from another planet.) Malle, in contrast, was born into wealth & privilege and attended excellent schools, and he was praised for his smarts. So, it must have really stung when a fugitive Jew kid holed up in his school turned out to be smarter and more cultured. He was creme de la creme whose ‘genius’ was recognized by fellow students, but a single Jew comes along and out-performs him. (It’d be like a white kid who’s the best athlete in school being knocked off his perch by the arrival of a Negro kid. He could become friends with the Negro kid as a fellow athlete, but he will likely resent having to play second fiddle to the Negro who wins top trophies and humps the best-looking white girls. He might develop genuine friendship with the Negro, who could be a nice guy, but a part of him will always wish the Negro would go away.) Of course, Jews are extremely competitive too, and they will go to any length to knock out the competition — even starve 100,000s of women and children in Iraq for the sake of Israel — , and Jews don’t care about the damage they cause because they lack conscience toward goyim. In contrast, Christianity planted the seeds of self-doubt and self-recrimination in the hearts of white Europeans, and in the postwar era, this would lead to the cult of western guilt for the suffering of Jews.(Incidentally, Christianity doesn’t necessarily instill guilt, atonement, and self-abnegation in all peoples. If anything, it can make a people feel righteous and justified in their violence. More crucial than any ideology is who-gets-to-steer-the-ideology because any credo can be redirected to be for or against anything. Take communism. It could be steered to serve Russia against China or to serve China against Russia. It could be steered by Stalin against Trotsky or by Trotsky against Stalin. The result can be credo to birth or credo to grave. It is human wit & agency that controls the crosshair of any ideological firearm. Most Negroes in America are Christian, but did Christianity make Negroes humble, self-critical, introspective, and contemplative of their sinful natures? Once upon a time, yes, when whites controlled the Narrative and instilled blacks with ‘savage shame’ that motivated them to better themselves and be a credit to their race. But since the Narrative Shift that made MLK and Civil Rights the paragons of virtue while burdening European-Americans with ‘white guilt’, Christianity has made Negroes feel uppity, self-righteous, and nasty. Today, Negro Christians just want to howl and shake their booties, act like they’re utterly blameless and holier-than-thou, sermonize as a race of saints who can never do no wrong. Cultural factors notwithstanding, Western self-doubt and guilt may have something to do with the genetics roots of European personality. After all, there are few blacks who are like Ken Burns or Bill Moyers. Americans of Northern European stock tend to be sober, serious, well-meaning, earnest, straight, and conscientious. In contrast, blacks are psychopathic, self-centered, self-promoting, and slick. For blacks, Christianity means other races should feel sorry for blacks, apologize to blacks, get down on their knees and pray to blacks, or worship blacks. It doesn’t mean that blacks themselves should examine their own failings and atone for anything. Part of the reason is surely that blacks did suffer racial oppression and discrimination in America, but that alone fails to address the deeper problem. After all, Poles never did anything to blacks, but even Polish-Americans can be made to feel ‘white guilt’ whereas even blacks who attack & harm innocent people never seem to give a damn, even as they profess to be good Christians. Of course, through most of European history, most whites felt justified than burdened by Christianity — at least when dealing with Jews, heathens, or non-whites — , but there has been in the European tradition of Christianity an element of self-loathing and self-purging. But Christian Guilt didn’t prostrate itself before Jews, so why did Christians go from harshly judging Jews to humbly groveling before Jews? The answer lies less in the nature of Christianity per se than in who gained control of the terms of Christian Guilt. When Christian Europe was ruled by Christian elites, most Christians were instructed to kneel before God and Jesus and atone before them. There was nothing about feeling sorry for Jews regardless of what was done to them since Christians were informed that Jews were the killers of Christ and sinful dealers of usury. Thus, the element of guilt in Christianity was directed toward God and Jesus. But after WWII, the tone of European Christianity followed in the footsteps of secular ideologies that favored Jews as objects of guilt. With Jews and leftists in control of the media, academia, and culture — and given the unspeakable nature of the Shoah — , this shift in Christian guilt would have a profound impact on Christianity itself. [In some ways, Christians sought to outdo even secular Philosemitism in atonement to prove their moral worth. The moral inferior feels compelled to prove its worth to moral superior. Inferior always seeks approval of the superior. As the superior sets the template of what is true-and-proper, the inferior plays by those rules even as they undermine the inferior’s agency & autonomy even more. The inferior, so eager for approval from the superior, is even willing to lose power for prestige. As power of religion began to fade rapidly after WWII and as Jews & secular left gained tremendous pride in the defeat of Nazism and Fascism, the Church felt the only way to keep or reclaim its good name was by winning the approval of secular powers that occupied the superior position of moral authority. This made the once pro-white Churches increasingly servile to Jews and sensitive to non-white issues. As the secular notion of ‘racism’ became the worst of all possible sins, the Church bent over backwards to dispel any lingering notions of ‘racism’ in the Church. And of late, the increasingly irrelevant churches play by the rules of homomaniacal moral ‘superiors’. How did homos become the moral mavens of the West? Jews control the Narrative & Values and vaunted homos to high holiness, and once again, the churches with moral inferiority complex seek to prove their worth by playing by the rules set by the moral ‘superiors’ of Jews and Homos, along with Negroes. Today, the American church is mostly about worshiping Holy Holocaust, Magic Negroes, and Glory Gays.] Though European Christians and American white Christians had, long before WWII, felt some degree of guilt for the wrongs done to other nations, peoples, and races, their noble attempts to redress the problems made them feel even prouder as Christians. Also, even though white Christians could be appalled by things like the slave trade and the sale of opium to the Chinese, they nevertheless believed that the white world was infinitely superior culturally, spiritually, intellectually, and morally than the non-white world. In other words, slavery and slave trade must be ended, but that didn’t mean black Africans were inherently good people. And the need to end the Opium Trade didn’t meant Chinese were saints. If anything, they were heathens needing to be saved and baptized through the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. But, with the rise of modern anthropology that romanticized indigenous native peoples of the world as Edenic & peaceful and with notion that non-white cultures were just as special and wonderful in their own way as the Western World, it became unfashionable for white people to feel that they were superior to non-whites in any way, not even culturally. Thus, if in the past, white guilt for wrongs done to non-whites had been counterbalanced by white pride of bringing progress and civilization to savage, barbarian, or feudalistic peoples around the world, in the new progressive era after WWII there was only the guilt and no pride. [Whites could feel pride only by denouncing anything white in the shrillest manner.] In an earlier era, whites could feel sorry about slavery but also take pride in having ended slavery. But in the new era, they could only feel sorry for slavery and feel no pride whatsoever. And since Jews came to dominate the media and academia in America — and since American universities and media empires influenced their counterparts all over the world — , they got to reconfigure the guilt dynamics of Christianity. Thus, if whites in the past experienced Christian guilt mainly by atoning for the killing of Jesus — Jews may have done it, but gentiles, especially the Romans, took part in it — and confessing daily transgressions[like the studio boss in HAIL CAESAR who confesses his failure to quit smoking while overlooking his more egregious ‘sins’ as businessman and fixer], the new Christian guilt was about total prostration before Jews and blacks and finally homos too. Thus, if in the past, a Christian homo would apologize to God for harboring filthy homo impulses, today we have homos as heavenly angels while those who’d opposed ‘gay marriage’ in the past are groveling before god for having once harbored evil ‘homophobia’ in their hearts. So, there is Christianity as core creed and christianities as fashionable games of power. The element of guilt is a crucial component in Christianity, but different christianities will lead their adherents to feel guilty for different things, and of course, most people are sheeple who must be told what to feel and think. Thus, their sense of guilt is directed by the forces that control the institutions. Mainline Protestant churches in America have been infiltrated by the PC agents, and their current message is that God and Jesus love Jews, Negroes, illegal aliens, and homos more than white Americans; therefore, if you want to be a good white American with the right kind of guilt, you must do everything to undermine the power and interests of your own people for the aggrandizement of the aforementioned ‘victim groups’ favored by God and Jesus. Thus, a Negro rapist and thug need feel no guilt. A homo who sticks his penis into the fecal holes of other men need feel no guilt. Jews feel no guilt in rejecting Jesus as the Son of God, in having ethnically cleansed the Palestinians, in having played a prominent role in communism, in having instigated all these Wars for Israel, in controlling gambling to rob people blind, and etc. And illegal aliens need feel no guilt for having violated the laws of other nations for material self-interest. [If indeed illegal aliens are such spiritually pure souls, why did they move to a richer nation for material improvement? Surely, they can pray to God just as easily back home. And they could be using their skills and talent to help the poorer folks back home than work for richer gringos in America.] All such peoples are deemed as innocent as lambs, and evil lurks only in the hearts of white gentiles, therefore the burden of guilt falls entirely on the straight white community. Such is the thinking of Garpian Mainline churches, the evolution of which to the current status is regarded by some as logical and inevitable, but continuing existence and health of Orthodox churches belie such claim. [Garpian mainline churches are utterly disgraceful, even more so than Gumpian Evangelical churches. If one has truly lost faith, one should just let it go. But Garpian Mainline observers want the comfort of form without content. Their church is like a seashell without the life inside. So, the hollow shell is stuffed with fakery like homomania.] If powers-that-be in another part of the world define the terms of Christian Guilt in their own way, their practice of Christianity will be fundamentally different. In Russia, the Pussy Riot’s desecration of the Holy Church was deemed shameful and guilty. In the inverted world of Jewish-controlled America, the likes of the Pussy Riot feel pride and glory than shame and guilt that is reserved for Christians who won’t bend over to homomania. In Russia, shame and guilt fall on the ‘gay pride’ community despite its protestations as moral arbiters according to the gospel of Jew-run globalism wherein homos are second only to Jews in holiness. In Russia, to be Christian means to be proud of one’s tradition and to love of one’s nation and culture; it means shame and guilt accrue upon those for whom ‘love’ is a matter of homo fecal penetration. But in America, Christianity has been redefined to mean absolute non-judgmental Tolerance for all kinds of Jewish obnoxiousness and subversion, black thuggery and criminality, feminist bitchiness and narcissism, homosexual degeneracy and debauchery, and illegal alien befoulment of the laws and codes of the nation. This Jewed-christianity preaches tolerance for degeneracy and intolerance for opposition to degeneracy. Why did American Christianity turn this way? Because American Christians come under the power of Jews and homos via the media, academia, business pressures, and government controls, they also turn into decadent nincompoops and go about adapting their faith to nincompoopery. Thus, American Christianity is now little more than a tool of political correctness and pop culture, and increasingly, the ‘faithful’ are led to believe that the main mission of Christianity is to conform to the Zeitgeist, which is currently controlled by Jews and homos whose misuse of Christianity is utterly foul and cynical. For one thing, Jews are not Christian, so why should they exert influence on Christianity? Jews would be offended if Christians told them what the True Meaning of Judaism or Jewishness is all about, so why should any Christian defer to Jews[and Homos] as to the true meaning of Christianity? Also, even though God and Jesus, according to the New Testament, are forgiving of sinners, it is incumbent on their willingness to repent for something like homosexual acts. Though Jesus softened the message with hope of forgiveness and redemption, He didn’t reverse or remove the spiritual heart of the Torah. Thus, while Jesus was not for stoning sinners[especially over minutiae of laws beyond the comprehension of many people], He still called for repentance as the path to redemption. Thus, while Christianity is open to homos as is to whores, both homos and whores would must make an effort to cleanse themselves of sin in the eyes of the Lord. Indeed, how can any lofty spiritual system possibly approve of a man sticking his penis into bungs of other men? Now that Jews and homos degraded Christianity to the level of ‘gay pride’ parades, much of American Christianity lost its luster for lust. And of course, most homos who claim to be Christians are just infiltrators and conspirators who move up the ranks, mug for sympathy, and steer the church toward celebrating homosexuality as the new holy. As for Jews, despite their devious attempt to burden Christianity with Holocaust guilt, there is no need whatsoever for white Christians to feel guilt for Nazi crimes. National Socialism was a neo-pagan movement, and it grew to prominence in reaction to communism, a Godless ideology cooked up by Jews who spread the virus throughout Russia, undermined the Russian war efforts in WWI, gained power through a putsch, and then instituted ruthless totalitarianism to destroy Russian Christianity, killing millions of Slavic Christians in the process. If some Christian groups made alliances with Fascists and National Socialists, it was in reaction to Jewish communist mass violence against Slavic Christians. Also, Jewish communists and anarchists who volunteered for the Spanish Civil War were only too happy to massacre tens of thousands of Catholic priests and nuns, and there were plenty of Jewish atheist communists in the US who conspired to funnel top secrets to the USSR. So, if Jews hadn’t destroyed Christianity in Russia and hadn’t attempted the same in Spain, the bond between the Catholic Church and neo-pagan fascist movements wouldn’t have formed. It was Jewish radicals who, through vile and vicious acts as communists and anarchists, pushed certain elements of European Christianity into the arms of fascist movements. For this reason, the history of the 20th century cannot be properly understood or appreciated without the role of Jewish communists in destroying and threatening the Christian order. Even though neo-paganism of Italian Fascism and National Socialism didn’t jibe with Christianity, European Christians gravitated toward radical right movements because communists had amply demonstrated what they had in store for Christianity. Anyway, while the element of guilt is essential theme in Christianity, the object of one’s guilt is determined by whomever that controls the power and narrative. If indeed universal guilt is what Christianity is about, how come feelings of guilt are absent among blacks despite their myriad acts of mayhem and violence? How come there is little guilt among illegal Mexican-in-America for having messed up their own country, breaking into another country, dealing in drugs, and leeching off the American system? How come there is no guilt among homo christians for the spread of AIDS epidemic? And if Jews claim to respect and know the true meaning of Christianity, how come they don’t repent for their crimes of communism and Nakba of Palestinians? Jews don’t partake of redemption-via-universal-guilt but only manipulate guilt among others to bring them to heel. Therefore, if you’re a Christian, it is imperative that you control the terms of your own Christianity than be dictated by people such as Jews, homos, blacks, illegal aliens, and white traitor Liberals who never operate in good faith.)
Ideology is secondary to the Power that gets to steer the ideology. It's like a gun has meaning only in relation to the gunman who sets the target. Thus, Christianity can be used to justify or vilify any side depending on who has power over the Church. Communism can be used to favor any personality or any nation against any other. Yugoslavian communism was anti-Soviet, and Soviet communism was anti-Titoist. 'Democracy' can be used to justify any side that wields the power. US invoked 'democracy' to invade and destroy Iraq. However, other democracies opposed US actions, but US had the power to override their opposition. Every ideology has its distinct set of values and priorities, but in the end, the Power gets to decide how those values and priorities are used, distorted, suppressed, or betrayed. Maoist ideology didn't prevent Mao from thawing relations with the US, a nation that had once been vilified as the biggest enemy of China. And of course, Jews play fast and loose with any ideology to their self-aggrandizement. So, Jews say American Democracy is anti-tribalist; therefore, whites mustn't think of white interests, but then... whites must go out of their way to favor Jewish tribal interests.
Unlike Truffaut who, as a young child, sought refuge in novels and movies, Malle grew up in a world of respectability without much in the way of want, even during the Occupation years. (The fact that Truffaut was abandoned by his Jewish dentist father was surely an advantage during the German Occupation when Jewish survival became precarious. Truffaut discovered his half-Jewish identity only later.) So, the arrival of the Jewish kid at the elite school and the fact of his higher intelligence must have, on some level, rubbed the young Malle the wrong way despite the fact of their friendship reflected in AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS. Friendships naturally develop among children, especially those of comparable talents and interests, and both Julien and Jean the Jew kid are intelligent, and, as such, stand out from the rest of the class. But like in SEPARATE PEACE, envy and resentment are also always present among friends(especially those with excess ego and pride), and an hidden side of Julien(even to himself) might have surfaced in that moment of turning his head toward Jean when the Nazis were sniffing around for Jews. It appears Malle spent his entire life asking himself why he did what he did. Was it to look at his dear friend one last time before he might be taken away? Was it a flaring of a repressed resentment toward Jean, a sly impulse to rat him out? (And why did Jean yield so quickly upon Julien’s glance? Did he turn himself to spare further trouble to teachers and classmates? Or, was it possible that the Nazis would have left the classroom if Jean had remained seated? Or, did he feel especially betrayed by Julien? Even though Julien didn’t say or do anything obvious, Jean may have inferred Julien’s heart-of-hearts. Despite their friendship & affection, a part of Julien still regarded Jean as the Jew, the outsider, the usurper, and a threat. [It’s like a white guy could come to be friends with a ‘groid’ but still be relieved to see him devoured by a crocodile or stomped by a hippo because the Negro is the Ur-Danger or Eternal-Threat to the White Man.] If indeed Jean felt thus, his surrender to the Nazis was ultimately personal. It’s one thing to be hated and hunted by Nazis or collaborationist France. But to realize that one cannot trust even the heart of a close friend, that could have been the nail in the coffin. It broke Jean’s spirit. This is all, of course, speculation, but Jean’s final action in the film is a response to Julien’s stare.) The feelings of envy and resentment among children are nothing special and hardly evil, but in this case, Jean was taken away to his death, and Julien knew of Jean’s predicament even if not the full implications. How much did Julien know of the murderous Nazi plan for Jews? He surely knew of the antisemitic policies instituted under German Occupation, but did he know about the death camps? Had the fate of Jews been comparable to the fate of Japanese-Americans ‘interned’ during WWII, perhaps Malle’s misgivings about his ‘betrayal’ wouldn’t have been so painful, but then, maybe not. Consider that what happened to the Jewish leftist community in the late 40s and early 50s(HUAC-McCarthy Era) was much milder than what had been done to the Japanese-American community during WWII. Also, even though many Jews were involved in espionage for the Soviet Union, the Jewish community as a whole was not targeted, and only a small number of Jews did time in prison. Yet, Jews hyped this into one of the great crimes of the century. Indeed, according to NPR and PBS, the so-called ‘McCarthy Era’ might as well have been the darkest period of the 20th century after the Holocaust. And Elia Kazan, for having spilled the beans on his former communist colleagues, was ceaselessly hounded by the Liberal community — though the likes of Jane Fonda and Roman Polanski were lionized and defended by the Hollywood insiders. (But now that Jews hate Russia and fear good relations between white Russians and patriotic white Americans, they are going all out to denounce Russia as the worst nation, Putin as ‘new hitler’, and Donald Trump as Putin’s puppet. At least HUAC and McCarthy had valid reasons to go after communists and fellow-travelers who’d penetrated American government and institutions. In contrast, current Jewish Hysteria about Russia is pure fantasy cooked up by Jew-run media. Rabid and virulent Jewish Supremacists will go to any length to smear and slander anyone or any nation to get their own way. Good relations between Russian gentiles and American gentiles could mean both peoples waking up to the alien character of Jewish Power. So, Jews hoodwink dumb Americans into believing that improved relation with Russia is ‘treason’ whereas slavishness to Israel & Jewish globalists is what America is really about. According to this logic, American gentiles’ attempt to get the Jew off their back — like Russia did to some extent under Putin — is betrayal whereas their ‘submissivism’ to Jews is as American as Apple Pie[that was fuc*ed by the Jew kid in AMERICAN PIE]. In the Current Year, the quintessence of Americanism is servility to Jews. There’s a kind of covenant between Jews as god and white gentiles as the Chosen Fools. At least with the Jewish Covenant, God promised the People of Israel great power and wealth if they were to remain true to God. In contrast, the covenant between Jews and whites is that whites, as Chosen Fools, will be defamed and destroyed upon doing the bidding of the Jews to the letter. Jews feel nothing but contempt for such dumb people. To be sure, the white elites aren’t so dumb since they are handsomely rewarded for their treacherous service to Jews. The real dummies are white middle class and working class who wave the American Flag and pledge to kill Muslims to serve their Zionist masters.) It’s likely that Jews focused so much attention on the ‘martyrdom’ of the Hollywood Ten to divert people's attention from the fact of extensive Jewish involvement in Soviet espionage and subversion of culture. By directing our attention at ‘sainthood’ of the Hollywood Ten — also, E.L. Doctorow wrote a novel on children of the Rosenbergs, and Tony Kushner anointed Ethel Rosenberg as a saintly figure — , we lose sight of the truly important fact that Julius Rosenberg, Morton Sobell, and other Jews did spy for the Soviets and unconscionably gave away America’s most carefully guarded secret — the blueprint for the atomic bomb — to the bloody regime of Stalin that had been responsible for the deaths of millions of Christian Slavs, totalitarian occupation of Eastern Europe, and arming of Chinese communists poised to conquer all of China. It’s rather odd. During the height of the Cold War when communism was spreading tyranny around the world, a significant number of American Jews used their access in government, business, and culture to aid a powerful enemy that had its claws deep into Eastern Europe from which so many Americans had emigrated in the late 19th century and early 20th century, but almost no one remembers or cares, whereas just about every cinephile dummy repeats the mantra about the poor saintly members of the Hollywood Ten who were ‘victimized’ by HUAC and McCarthy. While it’s true that HUAC and McCarthy did overreach and resorted to a cheap and even dangerous form of demagoguery — though far milder than the paranoia during WWII that led to ludicrous panics about German submarines surrounding American shorelines & Japanese bombers attacking Iowa and the collective imprisonment of over 100,000 Japanese-Americans, most of whom were a lot more loyal to America than leftist Jews ever were — , the fact is the US government had indeed become infiltrated by communists, fellow-travelers, and double-dealing radical Zionists(who played US and USSR both to bring about the creation of Israel on what was then Palestine; indeed, it’s instructive that Jews who denied the right of Palestine to exist bitch ceaselessly about Palestinians’ refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist; imagine Germans occupying Poland, reducing Poles to second-class citizens, declaring Poland as New Germany, and then bitching that Poles won’t recognize the right of New Germany to exist). And even though these Jews didn’t care one iota about Poles, Hungarians, Czechoslovakians, and others who’d fallen under the Iron Curtain, they pressured the US government to do everything possible to support the creation of Israel so that Jews could ethnically cleanse Palestinians and grab most of the territory for themselves. Jews bitched that Arabs attacked first when Palestine was divided in half, but surely Jews knew that Arabs had no choice but to fight back since the so-called Partition meant the end of Palestine. (How would Israeli Jews react if some foreign power let in 5 million Chinese into Israel and then declared Partition whereupon half the land would go to Chinese? Jews would surely rise up and fight.) Jews provoked the Arabs, Arabs rose up to unify Palestine, and Jews struck back(with the support of US and USSR) and drove Arabs out of nearly all of Palestine.
The manufactured brouhaha about the Hollywood Ten, a bunch of communists committed to anti-American subversion. Though defenders always framed the controversy as a civil liberties issue, they were completely mum about the violation of civil liberties of German-Americans and Japanese-in-America during WWII. And these leftists and liberals, many of whom were Jewish, used all their power to blacklist people and destroy careers based on politics, ideology, and tribal interests throughout Hollywood history. Just think. How long would anyone have lasted in Hollywood if he or she wanted to make a movie about Nakba? And just look at how Jews in media, academia, and deep state collude to cook up the most rabid hysteria about Russia and Trump to perpetuate Jewish supremacism.
The vile left-wing Jew Morton Sobell who lied and professed innocence all his life... only to finally admit near the end of his life that, yup, he'd conspired with the Rosenbergs to send US secrets to mass killer Stalin. Trust Jews at your own risk.
That is how Jews play the game. Deviously. Anyway, my hunch is that whenever Jews bitch and bleat about the holy schmoly Hollywood Ten, it is to divert our attention from the fact of Jewish espionage, Jewish subversion, and Jewish dirty deeds in the various organizations and institutions of America. So, even though the Jewish community produced an excess of radicals who compromised America’s well-being and security — as well as those of Eastern Europeans — , Jewish historiography and Narrative Monopoly would have us believe that Jews, even as commie lowlifes, were saintly victims of evil ‘paranoid’ McCarthy and HUAC crackpots. The Jewish media also sought to discredit members of HUAC for their political corruption, but if we want to play that game, there’s surely no lack of Liberal and Jewish figures tainted by political and financial scandals, indeed far more egregious than anything committed by those in HUAC.
There is a discernible pattern to the Narrative of Jewish victimology. No matter what happened, Jews spin it so that their ilk are the hapless and innocent victims, the poor little lambs set upon by wolves. Jews had been deeply involved in Soviet communism and its mass killings, yet most of Jewish historiography overlooks all that and focuses mainly on Jewish victimization at the hands of Stalin who turned against Jews when Israel ‘betrayed’ him. So, in both the USSR and the US, Jews were never perpetrators or villains; they were ONLY victims. So, never mind what Jewish spies and radicals did in the US; just remember that some Jewish Hollywood Ten guys were saints because they took the fifth and did a few years in prison. So, never mind that Jews played a key role in the communist putsch in Russia and ran the Gulag system. Just remember that Stalin killed some Jewish leaders and later turned against Zionist-Jews. Never mind that Jewish Oligarchs during the 1990s looted and bled Russia dry and ran off with the loot to UK and fancy cities in Europe and Israel. Just remember that Putin is an evil guy and ‘anti-Semite’ because he went after some Jewish oligarchs and because he won’t cave into the demands of the international homo cabal which is really a proxy for the international Zionist Jewish supremacist agenda.
Malle grew up with pride and privilege in a wealthy family with a sense of national glory, but at the mere age of eight, France lost a most humiliating defeat to the Germans. France’s miserable performance in the second war with the Germans in the 20th century cast doubt on its ‘victory’ in the first war, in which France just barely eked out a win with massive participation of the British and, in the final years, the Americans, and of course, half of German military had to fight the Russians. Indeed, it’s interesting that the French-German battles in WWI were mostly fought on French soil, and despite Germany’s defeat, her territory was barely touched by the victorious allies. Anyway, when France squared off against Germany virtually alone in 1940, the result was as devastating as Joe Louis’ 1st round knockout of Max Schmeling in their second bout. It was all the more humiliating because, despite France’s declaration of war, it had taken no offensive action and merely dug in as if its only hope was to fight defensively. French had made a grandiose gesture in declaring war to liberate Poland but, when push came to shove, just hunkered down to weather the German offensive. Later, such caution or ‘cowardice’ proved useful in portraying France as the victim of Germany as the aggressor-nation. France could play victim because it had taken no offensive actions against Germany despite having declared war. Had France declared war AND attacked Germany first, German actions against France would have seemed more justified. But because France declared war but did nothing but dig in, the popular narrative has been "Germany invaded Poland and then, for no reason, invaded France", when, more likely, Hitler wouldn’t have moved westward if France and UK hadn’t declared war on Germany. Although Hitler had vengeful feelings toward the French over the ‘injustice’ of the Versailles Treaty and prepared Germany for a possible war with France, a Franco-German war was not a priority in his grand strategy, which was to win over UK as a global ally and to find some way to prevail over the USSR. Thus, the outcome of the war in 1940 made clear the comical the discrepancy between French pride and French prowess. France was like Jim Jeffries against Jack-Johnson-as-Germany. Despite all the hype as the Great Hope of Freedom, it was KO-ed by the ‘crazy nigger’ of Europe: Hitler’s war machine. It was like Ride of the Valkyries, with Germanic warrioresses tearing Joan of Arc to shreds. Perhaps, an honest assessment of defeat would have led to meaningful self-reckoning. But the Vichy Regime maintained the facade of independence while the exiled Resistance postured emptily(like a prince-turned-hobo whose only reminder of former glory is the suit over his shoulders), utterly dependent on the power of UK, US, and USSR. The Vichy regime cut a deal with the Germans whereby both sides feigned amity and mutual respect; Germans would pretend to respect the French as long as French dutifully served as lapdogs(just like fallen Anglo-Americans cut a deal with the new Jewish elite whereby the former could go on pretending to be co-elites as long as they bend over to every one of Jewish demand, such as ‘open borders’ & amnesty for illegals, Wall Street bailout, attack on Mother Russia, bombing the Muslim world, praise of interracism, promotion of homo propaganda, and etc). So, even though France was crushed and reduced to playing whore and running dog, the official facade allowed Germany and France to maintain the pretense that France hadn’t so much been defeated & invaded as liberated from Jewish socialists. (To be sure, the collaborationist narrative wasn’t entirely bunk. Prior to the war, many Frenchmen on the Right and Center felt their nation had been stolen from them by ultra-cosmopolitan internationalists and Jews. They were filled with so much anger that they genuinely preferred the Germans as less harmful to France. Despite the shame of French defeat and German Occupation, the alternative — evisceration, emasculation, and immiseration of France at the hands of proto-globalist Jewish bankers and soulless decadents — seemed far worse. In this light, the Collaboration was far more complex than the official postwar narrative would have us believe. Likewise, some Manchurians sided with Japanese Colonists because they feared Chinese nationalist hostility as the greater threat to Manchurian integrity. And Sukarno also collaborated with the Japanese because his priority was liberating Indonesia from the Dutch. And American Revolutionaries collaborated with French Imperialism to defeat British Imperialism. By some twisted miracle, American Revolution managed to kill two birds with one stone. British were defeated in America, and then, the financial duress from the war finished off the French monarchy as well. An independent American Republic was possible only through the clash of empires.) Furthermore, the defeat of France was sweetened by the Nazi narrative that the French military had been weakened and demoralized by Africanization and Jewish cosmo-socialist influence. Thus, Marshal Petain, the grand hero of the motherland in WWI, found the arrangement palatable as the head of the Vichy government. Besides, the German terms weren’t as harsh as what France and UK had forced upon Germany in the aftermath of WWI. While France and UK utterly demolished the German economy, Hitler had no such agenda for France as his real contempt was reserved for Slavic populations. Though Hitler thought the French weren’t ‘racially’ as good as the Germanic ‘Aryan’ stock, he had profound respect for them as a people and civilization. Even the Jewish Policy was largely left to the French themselves, and it was the French who rounded up most of the Jews, sometimes using a ‘racial’ criterion of Jewishness that exceeded Nazi guidelines. French antipathy toward Jews wasn’t a phenomenon only on the Right. While some Frenchmen eagerly welcomed the Germans as counterweight and destroyer of Jewish power in France — similarly, some white Americans probably wouldn’t mind if Russia invaded America and liberated white America from hideous Jewish elites and their homo allies who’ve gained tyrannical grip over the nation — , many Frenchmen across the political spectrum were deeply ashamed of French defeat and subconsciously sought scapegoats to fix the blame on. Just as the German military on the eve of the defeat in WWI cooked up the myth of having been ‘stabbed in the back’, lots of Frenchmen were eager to blame someone for France’s ignoble defeat, and Jews made a handy excuse. Therefore, even though the most enthusiastic participants who rounded up Jews for the Germans were Frenchmen on the Right, many non-rightist Frenchmen felt little sympathy for the Jews because maybe, just maybe, the shocking French defeat was the result of undue influence of Jews upon French culture and politics. A key moral question is, how much did the French who rounded up Jews know about the Nazi deathcamps? (It’s like the British who turned over Ukrainian prisoners back to the Soviets knew the men would face certain death but did so anyway to maintain good relations with the USSR.) How many Frenchmen knew there was a good chance that the Jews would face death? If they didn’t know, their rounding up of Jews wouldn’t have been any worse than American people’s support, tacit or active, of the governments ‘internment’ of the Japanese-American population during WWII. Suppose Germans didn’t kill the Jews but the American government killed the Japanese-Americans. Then, in retrospect, the Americans might seem worse than the French. (Indeed, some historians argue that the Truman’s government willfully derailed peace talks with Japan to test the nuclear bombs on that country.) While some Frenchmen surely knew about the death camps, many could not have known, and their participation in the roundup was hardly different from American support of rounding up Japanese-Americans. (To be sure, there were plenty of Frenchmen who heard rumors of the horrors but refused to believe them for whatever reasons ranging from sincere skepticism to willful denial.) Also, French behavior was hardly extraordinary given the heated passions during the war and under Occupation. How many Jews in Israel opposed the building of massive walls to keep Palestinians in ghettos? How many protested against Israel’s use of extreme force on Gaza, killing thousands of women and children in retaliation for one or two dead Israelis from Palestinian mini-rockets? When a prominent Nazi was assassinated, Germans had a policy of rounding people up randomly for execution, and Zionists do much the same in Israel. If Palestinian rockets kill a few Jews, Jews retaliate by killing thousands of Palestinians. When two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah forces in 2006, Israel bombed the entire nation to smithereens, and Americans fully backed Israeli aggression. Neocon stooge Bush II always made brazen excuses for Israel. And think back to the days of communism when many Jews in Russia enthusiastically participated in the imprisonment and/or killing of millions of Ukrainians. Perhaps, we could argue that many Jewish communists didn’t know the full extent of the horrors awaiting the Slavs in the Gulag forced-labor camps, some of which were virtually death camps due to horrible conditions. Maybe some Jews knew and acted out of revenge against the ‘antisemitic’ Christian Slavs. Maybe some Jews really didn’t know the full extent of the horrors or believed that means justified the glorious ends of communism.
At any rate, same kind of moral logic applies to the French. Under great duress, people turn on their neighbors and lash out in frustration/desperation, especially if their neighbors are seen as ‘alien’. Consider the horrible sectarian violence in Iraq or India following severe political crisis. It’s like desperate rats struggling for survival will turn on each other. If people of same blood can turn brother-against-brother in times of crisis, it’s usually far worse among peoples of different blood. After WWII, plenty of people of Eastern Europe(driven to desperation and dementia by war and want) were more than willing to set upon German families — even those with roots in the land going back centuries — for pogroms, expulsion, or even extermination. And there are plenty of Jews in Israel who, if given a chance, would love to uproot all Muslims and Arabs in Israel and drive them to Jordan. French social psychology was no different in WWII. What made it especially tragic is that many of the Jews were destined for slaughter. That said, many Ukrainians rounded up and shipped to the Gulag also died in miserable conditions, but I don’t see Jews expressing contrition for their involvement in communism.
Shoah Desecrationists who deny the tragic are cranks or lunatics, but we should not blame all Europeans who took part in the roundup of Jews for Holocaust Guilt because many really didn’t know the full extent of Nazi horrors. Also, we must try to understand general ‘antisemitism’ within the context of Jewish attitudes, agendas, and abuses. Recent survey of what Jews have done to US and EU — and the Middle East racked by Wars for Israel concocted by Zionist Neocons — should heighten our awareness of the foulness of Jewish power and influence. Though the current rottenness of Jews doesn’t mean Jews were likewise in the past(just like German and Japanese foulness during WWII doesn’t mean they were similarly foul before or after the event), there is a discernible historical pattern of disproportionate Jewish influence(for good or ill), and since the end of WWII this influence has not only destroyed the Palestinian people but emasculated Western Europe men, homo-fied the United States — where masses of straight people now worship 1.5% of the population whose idea of ‘sex’ is fecal penetration — , and undermined the national sovereignty, cultural pride, and moral values of all gentile nations. Jewish power became especially noxious following the end of the Cold War because it came to control the US, the lone superpower. Jews couldn’t resist the temptation of using American power to further the aims of Jewish megalomania all over the world. If Jewish influence had positive and genuinely progressive value in the past because Jews, as upstarts, critics, and dissenters, provoked the status quo and challenged the powers-that-be with fresh insights and impassioned demands for new freedoms, Jewish globalist elites with their immense power now try to IMPOSE their will and agenda from above on all of humanity. It’s not about will & grace but will-to-power to disgrace anyone who’s deemed at odds with the Jewish agenda.
Anyway, the experience of the Occupation left an indelible mark on Louis Malle, and it was something he ruminated on for the rest of his life. A part of Malle always remained something of a dandy, a bon vivant, and he was accused of making rather shallow fashion-magazine style of movies(and without the ideological passion of Bernado Bertolucci whose cartoonish Marxism supposedly redeemed his celebration of perfumed aesthetics). His real breakthrough THE LOVERS, despite the eyebrows it raised, seemed fanciful compared to the energetic new films made by core French New Wave directors. (Malle could have gone the way of Claude Lelouch.) Some of Malle’s films have indeed been slight and vapid. But with background in French intellectual tradition, Malle at his best could be formidable, especially with MURMUR OF THE HEART, one of the best coming-of-age films, and ATLANTIC CITY, maybe his best feature film. And his epic PHANTOM INDIA is one of the best documentaries ever made, possibly the best Western film about India, one that probes and ponders so many facts and facets of that confounding civilization where treasure and trash sit side by side. The narration throughout the film is ideologically left-leaning, typical of the era, but Malle’s observations(ranging from speculative to sociological) of India’s people, culture, richness, and troubles are filled with poetics, nuance, and insight. Whether sound or unsound on the factual level, Malle’s thought processes are amazingly adroit and nimble through the tangled mess that is India(even if the final product of his ruminations may be unconvincing). It’s like deftly skipping stones across a cesspool, and one wonders if he would have made a better critic or writer than a film-maker. (To be sure, elevation of elegance in French Thought has often led to accusations of favoring surface over depth, impression over substance. In other words, French wax poetic about reflections on the waves than wade into the water.) As a director, Malle shared a tendency with Bernado Bertolucci, another European born to privilege and posturing with politics — albeit with more one-sided commitment. At their worst, both film-makers had a knack for cheapening sensations into sensationalism, sometimes degrading their material into fashionable eye-candy or arty soft-core porn.
PHANTOM INDIA, one of Louis Malle's greatest works.
Because Malle had to shoot PHANTOM INDIA off-the-cuff in strange locations and meet with unfamiliar personalities, often with unpredictable results, he had no choice but to adapt and improvise, to think outside the box of preconceptions and projections. Even as he observed and processed everything through his Franco-Western ideas, there was a growing awareness, both discomfiting and illuminating, of a cultural and historical reality far beyond any Western assumption, critique, or vision. Just as Alexander the Great couldn’t make heads or tails out of ‘India’, Malle’s film is a testament to how every Western idea about India, from the most damningly critical to the most exotically idealized, can’t hope to get to the heart of a civilization that Indians themselves are lost within as a broken maze. (Unlike Michelangelo Antonioni who projected his troubled vision of modernity onto the Amerika in ZABRISKIE POINT, Malle used cinematic devices as modest archaeological tools to unearth clumps of insight, the possible clues to the essence and secrets to Indian history and society. Being a French artist-intellectual, he couldn’t resist theorizing with scanty evidence, but the impossibility of complete control over the project resulted in a healthy kind of dialectic that became increasingly rare among ‘auteur’ directors who, as the ‘authors’ of their films, had a tendency to ‘totalize’ their works by excluding anything that didn’t conform to the vision. Granted, works of fiction are inherently more personal and self-enclosed as they flow from the imagination of artists, whereas film documentaries and non-fiction books must come to terms with facts and reality. Even so, fiction can be an alternative way of approaching truth via empathy and speculation, and non-fiction works can be used to further personal grudges or political agendas without regard for truth and integrity. Even though the French New Wave got started by breaking out of the studio and hitting the streets, it wasn’t long before many ‘auteurs’ withdrew to their cribs of self-indulgence or solipsism. New Wave went from studio to the street to the closet, and despite the ritualized confirmation of loyalty from the usual acolytes, it grew utterly irrelevant as years passed.) Because of Malle’s pampered partiality toward indulging his whimsies, there was always the danger of getting carried away(like a child in a toy store), especially with misses like DAMAGE, ZAZIE DANS LE METRO, and BLACK MOON.
Perhaps, this accounts for why Malle had such a troubled tangle of emotions about the Jew kid in his youth. Malle-as-child led a carefully scripted and planned life. He was the son of a wealthy family, he was the smartest kid in the school, he was a citizen of the great and proud French nation. But then a Jew kid came along, and the script began to unravel. The Jew kid was smarter than Malle. And through the Jew kid’s predicament, it dawned on Malle-as-child that France, despite its pretensions, is a defeated & occupied nation taking orders from Germany. A proud whore is still a whore. And despite all the rhetoric about French pride and glory, too many Frenchmen just caved to German demands. Like most people under foreign occupation, most French people collaborated or kept their heads down. The shame wasn’t so much that the French were worse than other peoples but no better. After all, the French had been telling the world and themselves that they are special and different, overflowing in ideals and integrity in short supply among the non-French. Indeed, even French Jews were spoiled by French self-inflation. In one scene in AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS, a Franco-Jewish customer sits in a fancy restaurant and, when asked to leave by the owner, insists he has special privileges to dine there, leading to mounting tension. Ironically, it’s a German soldier sitting nearby who, out of irritation than sympathy, tells the owner to let the Jew stay. (The moment is doubly humiliating to the French owner who is doing the bidding of Germans but is then admonished for doing so by none other than German soldiers.
At least by humiliating the Jew with special vehemence, the French toady could make believe that he has agency and power against the Jew. He could pretend that his anti-Jewish actions are sincerely personal than orders from above. But then, the Germans command him to leave the Jew alone, and he realizes he has no choice but to sheepishly comply. Even a random German soldier has more power than him in Occupied France. It’s like a dog barking loudly like a top dog at another animal. But when the master commands it to hush and be nice to the animal, the dog has no choice but to comply. Its agency as an angry dog was just a delusion. Its ‘friends’ and ‘foes’ are decided by the master.) Jews are being persecuted in France, yet the rich French Jew is fixated on his own privileges that place him above other Jews, the ordinary ones. Most likely, if German policy had only targeted foreign Jews in France, many French Jews would have collaborated because many Western European Jews felt disdain for relatively newly arrived ‘dirty’ Eastern European Jews, just like affluent or over-educated Liberal whites in places like NY feel disdain and disgust toward ‘backward’ and ‘less evolved’ whites of the South and rural regions of the Midwest, who are sometimes referred to as 'white trash'. Such attitudes also exist among former West-Germany Germans toward former East-Germany Germans. And Hong Kong-ese and Taiwanese look down on ‘backward’ Mainland Chinese, and plenty of upper caste Asian Indians who speak English look down on the poorer elements in India. (To be sure, it’s more understandable among Hindu dotkins because India is a diverse nation with ancient roots of caste-apartheid. Rich Indians disdaining poor Indians is a case of one racial group looking down on another. The case of Mexican racial politics is more perverse. Like India, Mexico was created by a lighter-skinned race conquering and ruling over a darker-skinned people. But if Indians reinforced an explicitly racial system of hierarchy, the Latin elites of the Americas were of Christo-egalitarian tradition and later influenced by Liberalism and Marxism. So, even though ‘Latin America’ had developed as a racially hierarchical social order like traditional India, the official dogma was that peoples in nations like Mexico and Venezuela are equal as ‘brown people’. In truth, the white elites of ‘Latin American’ nations despise the indigenous folks but dare not air their views. For one thing, they are outnumbered by the mestizos and Meso-Americans who hold the moral ace since White Guilt is part of global PC. Secondly, even though Latin whites are essentially white and European, they are somewhat darker than Northern Europeans, a fact that has inflamed their sense of resentment and inferiority complex in Europe and the Americas. [Many Greeks and Southern Italians are genetically closer to Turks and Arabs than to Northern Europeans.] So, even as Latin Whites despise Indios and Mesos, they pretend to be one with the ‘browns’ and redirect their contempt[for non-whites] toward ‘gringo’ whites, the whiter whites. This way, Latin Whites figure on killing two birds with one stone. By making ‘gringos’ out to be the enemy, Latin Whites encourage their impoverished brown masses to migrate to America in the spirit of ‘reconquista’ to alleviate socio-economic problems at home. Also, by delighting in the demise of Blanco Gringo America, the less-white Latin whites find satisfaction in the destruction of the object of their envy. It’s like Jewish women want to see white women have babies with black men because they resent ‘Aryan’ beauty. Jewish women see white beauty as a False Idol to desecrate and destroy, and what better way than by turning white wombs into baby factories for kids with frizzy hair, fat lips, and broad noses? Though Hindu elites and Latin elites have different histories, the Latin Perversity has now spread to many Hindus, especially in the West. Even though lighter-skinned Hindu elites have long despised darker-skinned Dravidian Indians — and still do in daily life — , they find themselves to be dark-skinned vis-a-vis the whites. They’ve been treating dark-skinned Dravidians as ‘niggers’, but the white Anglos saw all Hindus, even the Brahmin elites, as ‘niggers’. So, the Hindu ‘honkies’ suddenly found themselves to be ‘niggers’ in the eyes of whites. They still despised the Dravidian ‘niggers’ but resented being despised as ‘niggers’ by the British. Today, they want to keep down the darker-skinned Dravidians as ‘niggers’ but don’t want to be treated as ‘niggers’ by whites. On the one hand, they want to move to white nations and rub shoulders with white people. They don’t want to mingle with dark-skinned Indians who still poop outdoors and live in trash dumps like in SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. But because of the history of Anglos having called all Hindus ‘wogs’, the Hindu elites make noise about their alliance with Diversity against whites. But they’d rather be with white than with ‘wogs’.)
There’s no guarantee that a people will be sympathetic toward their own kind. Many German-Americans were disgusted with Nazi Germany and more than willing to fight their ethnic brethren across the Atlantic. (Disdain for one’s own kind could arise from conscience, a rejection of the blinding tribalism of ‘my country right or wrong’. It could also arise from assimilation with another dominant population, e.g. Italian-Americans primarily identifying themselves as ‘Americans’ than as ‘Italians’. It could also result from a sense of inferiority, whereby seeking approval of and acceptance by the superior Other is regarded as a sign of status improvement.) Thus, the snobbery of the Western European Jews toward Eastern European Jews was hardly exceptional as an example of intra-tribal hostility, except for the fact that WWII became a matter of life and death for ALL Jews, and so, the snubbing of ‘less evolved’ Eastern European Jews by Western European Jews proved to be a futile act of betrayal. No matter how much Western European Jews sought to assert their distinction from the ‘dirty Jews’ from the East, they were all Jews in the eyes of Nazis for whom every Jew was the Eternal Jew beneath the facade of various levels of assimilation.
To an extent, the attitude of some Western European Jews toward Eastern European Jews — who were seen as hairy, smelly, vulgar, uncouth, obnoxious, and backward — reflected their desire of assimilation. (After all, if Jews must assimilate, why not into a superior culture like France than some ‘drab’ culture in Eastern Europe? After all, weren’t Western European Jews superior to Eastern European Jews precisely because Western European culture & society were more advanced their Eastern European counterparts? While Jews have always fretted about loss of identity, if lose it they must, why not trade Jewishness for a glorious culture/identity like that of the French, British, or German? Why give up Jewishness to become one with a bear-wrestling Russian or a ‘Dumb Polack’ who has to summon the entire village to change a light-bulb? Indeed, it’s instructive that Jewish assimilation in Russia happened only under communism, an equalizing ideology of enforced mediocrity as a moral mandate. In contrast, assimilation for Jews in Western Europe meant reaching the upper echelons of society and partaking of the best that the most advanced civilization had to offer. All over the world, people are generally less resistant to assimilating with what is deemed superior. Many are indeed more eager to assimilate with the ‘superior’ people & culture than protect and preserve their own. So, Chinese in Southeast Asia don’t want to give up their Chinese-ness to become a lowly ‘Indonesian’, ‘Malaysian’, or ‘Cambodian’, but Chinese in the West will gladly give up their Chinese-ness to become ‘British’, ‘American’, ‘Canadian’, or ‘Jewish’. Chinese women don’t want to have ‘inferior’ children for Laotian or Nepalese men, but they will gladly have kids for Jewish men and raise them as Jews because Jewishness comes with great prestige. Blacks are something of an outlier. As Africans, they’ve achieved little in terms of science, technology, and economics. They are among the biggest losers in the world. But as ‘groids’ in the West, they’ve become dominant in sports, pop music, gangsta style, and sex culture. The idolatry of black ‘cool’ had even the daughter of John Boehner marrying a dread-locked ‘groid’. And white women worship Oprah as electronic-earth-mother, and even the British royal family wants to marry with Negroes and Negresses. Brits feel chilly & cold with their uptight buttoned-up Anglo-ness and find warmth in the vibrancy of Afro-fizzy-ness, like Wasp George Lucas did with his sappy head lodged between the chocolate-flavored boobs of his Negress-wife .) Napoleon said, "Everything for Jews as Frenchmen, nothing for Jews as Jews." In other words, if Jews want equality under the law, their main loyalty had to be for the Republic(though it began to look more like an empire). Thus, French Jews whose main loyalty was to France than to foreign Jewry didn’t regard themselves as ‘bad Jews’ but as ‘good Frenchmen’. If a good Frenchman must choose France over all else, he must do what is good for France even at the expense of foreign Jews. (Granted, this led to layers of snobbery among certain assimilated French Jews. Jewishness itself is inherently arrogant and chauvinistic, founded on conviction of special Covenant between God and Jews. So, when Jew adopted Frenchness, they could become doubly arrogant as fancy French culture provided yet another layer of arrogance. Because of the French Revolution that waged war on all spiritual underpinnings, the French demand on Jews seemed ‘fairer’ than ones made on Jews in neighboring states. The Revolution, in attacking all religions, didn’t discriminate between Christians and Jews, the model for what would happen later in the Soviet/Russian Revolution. Outside France, in contrast, Christians were clearly favored over Jews. In France, Jews didn’t have to become ‘goyim’ by conversion to Christianity to assimilate. Rather, they just had to become ‘Frenchmen’ without any particular religious affiliation. The great irony of French Civilization derives from its universalization of arrogance. Its openness was both chauvinistic and brotherly. It was offered as a gift to all mankind on the premise that French culture is better than all others. It was imperialism and liberation at the same time. Those who came under French influence took on Princely attitudes in the name of the People. In contrast, the traditional Chinese were no less arrogant and chauvinistic, but they just wanted to keep their superior culture to themselves. Barbarians were not good enough to partake of it, and even if they did, the Chinese were indifferent. In contrast, the France developed a notion that French grandeur can fulfill its destiny only with the spread of French Culture all over the world.) And if the French Law said foreign Jews must go, then it was incumbent upon good French Jew to work with French gentiles to comply with the law. (Such principle of higher loyalty became meaningless during WWII when it became futile for Jews to demonstrate their goodness. No matter how much French Jews cooperated with the Vichy regime as proof of their patriotism, they were seen as Jews who didn’t belong in Europe.) Of course, in France as in Germany, the harshness of the laws wasn’t manifest all at once. The Nazis cleverly understood that if they tried to ram it all down at once, it could lead to outrage and resistance. Therefore, they moved in stages, thus making people feel that the worst was over and that things would slowly return to normal if they obeyed the system. Lenin and Mao pulled the same trick in their respective nations, pushing for communization in gradual stages, thus making most people feel that the worst excesses of radicalism were behind them. Likewise, the German-ruled France initially targeted foreign Jews, and French Jews thought things would improve once the foreign elements were removed. But then, it gradually dawned on French Jews that they were next. They realized that there is no end to pathological radicalism. Once the ball gets rolling, it accelerates and demolishes everything in its path until it runs out of energy or is met with countervailing force.
Similarly, white Americans think if they just go along with the Jewish globalist agenda, cooler heads will prevail and things will settle down & return to normal. Such misleading impression is sustained with the gradualist see-saw policy of white displacement that is calibrated to gain full momentum only when white resistance is hopeless EVEN IF whites were to finally wake up and unite in action. It’s like a passenger can be fooled that the car is going northward than westward by swerving the car back-and-forth from northwest and northeast. But if the car alternately goes two miles westward and one mile eastward, the final result of all that mileage will be someplace far out west. If Jews had implemented a full-blown radical policy in the past, whites would have risen up and confronted the Jews. So, devious Jews use the ebb-and-flow method. They pushed hard but then relaxed, as if to create the impression that the worst was over. But they were just prepping for the next push that is even harder. In this way, the US went from a sane normal nation to one where idiots worship Homomania as the new christianity. As a result, the US went from a solid white majority nation to one where whites live under Jewish tyranny in Diversity-Dystopia. America went from having a president like Ronald Reagan to a scummy son of a mudshark who did the bidding of the Jewish and homo elites. Just as Jewish hopes for Nazi mercy were foolhardy, white American prayers of mutual respect & understanding with Jews are pure fantasy. It is the radical and contemptuous nature of the Jew, cultural and genetic, to push the knife deeper, twist it, and add salt to injury. Just ask the Palestinians if Jewish aggression can ever be appeased or satiated? It’s like believing Harvey Weinstein will stop abusing women of his own accord. The fate of Palestinians is the template for the future of the white race in the Jewish Globalist-Supremacist order.
Anyway, Malle-the-child, who was born into privilege and complacency(even if a competitive complacency in which he had to make the grades and pass the exams), found himself in a kind of a bind: A world, at once, too-good-to-be-true and too-horrible-to-contemplate. Like the young Siddhartha, Malle-the-child was sheltered from troubles of the world. Though pushed to succeed in school, as long as he made the grades(not difficult since he was born with natural smarts) and found his place in the system, a nice future was in store for him alongside others like him. When Siddhartha stepped out of the comfort zone and bore witness to disease, decay, and death, he underwent a spiritual crisis. Something similar dogged Malle for the rest of his life. On the one hand, Malle never lost the bourgeois sensibility of elegance and taste for pretty things — and as a French man, for sensual things — , but another side of him couldn’t help but feel that this personal paradise hid a dark secret. (And perhaps, he didn’t deserve his successes because historical circumstances favored him over Jews with superior smarts and talent. It’s like Liberal white men like Tom Brokaw loved fame and wealth but were nagged by the sense that their success had been premised on the ‘racism’ and ‘sexism’ of a society that favored their kind over others. It’s the QUIZ SHOW[Robert Redford movie] mentality that Wasps enjoyed favoritism and privilege they really didn’t deserve. In a way, they were correct because past American society did favor 'white males' like Tom Brokaw over others. But then, white people like Brokaw founded, settled, and built this country, so why shouldn’t they have favored their own kind over Jews and ‘groids’? Jews certainly favor their own kind in Israel, and blacks in South Africa rig the system to favor less qualified blacks over whites and Asians.) A similar sense pervades throughout BLACK MOON, an interesting if confused combination of decadent opulence and grim violence. As for PHANTOM INDIA, perhaps in a subconscious way, Malle felt compelled to visit and make a documentary about India because its history, culture, and society embodied such divergences between dream and reality. Especially in the 1960s, there was much romanticism about India as a timeless oasis of spirituality(as opposed to the fast-paced materialism of the West), peace & harmony(especially between man and nature), selflessness & abandonment of ego, and etc. If some movements in the 60s looked to Mao’s China for revolution, others looked to India for revelation. But the real India didn’t resemble the pipe-dreams of Hippies, proto-New-Agers, and utopians. The real India was dirty, grimy, sickly, corrupt, demented, cynical, brutal, petty, greedy, nasty, wicked, hideous, vile, stinky, laughable, ridiculous, ludicrous, cruel, uncaring, repressive, oppressive, pitiless, and gave you the runs if you drank the water. A dotkin’s world could be as filthy as a fruitkin’s bung.
In the West, ‘dirty money’ means greed and corruption are bad. In India, it means the money is literally soiled and stinky and filthy, like it was pulled out of a sewer or used as toilet tissue by the kid in SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. Though Ganges is supposed to be the Sacred River of India, it is really a giant toilet bowl. And yet, there’s no denying that India has been one of the absolutely great civilizations, and one of the great sources of imagination and spirituality, perhaps the most profound in the world. Also, India has exerted tremendous influence in arts, dance, and music on its neighbors. Though China and Japan has commanded more attention in the West in the 20th century, India has historically influenced China and Japan more than vice versa. Buddhism’s impact on Northeast Asia cannot be overestimated, whereas India remained impervious to East Asian philosophies and ideologies. Possibly Lao Tzu, as an individual or collection of individuals, might have cribbed ideas from Indian Thought as well. So, India is a great civilization that produced some of the most interesting arts, cultures, philosophies, and religions. But like so many dirty, corrupt, and poor Third World nations, it’s also been a stinkpot throughout the 20th century, made worse by the fact that the Indian Saris aren’t ideal in heat or pleasant to the eyes. Hot regions are sweaty, and so it’s best to wear something simple in design and pattern. Saris have to be held as well as worn, and their bright colors only accentuate the sweat. Arab women have the better hot weather outfit, as long as the color isn’t black as black absorbs excess heat. Indians sure can be stupid sometimes, coming up with dumb ideas like smudging dots on their foreheads and piercing their noses, an especially hideous sight to behold. Earrings look good, nose-rings look retarded, but the fact that this aesthetic crime has spread among white folks — some of whom even pierce their tongues(but then, this is a society that now thinks homo fecal penetration is real sex) — makes you wonder about mass culture in the 21st century. When I was young, nose-piercing was something that the Other, the weird Hindus featured in National Geographic magazines, did. The idea of any white woman piercing her nose would have been ridiculed as ugly, and rightfully so. Even Negroes would have scoffed at the idea of piercing their noses. But when standards and meanings collapse under the weight of degenerate Pop Culture and demented Political Correctness, anything is possible. Just as junk is promoted as ‘art’, ugliness is marketed as beauty.
Anyway, Malle became noted as a documentary film-maker as well as a feature film director; indeed, documentaries comprised one-third of his output. A film-maker doing substantial work in both fiction and non-fiction isn’t rare though not common. Though our general impression is of directors as being full-time documentary makers(Barbara Koppel, Maysles Brothers, Errol Morris, Michael Moore, etc) or full-time feature film-makers, many have straddled both forms, though most American directors tend to be more renowned for one over the other. Martin Scorsese, for instance, made documentary films — NO DIRECTION HOME, SHINE A LIGHT, PERSONAL JOURNEY WITH MARTIN SCORSESE THROUGH AMERICAN FILMS, LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD, MY VOYAGE TO ITALY, THE LAST WALTZ, ITALIAN-AMERICAN, and etc. — , but his reputation rests on his fiction films. For most aspiring film-makers in America, documentaries were seen as a means of apprenticeship and experience before embarking on the true ambition of feature film-making with huge production values. This was clearly the case with William Friedkin’s evolution from documentaries to Hollywood. It was like going from folk music with acoustic guitar & harmonica in small venues to playing with a band with electric guitars, bass, and drums in giant stadiums. Documentaries have been a cheap and convenient way of getting training and being noticed(at film-festivals or work on public TV) because film stocks, even 16 mm, were pretty expensive. Documentaries needed not be long, and crudity of technique was more forgivable than in feature-films. (Stanley Kubrick got practice making documentaries like THE DAY OF THE FIGHT.) Besides, one could make documentaries without props just by directing the camera at reality, whereas feature films, even most French New Age ones, relied on artifice and production values. And, with cinema-verite, camera movement could be jerky, the image dark and grainy, editing elementary and crude, and real-life characters grungy, drab, or un-photogenic. If anything, such qualities were deemed as seal of authenticity & unvarnished truth and , in time, even influenced feature film-making as it moved out of studios into streets and actual locations. (Now, even big Hollywood movies employ, albeit in a post-modern mode, styles that originated in independent film and foreign cinema. Consider how the Tom Cruise vehicle AMERICAN MADE freely alternates between standard Hollywood conventions and documentary-verite style once rare outside the domains of documentary film-making and radical cinema, which gave us works like SALVATORE GIULIANO or THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS. The willful crudity as badge of authenticity and autonomy has been copped by Hollywood. There was some of this already with Elia Kazan who took obvious inspiration from Italian Neo-realism and made some powerful movies. But it may have been the success of EASY RIDER that really convinced Hollywood that ‘radical’ and ‘independent’ vernaculars could be ‘appropriated’ and adapted into New Conventions. And this process was accelerated with the rise of the music video that made pomo sensibility dominant in American culture. Despite or precisely because of their sheer nonsensicality, music videos could shamelessly ‘experiment’ by ‘mumbo-jumbing’ everything under the sun and from where the sun don’t shine. MTV warholized every child’s bedroom. Oliver Stone’s terrible NATURAL BORN KILLERS bemoaned of how the pomo contortions of media warps and distorts reality itself because the TV has become THE reality in the lives of most Americans. It’s all the worse in the Age of MTV because even the representational markers between documentary/news and fiction/fantasy has dissolved. Stone didn’t so much adapt as remonstrate with Quentin Tarantino’s script. While the news media always had a problem with the truth, there nevertheless used to be recognizable markers as to what constituted news/documentary as opposed to movies/entertainment. It’s like the book covers for serious literary output differs from covers of pulp novels. But pomo sensibility not only blew up the wall between art and pop but the wall between news and entertainment. So, the ‘font’ and style heretofore associated with serious news or documentaries could be copped for tabloid junk or music video just to add ‘ironic’ flavor. It was in the Age of MTV that the barrier between news and entertainment nearly vanished with shows like Current Affair and Hard Copy. Today, most news programs are closer to salacious tabloid or deep state propaganda than sober news. But then, Stone himself shares in the blame for making something so wacky-sensational and demented-over-the-top as JFK, a case of "This is your conspiracy theory, this is your conspiracy theory on drugs." Anyway, if Pop Music could borrow cruder elements from the streets and farms and reshape them into formula & industry standard, cinema did likewise. Consider UNITED 93, which is both Hollywood and ‘indie-radical’ in style.) For film-makers just starting out with limited means, one of the best chances of being noticed was with a documentary film screened at festivals or aired on TV. Generally, if film-makers are more interested in subjects than styles, they’ll stick to documentary. Some people are more inquisitive than creative. They regard film as a means than an end in itself. For them, film is a lens focusing on reality or spade digging for truth. (On the other hand, there are ways to be experimental and creative with the documentary form. Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and Hiroshi Teshigahara were especially adept at this. And Orson Welles, via elements of docu-drama narrative in CITIZEN KANE and the pseudo-documentary in F FOR FAKE, illustrated the porous line between reality and fantasy; after all, mediums and minds process everything, true or false, through the same organs and instruments. Thus, our perceptions are never that of pure truth or pure fantasy but of series of impressions harboring bits and pieces of everything. MR. ARKADIN, like CITIZEN KANE, also blends documentary investigative elements with fictional drama. Welles instinctively understood the paradox of how docu-elements could actually heighten the unreality because the keen ‘investigative’ eye is made to bear witness to the disorientation of truth. If you want to make people believe in UFO or Big Foot, offer the ‘documentary’ evidence, however doctored it may be. Or why not subvert the very faith of seeing-is-believing, until the objective gaze no longer believes in anything anymore, as becomes the case of Joseph K. in THE TRIAL. Consider how, with a few bits of ‘documentary’ evidence, Iago fools Othello into seeing what isn’t there. It’s the conceit of seeing-is-believing that ultimately fools people into seeing what isn’t. The make-believe of involving an ‘objective’ eye in the world of fiction only heightens the strangeness, especially as the supposedly ‘objective’ player is, after all, also an invented figure. An objective figure in fiction is a contradiction: An honest factual eye fixed on what is make-believe and fantasy. This creates a hall-of-mirrors effect as the ‘objective’ figure, though introduced as autonomous and independent from the rest, comes to realize that his fate and ‘reality’ are no less interlinked with the subjective wills and agendas of the others. He is less a sun observing the planets revolving around him than a ball batted around among them, like the Tom Cruise character in AMERICAN MADE. This contradiction is somewhat muted in CITIZEN KANE where the reporter mainly serves as our eyes and has no dramatic function. It’s more striking in LADY FROM SHANGHAI and MR. ARKADIN where the hero, who begins as an ‘independent’ observer/operator of other people and their problems, comes to realize that he too is as much an object of others’ gazes as they are to his.) But for those immersed in the magic of cinema, feature film-making is their true calling. So, if your main interest is astronomy, you’d make a documentary that puts science and facts at the center. In contrast, consider Terrence Malick’s approach to the cosmos in TREE OF LIFE. It was about using the art of film to suggest at the spiritual connection between psyche and space. Though a terrible film, one can nevertheless understand Malick’s striving for meaning.
Of course, most documentary film-makers are not experts in any academic field and operate as mere professionals(even hacks) whose products are more entertainment than science; it’s science-for-dummies who will never understand, let alone practice, real science. But then, if such films inspire smart kids to pursue science, they are a net plus to society. Even though documentary film-makers for corporate-statist media are experts at their craft, their main function is to perfect and follow the formula. Because their primary purpose is to serve the public with facts, analysis, and interpretation, they agree upon a standard format, which accounts as to why most PBS documentaries in any given era look and sound so alike despite being made by different individuals and crews. Most stick to the idealized consensus of conveying ideas and information in the most digestible manner to the largest possible audience. The trick is to keep it reasonably smart but not too intelligent and certainly not intellectual. While such formula is respectable and often effective, they pose problems. For one, the documentarian has to follow the script and adhere to conventions. Even CucKen Burns, with his prestige and renown, must deliver what is expected of him. Indeed, THE CIVIL WAR, which made his name, was most notable for being the kind of generic documentary favored by PBS. It was almost made-to-order. Even more troubling is the conceit of objectivity on the basis of the impersonal presentation of the material. We barely sense the mind or the controlling agenda behind the presentation. Therefore, even though PBS is mostly controlled by Zionists and Jewish globalists, we may be lulled into believing we are seeing disinterested reporting and analysis of issues and stories. Also, diverse talking heads give the false impression of balance because, in actuality, the ‘contrasting voices’ are restricted to a spectrum preordained by the powers-that-be. So, even as corporate/consensus documentaries can be informative and engaging, we don’t get a sense of who is really pulling the strings and for whose agenda. In contrast, the personal documentarians do exhibit a specific angle of curiosity or passion, even bordering on obsession. At the low end, there’s the putrid Michael Moore, and at the higher end, there’s Errol Morris and Terry Zwigoff. And there have been figures like Peter Watkins who mix facts and fiction to propagate their own vision or fanaticism, albeit with the saving grace of personalism. At the very least, someone like Watkins can honestly claim his biases as his own than a decree from Big Brother... though one can’t feeling that the logical end of Watkinism is just another Big Brotherism so sure of its truth and rightness. Though corporatist documentaries are consistent and professional in quality, the personalist documentaries at their best succeed on a higher plane because they are guided by a discernible heart and mind imbued with poetics and/or poignancy lacking in works made by fiat of consensus and consent. Also, a honest subjectivity is more truthful than disingenuous objectivity. At least when subjectivity tries to be fair and balanced, we sense the subjective effort at objectivity. In the end, it is that effort that’s the most we can hope for when it comes to truth. It’s best to admit to our subjectivity and then work toward an attempt at objectivity. In contrast, the corporate/statist documentaries would have us believe they operate on the basis of objectivity.
Generally, non-fiction writers tend to be critical-and-analytical, whereas fiction writers tend to be imaginative-and-escapist. Though most documentary film-makers commissioned by public television have an impersonal ‘objective’ style — though documentaries have become more manipulative and propagandistic, especially in their use of music and editing over the years — , some documentarians develop unique styles of their own(and specialize in certain kind of subjects) and come to be admired as ‘auteurs’ in their own right. Though a risible film-maker and ugly personality, Michael Moore’s films can never be mistaken for anyone else’s. But then, Moore-ism is more a personal brand than a personal vision.
Though all kinds of documentaries have been available in the US, most Americans associate documentaries with journalism or general information for people who have neither the time nor will to read books. Consider the National Geographic documentary based on Jared Diamond’s GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL. The standard documentarian generally withholds his perspective(or appears to), partly a legacy of the school of journalism that emphasized impartiality and ‘fairness’, a key concept of Anglo ethics. Also, there’s been a long debate as to what constitutes documentary as opposed to propaganda or advertising(especially since so many documentaries are produced by institutions funded by big donors; generally speaking, donor money will not compromise the material IF the subject matter is unrelated to the business or political interests of the donors; for example, if donation from a Wall Street oligarch funds a work about ancient history or astronomy, the documentarian has a freer hand; even in the Soviet Union, the documentarian was most free when working on subjects with little or no ideological relevance). There’s also been heated controversies about print journalism vs Television and about where reporting ends and where editorializing begins. But then, a truly crafty reporter can subtly add/subtract details and play with diction to slip bias into what appears like objective reporting. There is also the element of Term Warfare, the germ-warfare of words. With PC terminology informing journalese, even reporting becomes rigged when terms like ‘antisemitism’, ‘racist’, ‘homophobic’, ‘xenophobic’, ‘undocumented immigrants’, ‘unauthorized immigrants’, and ‘white supremacists’ are used. For example, suppose some white Americans call for White National Liberation from Jewish Supremacist domination of America. They won’t get a fair shake from the Jew-run media that label them as ‘whites supremacists’ but never ponder the possibility of Jewish Supremacism. Journalism is as much about labeling facts as reporting them. The Rule of Labels defines and pre-judges the facts. So, if ‘white supremacism’ is a term acknowledged by journalese but ‘white national liberation’ isn’t, then even white national liberationists who simply want OUT of the Jewish supremacist empire are branded as ‘white supremacists’ or ‘racists’. But since ‘Jewish supremacism’ doesn’t exist in journalese, even obvious manifestations of Jewish Supremacism don’t go reported as such. Consider how the Old Frontier press used to call American Indians ‘savages’. That term labeled Indians as primitive thugs, so they were always the bad guys no matter what they did, even when defending their turf from European invaders. This is why Jews are so adamant about keeping terms like Nakba out of the public discourse. Because of the absence of such terms, most Americans are unaware that the creation of Israel entailed massive ethnic expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. The game of the name is the name of the game. Journalese narrative is fixated on the issue of "Will Palestinians acknowledge Israel's right to exist" while muting the fact that Nakba denied the right of Palestine to exist.
Contra the corporate/statist documentaries with authoritative air of respectability, there’s been a rapid expansion of another kind, for good or ill. Greater personal/subjective input has made the form more direct, candid, and open, but also more brazen and blatant. While Dinesh D’Souza and Michael Moore are freer in spirit than people who make FRONTLINE documentaries, their Pop Journalism is as debased as Pop Art. While Michael Moore certainly draws inspiration from the sobering works of Barbara Koppel and Emile de Antonio, his sales pitch is closer to that of shock jocks of Talk Radio. Just like the sincerity of folk music lost out to various forms of rock(that copped elements of folk for their own purposes), Moore and his imitators have been shameless in blending classic guerilla documentary-making with crass commercialism & egotistical self-promotion. Oliver Stone also found himself pushing the very sensationalism that he was condemning as a feature of exploitative capitalism. Unlike gross pigaroon Moore, Stone at least felt some angst and doubt, which is why NATURAL BORN KILLERS, awful as it is, is compelling as a confession of a boomer who came to realize, especially in the Clinton 90s, that his generation in power was turning out to be even worse than the previous generation. After all, increasing trashiness and retardation of both mass and intellectual culture was the work of the boomers. Moore comes off as a socialist Limbaugh with a camera instead of a microphone. His shtick is part MTV and SNL, which accounts for his popularity. He gorges people on laughter.
NATURAL BORN KILLERS, Boomer Oliver Stone's adaptation/critique of Gen X-er Quentin Tarantino's Pomo Dystopia
A far more interesting personal documentarian is Ross McElwee who made his name with SHERMAN’S MARCH, followed up with TIME INDEFINITE and BRIGHT LEAVES. Unlike Moore the boor, McElwee is reflective enough to ponder his incessant need to turn the camera on himself, a strange obsession he can’t do without, so he makes the best of it and records life in hope of chancing upon bits of insight and, on occasion, something like a revelation. In his breakthrough film, he meanders through Georgia, ostensibly to film a documentary about General Sherman’s campaign in the South but is mostly distracted by mundane details of life, the distant aftermath(of the Civil War) that is so disconnected from but inescapably linked to the tragic past. The present exists only because of the past, but the past is a foreign country, a theme also explored in MURIEL. To what extent McElwee’s low-energy ‘exploits’ are meant to be deadpan humor or neurotic recusal from active life, it’s not always easy to tell. Sometimes, we laugh with him, sometimes we laugh at him, sometimes he seems to be laughing at us, sometimes he seems to be laughing at himself. One thing for sure, we end up laughing, sometimes smugly, at the array of characters who are presented as far more eccentric(or ridiculous) than their self-image of normality. This New South is somewhat endearing, especially in the way it has come such a long way from the bad old days of slavery and Jim Crow. And yet, it is also pathetic and hollow, with the old displays of chivalry and honor kept as empty reminders of the sheer irrelevance of the past. Hardly no one would notice or grieve if they were discontinued, much like the debutante balls of the Northeastern Wasps, only more so because of the ignobleness of the Southern brand after the Civil Rights Movement. Also, the new Southern elites, having been educated in the same schools as their Northern peers, seem up to date in flaky fads and trends. Yet in certain respects, some things haven’t changed much at all. As McElwee mostly moves around in affluent circles divorced from the world of blacks and ‘white trash’, the reality of privilege and exclusivity continues in the present. One can’t help feeling McElwee can live in world of hobbies and 'trivial' pursuits because he’s been a man of means, if not great fortune, all his life. Though lacking the manic energies of Woody Allen and Albert Brooks, he shares their passive/aggressive relation with the world. The camera serves as both security blanket(like Linus’) and a hammer-and-chisel to carve his niche. McElwee is like a masterless bloodhound sniffing around for clues without knowing where the clues(or diversions?) will lead. But then, he invariably comes around to sniffing his own butt. Still, he manages to unearth some truffles.
When McElwee was young and single, the shtick was rather endearing in a work like SHERMAN’S MARCH. But as he grew older, got married, and had children, his constant need to record became somewhat pathetic, even disturbing, though also informative, revealing, and touching. Also, in a world where most of visual medium is saturated with stars and celebrities, why not turn the gaze on real problems of life? In a way, he was ahead of his time because the ubiquity of cell phone cameras and social networking enabled countless people to record and share so much of their lives. (200 yrs from now, descendants will be able to see an over-abundance of details of their ancestors beginning with the onset of the digital-internet age, that is if the data are stored and preserved. And yet, paradoxically, future generations may have no interest in their ancestors precisely because there is too muchness of data and information. The past won't be so much a fascinating 'foreign country' as a click away that shows stupid images of ancestors taking selfies of themselves in the washroom of Taco Bell. Also, as the technology is geared to make users focus on the here-and-now, they are too busy making new data to care about old ones.) On Facebook, it’s not uncommon for people to share what they had for lunch or where their dog or child threw up. Through Twitter, celebrities and public figures instantly share whatever pops into their heads. Anthony Wiener of New York even forwarded photos of his ding dong with strangers on the internet. So, given current state of culture & technology, the neurosis on display in SHERMAN’S MARCH and TIME INDEFINITE seems the dawn of the New Normal. The ease and availability of technology have normalized what might have been considered a neurosis. In making SHERMAN’S MARCH, McElwee had to lug around a big camera(by today’s standards of mini-portability), and he stood out as a rare bird. Even with the advent of the camcorder in the 80s, most people didn’t carry around a video-device at all times. Back in the 80s and 90s, McElwee was doing something ‘different’ and ‘obsessive’, like the mad hero in FITZCARRALDO dragging a ship up a hill through the Amazon forest. But now that photographing, filming, and videotaping have become so cheap, easy, and mundane — even babies grow up playing with high-tech gadgets — , the melding of subjective/personal/private life with the public sphere has become normal and ‘natural’. There are many who rely on devices almost as indivisible parts of their bodies. They don’t feel alive unless the personal is made ‘public’, in which case, it is no longer personal or private. That said, McElwee is concerned with real life whereas most video-obsessives play at celebrity-wanna-be’s and imitate their favorite pop idols. In DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, it was the coercive totalitarian regime that tried to do away with the personal. In today’s hyper-globalist interconnected world, individuals themselves dissolve the personal as something lonely and isolating; they want to feel connected with the world at all times, like a baby inside a womb is connected to the mother. Having been cast out of the womb in childbirth and with flimsy family ties in an atomized soulless world, advent of high-tech connectivity has created a womb-like sensation for an increasingly infantilized populace. (Our lives intersect so much with technology that we are sort of like replicants in the BLADE RUNNER universe. Despite our flesh-and-blood existence, modern life has become inseparable from technology, not just for material convenience but in matters of consciousness; we are no longer content with classic consciousness of having mind and soul; we don’t feel alive unless our senses are connected with constant streams of signs, music, images, narratives, and messages via electronic networks. And yet, each of us do have an autonomy even if it goes ignored and neglected. In BLADE RUNNER 2049, the hero navigates between classic humanity and virtual humanity. The female police chief is a defender of the classic humanity. Even though she accepts the invaluable existence of replicants, she wants to maintain a WALL between humans and androids. Replicants may be stronger and even smarter than humans, but they are distinctly inferior to humans in one key department. What sets humans apart is they, and only they, can create life through procreation, whereas replicants, however capable they may be, cannot. So, the idea that replicants can create life on their own is deeply threatening to the humanity of the police chief. The ‘miracle’ of replicant procreation is presented as both holy and unholy. It is a hope for replicants who’d always been regarded as creations than creators, products than producers. But it’s also the sinister vision of super-oligarch Wallace who apparently wants reproductive replicants to replace pathetic & fragile humanity. The character of Joe is at the cross section of all these conflicting forces. A further irony is represented by the virtual character of Joi. In some ways, her kind is the most superficial ‘being’ in the world: Ephemeral and illusory. Ethereal creatures who look real but are mere signals beamed all over the city like 3D billboards. And yet, she has her own consciousness and memory. Furthermore, hasn’t the ultimate dream of all religions been for man to transcend flesh and become spirit? Joi is a kind of ersatz-spirit-being, and as such, cannot be harmed physically. Bullets will go right through her. But having something like consciousness, she can be hurt emotionally. Ultimately however, this ‘spiritual’ aspect of Joi is also an illusion because, all said and done, her existence depends on materiality; she is a software that cannot exist without hardware, however elegant it may be. Unlike Jesus who cannot be destroyed by the stepping on the crucifix in THE SILENCE by Martin Scorsese, Joi is gone when Luv’s boot crushes the ‘emanator’.)
BLADE RUNNER 2049: Status Quo vs The Future
But because the new technology is so unobtrusive and easy — a smartphone even has quasi-totemic quality — , it functions as an almost natural extension of life. There’s more eagerness than anxiety among social commentators and culture critics about new technology even when it involves something as radical as virtual reality and sex-robots. The only question is how we can best adapt to what is deemed inevitable(channeling Alvin Toffler) than question its moral, philosophical, and political implications as men like Aldous Huxley and Anthony Burgess have done in the past. While the ‘wonders’ of high-tech devices are undeniable, the paucity of discussion on how technology may fundamentally alter what it means to be human is troubling.
Though McElwee carved out a niche for himself with SHERMAN’S MARCH, his subsequent films have garnered less attention, and part of the reason could be McElwee-stics has become a humdrum part of everyday life. When so many people are recording and sharing details of their lives, there’s less need for a representative scribe of Real Life. Same happened to the art of film criticism. When so many people can share their opinions of movies online, there is less need to rely on critics as delegates of one’s views. In the age of print journalism, a person might look to a critic with like-minded views on a particular film to hoist the battle flag of righteous opinion. Critics have lost that priest-merchant role in culture because moviegoers now feel they can share their views freely with others. Granted, most voices go unheard in the busy traffic of the internet, but the SENSE of being part of a community is enough for most movie fans.
When most Americans think of quality documentary film-making, they think of someone like Ken Burns, whose technical skills are undeniable(even if conventional). Burns’ approach isn’t bombastic or propagandistic like that of Moore and his imitators even though, like most ‘objective’ documentaries on PBS, skewed toward Liberalism and Negro-mania. In conceptualization and delivery, it’s strictly middlebrow stuff. However, as treasure troves of carefully assembled archival photos and film footage, Burns’ documentaries definitely have value. However one may feel about the narratives of CIVIL WAR, JAZZ, UNFORGIVABLE BLACKNESS, and PROHIBITION, they resurrect mostly forgotten or overlooked history. As a stylist and ‘artist’, Burns is no better or worse than the people who worked on AMERICAN EXPERIENCE and AMERICAN MASTERS series.
One thing for sure, people like Ken Burns now have a decisive advantage over documentarians or visual-memorists like Ross McElwee because it’s still an expensive and elaborate undertaking to make something like CIVIL WAR, whereas anyone can now do what McElwee has devoted his life to. Also, if McElwee was once refreshing in an industry where stars and stereotypes have been favored over true eccentrics(as opposed to cartoonish characters), social networking devices and Youtube have given platform to any number of oddballs around the world. Though most people who record and share their lives on their internet don’t have the knowledge and thoughtfulness of McElwee, they can theoretically do what he’s doing. But without big budgets and close cooperation of institutions, something like a Ken Burns documentary is impossible.
Anyway, despite the useful and necessary distinctions between ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ AND between ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’, purity of form in one or the other is impossible, especially as pertaining to narratives dealing with human complexities. No non-fiction documentary can be purely factual and objective, and no work of fiction is purely fantastical — even if it’s entirely made-up, it says something real about the the culture that shaped the author's worldview. Non-fiction films often tell blatant lies, unwittingly pass off false information as truth(some details in NIGHT AND FOG by Alain Resnais have been discredited), favor or ‘privilege’ one angle/agenda over others, and etc. All films are from someone’s or some institution’s viewpoint, and every viewpoint posits a version of correctness based on a set of assumptions or values. Furthermore, unless there is a way to interconnect or merge all our consciousness together — and maybe with those of the animal world as well — , each of us is trapped in one’s own severely limited perspective. (Perhaps, the fact that we don’t see ourselves unless we stand in front of a mirror makes us experience life far more ‘objectively’ than it really is. Most times our eyes see other people and the world around us, and our ears are usually attuned to things outside us. We don't see ourselves and even our voices sound more 'objective' to our inner ears than to other people. It’s like in 99.99% of the time in movies, we don’t see the camera or the camera operator. [Such self-flexivity is usually encountered on occasion in Art Films or comedy skits, like those of Monty Python.] Thus, there’s an air of omnipotence about the camera, as if it’s the eye of god. Camera sees everything but who sees the camera, especially when actors are instructed to act like the camera isn’t there? Especially in big cities where we mill about surrounded by so many strangers who don’t notice us or pretend not to, we almost feel like the angel-visitors in WINGS OF DESIRE: Invisible beings with consciousness adrift, watching and hearing everything without being seen and heard. This conceit of ‘invisibility’ creates an illusion of ‘objective’ existence because we don’t need to subjectively engage at most times. We aren’t always reminded of our presence as members in the social order, as is the case in Amish communities where everyone is made aware of his or her particular role in the community in relation to all-too-familiar faces. [On the other hand, subjective awareness of personal duty by each member of an Amish community paradoxically dissolves the sense of subjectivity because all ‘subjectivities’, in carrying out their apportioned roles, must merge together to serve the collective ‘objective’ good of the order.] Perhaps, if a mirror followed us at all times and reflected each of our places, we would be more conscious of our limited subjective place in the world. In a way, the smartphone plays that mirror-like role, especially as selfies remind individuals of their place in the world. On the other hand, because selfies can instantly be shared with the world, subjectivity becomes universality, an idolatrous promotion of one’s own image. Subjectivity goes from being a reminder of one’s limited self to the projection of one’s limitless self. Incidentally, another reason why we can easily be lulled into illusions of objectivity is the sheer comprehensiveness of our eyes and ears. Even though our eyes and ears can only take in so much — indeed, just a tidbit when we ponder the unfathomable immensity of the universe — , they nevertheless take in ENOUGH to create the impression of seeing the Whole World. Two tiny eyes can span vast swaths of the sky, entire mountain ranges, and the distant horizon beyond the sea. And two tiny cochleas can take in rumbling thunders and the cheers of thousands. Them organs are tiny specks embedded in a frail little creature called ‘man’, but they have godly powers in taking in vast impressions of the world. We have the bodies of animals and senses of demigods. Impotent subjectivity is overlaid with omnipotent objectivity.) Thus, objective viewpoint is an oxymoron. However, each person can increase one’s awareness of one’s own biases and try to restrain one’s emotions/impulses to at least empathize with other points of views, and then arrive at a more balanced view of the world. Even so, one could argue that even when a documentarian suppresses his own conscious biases in order to be ‘fair’ and ‘objective’, subconscious biases are at work just the same. Take the film CONVERSATIONS ABOUT RACE by the White Advocacy activist Craig Bodeker, an anomaly because a white rightist film-maker is as rare as the Tasmanian Tiger. Still, the point is the film pretends to be fair and objective when the questions are skewed to favor the White Interest point of view. So, even though it allows all the interviewees to speak openly, the character of the questions and the manner of editing/assemblage result in something far removed from objective discussion of race. It is all the more so because neither Bodeker nor most interviewees have the slightest interest in objectivity and fall back on the same talking points. Instead of well-meaning people trying to rise above their biases, it just turns into a word-slinging feud among individuals clinging to their own biases, interests, and narratives. Also, even when libertarian-types call for total color-blindness and absolute adherence to the principles of meritocracy that objectively selects the winners over losers, they could be motivated by a racial agenda because, deep down inside, they believe whites will be favored by objective meritocratic standards over most other races on the basis of having higher IQ. I would think blacks would be totally for colorblind meritocracy in sports because they are naturally advantaged and will beat the competition. Anyway, Bodeker’s documentary is a White Advocate version of Stud Terkel’s leftist-biased RACE: HOW BLACKS AND WHITES THINK AND FEEL ABOUT THE AMERICAN OBSESSION. Because interviews mainly comprise both works, the viewer or reader may be lulled into believing that the ‘authors’ merely served the roles of impersonal moderator, but , if anything, the framing of the issues and the nature of the questions tilted the works one way or the other. In some ways, such works are more dishonest despite their conceit of objectivity because the ‘authors’ (not so)subtly provoke others to express views that unwittingly confirm the author’s thesis. And most politically-themed documentaries on PBS and TV news have such inbuilt biases that favor anti-white-ism, Magic Negro cult, pro-Zionism, homomania & homo neo-aristocratism, interracism, and anti-Christianism(unless a particular brand of Christianity happens to sermonize that Jesus died so that homos could ‘marry’). The whole Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman news coverage made it plain as day that only fools would trust the fairness and ‘objectivity’ of Jewish-controlled MSM. Not that MSM would be any more truthful if Conservatives — like those on Fox News and right-wing Talk Radio — ran them, but whether the media are controlled by Liberalism Inc. or Conservatism Inc., what goes by the name of ‘news’ is essentially Jewish Globalist propaganda because both establishment Liberals and establishment Conservatives in the West are shills of Jews. On the other hand, the radical types — the anarchists, Marxists, Christian Zealots, far-right elements, and etc. — , despite their lack of corporate connections, aren’t necessarily more honest or principled. And even so-called 'underdogs' and 'independents' seek funding from big donors who find radicals useful as street protesters or thugs. It’s fallacious to believe that, just because corporate power is corrupt and conspiratorial, those crying out from the wilderness are any more scrupulous, decent, or sane. Even though people working for the corporate media may be propagating the mad agenda of the oligarchs(mainly Jewish in our world), they must control their own personal urges and impulses to be team-players; they can’t just go off on their own tangents. They must remain ‘sane’ and ‘stable’ even as or especially because they serve demented Jewish Supremacist bosses who need obedient scribes and commentators. In contrast, even as radicals and dissidents without corporate affiliation are freer to speak their minds, there’s the real danger of their personal eccentricities running wild, sometimes going off the rails into conspiracy theory territory, or ‘theorritory’. So, MSM generally happen to be about ‘sane’ team-players serving a mad globalist agenda, whereas alternative media tend to be composed of free spirited individuals not infrequently spouting mad views. Sometimes, the dissidents can be even more demented than the mainstream, and if they win the so-called Culture War, their dementedness becomes the New Normal. Imagine if France had been taken over by the likes of Jean-Luc Godard and Louis Althusser in 1968. Imagine if Ron Paul supporters took over the US government. While radicals may be more sincere and ‘pure-hearted’, that hardly guarantees sanity, integrity, balance, and better grip on reality. The failure of the Arab Spring led to people fearing the new bosses and longing for the old bosses. One reason for the failure of both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street was the simplistic view that the Power, capitalist or statist, is all bad whereas The People are so pure and noble. But the People of the Tea Party despised the People who voted for Obama, and the People of Occupy Wall Street, supposedly the 99% standing up to the 1%, alienated plenty of ordinary Americans. One look at some of their ‘leaders’ makes you lose confidence in their agendas. Also, it turned out that the leaders of both movements were easily manipulated and appropriated by higher powers. The Tea Party, which began as a condemnation of both Washington and Wall Street, was taken over by Wall Street fanboys and Zionist tools. Occupy Wall Street fixated on the abstract 1% without naming the fact that this 1% happens to be ethnically dominated by Jews who not only control Wall Street but Big Media, Big Government, Big Law, and Big Academia. Wall Street Jewish banksters got away with so much precisely because they have fellow supremacist tribesmen in so many other positions of power. I mean, how many Eskimos, Hispanics, Negroes, Asians, Arab-Americans, Polish-Americans, Greek-Americans, Turkish-Americans, and etc are prominent in the 1%, especially in the 0.01%? And it’s foolish to regard powerful Jews as mere individuals who happen to be successful. It’d be like regarding the political, military, and economic elites of National Socialist Germany as mere individuals who happened to be wealthy or well-positioned. In fact, all those elites in National Socialist Germany were working together for a common national, racial, and ultimately imperialist interest. It’s the same with Jews who may have succeeded as individuals but work as a Tribal Team.
Another problem with Occupy Wall Street was the Accusation that the abstract 1% was to blame for everything while the 99% are perfect angels? But seriously... What about the vast underclass of insane ‘groids’, ‘white trash’, and tubby Gomezers? What about the vast bureaucracy of government workers who sit on their asses and shuffle paper all day, often pretending to fix problems created by the government itself? When so much of the American ‘middle class’ is reliant on government jobs and spending, for how long will such an arrangement sustainable, especially in the age of globalism and high-tech revolutions that undermine middle class security in the West? (But then, precisely because capitalism no longer ensures middle class security, perhaps more people look to government jobs to cling to their middle class status.) There are no simple solutions to these problems, but in the end, Tea Party degenerated into cheering for Wall Street whore-mongers and Neocon warmongers, and Occupy Wall Street turned into Street Theater for pampered brats(aka Teacher’s Pets playing at radicalism); it was more status-symbol 'leftism' of privileged virtue-signaling than classic leftism of real need among the middle/working classes. But then, this is to be expected from the so-called progressive community whose idea of virtue is cheering for ‘gay pride’ parades like the mindless minions under communism cheered hysterically for Stalin or Mao. Mobs can be unruly and dangerous but also brainless and obedient, unable to think for themselves. As mobs are addicted to the euphoria of popular culture, the elites that control idolatry via mass media and entertainment can use the mobs like dogs, leaving the bark but not the bite. Homo-culture is elitist-flitist, fancy-pantsy, bitchy-snitchy, snobby-wobby, and sneering-sniveling by nature; therefore, when mob mentality has been injected with the homomaniacal germ, it no longer emotes and expresses in terms of ‘we the angry people’ vs the ‘rich and powerful elites’. Since the PC-fied mob has been made ‘gay-friendly’ and since ‘gayness’ is associated with fanciness, privilege, haughtiness, preening neo-aristocratism, and whoopsy-do vanity, the mob representing the 99%, even as they rail against Wall Street, fail to realize that the problem goes much deeper than profiteering on Wall Street. (Incidentally, 99 is also a symbol of two homos buggering one another.) Wall Street power is connected to US statist power which is connected to the corporate Jewish media that favor homo power that is so prevalent in Hollywood that is owned by Jews. There is a whole network of powers and privileges hogged mainly by Jews and homos — some call it the Deep State — , but the brainwashed mobs are too intoxicated with Jew-worship and homo-worship to realize that the deeper problem goes far beyond financial malfeasance and is embedded in the vast interconnected network of sectors dominated by Jews and homos. After all, it was their connections in media and government that enabled Jews in Wall Street to get away with their high crimes. Without those connections, they would have been brought down, their wealth confiscated, and their reputations ruined with prison sentences. In America, an Alt Right patriot can’t even work at waiting tables, but super-rich Jews can steal billions and be rewarded with billions more. But of course, since the ‘progressive’ community now worships Homomania(along with the MLK cult), Wall Street only need to hoist the gay ‘rainbow’ flag and, wallah, it can brand itself as a force for ‘progressive equality’.
Despite the obvious differences between fiction and non-fiction narratives — print or film — , fiction can convey much that is true, and non-fiction can cover up much that is true as well as invent things that aren’t true. Most news, even in the so-called free world, don’t rise above Deep State propaganda. Consider the media’s drive-up to the Iraq War, persuading 80% of Americans that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11 and had WMD. Consider the skewed media coverage of ‘gay issues’, using bogus terms like ‘homophobia’ to imply that those moral voices opposing the radical ‘gay’ agenda are clinically ill or pathological. Consider the utterly ludicrous US coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, especially in contrast to the equally biased way it had covered the subject of Apartheid in white-ruled South Africa. (And consider the near-total silence in the Jew-run media about the butchery of white farmers in South Africa.) It’s difficult to tell where government propaganda ends and news reporting begins because big media, all owned by globalist oligarchs like Jeff Bezos, operate in collusion with the Deep State. John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and especially Barack Obama were shmoozed by the media complex, and George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush got huge breaks from the media in their wars in the Middle East. Today, with Jews and homos so prominent in academia, media, law, government, and entertainment — and with most TV news being just another form of entertainment — , there is an ethno-ideological consensus of Jewish-enforced Political Correctness. Fox News and Talk Radio are two Conservative holdouts but nevertheless beholden to neocon Zionist Jews for money and to mindless Evangelical Christians for audience. In the past, Liberal Wasps had the balance of cultural pride and critical reform-mindedness. They had historical pride in their role in America but also pushed for reforms. And because they took Wasp power for granted as a permanent fixture of America, they became more idealistic in using journalism to expose problems of social injustice. In this sense, they were more virtuous than conservative Wasps who cared mainly about power and privilege. But liberal Wasps were also vainly naive, self-righteous sentimental suckers manipulated by Jews deviously pulling their heartstrings.
That said, even though Jews are not to be trusted, prior to their ascendancy to elite status they used media clout to shake up a system that needed to be shaken up, thus challenging the sacred cows of the Establishment, albeit not necessarily with the truth but counter-sacred-cows. Today, Jews have near-absolute power in elite institutions, and most Wasps, Liberal or Conservative, are merely chickenshit lackeys of Jews who, by the way, unlike liberal Wasps of the past, feel zero sense of magnanimity and feel only arrogance, contempt, and paranoia. Why is Jewish elite behavior so different from Wasp elite behavior? If Wasps in the past had elite power but also mass support, both the mind and body of political power — there were lots of Anglo-Germanic whites and waspized white ethnics — , Jewish elites have great mind power but weak demographics; therefore, Jewish elites are bound to constantly fret about the 98% of Americans who are goyim. (Another reason why Jews are less compromising in their power is their prophetic egos. Whereas Anglo cultural personality has been about reason, moderation, and balance, the Jewish cultural personality has been about Big Ideas, the Vision, the Answer. So, when Jews hold power, they think they know everything and have the power of God behind them.) Since whites comprise most of gentile power, Jews have been increasing non-white numbers and fanning their resentment at ‘white privilege’ so that the gentile majority will remain divided in relation to Jewish power. The Jew-run media operate on the basis of Jewish-Power-First mindset. As things currently stand, Jews are so powerful that even whites who are being targeted by Jews must praise Jews. We have Jews using Diversity against white people, yet we have white people opposing Diversity in the name of defending Jews from it. Jews see Diversity as generally good for Jewish Power because non-whites can be used against whites. On that basis, whites should resist Jewish power that is out to undermine white power. But because Jews are near-worshiped as a holy people, the Jew Taboo prohibits whites from calling out and working against Jews. So, even the victims of Jews must frame their argument on grounds that it’s good for Jews or GFJ. So, if a Jew uses a hammer to bash your head, you must argue against the hammer on grounds that it might sprain the wonderful Jew’s wrist. If a Jew makes a pitbull bite off your leg, you mustn’t blame the Jew; the most you can do is warn of the possible harm the pitbull might do to the Jew.
If a Jew unleashes a pitbull to tear you limb from limb, the current PC says you must not accuse the Jew because that would be 'antisemitic'. The most you can do is warn of the harm that the pitbull might do to the Jew. So, the Jew uses the pitbull to bite you, but you express concern that the pitbull might harm the Jew. Is it any wonder why whites keep losing in a world where the game has been rigged to favor the Jew?
While dominant institutions often stifle inquiry, restrict the range of discourse, and even push blatant lies on the unsuspecting or apathetic populace, there’s no guarantee of truth, sanity, and integrity among the independents. There was that KONY 2012 craziness some yrs ago. Or Alex Jones in his nuttier moments. Some people call science fiction ‘speculative fiction’, and there’s a genre of documentaries that might be called ‘speculative non-fiction’. Consider all the wacky documentaries about UFOs, paranormal activity, telepathy, ghosts, Big Foot, and over-the-top conspiracy theories, like those ridiculous documentaries about 9/11. Institutions are corrupt and compromised, but they generally have more expertise and professionalism. Even though we can’t completely rely on institutionalized education or institutionalized religion for the Truth, a lot of self-taught people and self-seeking spiritualists tend to be nuts, cranks, or lunatics.
Still, given the extent of official lies by government and media(and the extent of the coverup and misdirections), a lot of conspiracy-theory-laden speculative non-fiction documentaries are hardly worse than what we get from the news. Or, even if they are full of misinformation, they may convey certain facts and details suppressed by the Jewish-controlled ‘mainstream’ media. It becomes a case of official disinformation vs independent misinformation. Neither side provides the whole picture, but each shows something missing in the other. This is why even the most demented Nazi-sympathizing documentaries may have some value in revealing or discussing facts or matters previously neglected by the official narrative. David Irving has been an interesting case. Though not a full-blown Nazi, he’s been a Hitler-sympathizer for much of his life. Though loathsome in many ways, he’s addressed details of the war overlooked by other historians and from angles that most historians dare not consider lest they provoke the wrath of Jews who control the media & academia and have the power to disgrace and effectively blacklist any author. An example of the invaluableness of independent and even amateur media was illustrated by the attack in Benghazi where four Americans were killed. The Obama administration and the compliant media concocted a story that the outburst was triggered by some American Pastor burning a Koran. It was all a bald-faced Jewish-globalist lie to shift the blame for the disaster on a white Christian male. And consider the swarms of lies surrounding the Zimmerman-Trayvon affair. If lies were locusts, it would have devoured half the crop yield in America. Things have gotten so bad that the satirical Onion news had been rendered irrelevant by the ‘real news’. No need for jokes when serious news is an endless parade of jokes(where no one gets the joke).
In essence, ‘non-fiction’ is more a matter of form than substance. In presentation, documentaries generally rely on talking heads, archival footage, graphs and diagrams(and now lots of computerized images), extensive voice-over narration, and sometimes ‘dramatization’, which veers perilously toward fictional conventions. In terms of stated principles, documentaries purport to either search for or expose the truth. If the Truth-on-display is well-known and widely accepted as valid, the documentary can usually be trusted, though its analyses and interpretations can tip the balance between pro and con. (Consider the many PBS documentaries on Castro’s Cuba that, while admitting the general scarcity and repressiveness of the system, tended to cast an idealistic light to the radical experiment in defiance of US imperialism. And there was one about Jim Jones Cult that, while documenting all the horrors and atrocities, ended on a nostalgic note because, after all, the cult was all about diversity and equality. Apparently, the experiment failed despite its ‘noble’ dreams because it was a Woodstock that went on for too long. In some cases, however, the work can be utterly fraudulent, like LIBERATORS, a bogus PBS documentary about how black US soldiers played a key role in liberating the Nazi concentration camps. It even had pathological liar Eli Wiesel making up stuff in front of the camera. That the documentary form can be in service of such a fraud and then be beamed across millions of TV screens even in a democracy like America goes to tell you that the Power ultimately decides what is ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’. Why else would the Big Media be spreading all these lies about Russia Hacking or ‘Russiagate’ when the only real ‘gate’ is Deepstategate and Jewishhategate. The anti-Trump hysteria is nothing but a flagrant act of arson set by Jewish globalists who hate him.) But if the truth remains out of reach, the documentary is, at best, a work in search of the truth, and this ‘mystery’ element of in-search-of is the pitch of many documentaries ranging from the serious to sensationalistic. In many cases, the ‘truth’ being sought is so ludicrous that it’s for suckers than seekers, but creative fraud can be fun for anyone. Often, there is both eagerness and anxiety about unearthing the truth. The truth could be disappointing or disillusioning, but even when exhilarating, the excitement soon fades(like Christmas gifts few days after unwrapping), and there is one less great mystery to unlock in the world. Sometimes, the truth is irrecoverable and lost forever. Sometimes, it goes unnoticed even though it’s right there in front of you due to misconceptions. In CITIZEN KANE, the sled was right there all along, but the reporters were focused on something so ‘special’ that it never occurred to them that it could be something so simple. But then, of course, the sled is very special, at least to Charles Foster Kane. If some things have independent value as, say, a great work of art, other things have value by association. The sled is objectively worthless but the most precious thing to Kane as he teeters between life and death. There’s a scene in MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS where the voice-over narration says of the old man in the last phase of his life: "And now, Maj. Amberson was engaged in the profoundest thinking of his life. And he realized that everything which had worried him or delighted him during this lifetime, all his buying and building and trading and banking, that it was all trifling and waste - beside what concerned him now. For the Maj. knew now that he had to plan how to enter an unknown country, where he was not even sure of being recognized as an Amberson." His senile mind is failing and adrift, detached from the world around him, but it’s precisely because his attention is no longer moored to the mundane and concrete that his mind touches upon the bigger questions of eternity and the void. Tragically, just when old minds encounter the phantoms of a deeper world, they no longer possess the mental acuity to make sense of things. In contrast, young minds are sharp and perceptive but prone to obsess on the competitive egotism of the here-and-now. It is the rare figure like Buddha or Jesus who, as a young man equipped with the sharpest of minds, possess the key to the gates of a realm that is open, in most cases, only to failing minds disassociated from temporal existence. (The tragicomic thing about Boomer Counterculture was that an entire generation thought they were Jesuses and Buddhas because they lived through Summer of Love with Beatles and Flower Power. [Anyone-is-a-prophet with bit of weed and ‘All You Need Is Love’, so implied Boomer Counterculture. Among millennials, it’s anyone-is-a-celebrity with their endless selfies and 50-gender fantasies. After decades of youth-oriented pop culture and with each generation being further removed from the traditional themes of humanism and spiritualism, the only recognizable and ‘cool’ cultural mode for young people is the ‘right’ to be fabulous and ‘beautiful’ like the celebs. So, Lena Dunham is a ‘sex symbol’, and if her, why not Trigglypuff too? In earlier times, even good-looking people were expected refrain from excessive narcissism. As for not-so-good-looking-people, they found meaning in being people of good heart and character. But with the rise of Homomania, Afromania, and Slut Pride Culture, the theme of new ‘leftism’ is the hyped-up notion that everyone has the ‘right’ to be considered ‘beautiful’. So, we are supposed to pretend that a guy with a wig is a gorgeous ‘woman’ or that a fat hippo woman should invoke ‘body-positivity’ to insist that she is hot. What a world we live in when the most ‘progressive’ idea is the ‘right’ of universal narcissism. Narcissism now molds spiritualism, as in the case of churches that bend over backwards to accommodate the vanity of homos who not only feel so pretty and creative but so holy-schmoly as the favorite little darlings of god.] The convergence of mass media, radical movements, cult of eternal youth, big ideas, pop culture, consumerism, and commitment made the 60s one of most prophetic moments in history. Young people were into the bacchanalia of Rock but immersed in 'difficult' Art Film. Cinema, hitherto mainly associated with Hollywood and mass entertainment, became the premier Art Form in the 60s, a huge contradiction. Boomer kids, with drugs and Eastern Literature, wanted both eternal truth and instant gratification. Cynicism and irreverence hung in the air but also hope and innocence for new revelations. It is no wonder that so many looked to Bob Dylan to take on the role of Prophet of the Age because he embodied all the contradictory yet converging threads of the 60s: Idealism, cynicism, romanticism, nihilism, egotism, traditionalism, urbanism, back-to-nature-ism, radicalism, spiritualism, arrogance, self-doubt. Paradoxically, it was precisely because Dylan opted out of his prescribed role that he became the most emblematic prophet of the age via mystique and the art of survival. Always keep a few cards up the sleeve. He instinctively understood such heady times not only create prophets but devour them all-too-easily. Those who ride the tidal wave will crash and wipe out. At some point, Dylan chose to tend the fire than play with fire. He’d seen the burning bush, and the heat that made him but could just as easily burn him. Indeed, it’s hard to think of another time that produced so many would-be-prophets whose acclaim rose and fell so fast. Ken Kesey, with ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST and SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION was on the verge of something momentous, but he lost himself with Merry Pranksters. Timothy Leary went from an intellectual to guru to cult figure to loony in a span of few years. The cult of youth and drugs created the conceit that a lifetime of commitment and contemplation was no longer necessary for attainment of enlightenment and wisdom. You could have it right away with the right songs, right dosage, and right mantras. Norman Mailer wasted most of the 60s on antics and publicity stunts. Susan Sontag and Jean-Luc Godard never recovered their relevance since the late 60s. Sontag became overly esoteric, Godard became overly radical. If there was a 60s cultural figure rivaling Dylan as a prophet casting a long shadow, it was Andy Warhol, not least because he too understood the value of caution and the art of survival. Had Warhol thrown himself into the world of his own creation, he would have been consumed and destroyed like the others in the Factory. But even as he encouraged others toward excess, he knew well enough to keep the distance and observe the horrible but fascinating wreckage of egos and lives, like a scientist injecting toxins into lab animals and watching them slowly deteriorate. It would have been more apt to call the Factory the ‘Laboratory’, and in the end, Warhol was more like a mad scientist with a serpent’s egg than an artist with a brush. He even survived a shooting, unlike John Lennon. Warhol’s influence on art and culture has been huge, though, unlike Dylan’s genuinely worthy contribution to music, wholly negative. Because the 60s was such a brash and splashy time, we tend to focus on music stars and big names. But some personalities have a more silent, subdued, even insidious, influence. In this respect, Herbert Marcuse has to be regarded as a key figure who had a profound, indeed prophetic, impact on the boomer generation. He didn’t make movies or sell records, but his formula struck a chord in combining hedonism and radicalism, possibly a modern variation of Abraham merging pud and heaven via the Covenant, which also could have inspired the scene in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY where the ape gets all excited about his ‘bone’ and hurls it into the air to be juxtaposed with a spaceship in heaven. So, whether it was Abraham’s boner and its connection to God’s domain above OR the ape’s bone and its technological link to future space travel, there is the sense of limitless power in the unity of the basic and the beyond.)
I recall watching as a child — with some interest as I didn’t know any better — a 1970s ‘documentary’ film called IN SEARCH OF NOAH’S ARK, which I later discovered to be nothing more than a publicity stunt by fakers looking to make a fast buck; but to a nine year old, that was pretty heavy stuff. Anyway, that experience illustrated how total hokum could be used to fool th suckers if packaged ‘seriously’ enough. (How Jewish globalists manipulate the academia-media apparatus to dupe the ‘thinking’ public about world affairs is just a more elaborate and sophisticated version of that bogus Noah documentary. Even when presented with utter nonsense, people can be fooled by the manner of presentation. It’s like a quack doctor can fool gullible patients by wearing a white coat and speaking medical-sounding jargon. The trick sure worked for Alan Sokal who fooled the fools. Incidentally, Jewish Power is so dominant because Jews control both mass media and elite institutions. If Jews controlled only trash culture and tabloid news, the more intelligent and educated people could use elite institutions and higher channels to set the record straight, and in time, the truth could trickle down from top to bottom. But Jews also have an iron grip on elite colleges and scholarly think-tanks. So, even well-educated individuals just come under the ideological bias & tribal agenda of Jews.) That the category of ‘non-fiction’ is more a matter of style than substance was playfully demonstrated by films like THIS IS SPINAL TAP by Rob Reiner and DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, which mocks the conspiracy theory about Kubrick’s alleged faking of Moon-landing with a straight face. Though neither film is the first of its kind — a ‘mockumentary’ — , it is distinct from something like REAL LIFE(by Albert Brooks), THE RUTLES(with Eric Idle), and NORWAY HOME OF THE GIANTS(with John Cleese) that are clearly pseudo-documentaries. If the viewer didn’t know any better, he could almost be fooled into believing THIS IS SPINAL TAP is an actual documentary, though perhaps there’s another layer of humor in the Jewish realization that, since they control all the media, they can turn falsehood into reality and reality into falsehood, in which case the Jewish Reiner’s film isn’t just a playful comedy but an ecstatic declaration of Jewish control of the Narrative. The Bush years(WMD and Iraq War), Obama era(The One and Homomania), and Trump hysteria(literally Hitler) all amply demonstrated that it’s hard to tell what is real news or Fake News. (And then, what to make of films like PUMPING IRON? Given that so much of it was ‘scripted’ and ‘acted’, it could almost be considered a mockumentary... in the way that Elie Wiesel’s NIGHT was re-categorized as a work of fiction because of its many inaccuracies and inventions. If there’s any truth to THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO’s depiction of the publishing world, such things might even be commonplace, as when we discover Chloe Sevigny’s character[one of the more principled characters] ingeniously repackaged a fraudulent autobiography into a self-help book. With a spark of cleverness, she turned loss into gain.) But it isn’t just a matter of our gullibility but of our innate longing to believe in something ‘more’ complete or fulfilling. (Most historical documentaries, especially about the distant past, are less about sticking to known facts[usually scanty] than speculating about them. They are like Hollywood movies ‘based on a true story’ that play loose with facts to make the story more compelling. If documentaries had to stick to known facts of archaeology and surviving texts — usually preciously few even from great civilizations — , they would be dry and boring. So, the storyteller aka narrator, often attractive and engaging like Bettany Hughes who did a splendid telling of Ancient Sparta, uses the tricks of the trade to transform the fragmentary bits, few remaining pieces of a lost puzzle, into an illusion of a completed picture. It’s like imagining a living being from the remains of a skeleton. Real scholarship requires caution, patience, and ethics of the profession, and as such, has little appeal to most people who grow bored unless something is viscerally engaging. [This doesn’t mean documentaries are necessarily dumbed down as there are intelligent ways to explain expert knowledge to lay people. Best documentaries do convey the essence of a subject and may instill children with interest in the field. But there are too many documentaries that are less complexity-simplified than complexity-vulgarized.] It is why documentaries rely heavily on music because sounds, more than images, stir and engage our emotions. It’s somehow fitting that the two films by Michael Wadleigh consist of one documentary and one feature film. WOODSTOCK is like Living History, possibly the biggest cinema-verite project up to that time or even until now. Generally, the cinema verite style was employed on small intimate subjects or up-to-date newsworthy events. In contrast, the Woodstock concert had been long in the works, and the makers of the film could opted for more of a formal approach, though, of course, not to the extent of Leni Riefenstahl in the making of TRIUMPH OF THE WILL and OLYMPIA that had the full backing of the state and worked on themes of orchestrated order than orgiastic disorder. Wadleigh wanted a freewheeling documentary that would capture the spontaneous spirit of the event: An instant recording of events as they unfolded among countless individuals following their bliss. Granted, the film-makers were heavily biased in favor of Counterculture. They assembled and edited footage to make the event momentous and epic. And yet, Wadleigh was also artist enough to show the things that didn’t go according to the vision: The disorganization, confusion, and growing weariness between musical numbers as the days dragged on. And in some cases, the irony was plain to see even if not intended. The hippies turned a hick ‘garden’ into a muddy wasteland strewn with an ocean of trash, much of it plastic. Still, what is memorable about WOODSTOCK the film is that, despite all the helter-skelter chaos and grimy details, it is also an act of myth-making not unlike STAR WARS. It was shaped by the sheer power of will to believe in the Youth Generation dream of peace and love, the realization of a new covenant with history and the cosmos. Indeed, it was that mythic element that made Woodstock so nostalgio-iconic to the boomer generation even long after signs of its ever having taken place was reclaimed by nature and grass. If WOODSTOCK is about stubborn reality willed into utopian myth, WOLFEN is about myth in search of truth. The American Indians in the film look like any other denizens of the modern city. They wear white man’s clothes, speak English, and go about their daily lives. The reality all around them is urban. And yet, despite their adaptation to asphalt, glass, and steel, their souls are still animated by the myth of their lost and scattered tribes. Their world is gone, but the spirits still carry on somehow. This myth makes them feel whole, ‘more complete’. Now, there are hardly any signs that would indicate that Indians had previously inhabited and roamed the New York area, even less so than for Woodstock as the site of landmark event, but through the power of myth, the Indians in WOLFEN channel that lost reality. There’s also the hint that modern world too will eventually collapse and fade from decadence and decay, in which case the natural world of the ‘hunting nations’ will return. Both WOLFEN and M. Night Shyamalan’s SPLIT make striking metaphorical use of the zoo as a condition of modern existence. We are animals in a zoo that keeps us safe but disconnected from the timelessness of nature. History, in measuring and utilizing time as an instrument, cut off man from the cycles of nature. In nature, man lives in accordance to the time of seasons, moons, stars, rains, and droughts. Man has no control over Time. He submits and adjusts to it. In contrast, the mastery of time with the rise of civilization allowed for tremendous human achievement. It led to greater organization, regularity, planning, efficiency, and order. And with technology, we could turn winters into summers with heated rooms and could taste the chill of winter with cold drinks in summer. But we’ve also created a bubble that is divorced from the way of nature, the theme of KOYAANISQATSI. [In MOSQUITO COAST, a confused man tries to make ice in the middle of a jungle; Harrison Ford’s character seeks to both return to nature by abandoning everything AND cling to civilization by making ice in the middle of a jungle. Perhaps, he feels that modern folks have come to take for granted the amenities and conveniences made by scientists. Science and technology are actually awesome powers, and people who invent things should be feared and admired as wizards, sorcerers, and prophets; and there was some of that in the time of Thomas Edison. But as mankind became so inundated with technology, they came to regard further innovation and new gadgets as normal and mundane, and scientists and inventors because faceless lab workers with white coats. In contrast, a strange object that makes ice will be seen as magic to virgin eyes and senses of the jungle.] The Woodstock event was like 300,000 white Counterculture kids pretending to be Afro-Injuns for three days. Of course, they all arrived by car and soon went back to their parents’ home to take showers, but the myth is often more powerful than reality — the very real death of Jesus could be re-narrated, hallucinated, and retold as His triumph. It’s like the Burt Lancaster character in THE SWIMMER whose romantic myth shields him from the grim facts of life. In many ways, WOLFEN is a wiser and maturer film than WOODSTOCK because it takes stock of the dark side of primitivism. The Indians are tragic characters but also bloody killers, and their way leans toward nihilism. Like the replicants in BLADE RUNNER, they are wanna-be-masters. Romanticism about Indians sure didn’t save Jim Morrison, who ended up dead with too much firewater. Perhaps, the Indian partiality to firewater betrayed the unbearable harshness of their world. If they were so happy being Indians, why did they take so readily to the escapism of the bottle? But then, why did the advanced Chinese take so readily to opium? Perhaps, both extreme primitivism and extreme civilization-ism leads to want of escapism. WOLFEN’s darkness is informed by something akin to the obsessive themes of John Boorman who, in films like DELIVERANCE and ZARDOZ, appreciated both the mythical beauty and grim brutality of nature. Burt Reynold’s character sure loves the smell of hospitals after busting his leg. Werner Herzog, in AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD, depicted nature’s stony indifference to the fate of man, and in RESCUE DAWN, the main character knows a candy bar is sweeter than raw snake. Still, there is a side of us that doesn’t feel quite at home in modernity, just like there’s a side of Willard in APOCALYPSE NOW that wants to get back into the jungle. It’s not just because he’s an American soldier who wants to kill Viet Cong commies but because the jungle stirs something deeper within him: A warrior and hunter than mere soldier, an interchangeable unit in an industrialized military. Unlike the soldier who is faceless and identified by number on his tag, every tribal warrior is distinct as a trophy hunter. It’s like cats and dogs happily return home for food and comfort, but a part of them never quite feels ‘at home’ in man’s environment. It isn’t long before they’re eager to run outside, sniff scents, chase after animals, and pee all over to mark territory, something not allowed in the human home. To the extent that people at Woodstock shat and pissed all over — reportedly, the smell of human fecal odor lingered even ten yrs after the event — , it was their way of being like dogs-and-cats outdoors and marking territory. Woodstock was their Tree of Forbidden Fun on which they relieved themselves to mark territory. The Stink Factor that had long been suppressed by Anglo-Americans made a vengeful and proud stand.) In this sense, documentaries and mockumentaries paradoxically give us ‘facts’ about fairytales. Though the notion of Kubrick having faked the moon landing is ludicrous, there is something in us that wishes it were true precisely because it sounds so outlandish. If such could be true, then anything could be true, which means dreams could be true. (Also, there is the lingering sense of anti-wonderment, which in itself is a kind of wonderment, of losing childhood innocence and seeing the truth. The loss of innocence is like a second birth, both traumatic and liberating. Up to a certain age, a child can be made to believe anything: Santa, elves, fairies, goblins, etc. His mind floats in an amniotic sack of innocence. But at some point, the bubble bursts, and the kid realizes Santa isn’t real. It is disillusioning but also exhilarating because the child gains autonomy of truth and begins the see the world with new eyes. Instead of just believing what is told, he feels the stirring of a free mind that notices things for himself, and as such, is no longer so gullible about what adults tell him. And it’s not just about a disillusionment about a detail but a fundamental overturning of the mental processes. It’s not just about Santa but Santa as metaphor. All Santa-like things are no longer very believable. It’s like WIZARD OF OZ and ZARDOZ: The moment of disillusionment is dark but also illuminating. The scales finally fall off the eyes, and all the king’s men cannot put them back together again. This could be why so many people are partial to ‘conspiracy theories’. It offers a chance at replay of that key moment in childhood when the mental bubble burst and consciousness emerged into a wholly new state of thinking. We want to relive that moment when we realized Santa isn’t real. So profound a moment is bound to reverberate throughout our lives on some level. It’s bound to ‘shine’, like what Scatman Crothers’ character says of certain events in THE SHINING, a film about a father-husband-writer whose progression of life turns out to be cyclical than linear. Kubrick’s film illustrates another aspect of the moment of disillusion. When children grow disillusioned with the fairytales told by adults, what they gain is choice than truth. With this choice or ‘free will’ they can use facts and logic to find the truth, OR they can choose or even create new fantasies. Freedom from imposed ignorance can lead to truth, but it can just as easily lead to self-chosen ignorance, which is what the Current Year is mainly about. Its anti-‘essentialism’ encourages even adults to choose their own fantasies, especially among the 50 genders. As for the theory of Kubrick’s Moon Landing, it has elements of both freedom for truth and freedom for fantasy. In a way, the theorist is poring over clues to connect dots to arrive at what may have really happened. But, it is also a creation of a myth that is ‘cooler’ and more ‘far out’ than what really happened.) So, even rational people who don’t believe in paranormal stuff sometimes find themselves reading books or watching documentaries on such things, and even as they snicker at the silliness, they can’t help hoping on some level that it may be true. Via modern science, all educated people know nothing is possible outside the laws of nature. There are no such things as miracles, believed only by ignoramuses and dummies. And yet, mankind having evolving to believe in gods, phantoms, and spirits, there is still an emotional craving for a truth that defies the strictures of physics, chemistry, and biology. Go to most book stores, and there are more non-fiction books on paranormal phenomenon, spirituality, and mystical stuff than about hard science and technology. For one thing, religion is more 'democratic' than science. Even an atheist who never believed in God has a longing for signs and meanings that go beyond the empirical. (Just like our bodies need both meats and vegetables, our souls need both reality and myth. This is why certain diehard atheists who denounce tiniest vestige of spirituality or religion can seem like vegans. Even if they are better grounded in reality, their souls seem undernourished and sickly. And because they reject spirituality, they have this obsessive need to turn their atheism into a kind of messianic crusade; paradoxically, they try to obtain spiritualist nutrients from anti-spiritualist atheism. In this sense, Richard Dawkins is ‘religious’ in emotions if real in science and logic. It’s like a vegan, unwilling to eat meat, tries to absorb as much protein as possible from foods low in protein; they crave most what is most lacking in vegetables. But then, exclusively religious people have their own problems. Constipated with religious dogma, they lack the necessary fibers to get the mental digestion flowing, and this accounts as to why so many diehard religious types are shi*heads.) Unlike science, religion is open to all. Conversion doesn’t require years of study and mastery. It’s a matter of few basic tenets, faith, and devotion. In contrast, science(by which I mean real science) is only for the experts who have mastered the scientific method. Most of us blindly accept what the experts tell us because it sounds ‘true enough’ and we trust our institutions against our intuitions. (If an actor-roleplaying-a-scientist presented a totally sci-fi lecture on chemistry with a straight face, most people would fall for the hoax because of his said ‘expertise’ convincingly acted.) Science is elitist, and it can’t make allowances in discerning fact from fiction. Though religion too has hierarchy from the priesthood to the layperson, anyone can feel equally loved and blessed by God. Anyone can pray and speak with God, whose truth and justice don’t necessarily favor the learned over the unlearned. After all, God could whisper into the ears of an illiterate while shunning the erudite, even those devoted to serving Him. It’s said the Lord works in mysterious ways, and no amount of human learning and knowledge can predict His next move in ways that scientists and engineers can calculate when a spacecraft will reach Mars.
Religion seeks meaning based on prophecy and vision, whereas science isn’t supposed to venture beyond what is knowable and has been proven. Science informs us about star systems, cells, evolution, and etc. but can’t ascertain right or wrong. It’s only a matter of true or false. Religion, on the other hand, says there's a reason why the universe is governed by God. God kills a lot of people in the Bible for a reason, but an asteroid wiped out all the dinosaurs(according to science) simply because laws of gravity set in motion a big rock hurtling toward Earth in that moment in time. God kills to punish, but laws of nature destroy entire star systems for no reason. So, even God’s angry presence is more comforting than a soulless universe. While most scientists accept the meaningless ‘accidentalism’ of the universe, the kookier members of the community, such as Michio Kaku, believe that, in the absence of god-mind in the universe, such might be created by science with a technology that can beam our consciousness throughout the universe at the speed of light or something. On some level, scientists feel stifled by the restrictions of science, just as an athlete feels frustrated by the rules on the field. If scientists must only stick with what is known with certainty and reiterate that anything else is mere speculation, they would sound like robots or accounts crunching up the numbers. After all, even the best scientists know only so much. So, despite the strict rules of science, scientists are prone to make grand statements and speculate rather too freely to make things more lively and interesting. Consider the Out of Africa Theory that posited that homo sapiens that had left North Africa some 80,000 to 60,000 yrs ago wiped out all other hominids in Europe and Asia. The theory seemed likely but not 100% certain, but archaeologists and scientists spoke with total confidence and spun grandiose all-encompassing theories on that premise. Scientists tend to get sloppy, simplistic, sensationalistic, and/or sermonizing when dealing with the public. On the assumption that most people are too dumb, ignorant, and impatient to handle complexity, they are fed Narratives that tie together various threads rather too neatly. Often when engaging the public or the media, scientists don’t emphasize that "this is what we know so far" but act as if they possess the final truth, not least with the encouragement of the media that are always looking to add entertainment value to the reporting. So, physicists will talk of the Big Bang as if it’s a certainty when it’s really a theory, even if a very likely one. And in the 1970s, nutritional science was so sure of its latest findings that, in tandem with the government and the media, it pushed a set of dietary guidelines as holy writ, only for much of them to be debunked later. And now, we are told that scientists are so sure about global warming. Now, it may well be true that global warming could have a devastating impact on the world, but too many scientists sound off like prophets than professors. But then, the concept of ‘scientist’ itself has been corrupted over the years because even pseudo-scientists and semi-scientists with only cursory knowledge of the field are often presented to the public as ‘scientists’ — like chiropractors in the US are recognized as ‘doctors’ — and because real scientists in one particular field spout off as ‘experts’ on fields they know little or nothing about. It’d be like a dermatologist giving advice on neurology. A lot of scientists who’ve endorsed the ‘climate change’ theory are not even experts in climatology, which itself is a very incomplete science as it incorporates and coordinates data from so many sources.
With COSMOS, Carl Sagan presented himself as the pop-prophet of science-as-new-religion. He voyaged through the universe in the ship-of-the-imagination to Vangelis’ celestial choral to impress upon us the wondrousness of the cosmos. But wondrous to what and how? A sense of wonderment exists only in consciousness of emotions and senses. So, if the main theme of COSMOS is the wonder of wonderment, science can’t be the central key to the ‘meaning of life’. After all, we can have wonderment without factual truth, and we can have factual truth without wonderment. Wonderment is a wish to transcend limitations and be overwhelmed with a magical sense of discovery or rediscovery. COSMOS’ success owed largely to its resounding electronic music, classical music, gushing narration, and still-impressive use of special effects. It was like STAR-TREK-done-right. Now, one could appreciate Sagan’s perspective: Scientists are, first and foremost, people with emotions and imagination; therefore, science isn’t just collection of dry data for analysis but a search for more missing pieces of the puzzle so that we can, through speculation based on evidence-so-far, ‘imagine’ a more amazing and more awesome picture of the universe. Even as increased knowledge destroys so much of our imagined reality, it provides us with new material to imagine something more complete and also takes us to the precipice of yet grander mysteries to be unlocked. (There are times, however, when we wish we could have stuck with the legend than struck with the fact. Mars and Venus were places of speculative wonderment before astronomical advances proved one is too hot and the other is too cold for life.) According to Sagan's COSMOS-ology, science is the methods and processes that go into preparing the ingredients to finally be cooked into a great feast. Science, as a way of collecting and analyzing data to gain a better understanding of micro- and macro-cosmos and everything in between, is a means than an end. Once the laborious harvest of data and numbers has been completed, the sharing of that knowledge is to ignite wonderment in the world: A festivity of discovery. The joy of presentation is the ultimate goal of science, just like serving the feast is the fulfillment of all the work in the kitchen. Our eagerness to imagine and discover life in other parts of the universe suggests at how consciousness and imagination are the real keys to ‘meaning’. After all, if the cosmos has a trillion stars but is incapable of creating life, none of it would matter since matter only matters to life. But with advanced life, there can be wonderment with the cosmos, near and far. Now, if in a cosmos of a trillion stars, only one planet can create or sustain life, beings would feel most lonely in their wonderment that cannot be known or 'shared' in any other part of the universe. After all, the most beautiful palace has no meaning without humans to appreciate its magnificence. So, a universe with a trillion stars but only one planet with life would be like a great palace or cathedral with only one person to stand in appreciation. We all dread the idea of being the last person on Earth because, despite ‘owning’ all the planet for oneself, there is an emptiness without anyone with whom to share the wonderment. Scientists are pretty sure that they are other intelligent life-forms in the universe somewhere, but based on present knowledge, being an Earthling feels like the last-man-on-earth in cosmic terms. We feel as if we are the ONLY ones in the limitless universe. At any rate, if wonderment is the ultimate goal of science, may it not undercut science-centrism? After all, people can have a sense of wonderment without factual truth. Spiritualists seek illumination through meditation. Artists seek it through imagination. And the citizens of Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD find it through soma. And so many people around the world seem perfectly enchanted with zips and zaps of electronic media. Carl Sagan as a young boy was lured into science because he was fascinated with the dream of traveling through the stars. Though he immersed himself with real science all his life, what had drawn him to science was a sense of wonderment. But if wonderment is what makes life most meaningful, what about the problem that wonderment as a sensation can be had without any truth? Just consider the Negroes who be wild about Wakanda and vibranium. Sheeeeeiiiit!
Carl Sagan in his ship-of-the-imagination gets ready to do battle with Klingons
Steven Spielberg said his obsession with UFOs in the 1970s declined with the exponential increase in the number of camera(still and video) all over the world. UFO enthusiasts had hoped more cameras would produce more UFO footage, but the result was the exact opposite. More cameras only proved the lack of UFO’s, which had always been figments of imagination or remnants of distorted memory in absence of proof. In technology, the 1970s were still the ‘dark ages’ because many people around the world still didn’t have cameras, and relatively few people in America has movie/video cameras. Thus, much of reality remained in the ‘dark’. But with the universalization of digital and video cameras in every part of the globe, nothing remains hidden or unrecorded anymore.
Even so, human nature being what it is, people to still hope to document the mysterious or miraculous. Some people are fascinated with the demonic, possibly because if they can prove the existence of demons, angels might exist too. Or if the Lochness Monster really does exist, maybe dinosaurs are still among us. And if there are space aliens in UFOs hovering over us, maybe the universe is brimming with the wonder of life. Not surprisingly, pseudo-amateur mockumentaries(cinema unverite) like BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY have been huge hits. Their put-on actualism makes it seem all too real. Even though earlier films like the harrowing NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, disgusting THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR, putrid TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, and retarded EQUINOX used elements of documentaries, the ubiquity of camcorder devices led to the rise of the new genre of Homemade Horror — America’s Scariest Home Videos — , surely a reflection of how video technology has intruded into every corner of our lives. It would have been unlikely that just anyone would have been lugging around a movie camera in the late 60s world of THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD — and even if he were, it would have been costly and cumbersome — , but today, even people who aren’t interested in video have one attached to their nimble cell phones. Not surprisingly, DIARY OF THE DEAD was made in the style of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. One could argue that such overt documentarization of the horror genre has been bad for style — gothic horror is especially unimaginable in docu-style — , but an added element of fright derives from the pretense of seeing the Real thing. Though PARANORMAL ACTIVITIES was essentially a cheap gimmick, it does get progressively terrifying near the end.
The genre called Reality TV directs celebrities or wanna-be-celebrities to act ‘reality’ than real, with ‘reality’ being a trademark for loud, lewd, shameless behavior. So, TV hype now defines what is and isn’t Real American Behavior. And as talk shows became more confessional(often spilling over into exhibitionism), they were less about discussion of ideas and more about exposing or exchanging bedroom secrets and private feuds. And because new guests take their cues from earlier guests, especially those who got the most attention, the shtick turns into an imitation game of what constitutes ‘reality’ on the basis of entertainment value. Over time, the ‘reality’ format comes to favor the shameless and exhibitionistic among the players and the trashy and vulgar among the audience. If the original PEOPLE’S COURT was a rather educational and instructive glimpse into the working of the judicial system, the later variations of Justice TV turned into a sham not unlike the court scene in Mike Judge’s IDIOCRACY. Justice became less a matter of principles than of personalities and of all stripes: Jewish, Negro, Cuban-American woman, some guy from Texas.
One of the most interesting American personalities on the subject of fiction and non-fiction was Orson Welles. While directors like John Ford and Frank Capra also made documentaries(more like propaganda) — especially during World War II — when not working on feature films, Orson Welles circumvented the restrictions of both, not least by subverting the conceits of the categorical imperatives. CITIZEN KANE begins with a mockumentary newsreel of Charles Foster Kane’s life, and the movie itself was inspired by the life of William Randolph Hearst(whose yellow journalism empire freely mixed truth and fiction)and Welles’ own colorful life experiences. The hunt for ‘Rosebud’ through the fictional landscape creates the impression of searching for the key that may unlock the space between fiction and truth(like the mysterious blue box in MULHOLLAND DR. that serves as a ‘black hole’ portal between the dimensions of dream and reality. Because movies look so real or more-real-than-real, something in our psyche seeks a pathway between movie-reality and real-reality. Of course, movies are just actors filmed in front of a camera plus special effects, but the impact of suspension of disbelief in cinema goes far beyond that of any other art form. No matter how convincing a play, we know we are watching a stage performance. No matter how vivid a novel, we know we are conjuring images in our heads. But the movie is right there on the screen and visual prowess goes far beyond the capacity of human eyes. It feels as if watching through the super-eyes of gods that can go anywhere and anytime. If someone runs up on a stage, he is interrupting a performance than entering another reality. But it’s tantalizing to think what kind of Alice-Through-the-Looking-Glass wonders might await us on the OTHER side of the screen. Films such as MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA, LES CARABINIERS, PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, THE LAST ACTION HERO, TRUMAN SHOW, and just about anything by Charlie Kaufman played on this obsession. The power of cinema has a way of making us forget in Groundhog-Day-fashion that movies are just actors-playacting-in-front-of-a-camera. It makes us want to believe that movies comprise an alternate reality. And yet, we know it’s not real but just pretense. So, one side of us wants to sneak into this other reality, but once we imagine ourselves to have made it inside, another side of us wants to find the hole that leads us back out to expose the fraudulence. This inside/outside dialectic dominates the BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, AUDITION, and THE ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. Part of the reason why Franz Kafka’s works are especially relevant in the Age of Cinema is because of their ominous sense of uncertainty between real and unreal, an aspect strikingly conveyed in Welles’ adaptation. The cinema has especially been confounding to intellectuals because of its intoxicating power to overwhelm the mind. It’s like the doctor in Ingmar Bergman’s THE MAGICIAN is made to ‘feelieve’ what he can’t rationally believe. The dead can’t come back to life, but the magician’s trick overrides the power of reason. It’s why even the most rational person can be scared by a horror movie that he knows isn’t real. If some critics, like Pauline Kael, happily surrendered to the Kiss-Kiss-Bang-Bang of cinema, others like Godard, who began as a critic, increasingly found the power of cinema threatening and degrading, not least because it was so American-dominated. Initially, Kael cheered Godard’s blend of bohemian romanticism and ingenious self-reflexivity as a hide-and-seek of instinct and intellect. He was the picklock of cinema puzzled but also intrigued by secrets that always eluded his grasp, much like the Richard Gere’s character in MOTHMAN PROPHECIES can’t crack the code of the strange ‘visitations’. Kael sensed Godard’s cinema as analogous to his attitude about women. [Highly cerebral, Godard’s natural tendency was to wrap his mind around everything and render it into a logical formula, except such attempt proved futile with something as sensual and seductive as cinema and women. No amount of philosophy or any -ology could do justice to something with such powerful hold over the senses. In a way, Godard was drawn to Marxist theory for providing him with a framework for a ‘clearer’ understanding of cinema and womenfolk. He could argue capitalism reduced women into ‘consumer products’ or ‘prostitutes’. This was, at once, a criticism of capitalism’s baleful effect on womanhood AND a clutching-for-straws to gain mental mastery over subjects that perplexed him. Marxism gave him license to call out women as corrupted ‘witches’. As Godard’s intellect stumbled over the mystery of womanhood, he settled for zeroing in on shallow stupidity of womanhood under consumer-capitalism that flattened humanity into a comic strip. From his Marxist perspective, women were not naturally ‘consumer products’ or ‘prostitutes’ but made into such by capitalism’s marketing of narcissism and materialism. It was half-sincere but also disingenuous. Unwilling to acknowledge the natural vanity of womanhood, he settled for Marxism’s interpretation of female wickedness as the product of capitalism’s distortion of values. So, blame America. But minus capitalism, would women really be different in their root nature? Would they be more virtuous and self-sacrificing and less likely to run off with some big-time American movie producer like in LE MEPRIS? If Truffaut in JULES AND JIM and THE SOFT SKIN was willing to accept the natural power of womanhood as both dangerous and alluring, Godard’s first film BREATHLESS ends with Belmondo’s character calling the woman who betrayed him a ‘bitch’ in his last dying breath. Truffaut, more romantic and less cerebral than Godard, could accept women as whore and goddess without judgement, but the controlling mentality of Godard simply couldn’t yield to such a vision of womanhood that stood independent of the man’s theoretical understanding of her. He wanted a math formula to figure out womenfolk, but none was forthcoming or satisfactory, and in films like A BAND OF OUTSIDERS and ALPHAVILLE — and some others with Anna Karina, which whom he was deeply in love for a time — , there were hints at accepting the mystery of love and womanhood.] Being an intellectual and sensualist herself, Kael regarded Godard as a kindred spirit who was too smart & thoughtful to regard cinema simply as entertainment but also too poetic and playful to regard it as Art, Message, or Thesis. Even up to WEEKEND, she was willing to give him the benefit of a doubt and pretend that he was having fun making satire, but his subsequent films proved how delusional she’d been, at least since 1966 when he grew increasingly radical, purist, and intellectual to purge himself of all ‘bourgeois’ notions of sentimentality and romanticism. Godard’s view of cinema was like the Madonna/whore Complex: Cinema is magic - Cinema is mendacity. He felt like both a priest guarding its canon and a pimp exposing its cunt. [But if cinema is such a soiled form of expression, couldn’t one argue that serious art films are in some ways graver sins than commercial works are? Isn’t an honest whore preferable to a prig in a whore-house pretending to be a saint?] But when Godard later purged every last vestige of cinema-as-magic, the sado-masochistic berating of self and the audience became unrelenting. Anyway, the hypothetical ‘secret’ passageway between movie and reality isn’t an issue with most viewers who fall into two categories. Super-movie-fans, aka film buffs, love to blissfully lose themselves in the fantasy of movies and block out reality. Then, there are others[most people] who just see movies as on-and-off entertainment, a diversion or escapism. They are grounded in reality and don’t obsess about cinema except as diversion. And then, there are those who are captivated by the magic of cinema but also seriously connected to real world issues. Straddling both realms, they are troubled by the barrier between the power of fiction and the weight of reality. How do they square the two worlds and the wall between them that is, at once, so porous and so impenetrable? Some may argue that we should love the arts & cinema for what they are and never mistake them for reality. Some may argue that art/cinema should be molded to serve the forces of good in the real world, which is the message of UNDER FIRE where Nick Nolte’s character even fakes a photography of 'resurrecting' a Che-Guevara-like figure to aid the revolution. But then, there are those who argue that even when cinema purports to address real world problems — PLATOON as opposed to the silly business of RAMBO — , it cannot escape its innate escapism and vanity. After all, grim as it was, PLATOON was made of actors and special effects, and Stone used it to stoke his ego as Mr. Conscience. When we watch a film like THE KILLING FIELDS or SCHINDLER’S LIST, are we really being better people OR are we just indulging in moral vanity of caring by crying into our popcorn? Are the emotions really any nobler than watching something like THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN? Also, just because a film seems powerfully realistic doesn’t mean it’s necessarily true-to-life or faithful-to-events. And given the power of movies to frighten and shock us, don’t even serious films play us like a piano than provoke us to think about real history? And so the question in CITIZEN KANE... what can we really know about someone through the existing media with their limitations, biases, and compromises? Furthermore, do we prefer myth over truth because the myth may summarize a larger vision of the truth as a recurring archetypal formula? It’s like a metaphor in a poem can illuminate a truth more potently than a mountain of data can. If ‘Rosebud’ was a secret hidden in the mind of Kane drawing its final curtains, Christopher Nolan’s INCEPTION goes up a notch with the ‘radical notion’ of implanting a ‘rosebud’ in the mind of someone. It suggests at the strange power of cinema working with two cylinders: the conscious and subconscious. While our eyes and ears take in everything on the screen, a deeper process happens somewhere within us. After all, most of what we see, even exciting and moving moments, soon pass from memory and leave no lingering trace. They spill over us but don’t seep into us. However, certain combinations of sound and images have a psychological effect far more penetrative[or insidious] than any visceral impact that usually come and go. Indeed, the Jewish control of Hollywood has implanted or ‘incepted’ the Negro-as-god in the hearts of so many whites. Subconsciously, so many whites now worship the mountain-sized-Negro-who-luvs-a-little-white-mouse as their god. They didn’t just sentimentally weep over the poor noble Negro but were infected with that ludicrous but iconic image. It’s like Alex in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE thinks he’s just watching something on the movie screen but is actually undergoing profound transformation due to chemical injections that associate certain images and sounds with inner mechanisms unbeknownst to him). ‘Rosebud’ being Kane’s last utterance, there’s also the suggestion of somewhere between life and death. Incidentally, Jim Jarmusch’s DEAD MAN, a prolonged hallucinatory journey between life and death, may owe a debt to Kane. Even though CITIZEN KANE is one of the most self-consciously cinematic films ever, it owes a debt to non-fiction formats in radio and documentaries. (Radio and Film led Welles, already established as a man of the theater, toward both more artifice and realism. Realism was never convincing in the limited space of the theatre, whereas one of the main uses of radio was the news of the real world. Not surprisingly then, Welles told fiction in radio news format in his version of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS broadcast. Fiction and non-fiction both have limitations. Generally, fiction is restricted by rules of genre, and non-fiction must stick to facts, at least in principle. As such, fiction tended to be limited by its formalism whereas non-fiction tended to be haphazard stream of latest events. But what if two modes could be combined to create something more powerful than either could be alone? Even though the relation between Welles’ work in theatre and work in cinema has been much noted, one could argue Welles’ cinematic vision owes most to the dynamics of radio. Radio storytelling is frenetic and fast, and voice-narration conjures in the mind’s eye of the listener an ever shifting and morphing series of images and impressions. Thus, Welles’ approach to cinema was less photographic than ‘radio-graphic’. It was less about representing reality than conveying flaring impressions of the mind’s eye stimulated by voice-over narration. This makes Welles’ expression both more avant-garde in experimental potential and more traditionalist to the extent that his cinema approximates the visual dynamics of the human mind since the advent of story-telling. Words, especially as expressed through artful narration, stir up constantly shifting shapes and patterns of peoples, places, and things. The later works of Terrence Malick could be striving to capture something similar, but the too-muchness just leaves us feeling seasick. What’s striking about Welles’ work is the balance of the real and unreal, of the stable and unstable. It’s a ship with sails and anchor. In contrast, Malick’s cinema has become just loose sails flying in the wind. Anyway, its radio-graphic quality set CITIZEN KANE apart from most Hollywood movie where images were staid and solid, usually tethered to a fixed set and setting. In contrast, the ghostly eye in CITIZEN KANE slips in-and-out through time, places, and states of mind. It wasn’t affixed or assigned to things but free of things, like an out-of-body experience where perspective has been detached from the strictures of form. Strikingly, CITIZEN KANE is far more realistic and artificial than anything Welles did in Theater. It has both the shopworn grist of the newspaper trade and the dreamlike aura of memory. Its power also owes to the tension between the moment and the monument, not only of Xanadu but Kane’s labyrinthine ego that grew darker and emptier as it grew bigger, constantly craving more novelties and possessions to fill the void. It rather sounds like current America where the elites just want to hoard more hordes in the ‘exceptional’ Lazarus-World.) The interviews with the various people who’d known Kane even has something of those talking head documentaries. Perhaps, the ever-shifting modes of expression reflected a sense of precariousness that had marked Welles from childhood. He was born into privilege, even wealth, but he lost his mother at an early age, and his father went into decline. As a young man of boundless energy, he never felt at home anywhere in the world. Either he was too big for the world or the world was too small for him. Welles was born for risk and success. It was going to be Moon or Bust. Success brings stability and security, and risk brings the danger of losing it all. And the two are forever entwined because greater the risk, greater the chance of success... or failure. Because of his great talent and intelligence, Welles could have been a wealthy man had he gone into business or film production instead of directing. But he was a natural showman and furthermore an artist(a bad word in Hollywood), and this put him at odds with producers, money-men, and the public that as usually fickle about the wrong things. Welles had the talent to conquer the business world, but he preferred creative conquests, and in the end, he failed in business and in art(at least relative to his true potential as a film-maker that was frustrated throughout his career; while his failed works are still many times more interesting than the successful films by lesser directors, they are still far less than what they could have been under the right circumstances). To succeed as a businessman, one has to be willing to abandon or compromise any plan for the more profitable one. In contrast, to success as a visionary, one must be willing to stick to his vision against all odds. Businessman gains wealth by betraying everything for profits. Visionary gains honor by holding steadfast to his idea against all temptations. They are opposites but, for that very reason, could form a potent symbiotic relationship as envisioned in Ayn Rand’s THE FOUNTAINHEAD where a tycoon who betrayed everything for the buck finally commits his wealth to realizing the work of a true visionary who never compromised. Welles was a strange figure as he possessed all the savvy of a sleazy businessman, yet the larger part of him held steadfast to the hope of realizing his personal projects. He was Howard Roark with the character of Gail Wynand. He was a man of great confidence and appetite that, as often as not, served him badly. Being too sure of himself, he took too many thing for granted and left too many things to chance, as if the world would set itself right in his favor. He stood atop the globe like a nimble-footed log-roller only to be tossed over and rolled underneath. Welles wanted to commit himself to the art of film-making, but especially after the commercial failures of CITIZEN KANE and THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS(that was also badly butchered), he knew the Industry giveth, the Industry taketh away. In talent and intelligence, he was bigger than any suit in Hollywood, but the suits had the money & means, and admittedly as well as unfortunately, a better understanding of what the mass audience wanted. And it wasn’t so just in Hollywood but in Europe as well, where Welles often raised money to make films in the 50s and 60s. So, it’s not surprising that a film like MR. ARKADIN, another butchered work, combines elements of grandiose myth with grim reminders of reality.
Perhaps, Roman Polanski, a sort of exile himself — a double exile, in fact, from both communism and gentile Poland — understood this aspect of Welles, which may account for certain similarities between his treatment of CHINATOWN and Welle's CITIZEN KANE & MR. ARKADIN. CHINATOWN's private eye mystery was run-of-the-mill film noir(though Robert Towne’s inclusion of incest would have been too perverse for Classic Noir), but Polanski stripped the formula naked(like prisoners in concentration camps) and ruptured fiction into reality(one that is uncomfortably all-too-familiar), a grim world where truth hangs by a thread like Jake's nose. Polanski stuck with the noir style only to bitchslap it into raw meat. Noir was always grim but wrapped in myth; it was like a nihilo-decadent form of romanticism. But even that element of 'dark mist' blows away in CHINATOWN. The ending is especially appalling in its reverberations. It’s as if the bullet tore through the dark movie screen and killed someone in the real world. When the shots are fired, Polanski doesn’t cinematically cut to the impact but lets the car stall in the distance and then we hear a scream. Thus, it creates an impression of violence taking place in the inconvenience of real space than in the reserve of cinematic space, in which a quick cut would have revealed the impact of the bullet. Reality is uncertain, and its truths hidden in the dark are revealed only gradually, if ever, whereas fictional space assures of constant proximity to the truth. Though violence is intrinsic to Noir, the ending of CHINATOWN deviates from classic noir because mood and style break down. Even gloom can be reassuring as a philosophy of fashionable pessimism, but even that is missing in the ending of CHINATOWN. Like the final moment of DOG DAY AFTERNOON, there is only the brass knuckles of reality. It’s like no amount of style or attitude can undo the fact that Polanski’s mother was destroyed by the Nazis in WWII.
The confrontation between Dunaway’s character and John Huston’s character(as her father) explodes into an open event. It is no longer happening in the secretive private world of noir. It’s like a John Cassavetes moment, and as the old tycoon tussles with his daughter, you can almost smell his breath. The style breaks down into reality, and Jake’s conceit as an all-knowing mole is ground to dust. If Nicholson’s character, a cynic privy to the underbelly of L.A., still naively believed that the Law would protect Evelyn(Dunaway) from her father, what would the average Chinaman in the street know? If even the ‘knower’ didn’t know, imagine the ignorance of the ‘unknower’. There is tragic romanticism in Noir, but the darkness finally enveloping CHINATOWN is just blackness of ignorance and indifference. It is a void, just clueless Chinese people who don’t care about white affairs — and who are denied access to the white world — washing like a wave over the scene of the crime which will soon be forgotten. (And yet, maybe there is a suggestion that the Chinaman does know because he comes from an old and corrupt civilization where people have long ago made peace with 'mystery' and gave up on seeking clarity and 'justice'. Chinese are more resigned to the way of things. The clueless-ness of the Chinese could be a kind of ‘wisdom’. Unlike the inquisitive Jake who thinks he can unearth and expose the truth, it’s as if the Chinese have an age-old intuition that the truth is always elusive and uncertain. They are resigned to defeat and dismissal by history. They think less in terms of good vs bad or clean vs corrupt because they accept the corruption of cosmos itself. No matter how heroic a man’s struggle against history, all will be forgotten, all will fade, in the never-ending cycles of rise and fall. And indeed, this is why Jews have been so obsessive about keeping the flame of Shoah alive. It is the natural tendency of mankind to neglect and forget, with new peoples and new generations not even knowing that such-and-such ever happened. Unless Jews keep saying, "You European gentiles KILLED US HERE ON THIS SPOT", it will be just another street that people walk over as the Chinese walk over the crime scene at the end of CHINATOWN. Without constant reminders, Shoah will be just another Rosebud tossed into a furnace without anyone even knowing the significance of what is being lost.) A similar darkness should have engulfed the ending of MEET JOHN DOE — a noble self-sacrifice covered up by The Power and the snow of Christmas — , but it copped out for a happy ending, albeit one that works emotionally. (Incidentally, the shooting toward Dunaway’s car at the ending of CHINATOWN reminds me of Bert the cop shooting at the fleeing George Bailey in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, surely one of the strangest blends of lightness and darkness in American cinema.)
Anyway, Welles’ playfulness with dynamics of fiction vs non-fiction may have owed to his great ‘promiscuity’ as an artist. John Ford was a full-time director, so were Kubrick and Kurosawa. But Welles wasn’t just a film director but also an actor. He was also a famous voice-actor and narrator who became a legend on radio. He also directed theater. He was also a reasonably talented painter. He also dabbled in journalism. Working in theater, he had mastered just about every facet of production, and of course, he’d been a precocious child who learned to read in the crib. So unlike most artists who specialized in one form or another, Welles traversed the entire spectrum of the arts and media. He was also a gifted magician. His radio production of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS combined journalism and storytelling and freaked out plenty of suckers. When funds rant out on the theater production of CRADLE WILL ROCK, it was turned into participatory theater the dissolved conventional distinctions between performers and audience. He combined Shakespeare and voodoo in his Negro version of MACBETH and directed JULIUS CAESAR with fascist aesthetics as a cautionary tale of political troubles brewing in Europe(and possibly at home from the American Right). When he ran out of money on his Brazilian movie about struggling fisherman, he combined fact and fiction. To be sure, Sergei Eisenstein and certain Soviets, especially Dziga Vertov, had pioneered the synthesis of fiction and non-fiction, and categorizing a film like MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA and OCTOBER isn’t so simple. Is the former a visual symphony, a theorem, or a documentary of life in the Soviet Union? Is the latter a docu-dramatization of actual events or historical fiction? Welles’ heroic but doomed Brazilian project that was recovered in the 1990s and released as IT’S ALL TRUE(ironic title) pales in comparison with Eisenstein’s QUE VIVA MEXICO!, but it unwittingly set a template for Welles’ future projects, not least because he was often strapped for cash. Though he wished to have once again the control and funds available on the sets of CITIZEN KANE and MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS(before it was taken from him), he became something of an anomaly as a maker of big films by small means. It’s said of Jed Leland by Bernstein in CITIZEN KANE, "Mr. Leland never had a nickel. One of those families where the father is worth $10 million...then one day he shoots himself, and it turns out there's nothing but debts", and that was pretty much Welles’ fate as a film-maker. He was famous and renowned but the wandering minstrel of cinema. A hobo emperor. He dreamed and planned big, but he never had enough funds to realize the fullness of vision, and so, he had to tirelessly ‘improvise’, which sometimes added to the creativity but also wore him out like an old shoe patched too many times; it’s no wonder films like OTHELLO and THE TRIAL are such mixed bags. There are many striking moments of brilliance, but there just aren’t enough threads and fabrics to hold them together as seamless wholes. Though Welles’ personality was so unlike Kafka’s, perhaps his difficulty with film-making made him empathize with a character like Joseph K, a lone man against the system. Welles would have been more content in theater as director or actor. But theater is alive only on stage. While plays have eternal value, performances do not. In contrast, cinema has eternal value because the pristine image can live forever. With theater Welles savored being king of the moment, but with cinema he tasted what it meant to be emperor of eternity, and he couldn’t let it go. But what an expensive medium cinema is. Raising funds for film made him travel all over the world looking for financiers, some of whom were less reliable than others(especially as the industry was filled with hustlers and charlatans, of whom Welles was one except that he had creative genius to back up his chicanery. The showmanship aspect of Welles may have been what turned off Ingmar Bergman the most. Sure, Welles could be dazzling, but, in Bergman’s estimation, the Welles’ showmanship was all there was, i.e. Welles didn’t sincerely pursue any meaning or truth but just juggled images and played games with mirrors to impress people with Cinema Bravura. He was a masterly chef than a master chef, demonstrating mastery of technique but with rubber chickens & meat and plastic vegetables. To Bergman, it was all a stunt, but for those of us who believe Form Is Content, does it matter?) Unsurprisingly, Welles was pursued by creditors all his life. As for his legion of admirers, the film critics and buffs, they could give him love but no money, the lifeblood of movies. Fittingly, his last finished project was F FOR FAKE, in which Welles went all out to splice various modes and genres, shuffling questions of reality, art, history, journalism, myth, and magic like so many cards. But then, Welles was more like a poker player to Kubrick’s chess player. In his films, chance plays a bigger role(if only as an illusion) in defiance of the loaded dice of the universe. (Given Welles’ penchant for eccentricity of perspectives, he was the perfect narrator of the based on Alvin Toffler’s book.)
Welles was one of the few true geniuses in cinema — genius not only as film-maker but all-around individual — , and part of his genius was drawing inspiration from just about everything, artistic or otherwise, to expand cinema’s potentials. He was the Shakespeare of cinema in the sense that he was endlessly inventive with images in the way Shakespeare was with words. Everyone admires Shakespeare, and Welles felt as a kindred spirit because he too could take anything and render it poetic or dramatic with creative whim. Granted, Shakespeare achieved so much more since a writer can just sit and write whereas a film-maker can’t film without the necessary materials and manpower. Still, just like no one did more than Shakespeare to demonstrate the power of words, no one did more than Welles with the power of images. Welles’s use of cinema was richer than that of Eistenstein and Kubrick because he experienced cinema from inside and out as both actor and director, player and planner. There was spontaneity along with the spectacle.
In the first half of the 20th century, cinema tended to be, at least in terms of cultural status, slavish and referential/reverential to the more highly respected and long-standing art forms. This was especially true with the advent of sound whereupon synchronicity of image and sound became paramount though, to be sure, the visual fluidity of silent cinema has been much exaggerated. For every SUNRISE(F.W. Murnau), there were countless silent movies with routine constructions and editing.
At any rate, the aesthetic ‘promiscuity’ undoubtedly affected the style of Welles’ films. One striking contradiction owes to the tension between grandiosity and imbalance, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Especially with low and high angles, few directors created as many looming & towering architectural spaces, and yet, there’s granular to the grandeur, a world of castles made of sand, especially with the aid of odd angles and disorienting montage that is however ingeniously threaded with continuity of motions and motifs. Welles’ keen eye usually keeps track of the needle in the haystack. So many of his images are artfully-composed and seem definitive, yet there’s an element of uncertainty principle that any image, however stately or commanding, can be nixed with a flick of the wrist. Welles’ images often emerge and disappear through mischievous ‘backdoor editing’, and that may account as to why they may seem less iconic than those of other masters. There are actually countless outstanding images(that would make wonderful stills) in Welles’ films, but the pervasive uncertainty principle makes them feel less grounded or complete than the images of a Kubrick film that follow a logical than elliptical pattern. (The real power of a Welles image comes from a kind of seamless disjointedness[that he may have picked up from magic], and therefore an isolated still image from a Welles’ film fails to do justice as why that particular image has such power.) It is stable and unstable, grand architecture made of shifting shadows. Looking at the images of John Ford, David Lean, William Wyler, Alfred Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman, and Luchino Visconti, one can’t help feel they are the masterly culmination of the ideal visual construction. There is a definitive sense of finished-ness, a complete world of fixed logic, rules, and relations. In contrast, even though CITIZEN KANE, MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, LADY FROM SHANGHAI, TOUCH OF EVIL, and CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT(as well as parts of MACBETH, OTHELLO, MR. ARKADIN, and THE TRIAL) have some of the most memorable images in cinema, there’s a sense that a misstep can teeter the world upside down. It’s like a Titanic that rocks like a rowboat. There’s a surreal quality as, in dreams, the most prominent images and sounds can morph or fade in an instant. In dreams, our perception becomes god-like, moving in and out of time and space, even in and out of bodies and personalities, but that power is of course illusory; furthermore, not only does a most powerful moment vanish instantly upon waking but so do virtually all traces of it despite its having felt so striking and memorable while happening. There’s a similar sense of uncertainty and/or infinite possibilities in the films of Welles, and only a handful of other directors — Eisenstein, Murnau, Lang, Dreyer with VAMPYR, etc. — had comparable means to spellbind us with cinema where possibilities multiply before our eyes: Cinema that seems not so much like a perfect product, finished and packaged for delivery, but a prophetic revelation that opens up whole new avenues of expression and meaning. (Some directors maybe had this magic just once in their career: Frank Capra with IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, Federico Fellini with 8 ½, Sam Peckinpah with THE WILD BUNCH, Sergio Leone with ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, Ridley Scott with BLADE RUNNER, John Boorman with EXCALIBUR.)
The snow globe scene in CITIZEN KANE encapsulates the essence of Welles’ powers as a film-maker. When we first see the snow globe, it’s a dream-image of a home — comforting and reassuring — , but then the view lurches back to reveal a miniature house within a water-filled globe atop Kane’s palm. It’s a tycoon’s hand going limp in his passage into darkness. Sure and unsure become two sides of the same coin. Even stranger is how the fake snow inside the globe is dissolved with the room itself and over the Kane’s muttering lips(‘Rosebud’), and then outside the globe as it slips out of Kane’s hand. Thus, the distinctions between inside and outside, between psychology and physicality, and between private and public thaw into intimations of another dimension. Usually when film-makers convey weirdness, the visual style tends to be frenetic, murky, and bewildering — done well in MOTHMAN PROPHECIES, done terribly in TWELVE MONKEYS — , but the signature achievement of Welles was to convey instability and disintegration with the subtlest and/or quietest of means: Hypnotic than Hysterical. Welles had a knack for shuffling impressionism with expressionism, dream with drama, fact with fantasy. Even the manner by which we found ourselves in the room where Kane lies on his deathbed(like David Bowman at the ending of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY) is, at once, stable and unstable. We see the arched window from the outside, and then the light goes out inside the room, but when the light comes back on, we happen to be looking at the same window but from the inside. One may credit such techniques to Welles’ flair for Magic, but it probably also owes to theater and radio, possibly his training ground for film-making(even if he didn’t realize it at the time). Someone beginning in film is likely to develop a habit of thinking in terms of solid images: What is and isn’t filmable and how it can be constructed into a scene. One’s imagination is hampered by established technological limitations of cinema. In contrast, a radio person can visualize the story in infinite ways inside his head. If you begin in film and must shoot a battle scene, you think of production values. If you work in radio and narrate a battle scene, your imagination runs wild. As Welles came to prominence in radio, his mind must have brimmed with infinite possibilities of the stories he narrated. When Welles went to Hollywood, he faced the same technological limitations of other directors, but his imagination, possibly enlivened by radio, pushed harder to convey free-flowing images in his mind. Therefore, as striking as Welles’ images are, their power derives from an inspired sense that they are merely a set of possibilities among countless others. (This element of spontaneity is generally missing in Hitchcock's cinema where the finished product feels utterly authoritative.)
Before Welles mastered(and transformed) radio, he’d mastered theater, which also had a significant impact on Welles’ cinematic approach. Most obviously, there’s the element of acting, prop-work, and lighting, but more importantly, theater’s key contribution to Welles’ cinematic imagination may have been analogous to that of radio. This may seem counter-intuitive because the stage works so differently from airwaves. Of course, many theater productions were aired on radio, and to the extent that the essence of drama is conveyed through dialogues, theater and radio was a marriage made in heaven. But radio and theater are wholly different in the way they’re processed by the audience. A theatergoer fixes his eyes on the stage, which is the only reality during the performance, whereas the radio listener generates his own visuals. Thus, even as one listens to a radio play, one doesn’t necessarily visualize a stage; he may imagine real characters in real-world settings. Since theater performance is limited to what happens on the stage, one could argue it curtails visual possibilities. Even with lavish set designs and production values, a theater show is limited to the stage, and even the largest stage is puny compared to the mental expanses of the radio listener. And yet, in one way, the theater stage is infinite and dreamlike in a way cinema screen can never be. Though a movie can take us to all sorts of places — even the worlds of other planets in other galaxies — , the inherent ‘realism’ of cinema means that our characters literally have to move from one specific space to another. Thus, if a character in Wyoming is supposed to be in NY the next day, it must really seem as if he moved from place A to place B. Thus, place A can only be place A, and place B can only be place B. Such literal use of space in cinema is imaginatively limiting compared to the theater stage that can be places A to Z, even simultaneously. (In this sense, the final part of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY follows the logic of Theater because the space that Bowman-thru-the-Stargate occupies is all-places and all-times.) Therefore, even though theater performances are limited to the small stage and nothing but the stage, it can be Everywhere. Because theater cannot literally turn the stage space into exact facsimiles of real places, tricks of lighting and sleight-of-hand prop-work are used to create the often dreamlike impression of the stage as a place of magic. This is something Welles seems to have drawn from theater. If movies generally convey the sense of characters going from place to place, there is a sense throughout a film like CITIZEN KANE that place A can morph or meld into place B or place C and vice versa. Time and space are rendered fluid and illusory. Thus, the present and the past seem less like separate domains than two sides of the same translucent coin. Thoughts and reminisces materialize into reality, reality bleeds into memories, memories meld into dream worlds, and so the cycle continues. Even though the reporter visits different persons in various places to unlock the meaning of ‘rosebud’, there isn’t much in the way of spatial movement. Instead, he seems to move in and out of few doors, peeking or peering into the tinted windows of the interviewees. Much of the film is told in flashbacks but the demarcations between past and present and among the various accounts aren't steady and stable but rather like the shadowy borders between fantasy and reality in MULHOLLAND DR. (This owes to Welles’ approach being a kind of Mind Cinema. There’s the sense of almost everything being seen and processed by an intelligence than merely a pair of eyes. A kind of thinking camera, like Hal computer or the Monolith in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Cameras have no mind and just capture what are in front of them. But eyes, organic cameras, always operate in coordination with the mind that always processes new stimuli in relation to stored memory, fantasy, desire, and anxiety. The Hollywood convention was for the camera to serve as eyes to ‘faithfully’ observe characters and actions. Camera eye was subordinate to the characters, action, and literal space. Welles and others like him made the camera think, emote, and dream as well as observe and convey. So, it was fitting that Welles’ first film was about memory, which is as much about the mind as well as the eye. After all, memory survives only in mental space. Without capacity for memory, the only reality would be what we see at any given moment. It is memory that creates the past that is always confluent with the present.) Possibly, Kubrick cribbed something of this in the final segment of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY that plays like a mini sci-fi version of CITIZEN KANE or Citizen Bowman in which we are no longer sure of when is when, what is what, and where is where as Bowman or Bowmans seem to exist in multiple planes of extra-reality. The final segment of 2001 also shares something with COLOR OF POMEGRANATES(Sergei Parajanov) that came out a year later(1969). Both draw us into an imaginary ‘box’ where objective time and space are supplanted by sublime subjectivity stage-managed by divinity or higher intelligence. Also, the creative tension in both films stem from interaction of the iconic and steadfast with the idiosyncratic and unsteady. COLOR OF POMEGRANATES is composed of mounted tableaux inspired by Armenian culture & history, and its archetypal characters stand rigidly like statues or move like mechanical devices. And yet, in the fragmented passages of time(not always linear) from the artist’s childhood through moments in adulthood unto old age and death, it conveys a unified vision of life, especially as all the elements are of a carefully coordinated artistic pattern, which suggests at the larger design for all and everything set by God Himself. Everyone is fixed and finite, almost puppet-like. There are two ways to ‘escape’ from this determined 'bondage'. To live for the thrill of the moment, but moments are come-and-go. The other way is to live life, remember, and gain a deeper glimpse of the fuller picture. Even though no one escapes one’s fate, a realization of this condition-of-no-escape is a kind of liberation as truth unbinds us from ignorance. Even if both animal and human is about the inescapable fate of birth-live-and-die, it makes all the difference that the animal cannot understand whereas the human can.
Likewise, in the final scene of 2001, we see Bowman ‘trapped’ alone in a room where time seems both frozen and fragile like crystal. There is an overwhelming sense of man’s limitation and insignificance in face of infinity yet also the hope of revelation. (After all, Nirvana in Buddhism doesn’t promise to change the world or alter its course; rather, it promises illumination that is liberation enough. If two men are both unfree and can never be free, does it matter if one man realizes the truth while the other doesn’t? After all, know the truth or not, both will be unfree. And yet, to know the truth of one’s unfreedom is to be free of the illusion. When astronomers discovered that Earth is an insignificant planet in a vast universe, none of which we can control, we learned how unfree we are in the cosmic scale of things. But in knowing than not knowing, we gained the freedom of illumination. It’s like Joseph K in THE TRIAL ultimately cannot escape his fate, but there is a need to know, like the Richard Gere’s character needs to know in MOTHMAN PROPHECIES and the hapless Buckwheat-gone-bad Negro needs to know in DIRTY HARRY whether Callahan's pistol fired six or only five shots.) Bowman’s knocking the glass off the table is reminiscent of the amniotic snow globe falling and shattering in CITIZEN KANE.
Anyway, whatever inspiration Welles may have drawn from radio and theatre, he was obviously a born genius fascinated with creative riddles regardless of the task before him. Had he been a caveman, he would have been the kind to pioneer cave paintings, idol-making, and tool-making: the Moon Watcher ape-man in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Welles love to explore ways, splashy and subtle, to smash or slip through established formal limitations. If he lacked sufficient production values to fully realize his visions, he resorted to artful trickery not unlike the stylistic fusion of fact and fiction in the radio performance of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. (Incidentally, the greatest example of how facts and fiction were intermixed to create a narrative of ‘higher truth’ is the story of Jesus. If the stories of the Old Testament read like myth and/or history, remembrance of the legendary past, the New Testament reads like ‘you are there’ journalism; there’s a sense of immediacy and eye-witness account, a kind of proto-journalism, and indeed it has served as a template for certain type of reporting, what with men like John Reed and Edgar Snow mixing fact and fiction to herald a new dawn. As the newspaper in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE says, "when legend becomes fact, print the legend." Christography has certainly been a big factor in the coverage and remembrance of the Civil Rights Movement, which is why it has a quasi-spiritual hold over the American public. MLK has been sold as the story of black jesus. The 1980s film UNDER FIRE is about an American journalist who feels morally compelled to mix facts and fiction to create a Christographic news-gospel or ‘newspel’ about a Che-Guevara-like revolutionary who is dead but photo-resurrected to appear alive to keep up the morale of rebel fighters. [BROADCAST NEWS shows us another way fact and fiction can be blended to make us experience news not only as reportage but emotional support system.] The journalist and/or intellectual who cares about the truth above all, even more than his ideological biases, is a rare bird, which is why George Orwell, a leftist intellectual who spoke about the truth about the crimes of communism, was an exception than the rule.) One thing for sure, despite the invaluable lessons of theater and radio on Welles’ film career, success in one art form rarely translates into success in another. Peter Brooks was much lauded for work in theater, but his films ranged from adequate(LORD OF THE FLIES) to awful. Ingmar Bergman began in theater, and he did become a great film director, but he was never quite the cinematic artist of Welles’ caliber even though, perhaps, such isn’t a fair assessment because of their different outlooks. Welles relished being a public figure who reveled in the clash of personalities. Charles Foster Kane dies before his literal death because he is nothing without dynamism of human contact and friction. The tragedy of his life is he wants to be surrounded with people of talent, but his monstrous ego reduces partners and colleagues into foes or flunkies. He is utterly pitiful when his second wife Susan Alexander leaves him. In this sense, Welles had something in common with Fellini, whose cinema was also about the constant circus of personalities. (8½ is a film of distractions and evasions. A story of a man so enamored of company, festivity, and celebration that he finds it nearly impossible to sit quietly and delve into his own soul for inspiration. It could be that his creative well has run dry or he no longer has the will or determination to stick with one line of thought or overriding theme. It’s like someone who finds every excuse or diversion not to do his homework and then turning in the story of his evasions as the homework. It worked One Time with 8½, but it’s the sort of stunt one can pull off only once.) Both Welles and Fellini liked to tell ‘busy’ stories where a whole series of colorful characters constantly collide with another like so many billiard balls. Aloneness is hell in the worlds of Welles and Fellini, and almost no character willfully seeks it. Even when the eponymous heroine of NIGHTS OF CABIRIA finds herself walking alone after being defrauded by a lowlife hustler, she finds solace when surrounded by a merry band of revelers. The scene may have inspired the final moment of AU HASARD BALTHSAR where the donkey in death is surrounded by a cloud of sheep.
Perhaps, this is why Bergman didn’t much care for Welles and Fellini — though he liked Fellini the man if not exactly the artist. There’s a lot happening in the works of Welles and Fellini, but however artfully and impressively presented, they detract(and distract us) from the core matter of the human condition, meaning of life, and the central theme. (Bergman’s great admiration for Andrei Tarkovsky may have owed to the Russian director’s intensity of contemplation in vision and theme. Welles and Fellini’s films are about ‘the party is on’. Tarkovsky’s films are about the truth after the ‘party is over’. Tarkovsky’s characters feel truth than boredom when alone.) Perhaps from Bergman’s perspective, neither Welles nor Fellini had the patience, seriousness, and commitment to sit down and get down to business. But then, Fellini might have agreed, as his alter ego played by Marcello Mastroianni in LA DOLCE VITA admits to lacking the resolve to finish writing a serious book; despite his doubts about the circus of celebrities and the decadent rich, they are his kind of people. Granted, prior to Fellni’s grand ventures beginning with LA DOLCE VITA, he worked on smaller projects about more modest people, producing masterpieces like WHITE SHEIK and I VITELLONI and several other excellent films. But even there, there was always the sense of impatience and wish for escapism, to be where the action is. WHITE SHEIK is oiled with comic situations; the characters are too deluded or aggravated to find meaning... except by accident. The bride goes for escapist fantasy, and the groom anxiously does his best to salvage the situation, and if there is a kind of lesson, the couple stumbles on it. And I VITELLONI is about a group of ne’er-do-wells who do their utmost to evade responsibilities of adulthood. Pathetically and comically, they are grownups who refuse to grow up; they are growndowns. The only members of the bunch who seek any kind of meaning is the playwright and a character aptly named Moraldo, but the former is presented as something of a deluded fool(who craves approval and validation) while the latter is usually naive and clueless, and in the end, decides to leave the town... apparently for the big city where the action. 8½ is generally considered Fellini’s greatest film, and it too is about a character who lacks the patience to sit still and take a long hard look at his life. He is perturbed by the distractions of the people around him but not because he wants them gone but because he can’t do without them. He needs his wife here, mistress there, friends and hangers-on all around him, admirers and shmoozers everywhere. He wants to be considered a great artist but is racked with insecurity and relies on an intellectual to provide him with sobering advice, which he can’t stomach. He wants to make love to all the women in the world; he wants the adulation of the critics and commentators but also fears and hates them, but then, he can’t do without them either since he’s an attention hog hungry from approval and adulation.
8½ is as different a film can be from Bergman’s PERSONA, and yet it’s like Fellini’s own version of it — though it predated Bergman’s film — in the sense that Fellini’s alter ego or fictional persona Guido finds his sense-of-self integrating and fusing with those around him. It’s as if Guido has lost a sense of who he is and must be. If he is an artist whose identity is defined by his imagination and if his imagination is inhabited by all the people he’d known, then he is them and they are he. Who is Guido-as-Guido as opposed to Guido-as-circus? (On the question of "who am I?", late Bergman took a hard close look by retracing the lives of his parents and his childhood. Fellini’s preferred mode was impression and sensation than concentration.) Does he have the will to define what he is? Is there a kind of paradox to ‘egotisticality’ where the person with the biggest ego has the weakest sense of self? There is, after all, a degree of Jesus complex in 8½ though done in self-mocking humor. Fellini-as-Guido is half-clown but also half-martyr-to-art. When Jesus tried to be everything to everyone, He could no longer be ‘himself’. He had to be Him, the Son of God. Grander one’s ego and the more one’s life is intertwined with other peoples and the larger world, the more one has to live up to what others expect of him. Thus, bigger the ego, less stable the identity. Especially with the grand success of LA DOLCE VITA, Fellini underwent a crisis of identity, not unlike that of the heroine of LOLA MONTEZ. When he'd made films like WHITE SHEIK, I VITELLONI, LA STRADA, NIGHTS OF CABIRIA, and IL BIDONE, he was an Italian film-maker who combined neo-realism with personal whimsy. Though world famous in the 1950s, he was seen as essentially a director of provincial or rustic themes. But LA DOLCE VITA elevated him to a 'modernist'(and maybe even an 'intellectual') artist with ‘something to say’ about the world, and this made Fellini extremely self-conscious and anxious. In essence, Fellini was a terrific storyteller of the lives of simple souls and rascals. He was best at working small and personal, but LA DOLCE VITA made him something like a philosopher-moralist-social-commentator-and-even-prophet on the modern world, and Fellini knew he’d chewed off more than he could swallow. On the other hand, his ego basked in all the awe and adulation. He got away with maybe the greatest scam in film history with 8½, a film of evasions and diversions where Fellini refused to say anything(of any substance) by pretending to have too many ideas, too many complexes, too many inner-conflicts. If the actress in PERSONA refused to say anything by shutting up, Guido-as-Fellini refused to say anything by turning EVERYTHING into a lie. But it was so masterfully and brilliantly pulled off that 8½ remains as a towering achievement. It was a con-trick of the greatest order. But then, it’s difficult to pull the same con twice, and Fellini’s subsequent films could no longer hide the creative bankruptcy. In film after film, Fellini fell into the habit of falling back on distractions — an array of minor characters(often freaks or decadents) moving in and out of frames mouthing gibberish — to create the impression that his film was brimming with life, love, energy, inventiveness, and creativity when, in fact, Fellini seemed unable to focus and fixate on anything of substance. It was like a chef who goes about busily ordering the staff to move around a lot, mingles with the customers and talks endlessly, and serves a lot of appetizers but never gets down to preparing the main course. The old Jewish lady in the Wendy’s commercial would have demanded, "Where’s the beef?" upon watching Fellini films after 8½..
Close Encounters of the Creative Kind. The place where Guido is crucified by the mocking media and then resurrected by his irrepressible muse.
Similar criticisms have been leveled at Welles, namely that he was more of a showboating circus master than an Artist as Seeker of Meaning and Truth. Even in Welles’ most ‘arty’ film THE TRIAL, the maelstrom of striking visuals dominate, and the frenetic realization of Joseph K.’s character renders him like a pinball within a circuit-box of wizardry, all the more so because Anthony Perkins’ ‘balderdashy’ performance is riddled with shot nerves of someone who seems drained physically as well as emotionally. If Kafka’s story is akin to a hockey player wondering why he’s being consigned to the penalty box, Welles’ version is akin to a player wondering why the ice-floor is shaking and cracking and messing up his balance over and over. It’s less about closed doors than hall-of-mirrors. Though K of the novel is caught in Kafka’s maze, he is clearly the center, and the meaning of the work emerges through the duality of identification and alienation that we are made to feel in relation to K, not least because K is obviously Kafka’s literary double — Kafka shares K’s disorientation & anxiety as fellow mice, but Kafka also plays the role of the cat-god who toys with the hapless mouse; K is both Kafka’s hero and victim. We can identify and even sympathize with the part of K that appears to be an innocent falsely accused by a system that is either inhuman, tyrannical, crazy, or merely inept. (But then, the system’s ineptness could be as dangerous as inhumanity. One wrong file or button can send an innocent person to death without anyone knowing. Or even if the error is identified, maybe the system wants to get rid of him as evidence of its own failure. After all, HAL computer decided to erase all trace of its own ‘error’ by wiping everyone out. Power has pride and prestige, and it will do ANYTHING to cover up its ineptness that could go from a chink in the armor to a breach that breaks the dam.) Yet, there’s also a sense of alienation, for there is something odd about K, and we can’t help thinking that there is a reason why K has been charged of something.
Also, K’s dilemma seems at times to be a public matter, something that has larger implications for rest of society; but at other times, the problem seems as though K’s psycho-drama is warping fictional space itself, in which case his psyche is intruding into and violating the contract of ‘reality’ in fiction with a clear division between subjective characters and objective reality. Though these concerns are present in Welles’ THE TRIAL, the main strength(but also weakness) lies in Welles’ film-making prowess, prodigious despite problems of budget and production.
But a key advantage of Welles’ showmanship over Fellini’s was it was of much higher caliber(with the exception of 8½, a true cinematic marvel where magic and meaning merge into one), indeed an art in and of itself. Brush-strokes of brilliance and visionary power contain their own truths and need no further justification. Take LADY FROM SHANGHAI with its mythic resonance despite the ludicrous plot. Tumults and rushes stirred up by Welles’ roulette-like cinema jangle our nerves, setting off more responses than we know what to do with. We don’t know what exactly Welles is doing, but it’s more than style because it doesn’t merely dazzle but strike a deeper chord. It is genius. Why could Shakespeare assemble words to convey so much with so little? Likewise, what was this rapport Welles had with moving and shifting images? How was it that he could do so much more with so much less compared to Hollywood directors like Cecil. B. DeMille whose works, such as THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH and TEN COMMANDMENTS, while grandiose and spectacular, are really storytelling by the numbers(which is also true of LA DOLCE VITA except for the unforgettable opening scene). Just like the bartender in THE SHINING serves something more than drinks, Welles the magician served more than tricks. But what exactly is this secret that is spiked within the tricks? We don’t know, which is why it’s genius. It’s also why Welles imitators pale in comparison because they copy the externals without possessing the internals: The Style without the Secret. There is a Faustian element to such secrets because it goes over/under our conscious ability to understand. It’s like the girl in BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER doesn’t understand the power the Devil has over her, but she is transfixed by it; she feels sympathy and love for the devil. Listening to a great symphony, we don’t think about the ‘message’ or ‘meaning’. It is there in the expression itself: Form is content. The gods don’t have to explain or justify themselves; they can do what we can’t do. Genius is a case of the rare mortal possessing, if only for a blip in time, the touch of gods. Fellini at his best was formidable, but he was never the genius and symphonist on the level of Welles. And when Fellini’s inflated ego floated freely, divorced from his limited but real talent, he even lost the mantle of the Artist. (Even most fine artists are not geniuses.)
Ingmar Bergman's THE DEVIL'S WANTON
Ingmar Bergman was a different kind of artist. Though many of his films have ensemble acting and colorful characters, Bergman had the tunnel vision of the miner for truth. This side of him could have been a matter of personality or a product of his Lutheran upbringing. Unlike the Catholic tradition — often on display in Fellini’s films — where the faithful are bedazzled by a panoply of quasi-pagan and idolatrous theatrics, the Lutheran Faith insisted on sternness and quietude necessary for concentration. Though both Bergman and Fellini lost their religious faiths, the cultural mind-sets remained along with the quirks of personality. Similar to Fellini’s LA STRADA, Bergman made a number of films about traveling performers or circus troupes, but the centrality of solitude in Bergman’s films is absent in Fellini’s. Fellini’s characters are social animals, and when they’re exiled from the community, the film might as well end as in the final scenes of I VITELLONI(where Moraldo finally leaves his hometown), LA STRADA(where Zampano is left to wail alone), and IL BIDONE(where the mortally wounded con-man is abandoned by fellow thieves). Being alone can be painful in Bergman’s universe, but it is also a ‘monastic’ path to deeper truth. In Fellini’s universe, being alone is a curse, a cruel exile. In Bergman’s films, people feel alone even in the company of others. The fat guy in SAWDUST AND TINSEL(aka CLOWN’S EVENING) has a mistress and circus people all around him, but he feels estranged and profoundly alone. Bergman’s first film TORMENT — directed by Alf Sjoberg — is about a young man who arrives at a deeper understanding of self away from family and classmates. Aloneness doesn’t necessarily mean being literally alone. Rather it means departure from comfort zone of familiar community or from festive zone of escapist merriment in order to seek/gain a more honest or redemptive understanding of oneself by facing up to one’s own demons or learning to interact with others on a truer basis. (Bergman felt at home in theater because the stage is both prison and mind. A prison in the sense that characters are trapped together in claustrophobic space. And yet, precisely because a stage character is spatially marooned unlike a character in a novel or movie, he must create a mind-space, especially through monologue, to stake his rationale for existence. There is a theater-like quality about Bergman’s films in the use of monologues, verbal and/or visual[monolooks], to assert a character’s justification before others, nothingness, or God. Being itself is oppressive, morbid and morose, as in HAMLET, a story where one isn’t sure if Hamlet is enlivened or enervated by tragedy. While it is true that he struggles against villainy, would he be happier if nothing had gone wrong? Is his gloom-and-doom outlook the result of misfortune, or does the misfortune provide him with a worthy target for his innately and perhaps inescapably gloom-and-doom personality? Bergman’s obsession with baring inner truth increasingly placed him at odds with humanism. WILD STRAWBERRIES and THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY come closest to bridging truth with heart. He dug up much that was false or ugly but still strove for semblance of common ground, the meeting of hearts and minds. But the deeper one digs into psycho-drama, people seem less like moral creatures and morality itself comes into doubt as fiction created by man to favor mediocrity against true desire, true talent, and true truth? There is no hope in the humanist sense for the characters of PERSONA, HOUR OF THE WOLF, PASSION OF ANNA, and etc., just like there is nothing to save about humanity at the end of ICEMAN COMETH and STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. Look at the human soul ‘too closely’, and it’s a diseased heart.) A simpler version of truth-seeking was in SUMMER WITH MONIKA where young lovers go off on their own to experience freedom, only to get on each other’s nerves when supplies run out, novelty of adventure wears off, and aggravations pile up. Also, Monika is ultimately selfish, and the guy is weak. Bad combination in a couple. Though a tale of youthful misadventure, it sums up the essence of life itself as a story of reality, longing for dream, loss of dream, and back-to-reality again. A more complex version — though not necessarily better — involved the accidental exile of the sisters in the hotel in a foreign country in THE SILENCE. Bergman himself chose to live on the island of Faro to be free of distractions in search of the truth, and this side of Bergman could be glimpsed in films such as THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, PERSONA, HOUR OF THE WOLF, and especially THE PASSION(released as PASSION OF ANNA in America). And of course, SHAME, the strangeness of which derives from being maybe the most solitary-feeling of all ‘war films’. Nothing is more public and anti-privacy than war that forces so many to share in same horrors, but the overwhelming sense in SHAME is the psychological isolation of the couple from everyone else, in some ways even from one another. Even when forced onto the same boat, it’s like everyone is an island unto himself or herself.
Bergman sensed the paradoxes of truth-seeking, i.e. one must disassociate from distractions of the world, but the disassociation could just as easily be a form of escapism that leads to a dead-end. This is one of the problems of academia, a self-enclosed realm in search of truth about the world from which it is disassociated except in data and theory. Or the Monastery and Church, sanctuaries from the world but claiming to behold the Truth of the World.
Solitary quietude allows a person to focus on certain matters without the dizzying distraction of the ‘business’ of life, but it also isolates him from reality. Also, more likely than not, even the thing he wants to fixate on with full concentration is the product of the World of Distractions. In a way, every distraction is itself a truth that happens to be irrelevant to one’s particularly chosen 'field' of truth. But irrelevance doesn’t mean unimportance. Making pizza is irrelevant to metallurgy, but who denies the importance of pizza?
Liv Ullmann’s character in PERSONA, the neurotic actress Elisabet, may be a psychological soul-searcher, but she cannot handle the TV image of a Buddhist monk who set himself on fire in Vietnam. Not only is the image shocking but it features a monastic figure engaging politically with the world. One wonders if such monks are violating their own principles or exposing the cowardice of those who seek truth only in the solace of seclusion.
Anyway, Elisabet becomes such a purist for truth(or at least against falsehood) that she refuses to work, see her family, or even talk because human relations are tainted with lies, deceptions, and obfuscation. Worse, even the sincerest effort at truth only leads to more lies because truth is too complex and/or because the sincere could be as deluded as the insincere could be deceptive. In an earlier age, such a woman might have become a nun and offered herself to God, but Elisabet is living in the modern world of Godlessness. She shuts herself from the world to either protect herself from its lies or to shield the world from her lies. As with Holden Caulfield of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, there is no escape. One cannot be separate from the world, of which one is a part. As in the novel ARK SAKURA by Kobo Abe, all the problems of the world are found anew even in isolation because we carry the disease within us no matter where we go. It’s like when the eponymous character of Darren Aronofsky’s NOAH realizes that, even if he starts anew with this ‘good’ family, all the rot will begin again because the germs of sin infect every human soul.
If Elisabet listens to the world, she hears its lies. If she speaks to the world, the world hears her lies. She is an actress in an art form that is meant to convey truth, but art is all make-believe, a lie. And yet, fiction is the most powerful way of conveying truth about the nature of man. Art is a mask that unmasks, an idea that became ever more loaded with neuroticism in the Modern Age of psychology and personal meaning. Of course, this is one sure formula for madness, and indeed she is committed to some haute funny farm.
Bergman was well aware of the crisis of Truth. You couldn’t find it with people because social relations are built on lies necessary for people to get along. Also, ego prefers pride & vanity OR praise & approval above all else in social interactions. But then, truth can’t be found apart from humanity either because the very essence of our nature is that of social animals. Whatever one seeks alone has meaning only in the sharing. Buddha and Jesus ultimately shared the truth that had been attained alone. Even as True Artists take pride in not pandering to the lowest common denominator or the unwashed masses, it makes no sense to create anything unless SOMEONE ELSE will know about it. Even in isolation on the island of Faro, Bergman made films for the world. And even when an ascetic shuts himself from others, he finds himself communing with the imagined being of God(or gods or imaginary beings) or with the ghosts of his memory.
And even when one recedes into one’s own soul-space, one can never be free of the larger world, if even at the most rudimentary mundane level. After all, Elisabet has to be taken care of by other people. Diane Selwyn in MULHOLLAND DR. can’t shut off the world forever. Someone has to cook breakfast, take out the garbage, and feed the cat. There’s also no clear borderline between recess into fantasy or search for truth. In MULHOLLAND DR., Diane Selwyn clearly recedes into her fantasy world; she becomes like a poor girl version of Howard Hughes or Charles Foster Kane in the final stage of his life. Unable to face reality, they recede into fantasy. In contrast, other people seek higher truth that rises above desires of ego and vanity. To attain this, they feel a need to break out of the shell of comfort, physical and psychological. A need to see the world as it really is, the ugly side as well as the cosmetic side. And the need to realize that one's ego is a mere speck in the grand scheme of things governed by God or the ultimate truth, thus attaining humility over hubris. And we see this powerfully in the figure of Jesus who went among the sick & diseased and experienced the worst horrors of physical torture but also surrendered His Soul to God.
Even when one seeks solace from others to be true to oneself, one’s isolation or escape has meaning only in relation to others. Man can never be alone-alone. He is alone-from, alone-against, or alone-toward something. When the eponymous character of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA went off to think all alone, he was imagining a bold military strategy. So, even upon discovering a truth on one’s own, there is an urge to share it with or foist it upon others. (Even if ascetics choose to mostly remain alone, they are with God or gods.) It’s like Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad all went off to seek the Truth on their own, but it was ultimately to share it with the tribe or the world. Likewise, even as Ingmar Bergman became increasingly introverted as an artist in the late 60s and early 70s, he was plumbing for deeper truth to show to the world. Thus, the emotional psychology of Truth is a limbo between isolation and intervention. We see this in how academia, clergy, and artists operate.
In Bergman’s films, the search for truth is often a lonely endeavor. The minister in COMMUNICANTS(aka WINTER LIGHT) is often a solitary figure who can’t communicate with members of the parish because he himself can’t communicate with silent God. (The socially awkward character of THE DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST isn’t good with people either, but there’s a sense of spiritual calm. He’s not a capable agent but nevertheless a good servant of God. Townsfolk may not think highly of him, but perhaps God looks favorably upon him.) The minister in WINTER LIGHT desperately seeks God alone but agonizes over the silence. A man of the cloth without the voice is an empty suit. He seeks the voice just like the dark soul in THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER longing for the Devil. He feels abandoned, but then, did he ever hear God? Did it occur to him only later in life that his role as minister is meaningless and phony without contact with God? Is he like a failed scientist in a laboratory coat going through the motions without ever finding any proof of his hypothesis? What is it like to be a Man of God who is ‘shunned’ by God Himself? Sometimes, the chosen are not those who seek. (Salieri in AMADEUS sought God for musical gift, but he was not the chosen.) In contrast, despite the terror of madness, there is at least the voice from the dark side or the devil. In this sense, the minister in WINTER LIGHT is a more pitiable character than the mad daughter in THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY. Her hallucinations grow dark and terrifying, but at least she is in communication with something powerful and beyond banal reality.
The rational/scientific types in Bergman’s films tend to be like Richard Dawkins who, for all his conceit of lifting humanity from ignorance toward the light of reason & science, takes glib pleasure in feeling so superior to 99% of humanity. Personality-wise, Dawkins is a snobbist. Like the preening know-it-all ‘rational’ types in Bergman films, Dawkins gets off accentuating the difference between his highfalutin self and moronic humanity. His form of atheism might as well be called Sneer Studies. He’s like the doctor/scientist in THE FACE(aka THE MAGICIAN). Or consider the scientist in THE SERPENT’S EGG who regards humans as experimental fodder and history as theorem in accordance to some prophetic logic. But because only a select few are sufficiently intelligent to be privy to such truth, it is ultimately a brahmanic science of separateness of those-who-know controlling those-who-don’t-know in the name of making them know what those-who-know know but which can’t be known by most who-don’t-know because, ultimately, those-who-don’t-know also happen to be those-who-can’t-know.
Anyway, even as Bergman sought solitude(relatively speaking, of course, in the most cooperative and public of art forms), he became acutely aware of the impossibility of truth in art. (Indeed, it is interesting that the concept of both 8½ and PERSONA is predicated on the finding-of-art-via-abandonment-of-art. In Fellini’s film, it is upon Guido’s realization that he has nothing to say that he finds something to say. PERSONA is about an artist who finds all forms of communication to be phony and shuts herself from the world, but then, this very ‘shuttening’ served as the basis of what may be Bergman’s best film. Both films are predicated on the confusion of I-don’t-know that results in I-can-show. And yet, that notion can only be a dead-end. It’s not something that can be pulled off again.) All he could do was search alone despite the inevitable dead-ends. To be with people means distractions from the truth. To be alone means the truth of one’s need for company. Welles lacked Bergman’s level of concentration as an artist, but then, his personality and sensibility were altogether different. He was a symphonist than a soloist, a bullfighter-as-master-of-spectacle than a butcher rummaging through organs for portents.
In terms of technique, Bergman was like a gymnast whose every move had to be precise and exact. In terms of theme, he was like wrestler exerting all his strength to pin down some hard-earned truth. Hitchcock’s cinema was like baseball or cricket. Anything is possible but according to strict rules of the game. This is why movies like REAR WINDOW, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, PSYCHO, and THE BIRDS are so jarring. Because Hitchcockian world is one where spatial politics is strictly regulated and observed by civility and manners(closer to British sensibility than the American one of John-Fordian-School-of-Barroom-Brawls-and-open-spaces-trampled-by-John-Wayne-and-gang), a transgression is more than a mere individual act of crime; it is a violation of the order of the universe itself. Consider the parody of the Western in NORTH BY NORTHWEST where Cary Grant’s character, the urbane city-slicker, is dropped in the middle of nowhere and then pursued by an airplane. What makes it especially jarring is the contrast between rules of urbanity and sheer terror from the sky. Or consider how the sexual politics of transgression in THE BIRDS leads the whole world to shake and rattle with the madness of nature unloosed. In cricket and baseball, there is plenty of hitting and running, but one must stick to apportioned spaces. Violation of rules turns Jerusalem into Sodom.
In contrast, Welles’s cinema might be compared to football where the action is far less predictable and wields a greater spectrum between primal brutality and sublime grace. Not for nothing is there a play in football called the ‘hail mary’. While every sport has its unique qualities and strengths, it’s difficult to think of another sport more intensely athletic than American Football, and understandably, Welles the master quarterback became the most revered film-director for his sheer prowess as film-maker.
Anyway, returning to the subject of Louis Malle and his career as both a feature film director and documentary film-maker, one may argue Europeans had a more complex understanding of the relationship(in terms of similarities, differences, convergences, divergences) between the two forms, and that sensibility may have inspired films such as AMERICAN SPLENDOR and BEYOND THE SEA, as well as the works of Charlie Kaufman where ‘non-fiction’ and fiction loophole into one another. While Kevin Spacey’s film about Bobby Darin is what is called a ‘biopic’, it deviates from convention by questioning the meaning of identity, further complicated by Spacey’s conscious self-presentation as yet another ‘identity’ of Darin, which also calls into question Spacey’s own identity because his lifelong obsession with Darin sometimes made him feel he IS Darin. (In a world of Elvis Impersonators, Spacey was fixated on Darin. Now, with the rise of Rap music, imitation has become the core of music culture.) If most biopics affirm the life of a famous celebrity, BEYOND THE SEA questions it(and this cynical aspect of the film may have doomed it at the box office). The notion of ‘based on a true story’ becomes fuzzier as the film is more about Darin the ‘legend’ than legend. Instead of presenting the official legend, it makes us ponder how legends are created and not just by the industry but by individuals who, for whatever reason, feel compelled to weave myths about themselves. Consider how the woman whom Darin had regarded as his sister was really his mother.
Revelations about his personal history makes him question his role as a ‘star’ as well. To the world, he is ‘Bobby Darin’, but to himself, he becomes a question mark.
Kevin Spacey: BEYOND THE SEA
Todd Haynes tried so pull off something similar with I’M NOT THERE(a ‘decon-pic’ about Bob Dylan), but its self-conscious and conceited academism stinks to high heaven, whereas BEYOND THE SEA conveys the themes without turning into a classroom lecture about postmodernism. For all I know, much of BEYOND THE SEA may not be factually true, but then it calls into question the conceit of veracity in movies purporting to be ‘based on a true story’. If the real Bobby Darin didn’t know so much about his true self, how much can we learn from the movie Darin? Furthermore, even if every detail in the film is the result of exacting research, how ‘true’ is it when everyone in the film is an actor? Due to the power of movies, many people will be more likely to associate a certain historical figure with his fictional depiction in movies than to his actual self. I’d wager that most people conflate T.E. Lawrence with Peter O’Toole. (Also, why do we care so much about the private lives of celebrities? After all, our interest in them concerns their roles in arts & entertainment, without which they would be just Ordinary People. Furthermore, even famous people notable for some talent dealt mostly with mundane issues in their daily lives. Then, why are their 'boring' facts of life suddenly interesting or remarkable simply because they are famous for something or other? If two people, one famous and one ordinary, eat apple pies, is it more special when the famous one eats it? But there is nothing more commonplace than people eating pies.)
Oddly enough, fame paradoxically leads to both more lies and more truth. For sake of celebrity, the industry spins false narratives to whitewash the stars. But fame and fandom also attract scrutiny, and the hunt for facts by reporters and biographers often leads to revelations that even the subject himself didn’t even know about: Matters pertaining to his family and the cultural community from which he'd sprung. Thus, the lives of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson became both myth-laden and truth-exposed. The industry protected and promoted them as stars, but reporters and biographers dragged out all sorts of dark secrets from hidden places. (Granted, there are also lots of rumors that are neither preferred myth or verifiable as truth.) Most of us don’t know too much about our lineage or backgrounds, but suppose one of us became famous. Bunch of journalists might dig into our backgrounds and dig up stuff that we ourselves never knew or realized. BEYOND THE SEA, due to its playful auto-subversiveness(as in Oliver Stone’s NIXON and, to a lesser extent, Clint Eastwood’s J. EDGAR) provokes us with questions, whereas most biopics — even the best ones like COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER, RUDY, and RAY — present the stories as affirmations of life.
Thus, BEYOND THE SEA is more than show-and-tell. It is show-and-tell crossed with Charade, Pin-the-Donkey, and Simon Says. Reality isn’t an homily, but that’s what we usually get from ‘Based on a True Story’ movies, hilariously spoofed in MR. SHOW. The ‘uplift’ of ‘Based on a True Story’ movies is meant to be quasi-religious and ‘inspirational’, even make you feel ‘guilty’ if you don’t play along, like the pressure to stand up at sports games for the national anthem. I remember being moved by Richard Attenborough's GANDHI, so much so that I went to see it again the next day. The movie made you feel as if Gandhi was the greatest man that ever lived, but then, few weeks later, the Gandhi-bubble was pricked by an article I read about the Gandhi the man as opposed to ‘saint’, and I felt like a fool for having proselytized it to everyone, as if they could be ‘saved’ by a movie. The disillusion made it difficult to sit through the movie again, and now, it has more value as political comedy than serious history. It now seems the best way to appreciate Gandhi is not as a wiseman, guru, teacher, and prophet but as savvy operator, an Asian-Indian Groucho Marx as master middleman manipulator of Anglo psychology. (That said, given that the West is now under the rule of Jewish globalists and being demographically colonized by the Third World, GANDHI is a timely movie. It is a time when whites must go ‘gandhi’.) Richard Attenborough would go onto make other films ‘based on a true story’, but even Liberals lost interest as CRY FREEDOM, CHAPLIN, and SHADOWLANDS were regarded as both painfully earnest and slyly manipulative, a perverse mixture of holy water and gin.
GANDHI, a spectacle of sanctimony redeemed by Ben Kingley's semi-comic performance.
SHADOWLANDS, a rather nice if sappy movie. Its message is "It's holier to serve a Jew than Christ" or "Serving a Jew is like serving Jesus." The goy studio exec in HAIL, CAESAR! might agree.
I haven’t seen CRY FREEDOM or CHAPLIN, but I did see the sentimental philosemitic SHADOWLANDS. Attenborough is a decent film-maker, but his main interest isn’t truth(problematic because his movies have been ‘based on true stories’) but secular sanctimony. He was the Santa Claus of feel-good Liberalism and atonement of ‘white guilt’. In SHADOWLANDS, the abrasive and manipulative Jewish woman is near-sainted because, well, she is Jewish. One wonders to what extent Attenborough was a wishful sap of piety or a cynical operator who wanted plaudits & prizes from the Jew-run media industry. Given the tricks of human psychology, I suppose he could have been both. After all, the easiest person to fool is yourself.
In a way, it was fitting that he played the visionary oligarch in JURASSIC PARK. A man of good cheer and dreams but also a cunning and cynical manipulator of mass culture. Of course, the real South Africa — in contrast to the dream of presumably a ‘rainbow nation’ in CRY FREEDOM — is turning out like Jurassic Park where the beasts run wild and free, with white folks having to fly away in a copter to save their own skin. Spielberg’s casting of Attenborough was ironic, perhaps even subconsciously so on Spielberg’s part. On the one hand, Spielberg the Jew surely appreciated Attenborough’s ‘white guilt’ complex and Liberal goodwill, but on the other hand, he must have looked upon Attenborough as a self-delusional dupe with no idea what’s really in store for white folks when the shi* hits the fan. (The conceit of superior wit and charm among privileged members of British Society had a way of shielding men-of-brilliance from the full brunt of radical social change. As with Gore Vidal, these wits and charmers are so used to winning the status game with haute disdain or virtue-signaling that they take their vaunted positions for granted, as eternal entitlements. But, as with Arthur Frayn in ZARDOZ when the barbarians overrun the Vortex, the wits will be bloodied and dragged through the streets like all the rest. A Negro with a machete doesn’t care about your wits or manners. In this, the wits and dimwits have something in common. Both are clueless if for different reasons. Consider the dimwit Chance in BEING THERE who thinks he can makes Negroes disappear with a remote control. But then, is it really dumber than the conceit of wits who think their cloistered little world can always be maintained with charm and a wink? Did William F. Buckley’s brand of Conservatism really conserve anything? He had charm that couldn’t undo the harm. Still, at the very least, he saw barbarians for what they were, even if he failed to understand that Jews, despite their intelligence and ability, are really uncouth boors without scruples. Ability isn’t the same as sensibility; credentials aren’t the same as pedigree. More deluded than Buckley are men like Gore Vidal and Liberal wits who fail to understand the full implications of the rise of degeneracy and barbarism. As dissident elites, they see whites and/or the elites as the sole sources of evil and foolishly regard the radicals and Third World mobs as merely useful tools of ‘progress’. They were mostly blind to the horrors of communism until it was too late, and they now sweep the grim reality of new South Africa under the rug simply because, like Chance with the remote, they can.) Though Spielberg is officially a Liberal, his real animating spirit is Jewish tribalism and, as such, is a ruthless rightist(for the interests of his own kind) who spins fairytales before our eyes to make us ‘believe’. SCHINDLER’S LIST and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN are weak as history, biography, and character study but overwhelming on the visceral level of born-again hyperbolics. Spielberg is a master-manipulator of Christian tropes to dupe goyim into worshiping and serving Jews. His movies’ mixture of shock-brutality and hug-sentimentality has something of Christian mythology that uses horror to drive people toward hope. This is, of course, why Jews hated Mel Gibson’s PASSION OF THE CHRIST with such virulence. The main reason wasn’t the supposedly negative depictions of Jewish rabbis but the fact that, in contrast to earlier Jesus movies, it combined shocking brutality with sentimental rapture. It worked on the visceral level that overrode the mind, something that can’t be said for earlier respectable Jesus movies that limited the violence and restrained the element of uplift. One might consider Martin Scorsese’s THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST an exception, but Jews figured it’d be too porny and heretical to be inspiring to Christians. Jews welcomed it as an anti-Christian movie even though Scorsese had no such intention.
Anyway, what do we learn from SCHINDLER’S LIST and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN? Schindler was redeemed by his love for the Jews, and Jews were a saintly flock, and why would you want to know anything more? What are you, a Nazi, a Holocaust Denier, an anti-Semite? (Even so, those works were still sold as fictionalized accounts of ‘true stories’ whereas something like LIBERATORS by PBS was a staggering piece of mendacious propaganda sold as non-fiction documentary. Unfortunately, even those who knew it was a lie muted their criticism lest they be suspected for ‘antisemitism’. Also, the Jewish network may seek revenge on whistle-blowers just like the culture within the Police Department made it so difficult for Danny Ciello to speak the truth in PRINCE OF THE CITY. For those reasons, Jewish hoaxes are exposed only if some conscientious Jewish social critic or historian calls foul. Apparently, non-Jews are too afraid to say or do anything that might ruffle Jewish feathers, in the same way that so many whites, even conservatives, are afraid to call out on black pathology — it be ‘racist’! — or homo degeneracy — it is ‘homophobic’! Needless to say, even though LIBERATORS was a filthy lie, almost no one knows about it as it’s been flushed down the memory hole. Furthermore, no one involved with the project suffered consequences for having produced or aired such a blatant lie. The main problem in the West is not ‘Holocaust Denial’ but Holocaust Delusion, a phenomenon where the actual tragedy of Shoah is spun to concoct feel-good fantasies on par with Televangelist frauds. The current ‘Russia Hacking’ hysteria is proof of how the Jewish-controlled media and networks will inflame public consciousness with any amount of lunacy to maintain their bogus Narrative as the only permissible one.) Though some ‘Based on a True Story’ movies have the stuff of grit and heart — COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER is a good example — , too many are about converting true stories into pop cults, as in the cases of GANDHI and CRY FREEDOM. Even though Steven Spielberg would like us to believe that his main inspirations come from John Ford, David Lean, Akira Kurosawa and Stanley Kubrick — he is certainly their equal in terms of visual mastery — , his sensibility is drawn mostly from Disney and Attenborough. Though Lean’s LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is more entertainment than history, it portrays a complex and troubled figure of boundless ambition and agonizing doubt. He is both granite and sand. David Lean and Robert Bolts’s telling is inspired but not 'inspirational'. Like Anthony Mann’s EL CID, it is for tough adult sensibilities than for childlike sensitivities. Lean’s tragic sense walks the tightrope between will and fate, but in the end, history is bigger than any man, and something mysterious is bigger than history. Lawrence gained mastery over a burning match, and he sees Arabia as one big match over which he shall test his will. But even as he triumphs in body, he is left parched of soul and identity. He has proven a man can write history but at what cost to himself? No one walks away from films like BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, RYAN’S DAUGHTER, and PASSAGE TO INDIA with clear answers. The ending of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO may be the most hopeful among Lean epics, which is rather odd given its historical setting is the most violent and murderous of all Lean films. Even so, Bolt and Lean must have appreciated the bitter irony of Lara crossing Zhivago’s path once again only to miss him. It’s like the elusive Rosebud in CITIZEN KANE. Just as no one will know what Kane meant by ‘rosebud’, no one will know why Zhivago died as he did there and then. For most Russians, the main tragedy is that a great poet died. For Zhivago in his final moment, the greater tragedy is he failed to meet Lara once more. And yet, could a poet have met a more poetic death? There is a kind of ‘justice’ in that ‘wrong’. It’s a Deep Sadness buried within the General Sadness. (It’s like the private sadness hidden within the souls of characters in Kurosawa’s RED BEARD, one that is more piercing and incurable than the general sadness of poverty and disease.) In contrast to the bitter tragedy of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, there is the heart-warming reunion in A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE between David and ‘mommy’, and yet, that is one time when Spielberg reached heights of tragedy because the reunion is a fantasy, like cinema itself.
In contrast to Lean’s approach, Attenborough presented Gandhi as a saintly sage — even though, between the frames, Ben Kinsley seems more prankster than leader — about whom we are supposed to feel so uh-goshy about. (Does any of this matter anymore? When GANDHI was released, UK still had a sense of its distinct place in history despite having undergone the great cultural transformations of the 60s and 70s. Also, the overwhelming number of Brits were native whites. Since then, UK, especially London, has been remade almost entirely by soulless ‘conservative’ yuppie materialism, working class degeneracy & decline — not least due to the toxic effect of punk culture —, and mass colonization by Pakistanis and blacks, along with the spread of black rap culture. The overall effect is amnesia, loss of distinctness, and obsession with Afromania & jungle fever. The official idolatry of UK is promotion of ACOWW or Afro-Colonization of White Wombs, indeed even retroactively by casting black actors to play historic British and European figures. Movies like GANDHI and CHARIOTS OF FIRE of the early 1980s still tugged at themes and emotions more serious than blings, gangsta attitudes, jungle jive, and wanton hedonism. I can’t imagine either film having any relevance now when most people are addicted to pornification of mainstream culture, jungle fever among white women, and wussy cuckery among white men. Also, in a sports-and-pop-music drenched culture, history means little because history encompasses humanity. The rules of Pop Culture and Mammonic Idolatry see value only in those who hog all the trophies and prizes of Sports and Pop. In the Age of Idol-worship, there is no place for humanity. Worse, the main idols of the West are no longer white but black. Manhood is owned by black athletes, spirituality is hogged by MLK & Mandela, and womanhood is about white women imitating black dancers and having black babies. Jews want it that way, of course, in order to break the spine of white identity and power. Thus, the Brazilization of UK.) In 1993, Spielberg cast Attenborough in JURASSIC PARK and cast Kingley-Gandhi as Holocaust Jew in SCHINDLER’S LIST. It was shamelessly hokey even if Kingsley, as usual, turned in a fine performance. Most Americans rely on movies and TV to fill in the blanks of their historical knowledge, and even those who still read have little choice but to read books published by Jewish oligarchs who totally control the book industry. Before SCHINDLER’S LIST, most Americans associated Jewish history with the DIARY OF ANNE FRANK and the TV mini-series THE HOLOCAUST. In middle school, we were required to watch HOLOCAUST and MASADA. For most Americans(and people all over the world), what they see in movies and TV is history. And even for skeptics and cynics, certain images from the screen stick to memory and subtly affects the way they see the world. (Also, there is no guarantee that smarter and better-educated people will champion the truth over falsehood. If anything, they often relish the power of media control to manipulate masses of dummies deemed to possess childlike hearts and minds. Especially Jews feel this way about ‘dumb gentiles’. After all, why promote truth and intelligence when ‘dumb gentiles’ might ‘misuse’ them or pose critical challenges to Jewish Power? It’s safer for Jewish power to treat the masses like childish dummies who deserve mindless propaganda than thoughtful provocation. Also, even among well-meaning smart people working in the media, their sense of Higher Truth has less to do with hard facts than holy faith in the icons and idols fed to them in their formative years. So, even as they know the facts about MLK, they stick to the ‘legend’ and myth of the Civil Rights Movement because it made them weep like boo-boo babies as young ones. After all, who hasn’t read TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD in school?) It’s like when many people of my generation thinks of slavery, the images from ROOTS come flooding into their consciousness. Thus, true or false, accurate or inaccurate, TV and movies define how we ‘remember’ history.
Often, movie or TV trumps actuality. When most Americans think of General Patton, it is George C. Scott than the actual figure. And when we think of Muslims, images of stock Hollywood terrorists fill our minds.
One of the films that oft-aired on PBS in the late 70s and early 80s was JULIA(directed by Fred Zinnemann) from Lillian Hellmans’ PENTIMENTO, which, as it turns out, should have been called Sentimento or Dementimento. Hellman was a vile(and unattractive) Jewess, but I didn’t know anything back then except that she was played by the attractive and statuesque Jane Fonda. I recall watching it several times and being affected by it(even powerfully), and I thought the story must be mostly true since what kind of a sick freak would lie about something like that? Then, about a decade and half later, while reading Paul Johnson’s INTELLECTUALS I found out that Hellman was a dirty Stalinist bitch liar. Now, I’m no fan of Johnson, a big liar himself, and INTELLECTUALS is often ridiculous(including even Ernest Hemingway as an ‘intellectual’), but the chapter on Hellman opened my eyes about the odious woman and made me feel not unlike a fool. You know those old cartoons where someone stares in the mirror and sees the face of an ass/donkey? It’s how I felt because I’d trusted PBS(as the provider of quality TV) and Jews as tragic & noble people, but such discoveries(of how an entire network of Jews conspired to spread lies and half-truths through the media, academia, arts, and culture) raised key questions about the nature of Jewish power. How was a vile creature like Hellman able to get away with so much rot, that is until the courageous Mary McCarthy finally blew the lid off the tawdry, lying, and self-aggrandizing witch. Though it would be wrong to say most Jewish women are as bad as Hellman, her type is all-too-common in the media, academia, law, and government. They pretend to defend value and principles but have no qualms about pulling every dirty trick in the book to push a radical agenda, promote the Tribe, and/or prime the ego. They are opportunistic, cynical, and fanatical in their words and action. Now, if Hellman had altered a few details to spice up her material for dramatic effect, that would have been one thing. Instead, she fabricated an entire story of how she’d been involved, at considerable risk to her own life, with some clandestine network in Germany to lend support to the anti-Nazi underground and save dissidents. I mean it takes a special kind of liar and bullshitter to pull off something on that scale, but evidently Jewish Hollywood saw fit to produce such a film, and the Jewish Fred Zinnemann(the talent behind HIGH NOON and FROM HERE TO ETERNITY fame) saw fit to direct it, and the Jewish-controlled PBS ran it ever so often. I must have seen it at least five times on PBS. This is the Tribe that, for the longest time, made endless denials about Jewish leftist involvement in espionage for the USSR. Jews, who’d never come clean about their involvement in massive spying for Stalin’s empire(while impugning anti-communists as ‘paranoid’ and ‘hysterical’), are now in total control of the government and using the NSA and other institutions to spy on all of us, ostensibly in the name of defending America from terrorism. (And, if at least McCarthy and HUAC were essentially correct about Soviet espionage, the current Jewish Power that rules America cooks up total fantasies about Russia Threat to prevent good relations between Russians and White Americans. According to Jews, Russian-ness is a bigger threat to America than communism ever was. Jews are totally into Anti-Slavicist mode.) Non-Jews trusting Jews is like chicken trusting fox in the hen-house. In a similar vein, even though I don’t know the entire truth about Elie Wiesel — who, btw, gave false account in LIBERATORS, relating a story that was too good to be true — , the sheer preponderance of Jewish lies about everything — their involvement in communism, tribal networking to promote Hellman, and etc. — makes me wonder about his claims as a Holocaust Survivor. And consider how powerful Jews around the world pulled strings to protect Roman Polanski and allow him to live with wealth and privilege. Though Jews demand that every Nazi criminal be brought to justice, they’d throw a fit if anyone suggested Jewish communists and Zionist imperialists be called to account too. Jews still bitch about Wasp power and ‘white privilege’, but if you mention Jewish power and Jewish privilege, the entire media network circles the wagons and blasts you as a ‘Nazi’ and ‘anti-Semite’. And American conservatives, browbeaten to playing running dogs to neocon Zionists, just bark along to the instructions of their masters.
JULIA came out in 1977, and the feud erupted between Hellman and McCarthy in 1980, but if McCarthy hadn’t raised a fuss, the movie might still be highly regarded as an inspiring tragedy about a woman of enviable courage and nobility. (Granted, the movie is even dishonest about the extent to which Hellman was a shill of Stalinism. It has a scene where she is shown yawning during a Soviet Theater production, as if to suggest she was too intelligent and sophisticated for such State Propaganda. Apparently, her service to Stalinism was as a reluctant well-meaning idealist than a dogmatic true believer.) Jane Fonda, the wanna-be ‘radical’ dolt, was more than willing to whore herself out to the Jewish Left. But the McCarthy-Hellman feud ruptured certain myths about Hellman, and her reputation never recovered since then. (Intellectual types will support and protect fellow elitists who lie and cheat against The Enemy — consider all the foulness tolerated by the Elite Set in regard to Trump, Deplorables, and the Alt Right — , but they will think twice about defending one of their own suing another of their own.) For Hellman, Mary McCarthy proved to be more dangerous than Joe McCarthy. Mary McCarthy was of a generation that had yet to behold Jews in quasi-spiritual reverence, but even so, hers was a gutsy act given the formidable support Hellman had on her side. Of course, McCarthy could sound off more freely because she had all the proper political credentials — she was a left-liberal who also belonged to influential circles. If she’d been someone like Phyllis Schlafly, the Jewish Establishment would have made a greater effort to protect Hellman and destroy McCarthy’s reputation. Maybe it was McCarthy’s Irish blood that made her feisty, plus the fact that she was 1/4 Jewish, accounting for her chutzpah. Anyway, if not for the famous feud between McCarthy and Hellman, the latter would be a far more respected figure today.
Of course, things are completely insane in the current reality. Jewesses with the (lack of)character of Hellman can spew any amount of lies, and almost no one will dare call her on it. (Consider the filth and vileness that endlessly spew forth from the likes of Jennifer Rubin and Emily Bazelon in the media. Consider how Sabrina Rubin Erdely could have gotten away with the Hoax of the 21st Century if not for Internet Sleuths.) Jews now have supremacist power, Jews are now revered & obeyed(via the Holy Holocaust as the Neo-Religion), and Jews stick together. In contrast, there is no meaningful white goy unity because too many have been raised with mindless Jew-worship and/or because they are deathly afraid of Jewish Power that can destroy them. Even a casual remark about Jewish power got Rick Sanchez fired and blacklisted from MSM. Helen Thomas got canned after decades of working as a top journalist simply because she said European Zionist-Imperialist Jews should go back to whence they came. Of course, it would have been fine if she’d said Christian Europeans have no right to colonize non-white lands or that Chinese should return Tibet to the Tibetans. Scum like Jennifer Rubin can bark like a mad bitch and destroy the reputation/career of a conservative like Jason Richwine whose great ‘crime’ was having done a study on the differences in IQ among the races. Jews can bitch and call for blood; they announce witch-hunting seasons, they have lots of people censored and blacklisted, and yet, Jews flatter themselves as ‘tolerant liberals’ and defenders of truth and freedom.
Even though many Jews were undoubtedly upset with Hellman and came around to seeing her real self at last, she had many defenders to the end(and still do so to this day). Also, even Jews who were upset with her absence of character and lapses in judgement were surely perturbed that such a high priestess of Jewish Cultural Life could be tarnished so badly. In the paranoid Jewish mind, PENTIMENTO-denial could be a prelude to Holocaust-Denial. Therefore, it seems the main lesson for Jews from the McCarthy-Hellman affair was NOT the need for greater integrity honesty but for more safeguards to prevent such thing happening again to a prominent Jewish figure. Since then, Jews perfected the art of circling the wagons against anyone who dares to challenge the reputation of a Great Jew.
Anyway, the lesson gentiles must take from the Jewish Way of Political Warfare is that mutuality is key in dealing with the Other, especially if it is potentially a formidable rival/enemy. Though all sides should IDEALLY strive for honorable fair play, any group-strategy must consider the context of the situation. One must sling mud with the mud-slingers and go low with the low-blowers. While it’s despicable to cheat in sports and NO ONE should cheat — ideally, if someone on your side is cheating, you should call out on the transgressor — , if the other side has adopted cheating as its core strategy, it won’t be so wise to keep playing squeaky clean and honorable. (This is even truer if the referee is biased or corrupt, calling every foul, real or imagined, on your side while ignoring the fouls on the other side.) Now, such a scenario doesn’t mean that your side should cheat against all sides. Rather, the attitude should be on a one-on-one basis. Stay high with those who stay high, go low with those who go low. If a certain team has a long-running policy of cheating(without shame), then the only ‘moral’ option is to counter-cheat against THAT particular team. ‘Necessary Evil’ is sometimes the only good. Play it by ear(though, unfortunately, it is difficult to adjust one’s strategy in a world of global competition; in cheating against the cheater, one could easily develop the habit of cheating even against those who don’t cheat). Since Gypsies are incorrigible cheaters and crooks, Europeans should shelve the notion of ‘fair play’ and deal with them harshly. Since migrant-invaders from the Middle East and Africa come to leech off Europeans, there should be no sentimentality or sense of honor in dealing with such people, all of whom should be rounded up and sent back home. And since too many Jews in the West chutzpastically cheat, lie, swindle, subvert, and spread toxicity on an industrial scale, the ideal of ‘fair play’ with them can only be a dopey pipe-dream. (The current situation is especially untenable because Jews, though acting like gangster-sociopaths, present themselves as ethical betters and moral models. Despite all their sadism, parasitism, and destructiveness in service of supremacist-tribalism[that is both petty and megalomaniacal], Jews deign to sermonize about ‘compassion’ and ‘universal rights’. It’s like crazy people as arbiters of sanity and sobriety. When the crazy[as a holy-schmoly people] are allowed to determine what is ‘real’, even non-crazy people[as pliable sheeple] fall under the spell; it is all the more reason why no individual or group should be ‘sacralized’, thus made above-criticism and an object of blind reverence. While certain individuals are extraordinary and certain groups have achieved more than most, people are not angels[and certainly not gods] and shouldn’t be regarded as such by humanity. Notice how Jews express zero culpability for all the harm their hegemonic power has done to nations like Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, BUT they throw moral tantrums as if they and only they know what is ‘good’ for all peoples of the world. They go about this in such maniacal manner that they’ve come to believe in their own lies. According to Jews, truth is subjective than objective. If THEY insist something is true, it must be true because THEY said it. For Jews, ‘truth’ is more a matter of who/whom that what/where. Consider the Jewish-Supremacist Yinon-ist BS about how the US military must remain in Syria for the sake of the Kurds. Right, Jews really go to bed every night weeping about the Kurds! [Interesting that these ‘humanitarian’ Jews never call for US intervention to protect Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank from invasive Zionist caravans or the IDF death squads.] The West has a serious problem when psychotic Jewish gangsters & their globo-homo minions own the pedestal of Official Morality. Just imagine if we looked to the Mafia as our moral arbiters, betters, and instructors. Jews have become the godfathers of America. We must bow before them and kiss their rings. It has resulted in lunacies such as ‘gay marriage’, rap-music-as-jeremiad, and pornification of culture as ‘liberation’ and ‘empowerment’.) It’s like what Sean Connery’s character says in THE UNTOUCHABLES. You can’t fight fair with gangsters, thugs, and criminals. They will not fight man-to-man by Queensberry Rules. They will bring a knife to a fight, so you must bring a gun. Such is the ONLY way to deal with Jews(though Jews feel likewise tenfold in their eternal distrust of and contempt for goyim); problem is Jews consider as ‘fair play’(what others deem as foul) on grounds that Jews, as a people of superior wit and strategy, deserve dominance over ‘soulless dimwit goyim’ by hook or by crook. Jews feel that goyim not only lack intelligence but soul itself because, if indeed goyim really do possess souls, why was there a need for them to ‘steal’ God and the Sacred Narrative from the Jews to have blessedness for themselves? Why must goyim, as Christians or Muslims, leech off the spiritual prophecy, imagination, and heritage of the Jews? So, just as humans are not obligated to treat animals as equals, Jews don’t feel moral obligation to treat goyim as equals. Indeed, regarding goyim as equals is an affront, even blasphemy, to the cosmic order as Jews understand it. Just as most people look askance on humans who embrace animals as equals, Jews feel queasy about ‘excessively’ idealistic Jews who regard non-Jews as moral/spiritual equals. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all Jews believe goyim should be treated like slaves or animals, even though plenty of Jews do feel that way. There are Good Jews who believe that goyim should be treated decently, just like Good People believe animals should be treated with kindness or slaughtered with least cruelty. Good Jews favor decency toward goyim, whereas Bad Jews feel contempt for goyim, but BOTH GROUPS share the overall perception that goyim are inferior to Jews, just like even Good Southern Plantation Owners who strove to treat blacks with decency nevertheless regarded black slaves as inferior beings whose main purpose was to serve the white man. It’s like, even though Good People pet their dogs while Bad People kick their dogs, both groups believe dogs can never be the equals of humans. Alas, even Good Jews more-often-than-not side with Bad Jews because they fear the Goyim will grow uppity in defiance than remain browbeaten in deference. From the perspective of Good Jews, all members of the Tribe should ideally strive to be kind toward Goyim, that is if and only if the Goyim could be trusted to be ‘good’, which is to say remaining-obedient-loyal-reverential-to-their-Jewish-Masters. But, just like God found much of humanity disobedient and deserving of punishment, even Good Jews can’t help feeling that most goyim, given their natural instincts, will ultimately choose ‘badness’ over ‘goodness’ and sin against Jews, Good and Bad, with pitchforks to carry out another Shoah. So, even though Good Jews want to treat Good Goyim with kindness and call out on the viciousness of Bad Jews, they feel they’ve no choice but to make common cause with Bad Jews against Goyim, most of whom are condemned to be more bad than good; it’s like, even though Good White Slave-Owners were troubled by the behavior of Bad White Slave-Owners, they nevertheless sided, when push came to shove, with fellow white slave-owners against blacks who might rise up and act violent. For Jews, idealism has value only among themselves, the people with true souls. When dealing with goyim, Jews believe idealism must be strategy than principle, the trick being to load goy minds with do-goody naivete while Jews pull every trick in the book to gain more leverage, i.e. Jews fake ideals over the table with goyim while making deals under the table among themselves. Jews cheat shamelessly without remorse. They are like Greeks or Southern Italians with hyper-brains. I wouldn’t trust a Greek or Southern Italian, but at least I know his kind isn’t going to be controlling Wall Street, government, top law firms, Ivy League schools, and etc. anytime soon, or will it be making us worship them as an Eternally tragic-magic people. But Jews not only control those institutions/industries and then some, but they possess an ethnic nature and historical memory that encourage them to see goyim as lesser beings who must be put in their place. (This is why Jews have a special hatred for ‘Aryans’. Jewish women feel this animus even more strongly because women are more looks-conscious. Aryan Beauty is an affront to the Judeo-centric view of the cosmos. If God chose the Jews, then Jews must be the central race of humanity. By rights, Jews should be not only the most intelligent but the most beautiful. And yet, Jews can’t help thinking that God made the Aryans more attractive. But why? How could this be? Thus, Jews have a love/hate thing with Aryan Beauty. They want it but also can’t stand the fact that it is of the Other, the non-Chosen. So, one part of Jewishness seeks to destroy it by promoting race-mixing, especially with blacks. Janis Ian, the Jewish hag of the song "At Seventeen" that seethes with envy over Aryan Beauty, also recorded a song promoting white/black interracism. Jewish women especially push this because Aryan female beauty drives them crazy with envy. Some Jews want to race-mix with Aryan and steal some of that beauty for the Semites, and they figure WHY NOT when the 'Aryans' stole the God of the Jews. Indeed, the most popular Jewish female celebrities in Israel tend to look more European than Semitic. But even as Jews want Aryan Beauty destroyed, they know it has great commercial value, and so, they’ve turned whiteness from an identity to a commodity. An identity belongs to a particular people, whereas commodity is sold on the marketplace. If whites are commodity, they are little more than dairy products to be sold to other races... by Jewish merchant-masters of course; indeed, Hollywood pioneered just that, the commerce where Jews own the white image, just like Tyrell owned the more-human-than-human replicants in BLADE RUNNER. Whiteness-as-commodity cannot be solely owned by whites, no more than milk is owned by cows that produce it. Commodification of Whiteness is the New White Slavery, just like Jews use gambling as the New Confiscation and use pornography as the New Prostitution carried out electronically in a media controlled by Jews.)
There was a sci-fi-themed TV episode long ago of some alcoholic guy who, while driving drunk, had killed someone who was a relative or close friend of the doctor who is treating the alcoholic. Basically, the doctor plants a tiny ‘monster’ in the stomach of the alcoholic, and this creature grows bigger and causes increasing agony whenever alcohol enters the gut. Otherwise, it remains quiet and dormant inside the patient. So, if the alcoholic drinks again, the monster grows bigger and wreaks more havoc in the stomach, eventually leading to death. But if the patient remains a teetotaler, the monster remains in hibernation and can’t do him much harm. This is how Jews(as ‘doctors’) regard white goyim(as ‘alcoholics’). Because Jews believe that white goyim murdered all those wonderful Jews — like the alcoholic driver killed an innocent victim — under the intoxication of ‘antisemitism’ and ‘racism’, the monster-creature of White Guilt has been planted inside the soul-bowels of white folks. Thus, whenever whites dare to take a sip of ideas or sentiments that may contain ‘antisemitic’ content, their hearts and brains have been made to feel paroxysms of self-loathing and self-disgust. (Of course, Jews seek to turn whites both more ‘sober’ and more ‘drunk’. Whites mustn’t lose themselves to the racial-tribal spirits and instead be led on the narrow path of sober righteousness alert to the dangers of ‘racism’. Whites are told that white emotions + white ideas is like drinking + driving. Yet, in another way, Jews seek to get whites addicted to the wild passions of degeneracy and decadence, especially with drugs and Afro-adulation. Now, if white passion is so dangerous, why do Jews encourage whites to act wild and crazy in certain ways? Because passion without tribal and/or moral direction leads to disorientation and dissipation. It’s like the White Man feared Indian Braves with tomahawks inflamed with tribal pride but was eager to get Indians drunk on firewater. Drunk Indians may have been just as wild as Warrior Indians, but if warrior passion is directed outward at the enemy, wino passion in directed inward toward self-destruction. Then, it shouldn’t surprise us that while Jews take away the bottle of white identity, they supply the bottle of white degeneracy. Jews also push an inversion of values so that the sober becomes the ‘new intoxication’ while being drunk becomes the ‘new sobriety’. Jews screech that White Awakening of identity is ‘irrational’ and insist whites should guzzle down PC to become ‘woke’. And Jews say whites surrendering themselves to gambling, drugs, and sexual degeneracy is 'liberation' and ‘empowerment’. Jewish Logic would have us believe that Miley Cyrus is the most serious and sensible white person alive.) Political Correctness is a form of neo-Prohibitionism. Certain ideas and outlooks are said to be ‘odious’, ‘noxious’, and ‘toxic’, indeed to be handled as if they are dangerous liquid/gaseous substances. The only thing white gentiles are allowed to imbibe is Holocaust Juice, Magic Negro shake, and Milk of ‘Fagnesium’(as antidote to the reeking beer keg of ‘homophobia’). Of course, Jews would have been nasty and manipulative even without the Holocaust(as history and narrative), but it has been most invaluable as an arsenal in PC Neo-Prohibitionism. Jews see white folks as inveterate alcoholics who, if allowed another sip of white racial consciousness, will turn into mobs with torches and pitchforks marching to town to tear Jews from limb from limb. Jews refuse to consider the possibility that such passions, though certainly out-of-control at times(and utterly so during WWII among Nazi Germans), are often reactions to Jewish foulness, i.e. there is enough blame to go around among Jews and whites alike. If one could demonstrate that Jews are indeed perfect and saintly, we would have to agree that ‘antisemitism’ is totally wrong, but the reality of Jewish behavior throughout history and especially in current America indicates otherwise. (Paradoxically, the US has proven the validity of ‘antisemitism’ by having been the least ‘antisemitic’ nation’. Anglo-made US allowed Jews to rise rapidly to the top with far less discrimination than in the Old World. This super-success has made us see the Real Jew at Last. A general rule-of-thumb says the True Nature of someone or some people doesn’t emerge until he or they gain supreme power, the ultimate position to do pretty much as he or they please. In the movie ALL ABOUT EVE, the aspiring star conceals her true character, that is until she rises above all those who’d unwittingly aided her out of sympathy or condescension. Then, she betrays and shits on everyone. She was passive/aggressive until she accumulated enough star power to be aggressive/aggressive. Men like Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Mao Zedong could seem modest/moderate when faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles on their paths to power. Their true nature emerged ONLY AFTER they made it to the top. Because the Old World denied Jews the top position, Jews had to moderate their behavior so as not to rock-the-boat too much. One possible exception was in the USSR where many Jewish communists rose to top positions. With great power, they unleashed an orgy of bloodbath against Christian Slavs. Still, Jewish communists had to be communists first and Jews second. It was in the US that Jews were able to rise to the top as Proud Jews. But even in the US, prior to their ascension to the uppermost echelons of power, Jews were careful not to seem too pushy, contemptuous, and megalomaniacal. But now, with near-monopolistic control of finance, media, academia, and much else, Jews can do pretty much as they choose. As such, we got to See the Real Jew At Last, and it has been exposed as most monstrous. Seeing the Real Jew At Last, we know that the so-called ‘Anti-Semites' through the ages were more right than wrong about the Tribe. True nature of something emerges only when it has gained the world. What is finally bared is the naked lust for power in place of a soul. The figure of Jeffrey Epstein is emblematic of our satanic age. He wasn't just some lone pervert but was enabled by the Tribal Network. Granted, one could argue that the nature of something CHANGES as it gains power. While some people may conceal a long-held agenda of total-control UNTIL they gain total power, others may not initially nurse such ambitions but develop them along the way to power, as the logic of power makes one crave more and more. Take Modern Japan. For centuries, Japanese were focused on shutting out the rest of the world and minding their own business. Initially, Japan modernized only to protect itself from Western Imperialists. But as it kept gaining in power and prestige, a new power-dynamics took over the mindset of Japan that just had to have more and more, finally planning to control all of Asia. Japanese once again got over-ambitious in the 1980s when its economy seemed poised to overtake that of the US. But Japanese seem to feel that way only when they get lucky with sudden flushes of wealth or power. When things go south, they revert to focusing on their own nation and culture. In contrast, Jewish agenda of total-domination can be traced back thousands of years to the Covenant.)
There is a historic pattern of Jews gaining notoriety for foul and devious behavior all over the world. It’s no wonder Jews rely so much on irrational ‘white guilt’ to maintain grip over whites. If whites developed a rational view of Jews, they wouldn't think like Mike Pence the worthless cuck. Once the scales fall from their eyes, whites will freely call out on Jewish corruption & collusion and denounce the Jewish agenda of humiliating, subverting, and dehumanizing the white race. Paradoxically, Jews are now safest in those parts of the world where they'd historically been most despised, distrusted, and perhaps most persecuted(though we have to keep in mind that few if any Jews lived outside the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe for most of human history. Somehow, I highly doubt if Jews would have made themselves any more welcome(in the long run)to Hawaiian tribesmen, Aztec warlords, Mongolian horsemen, Japanese samurai, Zulu warriors, or some such because all those goyim would have realized that Jews are up to no good — not content with mere tolerance and opposed to assimilation, Jews would have pulled every trick in the book to gain dominance over goyim by gaining financial, intellectual, and moral control over the elites: Change the goy mind and the goy body will usually follow. Historically, Jews preferred to do business where the locals worshiped the same God(of Abraham) as the commonality let the Jews slip their foot through the door. Even with the Muslim disdain and Christian demonization of Jews, worship of the same God and shared allusions to Biblical narratives allowed for some degree of appreciation between Jews and Christians/Muslims.
Anyway, because Jews did periodically suffer in the past( and went through real hell in the Shoah) — , they’ve played on ‘white guilt’ as a special kind of Sin to browbeat white folks into bowing before Jews as neo-christs. But Jews have no comparable moral leverage against other races and nations, and so, they cannot manipulate them in the same manner. (Jewish power over non-white lands is the result of Jewish power over the US. Jews can use US might to levy sanctions or militarily threaten other nations. Consider what Jews made the US to do Iran. As the US is the lone superpower, even non-white nations have to come to terms with American policy as Jews define it. Even though US is now said to be post-white-dominant and pro-Diversity, the real power is with Jews who pushed Diversity as a weapon against whites to secure Jewish supremacism. When Jews speak of the wonders of Diversity, they don’t mean power should be shared equally or proportionally among diverse groups but that Jewish Power shall manipulate Diversity to shame and suppress whites.) So today, Jews feel safest and most privileged in places where they were once met with the most suspicion and hostility but are far less powerful and influential in places with little or no history of ‘antisemitism’. Furthermore, Jews were never eager to move away from ‘antisemitic’ white nations to non-white territories. Even Jewish refugees who sailed on the ocean liner St. Louis refused to dock in the Dominican Republic(even though they were given permission) and chose to sail back to Europe despite the Nazi threat. Indeed, if Jews love non-whites so much and loathe whites, why don’t they just leave white nations and emigrate to non-white ones, especially since Jews say constant migration is natural and wonderful? Wouldn’t that be easier than to bring tons of non-whites over to white nations? Of course, what Jews really want is to live in white nations and exploit white people, all the while importing non-white immigrant-invaders to play divide-and-rule among white goyim and non-white goyim.
Because Jewish power maneuvers like virus, bacteria, and rodents, one must maintain one’s guard at all times. Just because you feel pity for something in a sad state doesn’t mean it won’t spring back to action with special virulence. Take the Canadian Geese for example. At one time, they faced extinction, and many people in North America were concerned about the species. Would they go the way of the passenger pigeon? So, when the geese made a great comeback, people were happy to see them in the skies once again, but then, the bountiful geese began to shit all over and make a mess of parks, affecting recreation and business. Facing what seemed like precipitous decline, the geese looked so helpless, but their dramatic comeback made it all too clear the limit to which mankind can co-exist with nature-kind. Now, not all organisms are so virulent and aggressive. American Indians are a defeated people and in a sad state, but even if the US government and people were to shower them with special treatment and care, it's hardly likely that the stolid and rigid Indians will amount to much. In contrast, some groups are especially virulent and tireless in their aggression, adventurousness, and/or lust for domination. American Indians took pity on the first Anglo settlers who faced starvation, but it proved to be a big mistake. Adventurous and ambitious Anglos came in larger numbers and took over. Give Jews an inch, and they will take a mile and then a thousand miles. Let starving black Africans into your country, and soon, they will be running wild like blacks in Australia. And Somalis in Minnesota turned out to be a disaster. Instead of showing gratitude, the obnoxious East Africans just demand more and more.
Suppose all rats died but a few. We might look upon the few surviving members as pitiable and harmless, and we’d think, "What harm could such few tiny creatures do?" So, suppose the few surviving rats are allowed to run free, but guess what? Within a few yrs, they’re all over the planet causing all sorts of problems again. Jewish power is like Gremlins gone wild. Though Jews are not huge in number, there are still millions of them in the world, and they have a ratty-radical and virulent natures that won't leave other peoples alone. American Indians are like opossums that just want to be left alone, whereas Jews are like rats that want to gnaw into every house. Jews don’t merely maintain their own communities but seek out networks of information, finance, laws, and trade to gain control over other peoples. Of course, Jews use paralysis to further their parasitism. After all, it’d be more difficult for Jews to take over if the goyim react to the threat with alarmism. Via control of information, Jews seek to put goyim at ease with assurance that Jews mean no harm and come bearing gifts. But lest goyim refuse to be hoodwinked by the Jewish Hustle, Jews use the method of paralysis: Burden of Guilt. Then, it’s no wonder that the icon of the Holocaust is none other than Anne Frank, a pale and innocent-looking girl who wouldn’t hurt a fly(though it must be said she sort of looks like child-Hitler-gone-tranny). If the Icon of Jewishness were a full-grown globalist elite — a rich businessman, powerful bureaucrat, influential banker, fiery radical, or etc. — , we might be less likely to see Jews as helpless victims. But, just stare at the pale and gentle face of Anne Frank, a mere girl on the verge of blossoming into womanhood. Ban the 'antisemitic tropes' and make philosemitic idol-worship compulsory. Thus, animus against Jews is made almost synonymous with hatred innocent children, which is rather amusing since it’s hard to think of another people who are as Anti-Innocence as the Jews are. From a young age, Jews are made to think critically(for the Tribe, against the Goyim) and show allegiance to no one but fellow Jews; Jews may forge temporary alliances with non-Jews but allegiance must be to the Tribe only. Indeed, Jews often mock dumb Christians for their earnest goodwill and culture of trust. Consider Larry David’s attitude toward two earnest Catholic women with simple ‘innocent’ faith in an episode of CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM. He finds it hilarious that the dimwit goyesses would mistake his urine for the miraculous tears of Jesus. What goyim may admire as being pure-of-heart, Jews disdain as dim-of-mind. Jews certainly know that Anne Frank was no ‘innocent’ child. She was a smart precocious girl with a keen eye and probing mind. She was an innocent victim of the Nazis, but she wasn’t of an innocent personality(as most intelligent Jews aren’t), whereas even lots of smart white goyim tend to be naively trusting and simpleminded in their good will. Though Anne Frank was a genuine victim, the manner in which the Jewish media made her the face of Shoah victim-hood is more than a bit dubious. It certainly spread the false impression that Jewish victims in World War II were mostly innocent maidens like Young Ann. Countless whites, especially girls from a young age, came to worship at the altar of Anne Frank than identify with their own kind — but then, for 2,000 yrs, the Man most whites came to worship as the Son of God was a heretical Jew — ; they failed to understand that, while the Shoah was a horrible tragedy, Jews have indeed always been a dangerous, aggressive, subversive, and nasty people(as well as a great and profound one). Even if Jews didn’t deserve something as extreme as the Holocaust, there’s no getting around the fact that they’d done so many bad things that fueled the ire of goyim. It was never the case that Jews were always pure-as-snow innocent and that goyim, wherever Jews went, just burst in paroxysms of ‘irrational antisemitic’ fury for no reason. Similarly, humanity would certainly be overreacting if they tried to wipe out all rats, but there is a reason why people dislike like rats. It’s not due to mindless ‘anti-ratitism’. Rats do cause property damage and spread disease. Though the Nazi comparison of Jews to rats was rightfully deemed notorious, who can deny that Jewish Power gnaws, psychologically and physically, at the defenses of other peoples’ cultural/national domains AND spreads cultural pollution far and wide? Of course, given that there have been many intellectual giants among Jews, the spread of Jewish ideas, culture, and values have done much good for the world as well. Also, Jews like Jesus, Karl Marx, and Simone Weil were consciously trying to go against the Jewish grain of morality-for-us and immorality-against-the-other. There has been a bright side to Jewish influence. As there was a bright and dark side to German intellectual/cultural influence, the same has been true of Jews. Nietzsche was both a great thinker and a dangerous charlatan. Wagner was both a great artist and mad shaman who unleashed dark energies; it must be said his NIBELUNGEN and PARSIFAL, as epics pitting the Aryan Spirit vs the Jewish Spite, proved to be hugely prophetic in the following century where the fate of the world was decided in Gotterdammerung-like World War II where Aryan Warriors were pitted against Jewish Wizards. Otto von Bismarck was both a great statesman and a cynical manipulator who sowed the seeds of future crisis. If we can see both the good and bad sides of Germanism, we must do the same with Jewism. Jews, like all great peoples, have been both a blessing and curse upon mankind. Paradoxically, all Great Peoples are bound to be hated with special virulence due to unmet expectations, the distance between the reputation and reality. Because of their said greatness, humanity may expect most members of the group to be full of wisdom, justice, and kindness, only to realize that even a Great People are mostly made up of deeply flawed individuals — also, greatness is often the product of extreme struggle and boundless ambition that are hardly on the side of angels; many great artists have been total a**holes. Christians have been a deep disappointment too. If one reads the New Testament, one might think Christians are all about love and forgiveness as followers of a great religion of compassion. But in fact, countless Christians have been louts, hypocrites, or jerks... like the rest of humanity. Who can deny the great mind of Karl Marx, but then, who can deny the intellectual arrogance and intolerance? Noam Chomsky made key contributions to linguistics, but his radical politics blinded him all too often. Both his moral and intellectual narcissism got the better of him. Susan Sontag was a leading intellectual of the 1960s and 1970s but also an insufferable bitch by all accounts. Then, it should be obvious by now that the prevailing custom of praising everything and everyone Jewish is out of sync with our real needs. Especially if a certain people are great and powerful — Jews may be the greatest and most powerful people ever — , humanity must be critical and take a cold hard look because great power is rarely associated with kindness and niceness. (The trick is to advance and present an intelligent and responsible critique of Jewish Power, the kind that cannot be dismissed as cuckoo antisemitism, of which there have been too many, though many such are now being pushed by Hasbara to create the impression that anti-Jewish voices are invariably nuts.) Effects of meritocracy notwithstanding, general drift of history indicates the kind of people who gain an excess of power and/or wealth tend not to play by the rules and are more likely to be motivated by greed and vanity than noble sentiments. It’s like The World views America with envy and admiration but also trepidation and anxiety(and even horror) because great power often goes awry. Linking Jewishness in an essential sense to some mytho-‘innocent’ girl who perished during World War II is utterly foolhardy. It’s like fixating on a pitiable image of a dead rat baby as the essence of rat-hood when, in fact, the world is teeming with destructive and disease-ridden rats. Paradoxically, the Jewish peddling of Anne Frank’s cult of Madonna-like ‘innocence’ is the product of Jewish cynicism about the psycho-politics of power. Power-mad Jews know full well that Anne Frank is supposed to serve as a sappy icon to soften goy hearts about Jews and as a moral shield of Jewish power-lust. If Jews admire anything about Frank, it was her assertive high spirits. She has been sold as a passive victim to garner goy sympathies, but Jews see her as an aggressive heroine, someone who could have grown up to an intellectual or judge who could have subverted the goy world for the benefit of Jewish Power. Jews secretly adore Anne Frank as a ‘bad girl’(for Jewish Power) but put forth a ‘good girl’ image for dimwit gentile edification. Jews promoted Anne-Frank-ism — the Little Orphan Annie of the Holocaust — not because they themselves value pure-hearted innocence but to hoodwink white gentiles into associating Jewishness with saintliness, all the better to hide Jewish nastiness. It’s a Jewish version of Uncle-Tom-ism, the notion of a Negro so pure-of-heart that he takes the beating and dies for the souls of white folks than cuss and beat up the ‘honkey-ass motherfuc*er’. https://inthenameofannefrank.blogspot.com/
Needless to say, the Jewish media also crafted a Politics-of-Innocence/Childhood in relation to blacks, e.g. the Sainthood of Emmet Till(who was really a punk-ass kid, and Trayvon Martin, the 17-yr old child ‘armed only with skittles’). Even though countless full-grown Negroes(and juvenile blacks as well) have robbed, raped, and/or murdered innocent white folks of all ages, the most famous image of interracial violence perpetuated by the Media is that of Emmet Till. Till didn’t deserve to be murdered, but he was no saint. He was some trashy Negro thug who sexually harassed white women. Of course, if a white kid went into a black neighborhood and taunted or insulted some black woman like Emmet Till spoke to white women, the white boy would be dead in no time, and the black community and even white Liberals would argue that the ‘racist’ white boy got his just desserts for having ‘dissed’ a black women. Indeed, blacks all over America attack whites and non-blacks of all ages for no other reason than to act like wild apes. But the Jewish media perpetuates the Politics-of-Innocence/Childhood by using images of little black children as iconography of white prejudice. It’s like Liberals oftentimes bleat about the ‘children’ to boost their moral credentials. Now, if all blacks remained little children forever, even ‘racist bigots’ would find them nice and cuddly. It’s like white folks of all stripes adored Gary Coleman on DIFF’RENT STROKES and Emmanuel Lewis on WEBSTER as munchkin monkeys. But, of course, blacks grow up and indeed grow bigger and stronger than other races. And even shorter blacks can often beat up taller and bigger whites because blacks have harder muscles, more explosive power, and faster physical coordination. So, using pickaninnies as emblems of blackness isn't very convincing to many whites. Then, it’s no wonder that Jews in Hollywood often conflate even big blacks with childhood. Consider the mountain-sized Negro in GREEN MILE who’s so childlike and wants nothing more than to pet his wittle white mouse. He’s bigger than a hippo but has the heart of a puppy. And there’s the whale-sized Negro teenager in THE BLIND SIDE, a gentle giant meant to blind white folks to the dangerous side of Negroes. It’s Mighty-Joe-Young-ism. Stuff like this makes you hear Marvin Gaye’s "Save the Children" in your head. Save the babies! SAVE THE BABIES!!! And consider the silly study that showed that black children prefer white dolls to black dolls. You see, blacks under-perform in school since they’ve been socially conditioned to hate their own blackness. I wonder why Japanese kids do well in school even though their pop culture is saturated with white-looking anime characters. And why do geeks do better than jocks in school even though many more geeks are admiring of jocks on the sporting field than jocks are of geeks in the computer labs? And Jews are the most successful people in America even though pop culture favors ‘Aryan’ looks over Jewish looks. How many dolls are there with hooked noses and brillo-pad-heads like that of Albert Brooks? In the 1970s and 1980s, Hollywood’s most popular sports movies were the ROCKY series, and yet, the top heavy weight boxers weren’t white. Shouldn’t Larry Holmes have lost to Gerry Cooney since ROCKY movies undermined black self-esteem? Now, this isn’t to diminish the impact of racial stereotypes on the black community throughout American history. If the culture so often presents your people as ugly, childish, and stupid, it will have some impact on them. After all, who can deny the rise of ‘white guilt’ and white self-loathing as the result of Jewish control of popular culture? There’s no doubt that many whites have been inculcated from childhood to worship Jews, blacks, & homos while feeling uniquely tainted for being white. That said, it’s simply wrong to ascribe all failings of a community on external forces; it also encourages the community to scapegoat outsiders while dodging all responsibility. The rage and hatred of Malcolm X(and his fixation on the White Devil) was understandable given the time and place he grew up, but after several decades of black-on-black mayhem, blacks calling each other ‘nigger’ from cradle to grave, black men reneging on their duties as fathers, black teachers cheating in schools, black students playing hooky and flunking, black bureaucrats and politicians robbing the system blind, cities like Detroit being run aground, and etc., isn’t it about time blacks took a cold hard look at their own shitty failings? But given the junglo-pathological nature of blacks(and its encouragement by the Jewish-dominated media), the official policy is to see blacks as ‘helpless children and babies’(when not as the black god), and this idolatry turned into self-parody with the George-Zimmerman-and-Trayvon-Martin controversy. Zimmerman, a short and tubby ‘Hispanic’, was guarding his neighborhood when he was jumped by Martin the 6 ft seventeen yr old thug, but the Jew-run media tried to make Americans believe a towering white southern ‘redneck’ white shot Emmanuel Lewis who was just nibbling on Skittles. Sometimes, one wonders if Liberals and blacks are pathologically dishonest or just plain crazy. On the matter of race, they have no sense of irony and don’t even realize that they’ve sunken into self-mockery.
The Politics of Innocence/Childhood has appealed to both Jews and gentiles in the postwar world. Jews exploited it to alleviate white goy anxieties about Jewish power and to intensify white ‘guilt’ about the Holocaust by associating Jewish victim-hood with childhood. Surely, even a die-hard ‘anti-Semite’ must feel bad about the death of a young girl like Anne Frank, though to be sure, she died of illness. (Japanese too played on this trope with the anime GRAVEYARD OF THE FIREFLIES where a victim of US bombing is a little girl, and who can forget the photo of the naked Vietnamese girl burned by napalm? Even supporters of the war flinched at such images. Anti-Semites also played on themes of childhood/innocence, depicting Jews as despoilers or even destroyers of white Christian children. Some of them spread rumors about decrepit Jews using the blood of Christian children to make matzo, and OLIVER TWIST — the movie as I haven’t read the book — has a wicked wizened Jew exploiting poor English lads.) As for whites who couldn't shake their anxieties about cunning Jews even after WWII(when it became increasingly taboo to be 'antisemitic'), it was less jarring to think of Jews-as-children than Jews-as-adults. It’s like even as we dread going near tigers, bears, and gorillas, we wouldn't mind doting on tiger/bear cubs and ape babies. Ben Shapiro as a young boy playing SCHINDLER’S LIST on his violin is easier to stomach than the nasty full-grown hypocrite. So, one of the big French hits in the 1960s was TWO OF US, a story of a bigoted codger who befriends and comes to love a Jewish boy hiding from the Nazis. Of course, the Politics of Childhood can also be used to show how children can easily be corrupted or turned. REVOLT OF JOB’sscenario is the reverse of TWO OF US. A gentile boy is adopted into a Jewish family, and when the Jews are led away at the end, they must leave the boy behind. The boy thinks he’s a Jew, but he isn’t and could well have been raised as an ‘Anti-Semite’ had the Nazis won. The Spanish film BUTTERLY’S TONGUE is more explicit about the Corruption of Childhood when the young boy, who was adored by a leftist teacher, in the final scene screams abuse at the old man who’s being taken away with other leftists by rightist forces. (Never mind the Spanish leftists did their share of killing, but as the left has long controlled culture — even under right-wing Franco regime because conservatives simply haven’t been culturally engaged for the most part — , the official narrative of the Spanish Civil War has been that of poor leftists being hounded by evil rightists when, in fact, Spain certainly would have seen more bloodshed had the communists won. PAN’S LABYRINTH is Mierda Pura. Also, much more of Spanish heritage and culture would have been destroyed by communists, just like the Bolshevik-Jewish orgy of destruction laid waste to so much of Russian culture, a fact that has been largely suppressed by the Jew-controlled media and academia. On the other hand, Eastern European communists turned out to be better preservers of heritage and culture than Western European globo-capitalists who’ve been among the worst scum in history. As for Spanish anarchists, they were even worse than the communists, even raping and murdering nuns and burning priests alive as they laughed and jeered. This isn’t to say Spanish priests were innocents either, as many of them arduously worked with right-wing forces in the persecution of liberals, leftists, and communists.) Both the Reagan and Clinton presidencies were embroiled in the Politics of Childhood. Walter Polovchak refused to return to the Soviet Union with his family. For Cold Warriors, Polovchak became the poster-child of Americanism over Sovietism, even if it meant that conservatives had to compromise their principles about ‘family values’. RED DAWN by John Milius, like COWBOYS with John Wayne, was about boys learning to fight like men. And there is an element of Politics of Childhood even in RAMBO and UNCOMMON VALOR in the sense that POWs are depicted as akin to orphans abandoned by their parents. RAMBO accuses the US government and military as bad parents who sacrificed young men in the jungle. The Soviets too jumped at their chance to play the Politics of Childhood when Samantha Smith wrote a letter to Yuri Andropov, whereupon the Soviet leader not only assured Smith that he had no plans to blow up the world and invited her as a ‘peace activist’ to the Soviet Union, and of course, American conservatives cringed, American Liberals were bemused, and American Leftists loved every minute of it. During the Clinton era, there was much brouhaha over Elian Gonzalez, who was like Walter Polovchak and Samantha Smith rolled into one. In Miami with his relatives, he was the poster-child of American liberty against Cuban Castroite tyranny but once returned to Cuba and smiling in his father’s arms, he was the poster-child of Cuban independence and revolutionary respect for the family. Unlike Reagan, Clinton see-sawed on the issue before finally deciding to ship the kid back to Cuba. More recently, there’s been a campaign on the part of Jews and homos to inoculate children with the ‘psychobiotics’ of homophilia so that it can develop into full-blown homomania, whereupon they will grow into adults who stand alongside ‘gay pride’ royalty procession, wave ‘rainbow gay flags’, and chant globo-homo hosannas or ‘homosannas’. Jews and homos have spread homophilic indoctrination and propaganda even to elementary schools so as to acclimatize children from the youngest age possible to Revere the Queer. Since it’s natural for people to find homosexuality icky and ewwww, extra effort and constant attention are needed to reiterate globo-homo as the ‘new normal’. Without such effort, people will revert to the True Normal, which is to regard homosexuality as a natural abnormality(or 'abnaturality') where men prance around like girls, stand funnily with their hips sticking out, kiss each other on the lips, suck each other’s dongs, and stick their sexual organs into the putrid fecal holes of other men. Homosexuality is about regarding the shitting-and-farting orifice(or SAFO) as a sex organ. Since the natural normality of human psychology is programmed to disdain homosexuality, the homo lobby — in coordination with Jews — has decided to work on children’s minds as early as possible because childish minds are malleable and can be led to believe just about anything, even in Santa Claus. A child can be made to believe in Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Nazism, Communism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Scientology, Hare Krishna, or whatever else under adult supervision. Though the notion of Blank Slate — that anyone can be made to excel at anything is false — , it is true enough that children do have blank credo-slates onto which any ideology, religion, or culture can be etched/inscribed. Even so, there are things that are naturally appealing and naturally repulsive. For instance, people naturally prefer pleasure over pain, so a culture where pain is prized as a necessary element of virtue must train its young to accept the ‘glory’ of pain from a young age, certainly true of the Spartans. Even people who never had vanilla ice cream will naturally find it delicious. One doesn’t need to be conditioned to like ice cream. Indeed, even those conditioned to dislike ice cream will still find it delicious. But certain foods are on the gross side and would naturally repulse most people; therefore, cultures in which such foods are staples need to make children acquire a taste for such stuff. Rocky Mountain Oysters(or goat or sheep testicles) naturally wouldn’t appeal to most people — I gagged when I tasted a bit of it — so that’s the sort of stuff one has to grow up with and become accustomed to. Similarly, what Liberals refer to as ‘homophobia’ has long been a natural and normal reaction of healthy minds to ‘gay’ behavior. After all, the idea of two guys bung-donging each other is hardly appealing to non-homos. Also, when a guy acts like a girl, it looks so ‘gay’. Consider the homo guys in in Martin Scorsese’s MEAN STREETS, something that would likely be suppressed in today’s cinema. Something within us naturally disapproves of homosexuality, just as we are naturally turned off by incest and other forms of sexual deviance, like the idea of a very old man having sex with a very young woman or very old woman with a very young man. HAROLD AND MAUDE is a cult classic, but Harold having sex with Maude is gross(though good for laughs), and there were screams among first-time viewers in all the screenings I attended. I recall reading somewhere that the writer of HAROLD AND MAUDE, Colin Higgins, was a homo who used the young man/old woman sexual consummation to acclimatize us to the notion that love redeems deviance — and this also seems true of PRELUDE TO A KISS, which John Simon sniffed out as a piece of homo propaganda.
Politics of Childhood is at the center of Malle’s AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS and is the least savory thing about it. It’s an intelligent, reflective, and conscientious film, but the Jew kid is elevated from human-hood to angel-hood. Also, there’s something self-serving about films like this where the artist looks back on his childhood and makes a gesture of public atonement. This was the unpleasant aspect of Bergman’s FAITHLESS(directed by Liv Ullmann) despite its greatness. Though Bergman was harshly judgmental of his own failings, there was also an element of self-pitying self-aggrandizement. Self-loathing as a form of exhibitionism perversely becomes a kind of pride. In this sense, Bergman didn’t quite break out of the spell of his father’s Christianity. Christianity has a long history of self-aggrandizement by sanctimonious confessions of self-condemnation and self-abnegation. A Christian will go on and on about what a sinful creature he or she is, but such dramas of atonement only makes him or her feel holier-than-thou. The blatant striving for humility turns into a spectacle of self-righteousness, and there is an aspect of that in FAITHLESS, which is perversely faithful to the paradoxical(some might call it hypocritical)spirit of Christianity, especially the northern Lutheran kind that compensated for the abandonment of color and joy with tight-fisted pride of rectitude and humorless judgmentalism.
I’ve no idea how accurate AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS is about France under German Occupation and as to what really happened between Malle-as-child and the Jew-kid, but there’s something dishonest about the film’s pathos. The Jew-kid has been overly idealized and sweetened — into a boy version of the Cult of Anne Frank(as opposed to the real Anne Frank) — to the point of inanity, but then, given the thorny nature of French remembrance of the Occupation, Malle probably felt compelled to anoint the Jew kid. To be sure, the kid is far more natural and realistic than most hokey characters churned out by Hollywood films of the same ilk — the Hug-a-Jew movies with Holocaust as backdrop — , but he is more consecrated as a saint than constructed as a character. He lacks individuality and exists mainly as a sacrificial icon of French Guilt, shared by adults and children alike. (If the kid has survived, he would likely have grown up to support Zionism and Wars for Israel that killed countless Arab lives.) By turning the Jewish Question into a case of Politics of Childhood, Malle evades too many serious issues that were addressed in Paul Verhoeven’s THE BLACK BOOK. If the Jew is presented only as a child, then the issue of French Collaboration during WWII is reduced to a simple matter of ‘pure-as-snow innocent Jews persecuted by Nazis and French collaborators’. It doesn’t deal with the question as to why many French came to dislike Jews and what the French Jews did to incur such anger, distrust, lack of sympathy, antipathy, or indifference from the French community(though, to be sure, the fact that 75% of French Jews survived WWII is a testament that many more Frenchmen didn't hand over Jews to the Germans)? Even if millions of Jews certainly didn’t deserve to get killed, might there have been valid reasons for non-Jews to hate them? (After all, one reason why many Jews became communists was because they came to loathe Jewish capitalists whose greed and lack of scruples were seen as the main reasons for anti-Jewish hatred.) Similarly, even if innocent Japanese women, children, old folks, and civilians didn’t deserve the nukings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, wasn't it true that the Japanese committed lots of terrible acts that earned the ire of Asians and Americans alike? So, even if American bombing of Japan was overkill, Japanese were not pure-as-snow victims. Even though, unlike the Germans and Japanese, the World Jewry didn’t have a nation of their own and therefore could not be associated with any particular national crime, there was indeed a global Jewish power network(now greater than ever), and International Jews did things that caused grievous harm to many peoples, especially in what came to be known as the Soviet Union, where so many Jewish radicals collaborated with Josef Stalin in the killing of millions and destruction of national culture. And Jews in Germany and France were hard at work in subverting, perverting, and degrading national cultures and values, as Jews today are doing in the US and the world to spread the bacillus of globo-homo-agenda. Globo-homo agenda is designed to elevate homos in every nation to elite status and to use them as proxies of Jewish Globalist Power. Jews and homos aren’t content with homos in Russia having the freedom to be homosexual and doing ‘gay’ stuff. They are saying that homos in Russia should take over and command the national culture as is the case in the US and EU; they are saying that homos should take over entire city squares and have ‘gay pride’ parades, which really should be called Jewish Victory Processions since Jewish money and media support have been essential in the rise and spread of homo-mania all over the world. (Globo-homo is the backdoor entry for the cock of Jewish supremacism. Jews know that homos of all stripes are vain & narcissistic and, as such, will gladly collaborate with Jewish globalists who anoint homos in every nation as their favored agents.) So, Jews have indeed acted hideously in the past, as they do today. If anything, what is most sickening and pathological in our time is not the preponderance of ‘antisemitism’ — contrary to what rats like Abe Foxman say — but the mindless sheepishness of the elite classes in America, Europe, and the rest of the Western World at the feet of Jews. Even the so-called American and European Right, though the target of vicious attacks by Jews, do little but sing hosannas to Jewish power, Jewish wonderfulness, Jewish nobility, etc. A Jew spits in the face of an American Conservative, and the latter thinks it’s holy water. It’s like Larry David pisses on Jesus, and two stupid Christian conservative women think it’s a miracle! (Larry David’s act was foul but also honest about the nature of current Christianity in the US. It is dumb.) Paranoia is pathological but so is what might be called ‘passivoia’, or pathological passivity. Given the amount of venom spewed by Jews against white gentiles in America and Europe, it is amazing that white gentiles do nothing but shmooze the Jews. Perhaps, one reason why so many white gentiles in America hate the Muslim world and Russia owes partly to something akin to the Stockholm Syndrome. White gentiles are such mental hostages of Jews that they’ve learned to love their masters. Burden of Guilt turned into Bondage of Submission. (In a way, today’s Christians are like Muslims-for-Jews. ‘Islam’ means submission, and the new Christianity is mainly about submission to Jews, homos, and Negroes as the new gods.) So, when they see Muslims and Russians standing up to Jewish power, white Americans want to protect their Jewish master. Of course, the fact that Muslims and Russians can stand up to Jewish Supremacism implies that American whites are cowards and sheeple, but few people want to face the fact of their own servile cravenness. So, even though white Americans are cowardly dogs of Jewish and Homo overlords, they bark madly at Muslims(for having the guts to stand up to Jews) and Russians(for having the guts to say NO to Jewish globo-homo agenda). Barking loudly is supposed to drown out the truth of their servitude with false impression of aggressive power and pride. In truth, a dog that barks(no matter how loudly) for its master has no pride of independence. When a people come to accept the whip and their own bondage, the glimpse of an alternative where they might be free can be as distressing as inspiring. The evidence of freedom elsewhere means that they’ve chosen bondage as the new normal. Some ‘house niggers’ felt that way in the Old South. They had their place in the massuh’s house. Pride was out of the question, but they had a sense of place in the social order, and that meant something, everything. Still, a sense of pride is natural to human nature, and even slaves develop their own kind of pride, the pride of servitude to the rightful power. In a way, military men are armed slaves whose pride comes from mindlessly serving their masters. In religion, it would be the ‘pride’ of prayer to the Lord. So, when such slaves see an alternative reality where others refuse to bow down before the master, a crisis unfolds in their heart. A part of them realizes that they don’t have to be slaves. They too can demand and struggle for freedom. On the other hand, they’ve become so accustomed to the existing social order(that, at the very least, provides them a sense of place and purpose in the system) that it’s difficult for them to ponder an alternative and overcome their addiction to servitude — and there is also the fear of the whip. So, they desperately make believe that the rebels and non-conformists who won’t bow down before the masters are the bad guys, a bunch of bandits who need to be brought to heel. White Americans as a collective used to constitute the greatest power in the 20th century, but they lost authority to a bunch of Jews and homos. An honest assessment of their current situation would be too shameful to confront and ponder. So, they make believe it’s so wonderful that "We’ve come a long way, elected a black president, worship Jews, welcome endless immigration-invasion, wave the globo-homo victory banner, and herald the future where whites will be a minority." In other words, from the bad ole "Live free or die" to the good new "Be a slave or die". It was one thing for white Americans to face up to the dark chapters of American history, but it’s quite another for the great majority to submit to machinations of a hostile minority, the Jews, and cuck to every policy devised to bring about white demise. 'Proposition Nation' is one where Jews propose that whites hold a gun to their own head and pull the trigger, and white goyim are stupid enough to play the Jewish Roulette. Despite all the vile things Jews have perpetuated on white Americans, so many white Americans think the biggest global injustice is Russia saying nyet to ‘Gay’ Victory Parades. And never mind all the horrors committed by Jewish communists, Jewish Zionists, and Jewish oligarchs of the 1990s who looted Russia. Jews posture as perfect little saints and/or god-chosen prophets with eternal moral prestige over us all. They’ve become a truly vile and hideous people.
Anyway, by fixating on the Jew as Child in AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS, Malle evades the thornier issue as to why so many French came to dislike Jews. If Jews were so decent and angelic, wouldn’t most people have liked them? In the film, there’s something about the Jewish kid being smarter than the French kid, implying it was mainly French, pride, envy, and resentment that fueled animus toward Jews, but was it ONLY a matter of higher Jewish IQ? Or did it have something to do with how Jews used their disproportionate power and influence gained through higher IQ? Personally, I don’t care if there are high IQ Jews with lots more money and good stuff. In fact, I don’t care how many billionaires are in the US. What should be of concern is how the rich and powerful feel about the rest of us and what grand plans they’ve devised for us atop their ivory towers. This is what conservatives and libertarians all-too-often overlook. In their world view, the rich and intelligent are like free-spirited Ayn Rand heroes of individualism & liberty who only want to be left alone by the government/state to pursue their own dreams and build their own enterprises. In truth, however, the ambitious, rich, and powerful often unscrupulously seek to influence government, gain control of all media, and manipulate institutions through the power of the almighty shekel. When some rich Jew donated ‘generously’ to the Sierra Club, he actually took more than he gave. Sure, he gave away millions, but he essentially bought the organization to push his favored agenda of mass immigration to displace the white gentile population. Some givers give just to give but many more givers give to take back even more. It’s like Don Vito Corleone sometimes gives, but he expects a favor when ‘that day comes’. There’s a saying, "Freedom isn’t free", but it’s also true that "Free Stuff isn’t Freedom". If an organization takes lots of ‘free stuff’ from a super-rich Jew, it becomes dependent on him. Super-rich donations always come with strings attached. Obama was given the presidency by super-rich Jews who donate massively to the Democratic Party and control the media, and unsurprisingly, Obama wasn’t free to do much except serve the Jew-homo agenda . The ‘leader of the free world’ was really a shuffling ho-de-doing fancy-ass slave of the Globo-Zio-Homo elites.
If AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS were just a childhood story set during Occupation years of WWII, it would be less problematic, like FORBIDDEN GAMES by Rene Clement. Instead, the Jew kid is symbolic of Jewish Persecution as a whole, and as such, sweeps historical and moral complexity under the rug with sentimentalism. For this reason, it is actually closer in spirit to Malle’s films like THE LOVERS than to his hard-nosed, unflinching, and probing documentaries. Malle combed India for its sewers as well as its jewels. Also, Malle was tougher and grittier on the subject of the Occupation with LACOMBE, LUCIEN. In contrast, AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS has something of Hans Christian Andersen. Malle turned his childhood memories into a dark fairy-tale of guilt and grief. (Ingmar Bergman’s FAITHLESS is problematic for the same reason: Guilt and shame sanctified into beautiful myth where self-aggrandizement becomes the flip side of self-pity. It’s still a great work nevertheless as we can’t expect art to be totally honest. Malle’s film is more problematic because the personal tragedy is meant as a testament of guilt of ALL Frenchmen toward ALL Jews. Perhaps, Malle-as-child really did befriend a nice Jewish kid, but should that child be a symbol for all the Jews in France and Europe? After all, bad people as well as good people are ‘innocent victims’ in wars.) AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS is too soft and gauzy for a tough subject. If indeed most Jews were as thoughtful, quiet, dignified, gentle, and decent like the Jew kid, would antisemitism have been so ‘rabid and virulent’ all across Europe? This isn’t to blame the victim(as the victimizers surely weren’t saints themselves) but to point out that the Jew-gentile relation in Europe was far more complex than the post-WWII iconography of the Holy Jew would have us believe. It certainly wasn’t like the relation between aristocrats and serfs where one side clearly had more power, privilege, and rights than the other. Though Jewish merchants and money-lenders were often reviled and distrusted, some gained privileges by serving as middlemen between kings/aristocrats and the poor masses. Many Jews did very well, and some even amassed vast fortunes and key influence as financiers, businessmen, or tax collectors. Thus, many Jews were richer and more powerful than masses of goyim. And we know that with power and wealth come abuse and corruption, made worse by the Jewish worldview of tribal supremacism, regarding goyim as cattle, and reviling Christianity as heresy. And, even many gentile elites feared the Jews because, though of inferior social status, certain Jews had accumulated more wealth than the aristocrats and formed worldwide networks with other Tribesmen. Also, there is something about Jewish personality that is off-putting to non-Jews(and even to Jews themselves). Very few Jewish girls are like the pure-hearted and ‘innocent’ Nordic girl in Ingmar Bergman’s VIRGIN SPRING or the heroine of Frantisek Vlacil’s MARKETA LAZAROVA. There are lots of Jewish bitches with the personalities of Sarah Silverman, Leona Helmsley, Sandra Bernhard, Jennifer Rubin, Rachel Abrams, and other horrible hags. Even though plenty of Jews have lively personalities — and Jewish assertiveness can be fun and even sexy — , it’s no less true that they make you want to punch them in the face. Even as Albert Brooks makes you laugh, you also want to knock his head around a bit. In the final scene of BROADCAST NEWS, we see the older Albert Brooks character with his cute little son, but the chances are he will grow up to be a smarmy jerk like his dad, not least because it’s part of Jewish identity to be a thorn in the side of humanity; there’s something in Jewishness that hates the idea of being genuinely liked and trusted by goyim as such would require sincere effort among Jews to be good, likable, and trustworthy. Jewish intelligence wants to outwit and out-think others, not get along like earnest 'dummies' with brains tuned into 'nice' mode. Also, Jewish ego wants to act badly and nastily toward goyim yet STILL compel goyim to be nice to Jews — such is the nihilism of Jewish Egotism, i.e. "We can do as we please and act like a**holes, BUT you goyim better kiss our ass and compliment our fart." Well, ain’t that the state of the Current West?
Kids don’t remain kids forever, but the image of Jew-as-Innocent-Child of the Anne Frank cult and AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS would have us believe that Jewish Childhood is an eternal principle. Anne Frank would likely have grown up to be a troublesome bitch, and the Jew kid in AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS would likely have grown up to be radical, subversive, or tribal nihilist. We can dote on a tiger cub, but it will eventually grow up to be big and dangerous. Even if we were to commit the terrible crime of nearly wiping out all tigers, it wouldn’t change the fact that tigers are dangerous animals we should be wary about in our midst. Likewise, a Jew kid may seem harmless enough — even though Jews from a young age are often abrasive, nasty, and insulting — , but he could very well grow up to be someone like Michael Bloomberg, Larry Kramer, Howard Stern, George Soros, Roman Polanski, and other nasty Jews. These Jews may be highly talented and even do great things, but they pose a threat to goyim because of the combination of high intelligence, group unity, aggressive personality, and sneaky way of doing things against unsuspecting dimwit goyim.
Children come to awareness of the world from adults as authority figures, teachers, storytellers, and instructors. By the time a child turns nine or ten, he seriously begins develop a certain sensibility and world-view. This process can be corrupting or cleansing(or ‘innocenting’) or both. In some cases, gaining knowledge can make a child more ‘innocent’ as he grows older. For example, a child may be more skeptical and critical BEFORE his mind is molded with dogma, idolatry, and iconography that insist on the unquestionable sanctity of certain ideas, idols, and icons. Thus, the instilling of taboos is ‘innocenting’. This is the very purpose of Political Correctness. Though ‘progressive’ ideology purports to make people more ‘rational’, intelligent, knowledgeable, and etc., — after all, it is called ‘Critical Theory’ — the truth is most human-products of Political Correctness(and Pop Culture) end up yammering and babbling like innocent children on subjects such as racial differences and IQ. Political Correctness fills them with taboos and fairytales, or Santa Claus or Frosty the Snowman for grownups. So, even intelligent Liberals come to ‘believe’ in the myth of the Magic Negro, as with the Oprah Cult or the ridiculous mountain-sized Negro in GREEN MILE who wuvs a wittle white mouse. And even Ivy League graduates come to believe in the fairytale of ‘gays having a baby’, hardly more sensible than storks delivering babies. Of course, Liberals know that ‘gay sex’ cannot produce life, but Political Correctness made them make-believe ‘gays’ can have babies ‘together’ because the cult of homomania has pretty much sanctified homos and trannies — Progs feel holier-than-thou to have the nicest thoughts about homos, just like Catholics make-believe in miracles despite lack of scientific evidence. Like in THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, it’s as if PC Liberals are growing backwards. An old Mexican villager in THE WILD BUNCH says, "We all dream of being a child again...", but he knew it could only be a dream. But it seems like progs are STUDYING to be children again. But this is also true of Conservatives whose taboo of Jew-worship has rendered them childlike in their absolute dog-like devotion to Jewish authority. Because these truisms are based on lies and deceit, their effect is insidious and corrupting, and yet, in their encouragement of childlike emotions, they are also ‘innocenting’ of the population as they grow older. Consider college-educated fools whose eyes glaze over when they watch Oprah or Michelle Obama. Or all those Conservatives who got the 'truth' from the big fat baby talk of Rush Limbaugh. Consider all those progs who thought themselves ‘hip’ and ‘sophisticated’ for relying on Jon Stewart as main source of news. Or Pat Buchanan’s endorsement of FORREST GUMP, a movie where being a clueless and trusting dumbass is the greatest virtue.
A more interesting view of childhood than in AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS is found in Roberto Rossellini’s OPEN CITY and GERMANY YEAR ZERO. While Rossellini understood that children live in their own world of relative ‘innocence’, he also showed how they become aware of their environment and are eager to emulate grownups. Thus, the children in OPEN CITY who are eager to join the good fight are heroic but also disturbing for they are willing to fight, die, and kill over things they don’t fully understand. Irony is that adults aren’t all that different, as so many are willing to kill or die without historical understanding. After all, even though Italians are the tragic victims, resisters, and heroes in OPEN CITY, the truth is Italian Fascism predated National Socialism, and the Italian masses childishly glorified Il Duce. Even though children are children and adults are adults, there is a grey area between childhood and adulthood especially where violence is concerned. John Boorman’s HOPE AND GLORY shows children caught up in the thrill of war, and BORN IN THE FOURTH OF JULY shows how Ron Kovic played toy soldier before he became a real one; it’s like wolf cubs play as killers/hunters before they become real killers/hunters. In EMPIRE OF THE SUN, the British boy in a Japanese prison camp is enthralled with Japanese fighter planes, oblivious to the fact that such machines belong to the enemy and caused the havoc that led to his separation from his parents. Rossellini’s GERMANY YEAR ZERO, though problematic, is a work of profound empathy and, moreover, one that overcomes the temptation to depict German children as mere victims. Youth are less culpable than adults, but the toxicity of Nazism seeped into childhood as well. Even though the film is set in post-war Germany struggling to get back on its feet with Hitler’s regime defeated and discredited, the young boy’s anima came to consciousness under Nazism. No longer a Nazi youth but still acting with a Nazi mentality whose solution conforms to the deadly blueprint. There’s a similar sense in MACARTHUR’S CHILDREN by Masahiro Shinoda, though it ultimately soft-peddles the gravity of Japanese crimes in WWII. So, children too have a sense of the world, a rather brutally elemental sense of which side to root for, which side to hate, which side to fight for or ‘die’ for. (Furthermore, the mentality of adults in war seems hardly more sophisticated than those of boys playing war games in the park, not least because military training is meant to turn young men into mindless obedient killers than thinking individuals. Hollywood, the creator of mass myths that shape our imagination, doesn’t help either.) And in time, these relatively ‘innocent’ excitements morph into ‘adult’ passions. In BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, the Ron-Kovic-as-child is a wide-eyed dreamer about heroics-in-battle and the American Way, and he carries this ‘innocence’ into adulthood. Ironically, when an adult continues to believe as he did as a child, it’s no longer called ‘innocent’ but ‘grownup’. So, where is the clear line between innocence and knowledge? Paradoxically of course, the desire to ‘put away childish things’ can itself be a childish thing. Ron Kovic as a young boy wanted to grow up fast and become a proud warrior, serve as a noble defender of America, learn to use real guns than toy guns, and fight in a real war than in a play war. But this desire to grow up and ‘be a man’ stunted the natural process of mental development and emotional growth. He was so deadset on ‘being a man’ that he just childishly followed the official script of what-a-true-man-is-like. (Ironically, his 180 turn into an anti-war protester was no less simpleminded. He went from being one kind of a true believer to another, and it mostly had to do with his injury.)
Though Jews want us to believe in the rosy image of the pure-hearted, angelic, and harmless Jewish child — like the innocent red-coated girl in SCHINDLER’S LIST or the boy hiding in lavatory shit — , they’ve done the exact opposite with Arab and Muslim children. So, Jewish media constantly remind us that Arab/Muslim children are not to be trusted since they’ve all been raised to be the Devil’s Spawn(which is what the vile Rachel Abrams called them). In the film DANIEL(based on the novel by E.L. Doctorow) directed by Sidney Lumet, the children of the Rosenbergs are pure innocents who are clueless about politics. Now, innocence is a universal fact of childhood, but children don’t stay children forever(like Emmanuel Lewis or Gary Coleman characters), just like cute tiger cubs don't remain cuddly forever. Furthermore, Jews often raise their children to be tribal, paranoid, and strategic from a very early age — even as Jews push arrested development on goyim, they encourage their own children to grow up quicker in perspective and acumen. But Jews use the media to push forth the cult of Eternal Jewish Innocence via tropes of childhood centered around Anne Frank and others — indeed, one of the most famous ‘Holocaust’ photos is that of the Jewish child with his hands up; it was used in Ingmar Bergman’s PERSONA. In a way, Roman Polanski has been able to get away with so much rotten behavior because he did suffer as a child under the Nazis. He capitalized his tragic childhood into a get-out-of-jail card. You see, whatever he may have done as an adult, let’s remember poor and innocent Roman-as-child in Warsaw. Jewish childhood absolves Jewish adulthood. Jews use their own childhood as a Human Shield against criticism of their rotten behavior. If it's not the Holocaust, it's some story of how some Jewish kid was bullied by Big Dumb Polacks. In contrast, most depictions of Arab/Muslim kids in movies and the news feature them as the Devil’s Spawn who’ve been brainwashed and indoctrinated to kill Americans and Jews. So, the media could never get enough of showing us images of Palestinian kids throwing rocks and taunting Israeli soldiers. Never mind that Zionists have been occupying Palestinian lands and oppressing Palestinian people, men, women, and children. The most vicious slant on Arab children has to be in THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, a movie so dishonest and vile(though very well made by William Friedkin) that it has to be seen to be believed. Even for a Jewish Hollywood movie, it makes one’s jaws hit the floor. Even Nazi films about Jews were never as insane and murderous as this one. Throughout the film, we see a poor little Arab girl hobbling around on crutches. She is one of the ‘victims’ of US firepower unloaded on a civilian mob ‘protesting’ outside the US embassy. Naturally, we think she stands for the child-victim in any violent conflict, i.e. regardless of which side you’re on. But near the end of the movie, testimony given by Samuel Jackson’s character reveals that the Arab militiamen used the ‘peaceful’ protestors as a cover/veil to fire upon the Americans first... and the little girl was one of the crazed gun-wielding Arabs. And that justified the US war machine to unleash fearsome firepower on the crowd(made up of Arab militiamen and faux-peaceful protesters serving as a ‘human shield’). Now, the notion of militants and civilians acting in concert is nothing new in theaters of conflict. After all, US often couldn’t tell friend from foe in Vietnam where Viet Cong combatants could be one of the villagers or hiding among them. So, why would it be any different in the Arab world and why would it be so wrong, especially since the Jew-run US military has been invading and occupying the Middle East? We also know certain Arab children have been radicalized and used by Arab militiamen as terrorists and ‘human shields’. It’s been asserted that Hamas in Gaza even planted children near certain sites either to deter Israeli bombing or, worse, to use the deaths of children as cheap propaganda. So, the notion that ‘peaceful’ civilians could aid & abet radical militants and that Arab children could themselves be used as killers shouldn’t be controversial to anyone who knows about the Middle East. And if RULES OF ENGAGEMENT had soberly pondered that phenomenon, it might have been a provocative and thoughtful film. But the way the whole thing is set up(ultimately for cheap sensationalism and bogus moralizing), the only conclusion is "they are all animals and should be mowed down like foot-and-mouth-infected cattle or rabid dogs." Indeed, the emotional core hinges on the crippled Arab girl, especially as even haters of Arabs will feel some sympathy for the child. But when she too is revealed as a Devil’s Spawn, the movie’s message can only be read as, "All Arabs are animals, even little girls too." She is used as bait-and-switch. She baits us with sympathy and makes us believe that the movie is fair-minded and ambiguous, for it doesn’t flinch from the sight of an Arab girl crippled by the US military. But then comes the switch where she’s made out to be a vile creature as crazed and murderous as the rest of them. Besides, an appeal to realism cannot justify her portrayal because it’d be ludicrous for us to believe that a momentary glimpse over the rooftop amidst massive gunfire led Samuel Jackson’s character to see not only the militants but the pistol-wielding girl. Bullets are flying all over, and every US soldier hunkered down, lest he get his head blown off, but somehow Jackson’s character got such a clear look at the crowd that he even noticed the little girl(surrounded by adults towering over her) firing a pistol. It would only make sense in Absurdistan. It’s a shame because RULES OF ENGAGEMENT could have been an important courtroom drama — like PATHS OF GLORY, BREAKER MORANT, and THE CONSPIRATOR — about the difficulty of differentiating combatants and civilians in war and the thorniness of determining guilt and innocence — among both the enemy and one’s side as well — , especially in the era of global media where much of the fighting is done through the art of propaganda(perfected by Gandhi in the struggle for Indian independence and by North Vietnamese communists during the Vietnam War), but the movie betrays its potential and turns into shameless Neocon Zionist propaganda, the sort that made Michael Medved wet his pants. It ends on a note of absolute clarity, which is, "Arabs are animals, and America’s enemies are rabid dogs, and they should be handled as such." And of course, by having the accused officer played by a black guy, the movie peddles its ‘race’ hatred of Arabs while fending off charges of ‘racism’ since it was a Noble Black Guy who ordered the troops to fire on the Arabs. (As blacks are holy in the US Narrative, Zionist Neo-Imperialism is baptized with black 'patriotism'.) No wonder then why Jews found Obama so useful: If Magic Negro Obama done it, it must be wonderful. ‘Put the nigger behind the trigger’, and Jews can get away with a lot of shit. Since ‘white’ Zionists are so often accused of ‘racism’ for their ill-treatment of Palestinians and their Wars for Israel waged by the Jew-controlled US government, Jews will often use black characters as leads in movies about the Middle East crisis. Since ‘blacks cannot be racist’ and since blacks are doing a lot of fighting with Arabs and Muslims, it makes Arabs/Muslims the bad guys while Zionist-American policy is made ‘un-racist’ through its movie-association with noble/heroic blacks. If Nazis were smart, maybe they should have recruited blacks to kill Jews. Then Nazis couldn’t have been accused of ‘racism’ since they were associated with noble blacks who done the killing.
AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS was presented as an honest and courageous film that lays bare the truth of French antisemitism during the Occupation and the personal guilt of young Malle who might have subconsciously betrayed his Jewish friend. And yet, ‘honesty’ so often manifests itself in the form of dishonesty(especially a hallmark of Louis Malle who was equally an artist and sensationalist, humanist and narcissist, vulgarian and snob), and a seeming display of courage could conceal an essential cowardice. Furthermore, memory racked with remorse can nestle a certain nostalgia. To a degree, what Malle was reaching for is moving and penetrating. In a way, Malle’s alter ego’s ‘subconscious’ betrayal of the Jew-kid was worse than if he’d pointed to him in class and shouted, "YID KID OVER HERE, TAKE HIM AWAY, S’IL VOUS PLATI!!" That would have been awful but at least honest and straightforward. He would have revealed his true feelings about the Jew kid and acted on them. But Malle’s alter ego, Julien, tries to have it both ways. He wants to be the good-hearted and sympathetic friend of the Jew-kid, but he also wants to be rid of his rival, this Jew-kid who is smarter than him(and dearly protected by school authorities). He feels like the kid in John Knowles’ A SEPARATE PEACE who admires his friend but also envies him, even enough to see him destroyed. Thus, Julien’s act can be seen as an act of subtle treachery worse than outright treachery. (Ironically, Jews pull such things all the time, pretending to be your friend while doing everything to bring you down, but then acting like they are still your friend. Currently, the main victims of Jews are white conservatives, but they are too stupid to crack the codes and read the signals. Of course, Jews pull this on blacks as well, officially promoting the grand ‘people of color’ coalition, all the while employing various means to displace blacks from the nice parts of big cities to be reserved mostly for Jews, homos, yellow dogs, and libby-dib whites. And Jews encourage Asian students in elite colleges to vent their frustrations against ‘white racist privilege’ but then make movies like the RED DAWN remake that encourage white masses to freak out about Yellow Peril. Few real Jews are as nice, kind, and decent as the Jew kid in AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS. Your average French Jew is more like the vile scumbag Mathieu Kassovitz who made LA HAINE where a Jew kid hangs with a Negro & an Arab and fights with ‘skinheads’. Even though there’s no real love among French Arabs, Jews, and blacks, the foul film(though well-made and acted) would us believe they are brothers under the skin against ‘white racists’. Another dirty French Jew is Agnes Jaoui who made THE TASTE OF OTHERS, a film that insists on ‘tolerance’ but goes batshit crazy over some guy making a less-than-admiring comment about homosexuals. In one scene, a guy doesn’t know that someone is a homo and uses the French equivalent for ‘fag’, whereupon the homo throws a fit and says something like, "Fagois!!?? What you mean, eh? You mean, like a butt-fookeer???!!!" Well, homos DO fuc* each other in the ass. The rest of the movie has the guy who said ‘fag’ doing everything to redeem himself by winning the approval of the snotty and affluent homo. Now, it’s true that homosexuals ‘fuc*’ each other in the ass, but the homo in the film somehow thinks it’s offensive to regard homos that way. Imagine that. Homos do each other in the ass, but we are supposed to think of homos as fine, well-cultured, wonderful, upstanding people. And of course, there are French laws that fine and even imprison people who say insulting things about homos, and of course, vile Jews like Agnes Jaoui supports such laws, so it’s downright foul of her Jewish ilk to be lecturing us about ‘tolerance’. Anyway, AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS is dishonest in so many ways. For one thing, whatever may have happened between Malle-as-child and the Jew kid, it’s sickeningly sanctimonious to turn their story into a subdued passion play about ‘spiritual’ betrayal.
Apparently, Julien’s betrayal wasn’t merely a personal revelation but that of French Civilization as a whole. In a nutshell, the French, for all their grandiose displays of culture and declarations of liberty & justice, will go back on their word the moment their egotistical privilege is threatened — French talk universal but act tribal; they speak of courage but are essentially craven; justice becomes just-us, and it’s more about pomp than principle. A nastier variation of AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS is CACHE by the vicious Michael Haneke. Now, such indictment of the French may somewhat be warranted given it’s difficult to think of another civilization(though traditional China comes to mind) whose boundless conceits were so at odds with reality. Usually, bigger the claim, bigger the shame. Of course, the French problem was less akin to a poor man pretending to be rich than a rich man pretending to be super-rich — likewise, unlike Fascist Italy that was a weak power pretending to be a great power, the problem of National Socialist Germany was it was a great power pretending to be a super-power. Paradoxically, French cultural-national arrogance was made worse by the French Revolution. Though the radical transformation was anti-elitist and egalitarian, the overall effect was to spread the haughty pride of French Culture to EVERY French man and woman. In the end, the French Revolution didn’t so much put an end to French elitism as spread it far and wide as the defining principle of being French. Thus, each and every Frenchman was imbued with the national-aristocratic sense that he or she wasn’t merely a citizen but the inheritor and practitioner of the greatest culture known to mankind. In a way, this was the compromise between old elitism and new populism. The masses would be heard and represented in the new order but also imbued with the pride of culture once associated with the elites. As the French elites had never tired of reiterating their own greatness, the danger of national-universalization of elite culture was that every Frenchman might become excessively inflated with self-regard. Such cultural garb hardly guaranteed individual worth in achievement or virtue, and the great shame of the Occupation was that the French, for all their pretensions, acted like anyone else would under the circumstances. For most people, such compromise and failing would have been accepted as mundane facts of life. It was traumatic for the French because reality exposed the hollowness of their vain self-regard. In AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS, the Jew kid is used as a magic mirror that forces the French to confront what they REALLY are. But, the problem is the dichotomy of the specious French and the special Jew because Jews have their own issues of self-delusional claims and actuality. After all, if the Nazis had loved the Jews and hated the French, many Jews would likely have collaborated with the Germans to exploit and even kill the French. Jews certainly had no problem working with Muslim Moors during the Arab colonization of Spain. Sickeningly, the Jew kid is less an individual than an iconography of Jewish martyrdom. Granted, what individuals do and what happens to them are often reflective of a larger pattern, but Malle's film pushes it into the realm of mythology. And even though the film was made as an act of atonement, there is also the pride of remorse, as if we’re supposed to feel sorry for him for feeling sorry for what he did(or thinks he did). Also, even though the film bemoans the victim-hood of 'powerless' Jews, there’s a certain nostalgia and even idealization of Jews as a powerless people whose well-being, even existence, relies on the goodwill of good goyim — the suggestion is Jews are sympathetic only if they're without power. We may feel sorry for Jews in AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS, but there’s the feeling that Jews, having been ‘put in their place’, are preferable as objects of pity than agents of rivalry. It’s like a lot of Liberals find nostalgic value in stuff like DRIVING MISS DAISY and THE HELP since such works make them feel a sense of beneficent power over blacks. White Power bad, but White Power of Love good. Compassion is often inseparable from condescension because it's usually the case that the powerful feel compassion toward the powerless. So, even if white compassion is 'anti-racist', it can only exist from the perspective of superior white power. So, the fuzzy vibes that Liberals feel from movies like TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD and GREEN MILE are far from pure. Because white Liberals are often confused about current racial realities(where black violence, pathologies, and craziness are intractable) , they sometimes prefer to wax romantic about the good ole bad ole days when whites were in a position to help the Negroes who appeared more grateful, deferential, and tame back then(even though, in fact, there was plenty of black violence then as well). This is the emotional hook of something like Douglas Sirk’s IMITATION OF LIFE. Sure, white Liberals bawl and weep over the tragic Negress mama, but their compassion derives from the sense of power. They feel in the position to feel sorry for the powerless and nobly suffering Negress. It is so much simpler than being confronted with the current reality of race where many blacks are threatening to whites, cause so many problems, keep demanding more and more, and show zero gratitude(except to hustle white sucker dweebs for more freebies, favors, and preferences). So, even as AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS revisits the good ole bad ole days and grieves, "We wish it hadn't been so", it also waxes nostalgic about a time when the GOOD French had power of life-or-death over Jews who, during the Occupation, were less arrogant, pushy, and vile(as they utterly depended on the goodwill of the French — as that of the decent priests in Malle’s film — for survival). Indeed, if Jews were faced with great horrors in the present and relied on our support to protect them, they would be acting a lot nicer — still, it would just be an act, and once they regain power over us, they will do anything to push more Nakba on more goyim, often by making one bunch of goyim invade and replace other goyim around the world. In a way, when Jews say good goyim should protect Jews from bad goyim, they are not appealing to goyim as people of free will; rather, they are demanding upon goyim to be servile dogs. Thus, the goyim's protection of Jews is less a matter of moral decision than blind obligation. If Jews were truly committed to freedom of conscience and morality, they would insist that goyim should stand with Jews when Jews are good and stand against Jews when Jews are bad; in other words, if Jews act like Nazis toward a certain group, free-thinking whites as moral agents should side with the victims of Jews, such as Palestinians and Syrians. But Jews insist that white goyim serve Jews regardless of whether Jews are good or bad, or even pretend that Jews are always good. It's like dogs bark and bite to protect their master no matter what; they serve the logic of Master Morality, or whatever-the-master-does-is-right. Thus, there is a dark element to the sham-moral cult of Good Whites saving Jews from the Nazis. The intended lesson is less about white moral agency than about white servitude to protecting Jews simply because Jewish lives are more precious than any other. Though sold as anti-supremacism, it is really Jewish Supremacism. In the present, Jewish control over US foreign policy has led to horrors visited upon millions all over the world, but all we get from cuck goy politicians is WE MUST SERVE THE JEWS. Even when Jews act like the New Nazis or Judeo-Nazis and spread destruction around the world, cuck goy elites keep invoking the Holocaust in support of Jewish Evil. This suggests that the main lesson of the Shoah hasn't been universal morality that applies equally to all but a blind cultish servitude to Jews. Jews are like the communist in the film ELENI. When seeking refuge from right-wing forces, the Greek communist acts so gentle and friendly toward the matriarch of a Greek family, but when the communists take control over the region, he turns into a ruthless commissar and even orders her execution when she disobeys communist decrees.
Paradoxically, it could be one reason why Americans are so easily fooled is due to their faith in the free press protected by the First Amendment and the principles of journalism premised on facts and truth over bias or favor. Consider the title of Harrison Salisbury’s book about the New York Times: WITHOUT FEAR OR FAVOR. There is the impression of journalists being courageous idealists working tirelessly to get at the facts, no matter how inconvenient or disapproved(especially by the powers-that-be), for the sake of truth and justice — Hollywood movies have especially propagated such tropes about journalists. Thus, not only is the American system of government controlled by checks and balances, it is also vigilantly watched over by the ‘fourth estate’ of the free press; and since the media are not owned by the government but by private individuals and since journalists come from the best schools after years of training in the proper methodology of journalism and fact-gathering, we can rest assured and trust the media. And clearly, the American/Western/democratic way of journalism is generally more reliable than, say, the authoritarian, let alone totalitarian, way. (What is often overlooked is the importance of the general outlook and core passions of the owner class. When US media went from Anglo-American-Liberal hands to Jewish-American-Liberal hands, it wasn't a case of one form of liberal media giving way to another. Given the rather colorless personality of Anglo-American liberals, their liberalism eventually prevailed over Anglo identity, whereas given the tenacity of Jewish personality, Jewish identity took front seat among Jewish Liberals. Indeed, the notion of 'Jewish Liberal' is essentially an oxymoron because, whereas Christianity is universalist and egalitarian, Judaism is tribal, particularist, and even supremacist. So, if Anglo-American Liberals did their best to serve liberalism, Jewish-American Liberals did their best to make Liberalism serve Jewish interests. Wasps believe in Ideology > Identity whereas Jews live by Identity > Ideology. And yet, 'idology' or ideology-of-idolatry > ideology among Anglo-American Liberals. After all, if White Liberals truly favored ideology over identity, they would side with universal justice for Palestinians and oppose Wars for Israel, and yet, they suck up to Jewish Power just like cucky White Conservatives in the GOP do. It suggests that white commitment to ideology wilts under the 'idology' of Jewish holiness, globo-homo worship, and Magic Negro cult. This distinction between Wasp Liberalism and Jewish Liberalism is key to understanding why the triumph of Jewish Liberalism made the US less truly liberal in liberty and freedom. Not all 'liberalisms' are alike, just like Neocons and Paleocons are worlds apart. Jewish-driven Liberalism or Conservatism is a different vehicle than one driven by goyim.) Nevertheless, one advantage of living under an authoritarian or repressive system is you learn to be more wary and skeptical of the powers and the sources of information. You learn to glean the news with caution. Thus, you learn to trust less and hone skills of reading between the lines. You become more savvy about interpreting the narrative. You take NOTHING for granted. In contrast in a democracy, the masses may drop their guard and just believe in the truth disseminated by the 'free press'; no wonder so many were duped by something like WMD hysteria and Russia Collusion Hoax. In a repressive order, there is little truth but also little trust of those who dispense the ‘truth’. In a democratic order, the trust in the system blinds so many people(though, of late, the declining trust in the mass media in the US suggests a rising consciousness that MSM is a conveyor of oligarchic propaganda than an upstanding practitioner of freedom of inquiry). (Also, the fact that most Americans are economic animals preoccupied with material wealth and hedonism means that most of them regard World News as irrelevant to their lives. Many Americans simply don't care because their attitude is, "I got mine." Even most of American Politics is centered around consumerism and pop culture as right-and-wrong is essentially a matter of what celebrities promote or what one sees on TV shows. Same goes for much of American spirituality, which is about je$u$. And in Pop Spiritual works like CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and E.T., it appears the main mission of space aliens is to raid American refrigerators for fast food, beer, soda pop, and chocolates; or they love to tinker with electronics and toys as they hover over American suburbs. They act like the Russians in NY in MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON. They may be from more advanced civilizations on the far side of the galaxy, but America is #1 when it comes to fun and yummies.) Why be critical when one has been assured of the 'freedom of the press'? Furthermore, the partisan-ization of news has both decreased and increased levels of trust. While Liberals totally distrust FOX NEWS and Conservatives totally distrust MSNBC, the former are more likely to be blindly trustful of MSNBC while the latter are of FOX NEWS. The notion of truth has become ever more problematic with the rise of Political Correctness as journalistic policy and with the dissolution of the barrier between editorializing and the news or between the agenda and the facts; there is also the overwhelming tendency to spin all news into fave fables for Israel and Jewish Supremacism. Nascent forms of political correctness had a somewhat salutary effect in nudging the media to use more neutral language in favor of objectivity. Initially, linguistic reforms in journalism opted for less judgmental language and deconstructed conventions where words themselves had an instant-editorializing effect. For example, if the Cowboys vs Indians wars were happening today, it wouldn’t be fair or very objective to refer to Indians as ‘savages’. But the objectives of Political Correctness eventually went from less bias and judgmentalism toward more in service to certain agendas. Terms like ‘racist’ and ‘sexist’ should only be used in editorials. Besides, ‘ism’ means belief, so just how did ‘racism’ and ‘sexism’ come to mean, respectively, hatred of other races based on feelings of supremacism and misogynistic contempt/oppression of women? Also, the insistence on the term ‘gender’ over ‘sex’ is an endorsement of the notion that sexual identities are essentially ‘social constructs’. But then, Liberals say homos are naturally born homos, and nothing can be done about it. So, ‘male’ and ‘female’ are social constructs but a ‘homosexual’ is a biological fact; it's not true that girls naturally want to play with dolls, but homo boys most certainly naturally do.
And then, there is the term ‘gay’. It is a positive adjective meaning light-hearted, happy, blissful, elegant, and etc. To ascribe such an (positively)celebratory and descriptive adjective on an entire group is a form of editorializing. It is no more fair and indeed far less factual than calling homosexuals ‘sodomites’. It isn’t entirely factual because not all homosexuals are gay-ish. Some are macho, tough, and vulgar. But ‘sodomite’ does apply to most homosexual men since most of them do practice fecal penetration. The term ‘gay’ makes us fixate on the social style of homosexuals than on the biological fact of what makes a homosexual truly a homosexual: he likes to suck other men’s penises and have them thrust in-and-out of his fecal hole. While non-homo men can act gayish, even non-gayish-acting men into fecal penetration are homosexuals. Thus, physical substance of homosexuality should trump the social style of homosexuality. But the media and academia have associated homosexuality with superficial mannerisms than with underlying facts of its physicality. Since the physicality of homosexuality is clearly gross — even homomaniacs wouldn't be heartened by a sight of a man having his fecal hole being pummeled by another man’s penis that becomes stained with fecal matter and juice. No wonder there’s been an concerted attempt to make us focus on the happy and light-hearted style of homos in order to divert our eyes from the real physical facts of homosexuality. Meanwhile, those who oppose the radical homo agenda are condemned by the media as ‘homophobic’, which means that if you think ‘gay marriage’ is a debasement of real marriage, you are clinically sick in the head. Because ‘phobia’ is a medical term, one might mistake ‘homophobia’ as an objective phenomenon, but it was concocted by the Jew-run queer cottage industry in college campuses and media outlets. Whole bunch of Liberal Jews and homos in psychology have done everything they could to undermine scientific principles to push through their agenda; they’ve succeeded because psychology is, as yet, not a pure science but a field associated with 'social sciences' such as sociology, political science, and the humanities. Thus, even while Political Correctness in the media pretends to be about fairness and reduction of conventional/traditional bias, it really pushes an agenda geared to dupe us into supporting certain dubious policies, trends, fashions, and movements. And consider the oft-used terms ‘white supremacist’ and ‘antisemitic’ in ‘objective’ news reporting. But why aren’t Zionists referred to as ‘Jewish Supremacists’? Why aren’t people like David Sirota and Tim Wise referred to as ‘Anti-white Jewish Haters’? Why aren’t homo elites called ‘radical homosexual activists’? Why aren’t black gangsta rappers referred to as ‘black thuggery promoters’? You see, the so-called 'objective' and 'neutral' news employ judgmental and condemnatory language to describe white people who happen to care about their own racial interests, but Jews, homos, and blacks get a free pass, no matter how hate-filled they may be. And of course, the manipulation of images works the same way. Only handsome and/or pleasant-looking homosexuals are featured in news about homosexuals whereas the most unpleasant and unappetizing folks — usually of fat ugly people — are used to represent those who won't bow down to the homo agenda.
How did things come to this? Long ago, when many journalists lacked proper training in journalism, one can understand why reporting could have been sloppy. But the rise of journalism schools all across America since the 1950s should have produced entire generations of truth-seeking journalists whose main loyalty is to objectivity and fairness. In other words, just as doctors treat and save the lives of people they don’t like(and even hate) and just as public defenders are sworn to represent people they loathe, journalists have a responsibility to the truth regardless of their own personal biases, preferences, and agendas. If they want to spout off on their personal ideological, social, or political commentary, it should be in the editorial section. And of course, many journalists do attempt to write objectively, fairly, and accurately. When it comes to apolitical journalism, there isn’t any reason for a journalist to lie or suppress facts. He needs only to contact the experts and report on the prevailing consensus while also lending an ear to certain dissenting views. But when it comes to political and social matters, objectivity is understandably problematic. For starters, even the very act of choosing one story over another is a form of judgement and selectivity. Suppose there’s a case of a black man killing a white man and a case of a white man killing a black man. Suppose reporters have been sent to cover the stories, and both reporters submitted a perfectly fair and accurate description of the known facts without bias or favor. But if the media company decides to report or highlight one story while rejecting or minimizing the other(by shunting it to page 11), a de facto editorializing has taken place by the simple act of selection itself. Because all news stories are chosen and emphasized to varying degrees by people who run the media, selectivity can trump objectivity. The media can, of course, go for a certain proportionality. Even if it can’t cover every story of racial violence, if crime statistics show that for every black attacked by whites, there are twenty whites attacked by blacks, the media can proportionally report race-related crime and violence in a manner as to convey the impression that black-on-white aggression is a bigger problem than white-on-black aggression. But of course, the current Liberal Media controlled by Jews don’t do that. It overlooks and even suppresses most of black-on-white crime. It also uses code words like ‘teens’ and ‘youths’, even when some of the ‘youths’ involved in the crime are past their teens. Indeed, the impression created by the Jewish-controlled media(and esp. Hollywood) is that most racial violence in this country is white-on-black. Given the amount of press that the Duke Lacrosse case received — by a media that jumped to conclusions and rushed to judgement — , one would think there is an epidemic of rich white males raping poor black women when the real shame of America is that so many black thugs rape white women and girls. But of course, the problem isn’t merely the imbalance of selectivity decided by the Jew-run industry(to perpetuate 'white guilt' to keep whites morally subservient to Jews and minorities) but the barbed-wire-fencing of contextuality that has an 'idological' effect on those in the media. Since the contextual framework prevalent among the Liberal Hive Mind in media/academia is the ‘legacy of slavery and Jim Crow’, 'racism', ‘white guilt’, and refrains of ‘there is so much to be done’, and etc., there’s either a willful compunction on the part of White Liberals(and even white conservatives who are into MLK worship) to overlook black violence or even to rationalize/justify it as understandable response to Evil White America. Indeed, even when a black-on-black crime happens in the American South, it is often narrated in the framework of white-on-black violence, as was the case with the murder of the homosexual black guy by another black guy — because it happened in Mississippi, once the hotbed of white 'racism', the story was treated like a lynching narrative — by the way, lynching is the most common way of justice in black Africa. (The power of industry, 'idology', and hysteria undermine objectivity even among the most intelligent and well-trained journalists. The industry hires and fires, and as journalists are employees, they would rather not report or write anything that might get them fired. Also, humans are naturally 'spiritual', and idolatry often trumps intelligence/integrity. No matter how smart and capable a journalist may be, if he was raised or inculcated to revere and idolize Magic Negroes, Holy Homos, and Wise Jews, his modus operandi will be 'idology' > intelligence/integrity. We see the same thing among Catholic conservatives. No matter how smart and perceptive they may be about most things, they may still reject evolution because it goes against what they deem to be Holy according to Scripture. Finally, there is the general fear of hysteria, and this means the news industry will be more sensitive toward individuals and groups that are more likely to make a big stink. This is why the news media don't hesitate to spew endless invective against Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and etc. Such groups in the US aren't very vocal. But the media are very mindful of angry blacks, hysterical homos, and bitchy feminists. Also, as the media are owned and controlled by vicious and nasty Jews, they are likely to go easier on groups deemed as the most useful allies of Jews.)
But the most crucial truth in regard to forces animating mass media needs to consider the factor of Jewish Supremacism. As long as Jews regard whites as their main rivals — or potential obstacles to their future agenda — , it is essential that white hearts and minds be infected with feelings of guilt, unearned privilege, self-loathing, and disgust. Since ‘white guilt for white privilege’ has become the main 'moral' principle in the PC West, the only whites who are allowed social ascension are those who loudly profess to denounce ‘white privilege’. Reject 'white privilege' to gain privilege for your white self. Paradoxical, yes, but how clever of white Liberals to serve their own social-class interests by fixing the blame of ‘white privilege’ on white conservatives. (But then, don't feel too sorry for 'conservatives' as they will justify their own 'white privilege' by counter-dumping on Democrats as the 'real racists' or, worse, by dumping on 'white nationalists' who refuse to bow down to Jewish Supremacism and globo-homo-mania.) So, a rich white Liberal thinks, "I voted for Obama, so I’m less ‘racist’ than you, a white conservative, and because I am ‘more evolved’ than you — and working hard to create a more ‘inclusive’ world — , my ‘progressive’ white privilege is well-deserved." In other words, as white Liberals make things more equal and ‘inclusive’ for everyone horizontally — not least by promoting open borders where foreign ‘non-citizens’ can pour into the West by the millions and displace the white masses — , they make themselves more exclusive and privileged vertically as they get to live in communities that are de facto out of reach to those without high IQ's, special talents, and/or connections(that favor Jews, homos, mulattoes, and turncoat white Liberal race-traitors like the Clintons, Bidens, and the Bush league, which is why there’s no real difference between Democratic elites and Republican elites when it comes to the issue of immigration. Indeed, if it weren’t for grass roots resistance, the GOP would have signed onto total open borders long ago). It’s about horizontal open borders and vertical closed ladders. The elites push ‘equality’ and ‘inclusion’ on the white masses by using Section 8 Housing to dump dangerous blacks onto white communities and by using open borders & amnesty laws to flood the West with masses of non-white immigrants, but the elites — mostly made up of Jews, homos, mulattoes, and turncoat white Liberals — live in their own Elysiums of wealth, privilege, and neo-aristocratic special connections.
But might there not be some members of the elite who might wish to sound the alarm on what is being done to the white race? Such people do exist, but given that the ‘values’ and ‘principles’ of the elites are dominated by Jews, such heretics would soon lose their elite status. (Donating a mere $100 to Vdare would be a bigger cause for alarm than donating $10 million to Jewish Supremacist AIPAC or ADL or anti-white hate groups such as SPLC and BLM.) You cannot be a member of the elite without special connections and privileges, and those advantages can be taken away from you if you don’t go along. Look what happened to the newspaper tycoon in THE FOUNTAINHEAD when he chose to stand on principles and personal integrity? The other elites all turned on him, and he faced ruin, and so he caved under pressure. A little guy has little to lose by doing his own thing, but a big guy will lose big if his actions rouse the ire of fellow elites. Bigger they are, harder they fall, and Jews hold the ace card and the queen in the game of power since they control most of the elite academia, media, law firms, and the courts(filled with gangster judges funded by Jews). Thus, there’s more conformity among the elites than among the middle class. The positive aspect of this is that the elites are under greater pressure as they well should be. After all, men with great power should be under greater scrutiny and pressure to do the right thing. Bob with a big rock can create a bigger splash and more ripples than John with a tiny pebble alongside a pond. But if elite pressure comes mainly from fellow elites than from the people and if the particular elite group that applies the most pressure doesn’t itself come under counter-pressure(as it hogs all the moral capital), then it cannot be a healthy well-balanced system. Of course, that particular elite group in America is Jewish. It is pushy, aggressive, vicious, judgmental, and often hysterical. It pressures big name politicians, top pundits, academics, publishers, celebrities, and other movers-and-shakers among non-Jewish elites to be ultra-sensitive and very mindful, indeed downright submissive to the Zionist agenda, Jewish interests & demands, and Jewish Supremacism, but it never comes under similar scrutiny or pressure. There is no serious non-Jewish elite criticism of Jewish power, hardly any demand that Jewish abuses in Wall Street, Hollywood, government, and media be investigated and exposed. Jews in government, media, courts, law firms, and Wall Street colluded in 2008 to ‘bail out’ the Jewish banksters to the tune of trillions. If many decent and courageous Italian-Americans took up arms to combat the mafia, most Jews still play cover for Jewish crimes and abuses; indeed, even Jewish social critics tend not to point out the Jewish character of the power hierarchy and prefer to blame generic targets like the 'rich' and 'whites'.https://www.bitchute.com/video/6OV5Nir64UmG/https://www.bitchute.com/video/x1UHSof4YEUo/
There are Jewish successes and Jewish failures, and in order to cover up the failures, Jews need financial depth(or the 'nest egg'), and that means control of Wall Street. Jewish Wall Street and its lending practices provide a safety net for Jewish-dominated businesses; it can also play carrots-and-sticks with goy businesses seeking loans, i.e. they better agree with the Jewish agenda or face bankruptcy during crises. Since all businesses have ups and downs and face troubling times, a line of credit and easy access to loans are absolutely crucial for long-term viability. Just as German banks favored German industry and Japanese banks favored Japanese industry, Jewish-run Wall Street favors Jewish industry, and this means Jew-run industries enjoy a much wider margin of error because of easier access to loans. If an Asian-Indian and a Jew come up with the same great high-tech idea, guess which one will be favored by Wall Street in financial backing? Mark Zuckerberg is a smart guy, but I suspect he got a leg up because he was favored by Jewish-run financial institutions that might have refused loans if he were a goy, especially one with a reputation for pro-Palestinian sympathies or ‘white nationalism’. This isn’t to suggest there are tons of white nationalist geniuses whose ideas were overlooked for political reasons. Chances are, as smart kids tend to be mostly bookish, they’ve probably been indoctrinated by the overwhelmingly PC ideological literature in media and academia. Also, as enterprising smart people aim to rake in lots of dough, they develop the habit of avoiding controversy and disapproval from the powers-that-be.
Jews especially seek control over finance because it is the water supply of the world economy — it's like Jews know their control of the flow of water in West Bank decides life and death or success or failure among Jewish invaders and Palestinians; well, guess which side is favored? No matter how wonderful your grove, the plants will die without water, and you will be forced to sell your plot to whomever controls the water... like in JEAN DE FLORETTE. It affects non-profit organizations and think tanks as well because they rely on donations from rich people, many of whom happen to work in finance. Sierra Club may want cleaner water, but it's come to care more for water supplies of fresh donations from super-rich Jews. If you can’t earn the money or secure loans, you need donations from people who get to call the shots. Notice how Think Progress never criticizes George Soros and Jewish banksters since it totally relies on their funding.
For all its advantages, control of finance is shaky without the control of media and government. If Jews control finance but non-Jews control the media, the latter could have been far more critical of the Jewish role in the 2008 debacle. But because Jews ran the media too, there was just some generic lip service about generic ‘greed’, as if ALL Americans were equally to share the blame. Also, by scapegoating Bush II and McCain and promoting Obama as maybe a ‘socialist reformer’, Jews created the illusion that something drastic will be done to fix Wall Street. Of course, the first thing Obama did in office was to ‘bail out’ Jewish-run Wall Street, proving that Jews control not only Wall Street and the media but the government too. But then, what is the government but a consortium of people funded by Big Money and vetted by Big Media? The government should have taken over the banks, punished Wall Street crooks like the Enron crooks, and then returned the banks to the private sector under tighter regulations, but no such reform took place. And even though some Liberal Jews bleated about how Obama hadn’t done enough, they secretly breathed a sigh of relief because they are Jewish Ethnics first and 'ethicists' second. As for neocons, they created the illusion that ‘socialist Marxist’ Obama was attacking capitalism by unduly punishing poor helpless Wall Street(that actually funded Obama to power), and of course, white gentile dummy conservatives sided with Wall Street even as Wall Street Jews hoisted ‘gay pride rainbow’ flags and laughed at dummy white conservatives(some of whom also bought into the ridiculous notion that Obama is a stealth Muslim whose secret agenda is to destroy Israel and hurt Jews when, in fact, Obama turned out to be by far the most slavish president in American history to Jewish power, even more so than Bush II. Behind closed doors, Jews must be hysterically laughing at dumb white conservatives who are indeed the stupidest people on earth. Your average white conservative may have a higher IQ than average blacks, but his Political Intelligence — genuine awareness of what politics is really about and what is really at stake — is on the level of retards. John McCain, Sarah Palin, S.E. Cupp, and others are the sort of people who, upon being spat in the face by Jews, will say, "Jews love me!").
How did Jews amass so much power? Even if it’s true that rich & powerful Jews helped other Jews, how did they rise so rapidly when rich Wasps started out with more advantages in the US? Before Jews took over this nation, they had to rise to the top in the first place. Of course, part of the reason was the higher IQ of Ashkenazi Jews(but it's been said Episcopalians have IQ's comparable to those of Jews), academic/intellectual seriousness(at least relative to other groups), aggressive/lively personality, and a long tradition of networking. Jews also have a long history in business(as merchants and money men) and law(as scholars of the Torah and Talmud). But another factor is the Jewish mindset of constant 'strategizing'. Jews are generally more adept at focusing on essentials than peripherals. Jews know quality and concentration trumps quantity and diffusion. During the Russian Civil War, the White forces controlled more territory and had a more varied coalition, but it also meant that their forces were spread thin & wide and had no uniting ideology. At one time, the Bolsheviks were reduced to controlling less than 5% of Russia, but they held the biggest cities and maintained the loyalty of their followers with simple/clear ideological slogans or ideologans of ‘Bread and Land’. Similarly, at the beginning of the Chinese Civil War following the end of WWII, the KMT led by Chiang Kai-shek held more territory and had more men than the Communists under Mao, but Mao had gained control of the industrial North and commanded an army with a much clearer sense of mission. While KMT often took over useless areas, Communists focused on taking cities, and since so many educated people in cities — people of quality — had pro-communist sympathies, they fed crucial information to the Reds. On a chess board, a few powerful pieces are more crucial than a whole bunch of pawns. Also, gaining few key positions can win the game. It doesn’t matter how much of the chess board you control if the opponent controls the key positions that threaten your king. White conservatives can control all the rural churches and a whole bunch of third-rate Christian colleges, but they are no match to Jewish control of the elite universities and mass media with the power to disseminate the SAME news to all of America and the world. White conservatives may control 700 Club, small-town bake sales, and local talk radio where some preacher thunders about Jesus, but Jews control Hollywood and national media — for current Americans, entertainment = truth. White conservatives control more territory in the US, but Jews control the densely populated areas where power, people, and wealth are concentrated. Conservatism is no match for Concentrationism. Would you rather control all the planets and the spaces around them or the Sun in the Solar System? It’s the Sun that monopolizes the heat and light. Furthermore, Jews never take it easy. They are like James Woods' Max in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. No amount of wealth and privilege is enough to make him finally relax and take things for granted. If he has a lot, he wants more, and when he has more, he wants even more and etc.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/zeannDrpeF8G/
Also, Jews know that the art of gaining power requires one to be principled-unprincipled, i.e. invoke principles against the other side while being utterly unprincipled in one's own actions. All groups employ this tactic but not with the same level of skill and tenacity of Jews who are gifted in verbal acrobatics and make even the most unprincipled position sound principled with pleas to law and decency. So, Jews make the most principled-sounding arguments in America about ‘white privilege’ and ‘racism’ — about how Wasps fell short as national elites — but are utterly unprincipled about guarding their own Jewish supremacist interests and power. Jews condemn the blacklists of the 'McCarthy Era' but have no qualms about blacklisting anyone they disagree with by means fair and foul, mostly foul.
There are times when you can be principled-principled with people you trust on the basis of shared laws, customs, and honor in times of peace, but war is never about being principled-principled. It’s about being principled-unprincipled, especially if the enemy is utterly without scruples. Wasps failed to understand the true nature of the Jewish challenge. They offered an olive branch to a people who hold a knife behind their back. They regarded Jewish social criticism as passion for social reform when it was really social war or a social-tribal war. So, while Wasps sought to be more principled in response to Jewish demands, Jews were utterly unprincipled themselves and remain so to this day, even though they are the new elites of America. Being ruled by unprincipled people is most dangerous. Why were Anglo-Americans more partial to the idea of principles? It may owe to the aristocratic roots of Anglo-American elites. Even though the Founding Fathers declared a free republic, they were steeped in a cultural tradition of noblemen. Even revolutionary-minded Thomas Jefferson believed in natural aristocracy. Aristocrats of old may have been exploitative and hypocritical, but they believed in the sense of honor and reputation. They were willing to die for honor, to face punishment for lack of honor. Duels, so integral to aristocratic culture, were all about the importance of honor. For instance, if an aristocrat was found to have fled like a coward from battle, he couldn't live down his shame. He would have either killed himself or shaved his head and joined a monastery. Though America was founded on democratic/republic principles, the culture of honor lived among the Wasp elites and was passed down generation to generation.
In Old Europe, aristocrats or the warrior caste had a sense of honor. Peasants and merchants did not. (But unlike the merchant class, the peasants who later became the working class were too simpleminded to conceive of taking power; they simply wanted better wages and conditions.) Jews didn’t have an aristocratic heritage in Europe. They had lived as merchants, and business has always been more malleable and flexible than the art of war. A warrior is expected to be courageous and firm, even die for the cause. In war, he must show his mettle, and his honor is everything. You don't make a deal with the enemy in the middle of battle. Though business relies on trust and contracts, there is little honor involved, and traditionally haggling, never honorable, was part of business. (Even a barbarian thug who used raw power to pillage and loot got more respect than a haggler.) Also, a businessman has no loyalty but to profit and, if left alone, will trade anything with any side, like the white trader in John Ford’s WAGON MASTER who sells rifles to Indians at war with white folks. Even though Wasp elites came to excel in business in a democratic America, their cultural heritage derived from Anglo tradition of aristocratic honor. When faced with criticism, they either had to defend their honor or show dignity by admitting wrong, for a truly honorable man must face the music.
Playing principled-unprincipled may seem a common practice all over the world — as all nations and peoples seek their own advantage at the expense of others — , but what usually prevails is the rule of unprincipled-unprincipled. A good example of this would be the state of affairs among China, Russia, and India. None of the three nations really trust the others. Each knows it’s looking out for numero uno. None cares to be truly principled in dealing with other nations, but then, none expects the other to be principled either. (Russia and China got close in recent years because US policy alienated both.) So, China tries to come off best against Russia, Russia tries to come off best against China, India tries to come off best against China, China tries to come off best against India, etc. There’s a wink-wink understanding among them that it's about interests, not principles. They make agreements and contracts, but it’s about the pragmatics of power. And for this reason, Jews have a harder time gaining power over such nations, and indeed, Jewish communists lucked out in Russia because the idiot Tsar sunk his nation’s fortunes in the horrors of World War I; even so, Russians regained power from Communist Jews, and in the 1990s, when it seemed as though Jewish Oligarchs would gain possession of the entire nation, Putin and some Russian elites wrested it back in favor of Russian Oligarchic power. Russians prefer rule by Russian gangsters than Jewish gangsters, but at the very least, Russian gangsters have some nationalistic feeling for Mother Russia whereas Jewish gangsters only want to rape her. (One disadvantage of moral narcissism, which became pervasive among Northern Europeans steeped in Protestant ethics, is it can be used to expose the contrast between one's lofty self-regard and one's actual failures. With Russians, Chinese, and Indians being less morally narcissistic than people of Northern European stock, it is more difficult for Jews to manipulate them emotionally. On the other hand, their greater tolerance for moral laxity has made for more corruption.) When we see a character like the daughter in VIRGIN SPRING or MARKETA LAZAROVA, we feel protective of their body and soul, but when Jews eye such a creature, they want to degrade and own her as commodity, which is why Jews have prized Marilyn Monroe as the icon of the shikse bimbo owned by Jews ranging from moguls to artists. You may want your daughter to grow up healthy, find meaning & happiness, raise a family, and remain part of the white community. A Jew wants your daughter to dress and act like a slut, mistake her enslavement as empowerment, hate her own kind and see her own father as an ‘evil patriarch’, have loose sex with a whole bunch of men(especially non-whites), and have a kid out of wedlock with a Negro. And yet, white conservatives love Jews more than themselves. Go figure. Anyway, the game of power between Russia and China is unprincipled-unprincipled. Chinese know they are no better than the Russians and don’t expect Russians to be any better than the Chinese, and vice versa, and they respect each other on that basis. Since Russians and Chinese see the entire world this way, they are less likely to be racked with collective guilt if Jews were to press upon them with principles. They are more likely to tell the Jew to go fuc* off since Jews have ethnically cleansed Palestinians, committed horrors as subversive radicals(especially harmful to Russia), used the American government to bomb the living daylights of the Middle East, and etc. They’ll tell the Jews, "We are no angels but neither are you". Even though Russians and Chinese are not entirely without ideals or values, their own survival and power are of paramount importance to them. They’ll adopt any -ism and strategy for the survival of the motherland and their own race/culture. Besides, both peoples have learned what happens when principles take precedence over survival and continuation of culture. Russian experiment with radical communist ideals led to wholesale destruction of Russian culture, and Mao’s Cultural Revolution was most devastating.
But Anglos developed a different perspective. Feeling relatively safe and secure in their island nation and having gained dominance over much of the world, Anglos came to conflate their might with rightness. As Anglo elites had less to worry about invasion, they breathed more freely than continental Europeans. They pontificated more about the principles of power. And when they became the biggest and most successful imperial power in history, they didn’t merely regard the success as proof of superior might but of superior laws and values: Sense of justice & fairness, culture of dignity & honor, better use of intelligence, commitment to truth, and deeper wells of wisdom. Thus, the British came to feel mighty good about themselves, and this sense of righteousness(at times preening and conceited)passed onto the Founding Fathers. Even though the main catalyst for the American Revolutionary War was political and economic than ideological or idealistic, the Founding Fathers declared a War of Principles. And after Britain lost America — jewel more precious to the crown than one in the Asian subcontinent — , the Brits felt ever more compelled to moralize and justify their standing on the world stage. (Just like the communist threat posed a moral challenge to the capitalist world, especially in winning the hearts and minds of intellectuals, working class, and the Third World, the American challenge with its morally charged revolutionary rhetoric pushed the British to demonstrate their moral message as well as military mettle.) This is one reason why the British chose not to aid the South in the American Civil War though politically tempted to do so. It would have tarred their newly minted image as the torchbearers of civilization at war with all forms of slavery. Justify imperialist domination on grounds of opposing chattel slavery. The British Empire promoted itself as the Progressive Empire, one that conquers other lands to liberate natives from darkness, abolish slavery, and spread civilization. It also saw itself as a reformist and repentant empire that ended practices from which it had greatly profited. Partly, the moralism was sincere, but it was also to prevent rival powers from growing wealthy and powerful from the same practices — "It made us rich, but no one shall grow rich from it again." Of course, its legacy can be glimpsed in current Liberal Inventionist American ideology. As long as Anglo-Brits and Anglo-Americans ruled the world, they could use this Narrative: "We Force You to be Free", which had more than a kernel of truth. It was useful within the American Continent itself via Manifest Destiny: Indians got it bad for awhile, but entire territories were opened up for progress, civilization, and freedom; and even the Indians put away childish-savage things and learned to appreciate the American Way. A certain underlying principle was presumably at work all throughout American History. But, if control of the Narrative were to fall into non- or anti-Anglo hands, it could be spun that Anglo-American history was more a betrayal than fulfillment of the Founding Principles(that can only be realized by the Jewish Agenda). Jews grasped the significance of this, which is why they concentrated on taking over the media, academia, law, and culture.
The difference between the Jewish mindset and the Anglo-American mindset can be seen in THE ONION FIELD(written by Joseph Wambaugh and directed by Harold Becker). It is the difference between the criminal mindset and the cop mindset. There are bad cops, and even good cops aren’t angels, but cops are supposed to uphold the law, serve with honor, and act according to principles. There's some degree of idealism in police work, and reputation matters. In contrast, criminals have no sense of principles. At best, there’s something called ‘honor among thieves’, but it’s ultimately self-serving, merely a means to prevent mutual destruction. It’s like a soldier fights for the good of others, whereas a bandit fights for self-gain. In THE ONION FIELD, a cop named Karl Hettinger(played by John Savage) surrenders his gun to criminals Gregory Powell(James Woods) and Jimmy Smith(Franklyn Seales) when they threaten to kill another cop Ian Campbell(Ted Danson) who is held hostage. The criminals drive to a certain location, and Powell shoots Campbell to death while Hettinger manages to flee with his life. Eventually, the criminals are captured and sentenced to death. What happens next? Powell, who turns out to be quite intelligent, masters the law and gets a retrial to reverse the conviction or to have his sentence commuted to life or even less. Meanwhile, Hettinger is regarded by other cops as a black sheep and is haunted by "survivor's guilt". As years pass, Powell becomes a respected figure in prison, whereas Hettinger falls into depression, turns to petty crime, and is forced to resign. He even contemplates suicide. At the retrial of Powell and Smith, Hettinger at the witness stand seems mentally unstable(as if HE is being prosecuted) whereas the killers seem confident and composed, indeed righteous. How odd given that Powell is the murderer lingering in prison while Hettinger is a free man and survivor of Powell's evil deed. And yet, there's a sick logic to their twist of fate. It's about mindsets, how subjectivity overcomes objectivity. Powell is a scumbag guilty of murder, but he psychopathically feels no remorse, no guilt, and no shame. His sick soul paradoxically imbues him with a clear(if not clean) conscience because he has no qualms about stooping to any level to get his way. Lacking a moral vertebrae, he can shape-shift like an octopus and be/do anything. In contrast, Hettinger is mindful of reputation, honor, and duty. He is sensitive to peer perception. It doesn't matter that he was the innocent victim. What matters is others seeing him as a coward who ran and left his partner to die. Or not having died along with his partner. (SOPHIE'S CHOICE is also about Survivor's Guilt.) Or the shame of having been rendered powerless despite being a policeman, a figure of force and authority. His depression is a proof of his conscience. Furthermore, he cares about his name. To his peers, especially the police captain with a strong sense of honor, only a ‘coward’ surrenders his gun to a criminal. Hettinger surrendered his gun to save his partner’s life, but no matter; the fact is he lost his partner and his honor in the eyes of his colleagues.
Powell, in contrast, doesn’t care what anyone thinks. He's like a psychopathic Howard Roark(of THE FOUNTAINHEAD). Or like Howard Stern. He only cares about what HE thinks and goes after what he wants regardless of others think. (He also knows that intelligence and sheer ability, even in a psychopathic criminal, gains grudging respect from those who know him. With luckier breaks in life, he might have risen quite high in law, finance, or industry, whereas Hettinger was never good for anything above being a cop.) As a criminal he robbed stores, and as a prisoner he coldly masters the ways of the legal system to gain every advantage. Jimmy Smith, his partner in crime, is a mulatto and lacks the smarts and comes to rely on Powell. At one point in prison, he beats up Powell and feels good about whupping the ‘white boy’, but upon realizing Powell’s smarts might save him from the death penalty, he's even willing to get on his knees and suck Powell's penis — Powell seems bisexual, but maybe he’s a homosexual who sometimes pretends to be otherwise. It’s like Negroes can physically whup the Jews but know they need Jewish brains to get something more for themselves. And given that black politicians now even smooch Toxic Homosexuality in the ass, Smith’s submission to Powell is indicative of how power works in America. (Of course, none of this was the intention of Joseph Wambaugh the writer and Harold Becker the director. And Powell wasn’t Jewish. But the power dynamics and difference in the mindsets among the characters are instructive as to the relation between Jews and Wasps; they suggest how and why the Jews came to gain such control over the latter.
Perhaps, looks also had something to do with it. As Anglos were better-looking, many successful Anglo men married for looks, especially as looks and manners were highly prized in Wasp society. As Jews had lesser looks and less manners, Jewish men would have married more on the basis of intelligence and ability. In DINER, the Jewish guy makes the prospective bride take a quiz on baseball.) Powell is psychopathic but goal-oriented, egocentric, and clear-headed; his unblinking remorselessness spares him the burden of guilt and self-doubt. He cares not that he murdered a man. He is only fixated on saving himself and improving his lot in prison. Like Alex in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, he has no conscience. (Amorality misled his intelligence when he was free but ensures no drag on his conscience as a convict.) And therefore, he grows stronger while Hettinger, who is capable of guilt, grows weaker. (It is also the difference between Treat Williams's character and Jerry Orbach's character in PRINCE OF THE CITY. The former can't go on without clearing his conscience whereas the other hasn't lost a minute of sleep over whatever he did. The difference, of course, is that both are lawmen as opposed to lawman vs. criminal as in THE ONION FIELD. Still, it says something about a mind constipated with doubt and a mind that flushes it without effort. Indeed, it's interesting that even though it was Treat Williams' character who made an effort to come clean, he feels judged and intimidated by Jerry Orbach's character who never gave an inch.)
But it isn't merely Hettinger's sense of morality but of honor that undoes him. While other cops don’t say it to his face, he senses or suspects their contempt. His is an Anglo-American mindset of remorse/guilt and honor/dignity. In contrast, Powell feels no such qualms. For him, life is a ruthless game of cunning, and winners win and losers lose; the 'winner' mentality, respectable or criminal, has a clear mind, whereas the 'loser' mentality, lawful or illegal, is clouded with uncertainty. (We talk of legitimate/legal vs criminal/illegal, but, in more ways than one, the 'winners' among the Good and Bad have more in common with one another as do the 'losers' among the Good and Bad. It's no wonder that 'winners' in the legitimate world have no problem playing loose and working with the 'winners' in the underworld. Consider how Vice Industries such as gambling became legitimate. The 'winners' of vice gained the respect of the 'winners' of supposedly virtuous society, and together, they made the vice of gambling into a new virtue, not least by spreading gambling as reparations for the 'genocide' of Indians — maybe Germans and Poles should set up casinos at Auschwitz.) But the truly astonishing thing about Powell is he uses the methodology of principled-unprincipled. While countless psychopathic convicts sit in prison without guilt or remorse but also without a clue, Powell knows he can use legal principles to his advantage. Thus, Powell the murderer has the balderdash to cleverly turn the tables and put the judicial system & Hettinger on trial, and sadly, plenty of lawyers help him, especially as the story is set in the late 1960s and 1970s when many Jewish lawyers were eager to champion criminals, if only to make a mockery of the judicial system. Given the cultural climate, many cases are being reviewed for various reasons, such as ‘racism’, and Powell figures to exploit all he can to secure a retrial with his belated mastery of the law. The story takes place at a time when the rising tide of Jewish power played Marx-Brothers-like games with the judicial system just to embarrass and humiliate an American society that hitherto had been dominated by Wasps. So, even though Powell is without scruples, he superficially but brilliantly mimics the principles of the system against itself. Much like Jews, he invokes principles against the other side without letting them hamstring his own strategy. It's like Jews applied ‘racial justice’ to Apartheid South Africa but never to Zionist Israel. It’s like Jews called out on Anglo-Americans for rigging Ivy League admissions in their favor while rebuffing any suggestion of Jewish manipulation of admissions in favor of the Tribe. It’s like Jews still bitch and whine about ‘white privilege’ but flip out if anyone brings up ‘Jewish privilege’. It’s like Jews believe in the collective guilt of goyim but never of Jews. It’s like Jews use Hollywood to make virulently anti-Russian, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Asian, and anti-southern-white movies but denounce the slightest hint of 'antisemitism'.
James Woods as Powell in THE ONION FIELD
Ideally, the law should be premised on principles of preserving a just social order that deals appropriately with those who dare subvert or violate the order for easy gains or ugly thrills. So, it should be about lawman vs outlaw. Even with the rise of the modern state that guarantees rights to accused and/or convicted, criminals knew they were against the law. The truly frightening thing about Powell is he becomes totally for the law once he is in prison. He not only benefits from legal protection(guaranteed even to criminals) but does everything to appropriate the sanctity of the law for his own purposes. The outlaw becomes the cold-eyed master of the law whereas Hettinger the lawman loses confidence as the upholder of the law. Powell studies the ways of the law to gain mastery over it, whereas Hettinger is submissive to the law and to the honor code — unspoken rules of camaraderie — that come to disdain him. A bandit feels no shame no matter what he does whereas a centurion, knight, soldier, or cop is nothing without reputation. Of course, certain hoodlums, especially in organize crime, do need to maintain a measure of 'respect', but it’s about pecking order than law and order. Powell gains the attention of other criminals because he gains partial control of the law that keeps his ilk behind bars. He may lack a soul but packs brains and balls. In the final scene in the film, he seems to have mellowed somewhat, gratified to play legal counselor to fellow inmates; there's a glimmer of progress despite his utter lack of sincerity throughout the film. Most of all, he seems glad to have beaten the system, to be alive and have the respect of fellow convicts. He’s gentler on the outside — playing the role of elder guru to younger inmates — but probably the same psychopath on the inside; a piece of glass worn smooth on a beach is still glass. By applying his intelligence, he’s developed a ‘white collar’ personality. It's worth pondering how many such types currently work in government, Wall Street, Hollywood, law, academia, and etc. If Powell had been born into affluence or fortunate circumstances, he surely wouldn't have wasted his life on street crime. He could have climbed the corporate ladder or entered government. Still, he would have carried his psychopathy around him as a man without a soul. Consider the many near-psychopathic people in government, academia, law, Wall Street, and other institutions-of-power. Consider the likes of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Anthony Weiner, Barney Frank, and etc. (No better and possibly worse are the managers and operatives embedded in the Deep State like Peter Strzok.)
Richard Nixon was a very smart man but a pathological liar, even for a politician, and the likes of Clinton and Obama proved to be total snakes. The fact that George W. Bush seemed to fall apart mentally and physically near the end of his second term hints at something like a conscience, but he was too dumb, corrupt, and deep-in-doo-doo to face up to what he'd done. Given the amount of bullshit and dirty money, politics repels those with moral fiber in favor of 'amoral
fiber'. In some cases, reasonably decent men in politics are compelled to lie and compromise, but there seems to be less and less of them these days. Is another Ron Paul possible? Clinton and Gingrich reveled in lies.
One suspects the kind of personalities that are drawn to legal defense tend to be more psychopathic than those drawn to prosecution. While prosecution surely attracts the kind that relishes the 'hunt' and sending people to prison, it's more normal to want to take criminals off the street or knock charlatans from their pedestals than to defend them, not least because the great majority of the accused are guilty. (To be sure, some prosecutorial types may be partly motivated by the sadism of watching famous, popular, or beloved people brought low and dragged through the mud.) A defense attorney may be idealistic with the conviction that everyone deserves a fair trial, not least because the vast majority of the arrested are poor and/or black people. Especially if one is of the Liberal persuasion and feels that blacks have been collectively victimized by a ‘racist’ white society, he/she is likely to regard legal defense as a noble profession: Save-a-wrongfully-accused-innocent-Negro-from-'racists'-and-rednecks, which was a radical chic fashion in the late 60s and early 70s before it began to dawn even on Liberals that most accused blacks were indeed guilty of crimes(that usually harmed other Negroes or white Democratic city-dwellers). Even die-hard conservatives don’t want to see an innocent person, even a ghastly Negro, be wrongfully locked behind bars or executed. But given the fact that the great majority of the accused are indeed guilty, a win for the defense is usually clouded with suspicion. When someone is sentenced as guilty, the chances are he really did commit the crime — unless the accused was dragged to court under political pressure, as with George Zimmerman and James Field whose act of manslaughter was turned into first degree murder. However, if the decision is ‘not guilty’, it’s usually because there wasn't enough to clinch the guilty verdict or because the jury was utterly biased for racial or political reasons. More often than not, it’s like O.J. Simpson walking free. It was a black thing. When the defense wins, it's usually a case of a robber, rapist, or murderer walking free. In the 60s and 70s, many idealistic and/or self-righteous Liberal lawyers represented all sorts of thugs and criminals, usually black, in the naive, idealistic, and/or radical notion that America is a 'racist' police state that routinely railroads innocent people, especially blacks, every day. Or even when the criminals were obviously guilty(and even admitted their guilt in the end), certain Liberal and/or creative types empathized with them as 'misunderstood' mavericks or rebels, kind of like James Dean on steroids; or they hoped their clients would be so grateful for the good fortune that they wouldn't return to the life of crime. It was the latest variation of the myth of the outlaw. Truman Capote's IN COLD BLOOD had this very impact on the Zeitgeist, along with Jean-Luc Godard's BREATHLESS and Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE. (Most troubling, in some cases the Leftist lawyers didn’t care if the accused were guilty of the crime as they were more interested in the political ramifications of the case: Crime framed less as violent transgression against innocents than lashing out at an oppressive order or unjust society — like Jean Valjean in LES MISERABLES. William Kunstler was certainly that kind of defense lawyer. With him, everything was willfully ideological regardless of evidence. Everything was a contest between The Power and the Wretched of the Earth.) As social conditions deteriorated in the 1970s as the result of Liberal regimen in the courts(especially in relation to black crime), the 'progressive' position on crime lost its luster, indeed even among many Liberals who fled cities infested with black crime for the safety of the suburbs. And even though many Liberal lawyers initially rejoiced in getting their clients off the hook(either in naive faith in the latter's innocence or resolve to turn a new leaf), the rates of recidivism became a depressing fact. In a way, the Liberal policy on crime turned out to be a crime against facts(and countless innocent lives) and led to a sea change that came to favor Republicans in presidential elections from 1968 to 1992 — Jimmy Carter’s victory was a fluke as the result of Watergate fallout. The political ad about Willie Horton — and Dukakis’s ‘liberal’ demeanor concerning crime at the Presidential debate — sealed George H.W. Bush's victory. Of course, Liberals went the extra mile to shame-bait the Willie Horton ad as 'racist' — it made Republicans think twice about exploiting the issue of race/crime in such manner again — , all the while working with Bill Clinton to come up with a plan to mop up as many Willie Hortons off the street as possible. This way, Liberals could be effectively race-ist against black crime while maintaining a 'progressive' 'anti-racist' image for themselves. Oldest trick in the book: If you want to do something, do it quietly while loudly accusing the Other side of doing it. Good way to kill two birds with one stone: Lock up blacks to win over the white middle class while making a big fuss about Bill Clinton being the 'first black president'. With dramatic decline of crime in the 1990s, Democrats gained an advantage over the GOP, because the crime issue, along with the Cold War, had been winning theme for the Conservatives. Of course, even with dramatic decline in crime, there were parts of America that remained mired in crime & violence, and many non-blacks(and blacks) continued to be victims of black thuggery, but the concerted media campaign to smear the Willie Horton ad as ‘racist’(and one of the worst in US history) made the GOP unwilling to invoke race in relation to crime in the Age of Oprah and Billy Boy Clinton. Clinton’s policy on crime was ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’. He knew that Americans were both sensitive about ‘racism’ due to the cult of ‘white guilt’ and fearful of crime due to black thuggery. Americans didn’t want to seem ‘racist’ but wanted 'crazy niggers' behind bars. So, Clinton & Co. sounded off against ‘racist’ stuff like the Willie Horton ad all the while implementing ‘conservative’ policies on crime that made the streets relatively safer again. It was win-win for Clinton and the Liberals.
If some defense attorneys, as public defenders, were drawn to their line of work out of idealism, radicalism, or naivete, others were just in it for the 'sex appeal' of money and 'gangster' aura: The Wolf of Law Street. Perhaps, defense lawyers rationalize their service as a kind of justice-by-other-means because big-time criminals are 'punished' by exorbitant legal fees. Of course, the lawyers, not society, pocket the money, but the criminals were still made to PAY. In some cases, the criminals who walk free end up bankrupt, which means the defense attorney plays both sides. He plays against the social order by defending a criminal but also plays against his client who is picked clean by legal fees. It's like what 'Alan Dershowitz'(Ron Silver) does in REVERSAL OF FORTUNE. Society lost because a possible killer went free, the accused lost so much in legal fees, and the only real winner was Dershowitz and his team who raked in all the dough. Granted, one can make even more money as a litigation lawyer against big corporations — consider the sums involved in the Big Tobacco case — , but an excellent defense lawyer has a lot of teats to milk in a social order that is, at once, so defined by Rule of Law and so mired in semi-criminality. Human nature being what it is, defense lawyers are probably the type less likely to be burdened with shame. Average human nature would be bothered by the sleaze factor. It's no wonder that Jews have been disproportionately represented as both defense lawyers and pornographers. Both require strong stomachs and slippery hides. As many Jews were merchants, the shameless personality willing to peddle ANYTHING in ANY MANNER came to be favored in the Jewish gene pool. Then, it is understandable why Jewish conscience is less troubled by all the shenanigans associated with legal defense work. Many Jews have personalities like that of Alan Dershowitz. It's hard to imagine someone like Hettinger in THE ONION FIELDS thriving as a defense attorney, but someone like Powell would be a natural; he would see it as a game, a sport. Jews are especially adept at legal defense, and Sean Penn as Davey Kleinfeld in CARLITO’S WAY was a perfect embodiment of a certain feature of Jewishness.
For Jews, there is certainly the radical angle, the chance to play the role of champions of the poor and 'marginalized'. There is also the notion of the higher principle, that even the ‘worst of us’ deserve fair representation and trial. There's moral narcissism in being so committed to the Rule of Law that they will roll up their sleeves and defend the sort whom most people deem as indefensible. In taking on such an unpopular role in society, the defense lawyer demonstrates that he loves the Constitution more than anyone. Thus, defense lawyers get to ham it up as social pariahs & martyrs. It’s like how ACLU Jews used to beat their chest about how they would even defend the right of American Nazis to march in Skokie because of the centrality of the Constitution. Of course, Jews have changed their tune since then. As the new ruling elites, Jews now feel threatened by unruly goyim such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, and others who dare spill the beans on the empire or speak truth to power. When the Jew Daniel Ellsberg exposed the dirty laundry of the Wasp elites in the 60s and 70s, Jews praised him as a great champion of courage and truth — still, even back then Jews preferred deeply entrenched East Coast Wasp Establishment Elites to upstart Wasps like Richard Nixon and others from the West Coast and elsewhere who tended to appeal directly to the masses, the so-called Silent Majority; while Jews resented the snobby Wasp elites, they feared most the kind of white politics that appealed to white populism; Jews figured they could cut a deal with Wasp silver spoons behind closed doors but dreaded the prospect of white knives leading white pitchforks; many Jews are so freaked out about Donald Trump, despite his utter obeisance to Zionist power, because he awakened white mass consciousness; Jews want the white elites and white masses divided, not united, and that is why Jews were willing to work with the Wasp Eastern Establishment to bring down Nixon with the Watergate Scandal. But now that Jews totally control just about all the power, there is no great Jewish hue and cry about people like Snowden being persecuted by the system. If anything, notice how most Jews worked effectively with the Obama administration to nab every goy whistle-blower, toss him behind bars, and throw away the key.
Jews love playing defense attorney for other reasons: The element of intellectual vanity and nihilistic thrill(and sexiness of being a 'bad boy' or 'gangsta') as it is tougher to play defense, especially if the accused is obviously guilty. In such cases, the clever Jew sifts for technicalities and/or panders to jury biases to have the case thrown out or the verdict overturned, like Kleinfeld's coup in CARLITO’S WAY. Smart Jews tend to regard all of life as a game, and legal defense makes for great opportunity to use wit, skill, and knowledge as weapons to prove one's worth as a mind-warrior. Win-or-lose, not right-or-wrong, is the real name of the game. It’s like sports are not about ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ but about victory and defeat, and the winning is the only 'truth'. (One might argue that Ancient Jews were distinct from pagans in emphasizing right over might as they worshiped a moral God who insisted on submission to the Sacred Law, but Jews were as power-mad, if not more so, as any other people because their spirituality wasn't only about moral truth but association with the most powerful, indeed one and only, God. Thus, Jewish sense of righteousness ultimately owes to its origins to God, the ultimate power in and over the universe. In other words, Jews didn't conceive of rightness as being independent of might but as the decree of the ultimate might known only to Jews.) Kleinfeld obviously relishes both the ethically narcissistic and athletically vain aspect of the legal profession(along with ethnic pride as a smarter Jew), especially as there's also lots of money to be made.
In a similar vein, David Mamet’s GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS is less about truth-versus-lies or conscience-versus-the-con than about winners and losers. It doesn't matter how you win, straight or crooked, as long as you win, and it doesn't matter how you lose, straight or crooked, if you lose. On some level, Mamet was probably commenting on arts and entertainment as a kind of con-game. The salesmen in GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS complain they can’t sell worthless property to a jaded and cynical public, but the trick is 'value/worth' is added to the product by the 'quality' of the pitch, just like a baseball gains value in the play. That certainly holds true of much of art and entertainment, more often than not a game of selling trash as treasure. Even works of genuine worth come with their own tricks. Everything Mamet has written has been done before in some form or another. Everything he's said has been said, more or less, by others. Mamet surely knows his plays recycle and reformulate material that’s been done in theater so many times. Yet, he became a renowned playwright of the 1970s and 1980s because he could reconstitute(than merely repackage) the old and stale into something new and fresh. (Art is like biological reproduction in that, even as it re-creates variations of what has already existed, it does so at the organic level of inspiration, just like birthing new life, though re-creating from pre-existing life, operates at the molecular level. Mere repackaging of life would be like using cosmetic means to make an old man look young, whereas reconstituting life would be a matter of producing a child from the genetic material of his parents. The truly creative mind absorbs and breaks down existing material to its basic components before building anew from the elemental level, whereas the imitative mind merely toys with outward manifestations of existing works. It's the difference between melting an old sword into liquid metal to forge/fashion a new sword and retouching an old sword to make it look new. Stanley Kubrick did with science fiction what the extra-terrestrials did to David Bowman in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Take it apart, break it down, and build anew from the 'atomic' level. Thus, digestive juices are as important as building blocks in creation and creativity. Bob Dylan had powerful amino acids to process the old into the new.) Just about every Hollywood movie is a retread of old formulas done to death. And the movie audience is made of the same jaded people who are tired of the same old same old. And yet, certain movies come along that surprise the critics and rekindle excitement among moviegoers. Is it because they are truly original or evolutionary? No, but for some reason, they seem amazingly fresh and new, rendering the audience nearly amnesiac about how jaded they'd been about the material. With JAWS and E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL, Steven Spielberg made the cliches click and the cheap chic again. What was Spielberg's magic? He had the gift of reconstituting the tired into the inspired. In his hands, the same old became the same new. Nothing sells like a combo of familiarity and difference. Too much familiarity is boring, too much difference is confusing, but in balance there is a sense of adventure with a map.
The 'losers' in GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS want to believe it's all about the ‘leads’, and true enough, some are better than others. But, it's also about how you lead or, rather, how you lead others into the trap. Ricky Roma(Al Pacino), for example, can sometimes do without leads. He slithers like a python feigning its lethal moves as brotherly embrace. Mamet, with experience in business and art, had no illusions about Hollywood. One thing Hollywood shares with other arts & entertainments is the guarantee of ever newer generations to consume fantasies that older people have grown tired of. Every new generation is an army of suckers that finds BATMAN or STAR WARS 'awesome' all over again. In addition, Hollywood has the advantage over other arts/entertainment(except video games) in its technology to rebrand old into new. A fantasy novelist today cannot outdo J.R.R. Tolkien, but the newest 'reboot' of SUPERMAN or SPIDERMAN can always feature 'better effects'. Despite all the challenges, Hollywood continues to produce mega-hits. The 007 franchise is still going strong. Comic book superhero movies are made and remade with the hype that the latest is the real thing, the definitive version, and the must-see pushed relentlessly by the mega-media-complex... until another reboot comes along. Consider how ABC news and Disney are joined at the hip. And there’s Fox News and Fox Studios.
Now, this isn’t to say that the trick of turning lead-into-gold has to really work. It can be fool's gold until the sale is finalized. Even if the buyer paid for lead, the seller walked away with the price of gold. Much like Las Vegas and even Wall Street, the characters of GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS ply their trade just barely on the legal side of the con-game fence. This bare-minimum legality lends them the cover of legitimacy. How much of the economy is real or essential, and how much of it is sensationalist or sold on false promises? As much of the economy is geared toward selling things that people don’t need but nevertheless want so badly at the moment, the global economy will collapse without the Fool's Gold factor. In all this, advertising and fashion are the cornerstone of the world economy. We are like children(like the BB-rifle-crazed kid in A CHRISTMAS STORY) in that we've been made to really-really hanker for something as if our lives depend on it even though it offers little or nothing in terms of actual value. Before automobiles and electronic media, salesmen went door to door to peddle their wares, but they became irrelevant once the TV did the pitching and the consumers, women and youths included, did the driving to the local K-Mart.
A great film marketed poorly can become a flop, and an awful movie marketed well can become a hit — BEVERLY HILLS COP II was the biggest hit of the year. Of course, there is the factor of ‘fool me once... fool me twice...’, which is surely why BEVERLY HILLS COP III didn't do so well, but just when the people wise up to one thing, another comes along to start the cycle anew. People find most fads and fashions of yesteryear laughable but are blind to the ridiculousness of current fads and fashions, just like a Hindu can't smell his own curry-odor. The human mind is highly flexible, and it can be molded in so many, often wrong, ways. Ideally, words should bring us closer to reality, but the reality of human nature says we prefer lies over truth more often than not. It’s been said thought flows from one’s use of language, but this assertion is as false as true. While an honest person may indeed use proper grammar and diction to express himself clearly and logically, verbal skills often serve the agenda to dupe, mystify, and mislead others — lawyers and pundits are masters at this. A clever scholar of the arts, through crafty use of language, can dupe people into seeing junk as 'art'. What-was-said also works in tandem with who-said-it. While Max Ophul’s LOLA MONTEZ is certainly an interesting and important film, it received undue praise in certain circles because none other than Andrew Sarris called it the greatest film ever made. LAST TANGO IN PARIS's success in America owed largely to the ripple effect from Pauline Kael’s gushing review.
Liars lie all the time, and we're immune to them like germs. But when the power of lying becomes concentrated and amplified in government, finance, big media, and even the academia, the world is less about truth vs lies than lies vs bigger/better lies. And in this sense, we are all living in the GLENGARRY universe. What is being sold is secondary to how it is sold and who sells it — it's no wonder so many products are 'endorsed' by a celebrity who is paid to 'sell' it; the famous somebody didn't create it and most certainly doesn't use it, but he or she is used as the marketing face of the product. Lie is made into 'truth', like under hypnosis. In the 1980s, Donald Trump promoted the Mike Tyson vs Michael Spinks bout as bigger than one between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. Now, any sane person knew Tyson vs Spinks would be like gorilla vs gibbon, but the hype machine, or the Art of the Steal, was such that millions of Americans doled out $50 on pay-per-view to watch the ‘fight of the century’(that lasted 90 seconds).
Like the con-men of GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS and wheeler-dealers of Hollywood, Jewish defense lawyers love the dynamics of the ‘art of the deal’. They became obsessed with it as some to poker or chess. Since Jews are highly competitive but aren't equipped to win physically(in terms of strength or looks), they overcompensate intellectually and emotionally, which explains the combo of Jewish smarts and theatrics. Consider David Kleinfeld’s Alan-Dershowitz-like antics in the opening of CARLITO’S WAY. He relishes in the pride of winning while pontificating like a champion of civil liberties.
One 'personal' reason why Jews were drawn to legal defense especially when Wasps were on top was because their defense of every crook, gangster, terrorist, spy, drug dealer, or radical provocateur — most of whom were non-Wasp or a self-loathing Wasp — was meant as a middle finger to the System, and perhaps no one took it as far as William Kunstler, for whom no degenerate could be degenerate enough and no radical could be radical enough — as long as the accused was anti-white, anti-conservative, anti-Christian, and/or anti-American — to be undeserving of his legal counsel. Kunstler sometimes resorted to Marx Brothers antics, as when he was legal counsel to the Chicago Seven. Given the vast shift in the power structure in the past few decades, fewer Jews want to be the next William Kunstler. Why be so hard on the System when it’s now pretty much owned and controlled by their own Tribe? (That said, Kunstler was more principled than Alan Dershowitz, for whom 'liberalism' was just a ploy for his real conviction of Zionism and Jewish Supremacism. In contrast, Kunstler was truer to his chosen ideology of leftism in that he was willing to support even anti-Zionists against perceived Jewish Privilege and Tyranny.)
In THE ONION FIELD, Wasp prosecutors and district attorneys are disgusted by the utterly cynical machinations of sociopathic Powell and his chosen lawyer. The lawyer looks and acts Jewish, pushing legal technicalities to absurd lengths to provoke rage and exasperation and then, in classic Ben Stein manner, requesting the judge to take action against the un-professionalism of the prosecution. The shtick is about coordinating with his deranged client to subvert the legal process as far as possible. The Wasp prosecutor who loses his head is later shown telling a colleague that he intends to retire and wishes some judges and lawyers could be gassed along with those on death row. The reference to gassing, with obvious connotations of the 'Holocaust' — all the more ironic because the murdered cop was executed in cold blood like Jewish victims by the Nazi SS — , hints as to how some Wasps got to feeling about certain verminous Jewish lawyers, i.e. even normal white people can be driven to Nazi-like hatred by the utter foulness of Jewish behavior. His issue isn't with need for legal reform or the merit of reviewing cases of those on death row. What is infuriating is how certain lawyers with political agendas or personal issues willfully exploit due process to sabotage the justice system. If mere naivete were involved, it'd be somewhat forgivable(at least among idealists fresh out of law school), but some lawyers, often Jewish, seem to get a sick kick out of making a mockery of the entire system(at least as long as it’s controlled by Wasps). These lawyers are, no less than Powell, principled-unprincipled. They invoke the law and the Constitution against the System but have no intention of playing by the rules themselves. They call foul on others but, when called on their own fouls, call foul on being called foul on with utter shamelessness. They hold you to a higher(and often impossible) standard, but you better not hold them to account because it might be ‘antisemitic’, and of course, the Jewish-run media hardly serve as a trustworthy referee. Jew-run media work with Zionist Power like corrupt referees work with organized crime to rig games. The result? Just ask the Palestinians. The media might as well be called 'mythia' for they push fairytales than hard facts. And when media reporting is proven to be wrong beyond a doubt, the Narrative is reset as in TV sitcoms and cartoons, and amnesia washes over gullible Americans all over again. The George Zimmerman case could have been a wake-up call for the media not to jump to conclusions and play judge & jury. But the whole thing was forgotten with the ‘reset’ button, and it wasn't long before the nation was caught up with the bogus BLM crisis.
(The power of Narrative works like faith in religion. The Narrative isn't just a story but the sanctification of a story. It's like the account of Jesus' death and return went from a story to The Story. It went from one telling among many others to the One that couldn't be questioned among the faithful. It became a Narrative. Those fixated on the Sacred Narrative come to feel that the world exists to illustrate the Word. Anything that supports the Narrative, true or false, is favored, whereas anything, even if totally true, that undermines the Narrative is either ignored, suppressed, or vilified as blasphemous. It's like the cult of miracles in the Catholic Church. It doesn't matter how many cases have been proven to be bogus or even downright fraudulent. For the faithful, all the false positives are quickly sent down the memory hole in expectations of future miracles. Likewise, once the Civil Rights Narrative became sacrosanct in America and throughout much of the world — the US is an empire not only of money and military power but of narratives and idolatry — , so many journalists, academics, and politicians, most of whom are nominally secular but quasi-spiritual & neo-idolatrous in their emotions & sensations, have come to view the world as existing primarily to validate the superior holiness of blacks than to view and judge Negroes as they really be. Same goes for the Narrative on Jews. The Holy Holocaust Narrative led so many people in media, academia, and government to believe that Jews are the most sacred race. The result is Word > World, that is to say that the World is expected to prove the Word than the Word is expected to depict the World. It is then no wonder that so many facts about Jewish perfidy and foulness go ignored or suppressed as they don't serve the Sacred Narrative on Jews, the race of Anne Franks as the new madonnas.) It’s like what Jason Richwine said about why the media go through the same paroxysms about racial controversies over and over even though experts in the field of IQ have more evidence than ever on general IQ differences among various groups. Despite all the evidence and papers produced by the experts — some of whom even wrote for certain media outlets — , the latest outbreak of controversy has the hive-mind media regurgitating the exact talking points as if they're trapped in GROUNDHOG’S DAY. It's as if the media, only having short-term memory and being unable to store new information from the latest studies, are left to drudge up, yet again, old truisms. To be sure, much of it has to do with cowardice as well as ideological and/or idolatrous conformism. As the journalistic community is close-knit and news-people gather together to discuss matters and issues, a kind of hive mentality develops where one doesn't want to be the odd-man-out. Also, as journalism became tied to social status — it is often a profession of choice of children of affluence who crave the cachet of edginess even though, due to ethnic bias and/or ideological training, they are more likely to serve as commissars of the Power, especially against Dissident Right and pro-Palestinian causes, than speakers of truth to power — , it tends to attract the kind of people who are afraid to think outside the box. As such, wittingly or not, many journos function more as bouncers than crashers of the Establishment — in the past several years, especially since the presidency of Donald Trump, many journalists have prioritized using whatever means, statist or corporatist, to shut down dissident and alternative venues than to defend them as flawed but independent voices against the Deep State. Most journos are more in the business of pushing the Official Narrative against the skepticist dissident communities across the political spectrum. There is also the factor of the Agenda. As most white goy journalists are 'progressive' and were raised with ‘white guilt’ and MLK faith, their world view tends to be neo-spiritual-and-messianic than rational and objective — in contrast, Jewish journalists are animated by Jewish pride & power while black ones are fueled by righteous rage of Afro-centrism. Even though journalism schools in every nation instruct students on objective methodology — no different in the old Soviet Union than in the United States — , the prevailing Narrative, which is always subjective, usually decides on which material to apply the objectivity on. So, Soviet journalists objectively gathered evidence of anti-black 'racism' in the US and found plenty of ugly details, just like American journalists could objectively find much that was rotten about the Soviet Union. Thus, objectivity always functions within a subjectivity. If there are problems with A and B, but if you fix your objective gaze mostly on A, you will find A more damning than B. Even the most objective studies of breast cancer function within the subjective prioritization of it over other forms of cancer, such as of the prostate. Even if one objectively gazes at the North, he has subjectively favored it over the South, East, and West. This is why films that fixate on injustices of the American South are problematic. Even if they are totally fact-based — of course, most such movies are not — , the question is why is the critical eye turned on the Old South but not on, say, Jewish criminality and abuses of power in history? Never mind a pro-Palestinian film. Why hasn't Hollywood made even an objective work on what happened in the Nakba? Because even the most objective and cold-eyed look at that event will show that Jews stole the land from the Palestinians, the great majority of whom were rendered not only homeless but stateless. It's one thing to lose one's home in a hurricane but still be part of one's nation. But what happens when you lose your home and your homeland? Though objectivity functions within a subjectivity, it has gone far beyond that with the white proglodyte world-view. White libby-dib journalistic mindset(though, to be sure, white 'conservatism' is more-or-less on the same page on the issue of race)is schizoid as its dominant object of worship is the Magic Negro while the overwhelming objective fact of crime in America is black thuggery. Even subjectively-fixed objectivity is insufficient to serve the Narrative. Try as they might, they can't find too many KKK-style rednecks among whites and therefore have to cook them up with Hate Hoax sensationalism or the umpteenth fear-mongering TV show about the Nazi-Next-Door. Furthermore, they have a hard time finding sufficiently positive stories about blacks; another problem is too-positive-a-story about blacks might lend the impression that blacks are doing fine in the US, which goes against the Narrative of blacks-as-victims-of-white-supremacism. So many problems still plague the black community, but because white Liberals worship MLK, Mandela, and the Cult of Magic Negro & Badass Nigga, their psychology simply can't affix any blame on blacks themselves. How can one blame black god or black angels? All the fault must be with humans, or white humans, the sinners of the world. There is also the Fear Factor as blacks are vocal and holler like wild apes when anyone dares to hold up a mirror to their problems. Also, as the news rooms across the nations have become more diverse, whites are especially careful not to offend in any way their token black colleagues(who could well be burning inside with righteous Rage of the Black Middle Class), and so, they go out of their way to spout nonsense to flatter and appease black pride. In years past, when journalists were made of tougher stuff and had grown up without the 'niceties' of Political Correctness(even if liberal and committed to ‘social progress’), they might sit around after work and talk candidly about anything, like Mike Royko often did with his colleagues. But over the years, even conversation away from work has become devoid of forthright honesty because political sensitivity about certain subjects has gone from mere formality to quasi-spiritual faith. It's like, among the faithful, it's okay to mock a priest or some personality for his failings, but it is NOT OKAY to poke fun at God or Jesus. There was a time when Jews and blacks(and of course homosexuals) were regarded as human, and so, even if one took care not to badmouth them in public, one could speak candidly about them at a bar or dinner party with friends or colleagues. But PC elevated Jews, blacks, and homos to quasi-divine status, and that means ANY negative or critical remarks about them, even in private conversations, could elicit dirty looks, opprobrium, or censure from the listener(s). (Worse, it could even affect one's inner thoughts, i.e. the mere harboring of bad thoughts could lead to feelings of shame and guilt, thereby triggering automatic mental censorship. It's like a devoutly religious person dares not think bad thoughts about God or Jesus even when all alone. That is the difference between mundane/material things and divine/spiritual matters. Secular people have developed their own quasi-divine idols and taboos.) Indeed, younger Liberals will gladly rat out their ‘racist’ colleagues to 'virtue-signal', win approval of their ilk, and gain promotion. Liberal Journalists, especially Jews, have no sense of personal honor or genuine integrity in these matters; they just act according to faith, a special failing as journalism is or should be all about asking tough questions on just about everything to unearth the truth — it should be about excavation, not concealment, as a journalist who uses a shovel to bury than dig should really work for the Ministry of Propaganda. So, even though journalism schools provide instruction on proper methodology, it matters little in the end because the samples selected from history usually pertain to official narratives revolving around ‘racism’, ‘sexism’, and ‘homophobia’. Even if journalism students are taught the values of objectivity and professionalism, their mindset operates within the social context of ‘fighting racism’(though remaining silent about Zionist oppression of Palestinians). (Furthermore, some students, especially Jewish-black-or-homo ones, enter journalism schools with ready-made agendas and, as such, regard journalism less as a commitment to facts and truth, wherever they may lead, than a tool to push their identity politics. For them, there is no higher truth than that which 'empowers' their identity.) Suppose a journalism class offers instruction in the proper tools of the trade but uses examples that highlight the gruesome nature of abortion, murderousness of black criminals, mass killings under Stalinism, Nakba pogroms against Palestinians, epidemic of black-on-white rape, and etc. The sheer 'contextuality' of the examples would favor the American 'right' over the American 'left'. Or, suppose a class project instructs students to interview victims of black crime. Even if taught to be objective and dispassionate, their growing intimacy with details of black-on-white violence will tip their worldview in a certain way. Numbers are secondary to Faces. Many Slavs died at the hands of Jewish communists, but they are faceless, just stats. In contrast, Anne Frank has a name and face. She matters as a character in the Narrative. It's no wonder the Jewish-dominated media haven't allowed any children's book about Palestinian children brutalized by Zionists. Such a book would lend a FACE to the story of Palestinians.
There are two ways by which people gain or maintain a vision of Truth, a world-view. One way is to be attentive of and focused on the details, data, and facets of the world and then discern certain patterns from which general observations may be deduced. Then, it can be further investigated/inspected by academic specialists for validity. Think of the early geologist who began to notice certain patterns about Earth formations and surmised that maybe mountains had once been under water but were pushed up by geological forces, or even that separate continents had once been part of a single land mass. What else could account for fossils of undersea creatures found on rock strata of mountains? Such a hypothesis followed from noticing of patterns. We all do this to some extent, which is why most people avoid areas that are known to be black/dangerous. From personal observations/experiences, hearsay from associates, and local news media(despite the PC), it is well understood that black areas tend to be more dangerous. Some things are easier to notice than others. A shabby looking restaurant with few customers probably doesn't offer the best food. But some things are more difficult to comprehend, especially if they are part of a larger and much more complex set of phenomena. Take the financial & housing bubble-troubles taking shape in the 2000s. Most people knew nothing of the underlying factors and causes as they knew little of modern economics. While there were surely growing trepidation about the massively inflated housing bubble, most people chose to just rely on 'experts' who generally calmed their fears. Besides, as long as the going was good, why ask too many questions? Furthermore, as the housing bubble came to be associated with expansion of the 'ownership society' among non-whites(like the sinful vice of gambling was laundered through reparations for American Indians), it was seen as a form of ‘social justice’, and few people wanted to mess with them eggs.
Of course, in hindsight, it was surreal how growing numbers of people could 'afford' to buy homes just when home prices were going through the roof. It was less an Ownership Society than 'Loanership' Society. (It was more Phenominomics than Economics, one where trends and events owed less to hard data and supply/demand dynamics than distorted perceptions fueled by fraudulent theory[or theory fraudulently applied], easy money by the Fed, and mass media delusions or deceptions. It happens when the classic/basic laws of economics are devalued in favor of a grand vision of a New Economy. It happened on a far more spectacular scale with the Great Leap Forward that envisioned China would catch up with the West in a decade or two if everyone trusted the Party with proper zeal. At the time, the Party produced a film called BREAKING WITH OLD IDEAS, one highly regarded by Jonathan Rosenbaum, a 'left-wing' Jew who prefers ideology over reality. Naturally, Rosenbaum is also a fan-boy of Chantal Akerman’s FROM THE EAST. The late Akerman didn't bemoan the crimes of communism or the staggering body count. Rather, she eulogized the tragic death of the ‘great idea’. The film is a R.I.P. inscribed on the tomb of Marxism, not on the countless graves of its victims. Radical intellectual Jews like Akerman profess to care about humanity but, all said and done, regard mankind, at least goy mankind, as little more than guinea pigs for big idea hatched by Jewish Will. So, if their preferred ideas fail mankind and destroy millions of lives, they feel sad for the idea than all those dead goyim. This was one reason why Eric Hobsbawm could hardly be bothered by all those killed by Stalinism. In his radical Jewish mind, humanity, at least goy humanity, exists to serve the big ideas of Jews like him. Jewish Compassion isn't a real emotion but a ruse to justify the ruthless arrogance of know-it-all Jewish intellectualism. Then, it is hardly surprising that Rosenbaum is enamored with a simpleminded piece of Chinese Communist propaganda made just when Mao unleashed what would become one of the great catastrophes of the 20th century. And notice that Rosenbaum endorsed the film AFTER THE FACT when the truth had already emerged about what had really happened. But then, this Rosenbaum character, who’d apologized for communist crimes during the Cold War, is now happily living in a finance-capitalist America dominated by Jewish Supremacists and Zionists, which makes one wonder if Rosenbaum was a true leftist all along or just another nasty tribalist who adopted leftism as rationale to beat up on Wasp-ruled America. Indeed, leftism has been valuable to Jews for directing public attention on the power of money than the identity of money. It directs our blame on the amorphous 1% than the 2%, the Jews, who not only monopolize so much wealth and power but use them in service of the Jewish Will. Leftism conceals the fact that power in America isn't only about class privilege but tribal will, especially as rich Jews increasingly used their money for Jewish identity just when rich Wasp were increasingly using their money against white identity — the essentially tribal mindset of Jews is evident in the fact that so-called Jewish Leftists are more hateful toward working class whites than toward rich whites, all because white have-nots are more likely than white have-lots to be defiant against the likes of George Soros; indeed, white have-lots, as the managerial class, meekly submit to the will of Jewish supremacists. If Rosenbaum is a true leftist, he should be more discontent than ever, what with the vanishing working class, decline of the middle class, and monopolization of wealth & power by the oligarchs. But Rosenbaum said, at least during the Obama years, that he was happier than ever, and why? Almost surely it has something to do with Jews controlling America, Jews & homos running academia/media, white goyim facing decline & demise, American Conservatives being servile to Jews, and white men having been castrated & cucking their women to Jews(who went from Shylock to 'Mycock') & Negroes. So, Rosenbaum, the so-called lifelong leftist & socialist, has been bursting with happiness in a nation where the 1% is richer and more powerful than ever. It’s fantastic to the likes of Rosenbaum that the 1% in government, media, academia, finance, and etc. is disproportionately composed of Jews, homos, and turncoat libby-dib Wasps. So, deep down inside, ideology has always been secondary to Rosenbaum. Like the essentially tribal mindset of black ‘leftists’, it was essentially a cover for the obsession with Jewish wealth, Jewish power, and Jewish privilege. Anyway, the bursting of the Housing Bubble in 2008 was the result of bypassing and even outright violating core principles and laws in favor of a manufactured optimism of a supposedly miraculous New Economy where ‘old’ rules simply didn’t apply. Though it violated the basic principles of supply and demand — basis for burgeoning demand was scandalously easy loans made available to people with terrible credit records & without down payment — , many Conservatives were full of praise as the bubble happened under Republican administration and seemed to validate the myth that capitalism could turn blacks and Hispanics into ‘responsible’ homeowners and finally overcome the scourge of ‘racism’ in home loans. And Liberals, for the most part, were also eager to take credit as their constituents in the black and Hispanic communities finally seemed to have attained home ownership. Thus, the American housing sector became more a ‘spiritual’ event[of Prosperity Gospel and Neo-Shylock Doctrine] than an economic phenomenon operating on sound principles. The fact of capitalism is there will be winners and losers as not everyone uses freedom the same way. But the egalitarian ethos of America kept striving, through government intervention [favored by Liberals] and/or market manipulation [favored by Conservatives], for a solution that avails 'success' to all. Communism failed for its utopianism. Capitalism succeeded for its realism, which however led to great inequity that offended egalitarian ideals intrinsic to secularization of Christianity and modern populism. As Republicans were accused of ‘not caring’, Bush sought a ‘free market’ solution to the intractable problem of racial inequality in home ownership — and he had the backing of Wall Street that had devised new financial instruments that would allow the banking sector to reap immense fortunes [at least in the short run] once home loans could be granted to more people and then repackaged into 'derivatives' to be sold all over the world — dig up dirt, put it in gold wrapping, and sell it as gold to suckers of the world. As long as the mantra was about ‘making money while doing good’, there was something for everyone... as long as the party lasted, and when it was finally over, there was something ONLY FOR JEWS. Of course, people who lost the most from the debacle was the middle class, the backbone of any modern economy. Wall Street Jews who’d reaped vast fortunes while the going was good got to keep their ill-gotten loot and furthermore got ‘bailed out’ by their shills in government. They were also shielded by the Jewish-run media whose main priority is always to protect the power of fellow Jews in other elite sectors. The underclass that had ‘bought’ homes didn’t have much to lose either. They were either allowed to keep the house with government aid or to just walk away without loss as they'd made no down payment on the property. The people who have to foot the bill in the long run are the white American middle class, but they are too addicted to Jewish entertainment media, too worshipful of MLK & Holocaust cult, and too brainwashed by PC education to ever realize what's really being done to them.)
Anyway, almost all people lead little lives and lack firsthand knowledge of the world. How many people have been to Africa, the Middle East, Asia, South America, and etc? Even if you could travel constantly to meet everyone and see/hear/know everything, how much of the world could you possibly know? So, our world-view relies mostly on the media that happen to be controlled by Jews. We rely on experts, scholars, pundits, and reporters to provide the context and explain things for us. It's like even avid book lovers rely on works by literary scholars with greater erudition and deeper perspective(if they're really good). They might detect patterns, links, allusions, symbolisms, social/historical contexts, and etc. that would go unnoticed by most readers. So, most people fail to develop the skills of noticing patterns and/or thinking for themselves. As it happens, every society has its own set of make-or-break myths and taboos that exert such power that even those committed to facts/truth must tread carefully around it — granted, the pace at which certain idols and ideas can go from sacred to taboo or vice versa has accelerated with the rise of instant mass communication/education and the hyper-amnesia & manic-recall(of a matter forgotten by most but suddenly revived for political expediency) it has fostered; indeed, consider the speed in which Marx and Lenin replaced God and Tsar in Russia, the speed in which the once-conservative Chinese were led by Mao to wage wholesale war on their own heritage, and the speed in which whites have been made to revile whiteness while worshiping Jews, blackness, and homosexuality; in some ways, it's crazier than ever because, if past revolutions sought to replace one vision of the sacred with another, the New Normal is about 'sacralizing' what had been deemed decadent/degenerate by nearly all cultures for all history, a dire trend that is less about replacing god with false gods(as was the case with communism) but with the devil as the new or true god. Thus, even if teachers and reporters are trained in the methodology, much of it is made subordinate to mythology — control the mythology, and methodology will follow; generally, the period between the fall of one mythology and the rise of another is when methodology is freest to pursue the truth, but given the way of human nature, there is a demand by both elites and masses for a new mythology as the human mind simply cannot handle too-much-truth, which given the nature of man's limitations, means too many questions and ambiguities. This is certainly true of Christian Conservatives(who often complain about Liberal PC censorship but have their own long histories and habits of proscribing the mind). In certain religious colleges, students are taught the scientific method of hypothesis, experimentation, theorization, and etc., but many continue to push the Creationism or Intelligent Design because the myth of Biblical God is central to their being. All said and done, their methodology is subordinate to mythology, i.e. they will gather up as many facts and as much truth as possible to add 'scientific' credentials to the mythology without ever questioning its core fundamentals. In a subtler way, the same goes for Liberals in journalism schools. They learn all the proper methods of inquiry that favors truth over lies, facts over fiction, and etc. but the myth of ‘white guilt’ and ‘white privilege’ has such overarching power that journalists generally seek stories that reinforce such myths while steering clear of stories that may undermine them. Also, it’s tempting to push a half-truth as the total truth. For example, we know that the notion of race is, to an extent, a social construct, at least in the sense that various times and places have defined ‘race’ differently. So, what would be considered ‘black’ in the US might not be the case in Brazil or Egypt. Mexicans might see themselves as white in Mexico but see themselves as ‘non-white’ ‘people of color’ in the US, if only to gain from ‘affirmative action’. But it is true that group variations do exist within the same species, and if defined thus, race is a scientific fact; and indeed, without the possibility of variations developing within the same species, evolution would be impossible as evolutionary change builds on incremental variations that develop over time. It’s like polar bears and brown bears are really just one species of bear — as they can interbreed and produce fertile offspring like the different races of mankind — , but the polar bear developed as a new race of bear apart from the brown bear as the result of arctic conditions and genetic isolation(from the brown bear population). But because race can be and has been construed as a ‘social construct’, Liberals(and even many Conservatives) have turned this half-truth into the one and only truth, and they seethe or scream if you try to correct their dogmatism... though, to be sure, their 'reasoning' or sophistry is really premised on 'white guilt' than any real science; it's really a form of 'spiristry' based on worship of Jews and Negroes. Liberals will also repeat the oft-heard mantra that there are more variations within a race than across races. This argument is problematic because race categorization has been too broad. For instance, why are all Sub-Saharan blacks considered to be part of a single race? Because of skin color? But following that logic, many dark-skinned Asian-Indians should also be considered black. And since whites and East Asians are both light or lighter skinned, they could be construed as being part of a single race. In fact, Ethiopians are probably as different from Nigerians as East Asians are from white Europeans. Furthermore, we need to differentiate key phenotypes from countless genotypes when dealing with the pragmatic phenomenon of race. Human psychology and human nature are such that they tend to notice certain characteristics over others in the define-ment of personal and group identities. These key phenotypes are skin color, hair texture/color, facial shape, and temperament. Facial shape and color are probably the most important as the face is the door to a person’s soul. The face, more than the feet for example, makes us immediately sense a connection with another as ‘one of us’... or not. It’s just how human psychology works, as facial recognition is one of the key features of human cognition and behavior. Sight is for us what smell is for dogs.
Now, let’s consider Germans, Poles, and Nigerians. A race-denier might say that there are certain areas where Poles and Nigerians have more in common with one another than Poles do with fellow Europeans, the Germans. And let us say this is true when it comes to a bunch of genotypes that show up as minor phenotypes. For the sake of argument, let’s say that Poles and Nigerians have more similar pinkies than Poles and Germans do. Let’s say that Poles and Nigerians have more similar sinuses than Germans and Poles do. Let’s say that Poles and Nigerians are more likely to have moles on the bottom of their feet than Germans do. And suppose we tally up all these minor(often barely discernible to the eye) phenotypes and conclude that Poles are no closer to Germans than they are to Nigerians. However, when it comes to key phenotypes — that leap out before our eyes and most directly impact our social psychology –, Germans and Poles obviously have far more in common with one another than either group does with Nigerians. After all, we don’t notice MOST things about a person. We only notice features with the most direct impact and impression on our senses, sending signals to our brains whether someone is ‘one of us’ or ‘not one of us’. Studies have shown that Mongols have moist fingertips, a trait more common among black Africans than among the Japanese. Therefore, a Liberal will say a Mongol is no closer to a Japanese than to a black African, but what is more important to human perception and behavior? The moisture of finger tips or the shapes of faces, color of skin, hair type, and personality/temperament? For all we know, Russians and Nigerians might have more similar looking anuses than do Russians and Bulgarians, but we know that when it comes to the key phenotypes that have the greatest impact on the social psychology of the human, essentially a visual creature, Russians are far closer to Bulgarians than either group is to Nigerians. But because it is a half-truth that there are some traits that are more common across races than within a single race, it's been turned into official dogma that ALL racial similarities and differences within a race and across races are ENTIRELY arbitrary. (To be sure, race denial is most charged when it involves uniquely white characteristics or areas in which blacks are deficient vis-a-vis other races. But when it comes to unique black qualities, especially deemed superior to those of other races, there is no problem in noticing and even celebrating general racial differences.)
Using such logic, we can undermine any categorization of humans. For example, we can say psychopathy is purely a social construct since some psychopaths might have more in common with non-psychopaths than with fellow psychopaths. Suppose there’s a bunch of psychopaths who feel no remorse over killing strangers, but suppose some of them genuinely love dogs and cats, and as such, are more like decent normal humans than with other psychopaths who have a history of torturing small animals in their youth. So, since some psychopaths are more like non-psychopaths than with fellow psychopaths on certain characteristics, should we dismantle and discredit the entire concept of psychopathy? Truth is distinct physical markers have developed among different races, and these basic markers have always played a role in determining whom we immediately recognize as ‘our kind’ and ‘not our kind’. Of course, being of the same race is no guarantee for social peace. Consider the wars among the European kingdoms and, later, among European nations. Catholics and Protestants slaughtered one another in the past, and this "brothers' war" now rages in the secular form of white 'conservatives' and white 'liberals', especially as the latter are so totally brainwashed by Jews who are hellbent on stoking internecine conflicts within any goy group. But it is true that it’s easier for a people to form and maintain a viable a tribe, kingdom, or nation if most of the people share key phenotypes. Sub-phenotypes — invisible, barely detectable, or tangential — are trivial in their social impact. If there are three people named Jim, Jerry, and John, and if Jim and Jerry share similar facial types and hair types while Jerry and John share similar thumb sizes(and John has a different hair/facial type from Jim and Jerry), then Jim and Jerry are more likely to feel as part of a group than Jerry and John do because facial/hair phenotypes trump thumb size by the laws of human recognition that fixates so much on the face. And this is the natural function of human psychology. Of course, just because one naturally feels more as a part of a group doesn’t dictate that one will always prefer one's own over the Other. Black men feel more ‘at home’ with other blacks, male and female, but they may prefer white women as sexual mates. A white woman might feel more ‘at home’ among whites, but she may lust for the Big Negro. An Japanese woman might feel more ‘at home’ with fellow Japanese but may want to be humped by an ‘Aryan’-looking anime character. Jews may feel more ‘at home’ with fellow hook-nosed Jews, but Jewish men may want to hump a blonde shikse. In TWILIGHT, it could be that Bella feels closer to Edward because she notices right away that he isn’t only handsome but part of her racial tribe. When she looks at Jacob Black’s body, she is tempted with desire, but his face tells her that he is not of her kind. She is turned on by Jacob, but she feels more natural with Edward. Though Jacob, despite his wolfish genes, is human like Bella, whereas Edward is a non-human vampire, she senses through her eyes that Edward is the one for her. Of course, given the diversification of culture and entertainment, there are now many more ways for people of different races to mingle and come together around shared interests in movies, music, and etc. (Also, most kids now grow up identifying more with pop culture idols than with members of the tribe. A German-American child in Wisconsin could grow up with little communal sense with his kind and instead identify with black rappers and ball players whom he idolizes as quintessential heroes of the West. Just like dogs that grow up around humans believe they are more 'human' than dog, whites who grow up glued to black idols come to feel 'black' or cucked-to-black. The reasons are 'spiritual' as well as sensual, as the Official Narrative instills in young impressionable white minds that blacks are most tragic and magical. The white mind wants to grovel at the feet of dancing Mr. Bojangles.) Though most blacks may prefer their music and most whites may prefer their own kind, it’s true enough that Jazz culture brought together many black fans and white fans, and they developed certain cultural commonalities apart from blacks and whites who didn’t care for Jazz. And cinephilia has brought together peoples of various races and nationalities. A Jewish-American and a Palestinian-American may not see eye to eye on politics but feel a certain camaraderie as fans of cinema. Oddly enough, the most cosmopolitan aspects of film culture tend to be most ghetto-ized and isolated whereas the most militaristic, violent, and aggressive tends to be most universally popular. Nothing is more highly valued than the European Art Film among cosmopolitan would-be sophisticates around the world — every major city has such people who attend ‘art houses’ — , but the communities of such people tend to be islands unto themselves and mostly ignored by global trends. And younger crop of film reviewers seem to prefer discussing summer blockbusters and the hottest TV shows than European Art Films. The violent, aggressive, and often jingoistic Hollywood blockbuster movies are hardly what one would associate with sophistication and cosmopolitanism, but they’ve done more to bring the world together. I suppose the world would rather unite in conflict than in conversation — it's no wonder sports are so popular around the world — , and as long as the bulk of these blockbuster movies feature some grand villain, space monster, undersea creature, or some other ghastly thing, all the races and nationalities of the world can unite in common hatred. Space aliens haven’t yet attacked Earth to bring all of us together, but at least Hollywood unites our passion for war and aggression against some mythical enemy whose demise all of us can cheer. If the world cannot be made to feel as one through conversation, why not through mythical confrontation?
Louis Malle’s ATLANTIC CITY is one of his best(and one of the best of the decade) and shows how his experience as a documentary film-maker served him well in fiction. Though a ‘feature film’, it is in part a quasi-docu portrait of a city both being born and dying. It is this blend of myth — personal, cultural, and historical — and reality that makes ATLANTIC CITY both rough and romantic. Older folks dream of yesteryear while younger ones scheme for a stake in the future. All around them is the reality of the here-and-now, the ruthless wrecking ball of history that smashes the past and devours the future. Dave(Robert Joy), the loser husband of Sally(Susan Sarandon), and Chrissie, younger sister of Sally and pregnant with Dave’s child, remind us of the clueless French hippies in PHANTOM INDIA. Though the screenplay is by John Guare — and I’ve no idea if Malle altered it — , Malle played an 'auteurist' role in stamping the film with his own signature themes. There’s a sense of infatuation with finer things and longing for secure bliss punctured by brute reality. The privileged French boy in AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS lived in an ideal bubble — even with the German Occupation of France — , but then a Jewish boy entered his world and punctured his sense of security and self-worth as what is a privileged sanctum for him is a life-or-death sanctuary for the Jewish boy; the Jewish kid turned out to be smarter than the French kid who, despite befriending the Jewish kid, betrayed him with his heart if not his mouth. When the French kid turned and stared at the Jewish kid, it could have been dismissed as an arbitrary gesture — and no one else would have noticed — , but the latter read the heart of the French kid, and his surrender was more of a broken heart than hopeless despair. When the person you've come to confide in turns on you, even if only with his heart, it is game over. Despite the affection that the French boy feels for the Jew kid, there remains a well of resentment and hostility. When push comes to shove, the Jewish boy is a 'yid'. AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS is quite good in its abrasive dramatization of the false sense of normality & security upheld by so many Frenchmen — especially the bourgeoisie — during the Occupation, and it could have been a great film had it been just as hard-nosed about the Jew kid and the Jewish community. Not that the Jew kid should have been depicted as a nasty character, but he should have been presented as a real child with real problems and eccentricities than as Saint Jew.
Though the sympathy for the Jew kid is entirely understandable, the film contradicts and negates its own spirit by demolishing one myth for another. It’s rather like the Narrative of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens. We are told by Liberals that they were noble souls who destroyed the ‘myth of Aryan supremacism’, but neither Louis nor Owens had any ideological agenda on their mind. The political significance has been imposed on them. Also, while the false radical racism of Nazism was undermined by Louis and Owens, they established the fact of black athletic superiority in sports. In other words, their achievements didn’t disprove race-ism but only proved another variation of race-ism, namely that racial differences are indeed real and that blacks are racially better equipped physically — and possibly mentally — to prevail in athletic contests and physical feats. But instead, Liberals applaud the demolishing of one myth but then perpetuated another, as if Louis’ first round KO of Max Schmeling and Owen’s four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics established racial equality as the truth. If that were the case, Owens and his fellow blacks should have tied with the German sprinters, and Louis and Schmeling should have KO’ed one another at the same time.
Thankfully, unlike AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS(and the blatantly politicized ALAMO BAY), ATLANTIC CITY takes a hard look at myths for what they are without replacing them with another. Perhaps, the excellence of ATLANTIC CITY owes more to Guare than to Malle, but it seems Malle, as an 'objective' outsider, understood the material and handled it with the right balance of romanticism and realism. Guare and Malle don’t buy the romanticism but acknowledge the hopeless romantic in all of us; and it's perversely interesting how America, the most materialistic nation on Earth, makes the most noise about dreams, a theme also explored in Jonathan Demme's MELVIN AND HOWARD — 'making dreams come true', an oxymoron, is the Material Nirvana of Americanism. ATLANTIC CITY is so real about life but also understands(and appreciates) how reality isn't enough. Whether one's dreams are poetic or puerile, they are what makes us human as people aren't merely reactive creatures but subjective agents on their environments. The movie is real about people who cannot be real, and to varying degrees, that applies to just about everyone. In contrast, AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS, while it strips away the myth of French nobility during the Occupation, pastes on the holy image of the Saint Jew as the highest form of goodness. It desecrates one faith for another. It would have been enough to sympathize with the Jewish kid as a pitiable child victim without turning him into some kind of secular saint.
Malle may have chosen ATLANTIC CITY because he saw something of himself — as well as much of what came to define French culture and society in the past hundred years — in the scenario, as the story is about clash of illusion and reality, what it means to be deluded and denuded. Every character is under some serious delusion, but it is Burt Lancaster’s character, Lou, who serves as the thematic focal point as a master at it. He becomes the false sun king, the man around whom other conflicts come to revolve and head toward collision/resolution. (Another significant 80s film about the relation between reality and illusion is RISKY BUSINESS where a high school teenager finds himself way over his head with something he would have done better to leave alone but nevertheless turned out to be an invaluable learning experience.) Dave the loser husband of Sally is a liar and thief. A smooth talker and operator, one can see how he could have been a charmer, but he is so compulsive in his deceits and thievery — and so shortsighted and reckless — that he's doomed to fail. He shmoozes and lies to everyone, and no one trusts him. He steals from drug dealers and thinks he can cash in on the loot by making casual contacts with local hoodlums. He’s a slick operator, but his slickness deludes him with self-confidence that he can slip through any tight corner. He's a degenerate gambler of the streets. His sole possession is the loyalty of the pregnant younger sister of his alienated/separated wife trailing him like a dog, and this young woman, Chrissie, still dresses and talks like it's the Age of Aquarius, the 60s with Flower Children and etc. Her pathetic meaning-of-life is little more than outdated New Age flakiness, but at least she has one real talent: Foot massage. Her sister Sally, the main character alongside Lou, has a more realistic outlook on life. She seeks a niche in the casino industry for security and nest-egg; she even harbors a dream of eventually making it to Monte Carlo. However far-fetched her dreams, she takes pragmatic measures to inch closer. Though more sensible than most other characters in the film, she too has blind spots(fueled by hope and desire), such as her notion that the casino would overlook the criminal record of her husband, an automatic disqualifier in the gambling industry, which is rather ironic since what is gambling but theft on a grand scale? Though savvy and alert, her bullshit detector isn’t exactly topnotch, and she fails to see through Lou even when his mask slips. From a rustic town in Canada, there remains something of the small town girl despite years of having pulled her own weight in the Other Sin City of United States. It's a quality that makes her somewhat endearing and sympathetic. She’s a city slicker with a small town heart, and her situation, as such, is emblematic of countless people in the 20th century who trekked to big cities to start anew, and of course, characters like hers were once the staple of the ‘golden age’ of Hollywood, especially luminously played by Joan Crawford.
The setting of the film, late 70s or early 80s, is very different from America of the first half of the 20th century when a large segment of the American population still lived in small towns and rural areas, some of which were secure and even affluent though many others were becoming impoverished and depopulated, especially with the mechanization of farming that drove down the price of commodities, thereby favoring the big farmers who produced in volume. Also, with the rise of big cities, small town cottage industries felt the pressure, and more people went to the city to look for new opportunities or just to find any job to make ends meet. (Demise of small towns was further hastened by rise of globalism and shipment of factories to nations with cheaper labor.) This was a time when the social phenomena of suburbia hadn’t yet fully materialized, and so, great many Americans had to choose between isolated rural life(as many towns and villages still didn’t have electricity and paved roads) and crammed urban living with so many people, immigrants from other nations as well as migrants from other parts of the country. By the time of ATLANTIC CITY's release, the great majority of Americans lived in cities or suburbs(as outgrowths of major urban centers). And many of what had once been called ‘small towns’ had grown into big towns(de facto small cities) — they would have been considered major cities by late 19th century or early 20th century standards — , and also the ubiquity of automobiles and air travel made it far easier for small town folks — and even foreign folks — to trek to an American city.
Then, it is all the stranger that ATLANTIC CITY begins with a man and a pregnant woman making their way to the city on foot. It’s an image more befitting the first half of the 20th century(especially during the Great Depression that produced so many migrants and hobos) than the late 70s or early 80s. But it also serves as postscript to the late 60s when many young ones went off to 'touch Indians' or to Haight-Asbury, process that was as (sub)urban-to-rural as rural-to-urban; if small-town hippie-wanna-be's headed for San Francisco, city dwellers sought to connect with more natural or folkish communities. To be sure, for most boomers — even those into Counterculture — , it was more rhetoric than reality, but some took to it seriously, and Chrissie, a late Boomer, seems stuck with a passing fad – and yet in her earnest 'innocence', she could almost be a 19th century creature; she is very down-on-the-farm with her hippie truisms. Due to their circumstances, Dave and Chrissie’s journey to Atlantic City harks back to an earlier era. And Sally's small-town background makes her seem from another time also, especially because Canada, whiter and more rural than America, reminded Americans in the late 70s of an earlier America that had been more Anglo and 'square'.
Though the wrecking ball is fast transforming Atlantic City into the Other casinopolis of America, a city of the future, the very myth of Atlantic City recalls another era. During the 'golden' age of American gangsters, Atlantic City had been the place-to-be for hoodlums with connections and for players who knew their way around. Though the old Atlantic City of legend faded away, like the cult of Al Capone in Chicago, legends never really die. It’s like, even if the home team hasn’t won the championship in 25 yrs, the triumphant year remains etched in memory, especially if it was a special kind of victory. No one much talks about Soviet victories in Olympics Ice Hockey since the Soviets won so many times, but the Miracle on Ice for the US team in 1980 has become the stuff of legend. Also, as San Francisco and Dallas won the Super Bowl so many times, the victories all seem to blend together. But Chicago’s rare victory in 1985 became mythic. As Las Vegas was the place to be for gambling — and as gambling was soon legalized there — , it became a living reality, a mundane fact of American enterprise. Had history rolled a different dice, Atlantic City might have been the gambling capital of the United States. Its close proximity to the major cities of the East Coast and their crime syndicates dealt it a bad hand, but it also meant the hoodlums of all ethnic stripes in New York, New Jersey, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and etc. didn’t have to go far to find action. Its failed bid to be a gambling capital led to decline and decrepitude, and when the film opens, much of the city looks like a black ghetto, something more like the bad side of New Orleans or even Detroit than an Eastern seaside town. But the legend of Atlantic City lingered. The culture of gambling that had been associated with organized crime, sin, and infamy came to be seen as the hope for the city’s revival, and gambling was legalized in 1976, the bicentennial year in America. A city in a nation founded and built on hard work and the virtue of thrift chose to revitalize its economy by promoting an industry of leisure and risk. Now, risk-taking and speculation had long been a great American pastime, leading to cycles of boom and bust, but there’s a difference between speculating in industry & land to build or produce things and gambling for mere fun & thrills. Also, with economic and demographic sea changes in America and around the world — most problematic being the mass migration of blacks into urban areas — , American cities could no longer hope to rebuild themselves with simple industrial strategies such as making steel, building cars, constructing movie theaters, and slaughtering/canning hogs. With heavy industries on the decline and with service sector as yet to expand to produce enough jobs for what came to be known as the Reagan Era economic boom — and with the flight of white people into suburbs to get away from black crime and urban blight — , cities had to find new ways to generate revenue, and one of the simplest became gambling(and other vice industries). Gambling doesn’t produce anything, but it pulls money from other areas. Of course, the paradox for the gambling industry is that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Even though the industry lobbies in favor of legalization in more places, the success of any gambling operation relies on restricting the business to a handful of places. If every city and every town could build a giant gambling complex, why would people go to Las Vegas, Atlantic City, the Indian Casinos, and some towns across America where it’s been legalized? Consider the sudden decline of the pop music industry when people could get music for free on the internet. And video rental stores are a thing of the past. (But then, with so much monopolization of gambling in few Jewish hands, it may not matter. If the likes of Sheldon Adelson fail with a casino here but hit gold with casino there, it all evens out.) Gambling interests push for more legalization for their own proposed casinos against their competitors. While all industries play this game to some extent, it seems especially hypocritical in gambling because of the oft-touted libertarian argument for end to regulation and restrictions. It comes down to ‘more freedom for me, less for thee’. Indeed, every Indian reservation has been pushing for its own gambling rights while secretly working with lobbyists and politicians to forbid other nearby reservations from getting similar deals.
The very setting of ATLANTIC CITY is somewhat unreal despite its realist touches; perhaps, it could be called 'unrealism'. It’s a city built or being rebuilt on a legend turned into official myth. And despite its pretensions of grandeur and renewed wealth, the surrounding neighborhoods seem shabby, marked by crime and blight, and the new wealth won't be generated from real production but from legalized form of vice that hoodwinks the public into handing over their cash, hard-earned or not. The new Atlantic City is real enough but built on illusions, with money swindled from tourists and residents happy to lose themselves in dreams of hitting the jackpot or 'living the life' — after all, isn't it glamorous when 007 sits next to a roulette table? Lou is introduced as a has-been, an old-timer who collects payments for an illegal lottery run by a local black kingpin. As shoddy as this operation is — the Negro pays Lou his ‘commission’ and pockets the rest, saying there won’t be a winner on that day because of the meagerness of the collection — , it follows the same logic, economic and moral, as the official gambling industry. They are both selling false hope and raking in the dough from suckers all-too-willing to be suckered. But if the Negro gangster caters mostly to the black underclass in the ghetto, the casinos going up in Atlantic City have the blessing of politicians & big business and contracts with the ‘better’ kind of people of fame and fortune, whose image will add glitz and celebrity. (To be sure, many Casino acts are has-beens or second-raters. 'Wayne Newton' has become quite a meme. Just-famous-enough for an industry just-legit-enough.) Watching ATLANTIC CITY, one thinks of other films where a locale, culture, or industry is as much a character as the human characters. Consider KING OF MARVIN GARDENS, NASHVILLE, MANHATTAN, WALL STREET, BIG EASY, and CASINO. Though memorable films have been made about New York, it’s such a big city — almost a nation or even universe unto itself — that it’s impossible to imagine THE definitive New York Movie. At most, you can make 'a' New York movie about one of the aspects of Big Apple: Little Italy, Greenwich Village, the finance sector(as Oliver Stone did), the Irish-American community, Jewish-American community, the intellectual class, arts and culture, race problems, and etc. Though Wall Street is the dominant industry, there are too many things happening for New York to be defined by a single theme. Though every city is multi-faceted and full of diverse narratives, we know Las Vegas and Atlantic City are about gambling, Nashville is about country music, much of L.A. is centered around the entertainment industry, Milwaukee and St. Louis are associated with the beer industry, New Haven is a university town, New Orleans is about gumbo & Mardi Gras, and etc. San Francisco has been harder to pigeonhole. Though long associated with bohemianism and eccentricities, its reputation has swung wildly from the home of the hippies to the home of the homos to the home of computer geeks and other members of the ‘creative class’. The one mainstay of San Francisco has been Chinatown, but as most Chinese-Americans keep to themselves — especially those who choose to live in the Chinatown area — , Chinatowns are known for food tourism and pretty much nothing else. (Chinese, like the Mexicans, are the food-serfs of America. No one cares about Chinese or Mexican anything except that they serve tacos and chop suey.)
Unlike CASINO, Malle’s film isn't a bravura piece of cinematics and doesn’t need to be as it’s an intimate story of nobodies than a panoramic tour-de-force of the ins and outs of the industry. CASINO is about the conflict among the winners and would-be-winners in the gambling capital of America, whereas ATLANTIC CITY is about perennial losers and outsiders. Also, ATLANTIC CITY isn't dishonest movie like WALL STREET that, for all its moralizing, sleazily sensationalizes the world of greed and fraud as the sporting arena of men with big balls. Gekko's "Greed is good" is just a variation of Tony Montana's, "The only thing that gives orders in this world is balls." Remarkable as NASHVILLE is, it is tad too glib and condescending about the country music capital, its movers & shakers and its countless dupes & yokels. ('Country Music' is really the city music of Nashville that simplified, homogenized, and branded rural America, much like Hollywood processed the Western Narrative into genre formula. The real roots of traditional American music are richer, weirder, and more varied across vast regions.) NASHVILLE never makes up its mind whether it’s satire or drama, which makes it interesting but also confused. Some of the characters and plot-lines are strong enough to transcend the bemusement of dual sensibility, but some teeter between caricature and humanity. It's a tall order to mock people as hopeless clowns and then feign empathy for them as complicated individuals. Generally when an entire city or industry becomes the focal point of a story, there is a tendency for the film-maker to become overly ambitious and go for epic scale(and over-generalization). Part of the reason why Brian De Palma's BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES failed was it was done with broad strokes than surgical strikes. As conflict and controversy are interwoven into the very fabric of big city life, there's no need for added emphasis. In this regard, Philip Kaufman was sensible to focus on the eccentricities of personality in THE RIGHT STUFF, another Tom Wolfe book of intrinsic grandeur. To convey the scale of Mt. Rushmore in a photo, it's better to draw contrast between it and smaller objects, such as trees and people, than to blow up the picture itself. LOLA MONTEZ and HEAVEN’S GATE are films where scale dictates to the point of rendering the characters secondary or irrelevant. Scale can work as a formalist exercise if the story isn’t heavy on characterization to begin with, as with the cases of ANDREI RUBLEV, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, PLAYTIME, and ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST(which has archetypes than individuals), but material calling for lively portraiture and storytelling mustn't become overcast with scale. Shohei Imamura understood this, which is why PROFOUND DESIRES OF THE GODS never loses sight of the human element amidst the bigness of concept and production. Though Emir Kusterica’s UNDERGROUND is problematic, it too is a daring feat of minutiae contending with the monumental; Kusterica no doubt learned a thing or two from Imamura.
ATLANTIC CITY eschews scale altogether. John Guare, with playwright instincts, focused on plot and dialogue. (There is a tendency to associate a person or people with a particular locale — Parisian, Londoner, New Yorker, Chicagoan, etc. — , a comforting as confining a notion. It lends a sense of belonging, of culture & community, and a past. And yet, no two Parisians are alike, and there is in life so much more and so much less than what the label would suggest. Can one truly be a member or 'citizen' of Atlantic City without being a player? A politician and a dishwasher in Washington D.C. are both nominally D.C-ians, but while one's position is emblematic of the city, the other is dispensable, as dishwashers are dime-a-dozen anywhere. Likewise, think of the difference between a Wall Street financier and a street cleaner in New York. One occupation is distinctly New-York-ish whereas the other is generic. One is a 'citizen' of NY, the other a mere resident. But identity by locality is also problematic in a globalized world where anyone can easily switch local identities. A New Yorker can move to Los Angeles. An African can move to Paris and overnight become a 'Parisian'. Furthermore, some local identities have personalities, whereas others do not. 'New Yorker', 'Chicagoan', 'Angeleno' and 'Texan' mean something whereas 'Des-Moinesian' and 'Denverian' not so much. But what if one is a Texan but lack the qualities usually associated with the label? What does it mean to be an 'Atlantic City-ian' when Las Vegas already owns the 'personality' of a gambling town?) And, Malle was accustomed to European film-making with smaller budgets; the budget of ATLANTIC CITY was $7 million — not exactly cheap at the time but hardly lavish. And the story is about dreams and delusions of those on the periphery than politics and economics at the center of town. (As such, it is closer in feel to CHINATOWN, MIDNIGHT COWBOY, and STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE than NASHVILLE or WALL STREET, or even MANHATTAN for that matter, despite its grandiose title.) As such, not only are its particulars more unique but its themes are more universal, whereas WALL STREET is a very New York story and CASINO a very Las Vegas one. The characters of ATLANTIC CITY linger in the margins of the core action of power and politics of the city, and as ill-fated perennial outsiders who hardly ever break through, they are essentially exiles(from the castle-keep of the city), and exiles are home wherever they are. Some exiles move from place to place, and indeed Sally drives away in her final scene. But one can remain in the same place for the entirety of one’s life and still be an exile, the case with Lou. He’s always been a part of Atlantic City and always an outsider, a hanger-on, a sidekick, a loser. Even when he was young and played toady to a gangster of some repute, he was little more than a lackey. And despite his bluster of being tough and knowing the right people, he’s been a coward all his life who preferred to run and hide than stick around when things got hot.
There are certain similarities between MURIEL and ATLANTIC CITY as the former also deals with the intersections of time, places, and people; it features the motifs of gambling, of a seaside town rebuilding itself to simultaneously revive and bury the past. And both films are about lies people tell to others and, more problematically, to themselves. But most strikingly, both films have an aging male charmer smooth in talk but creased in action. Did Malle see a facet of the French national character in the figure of Lou as played by Burt Lancaster, who often starred as deluded romantics in movies like VERA CRUZ, ELMER GANTRY, THE LEOPARD, THE SWIMMER, 1900, etc? Even when Lancaster’s characters start out as cynics, the charmer would stare in the mirror, come under his own spell, and fall for his own snake oil. The redemption of his characters rested on the duper duping himself into stupor, turning con into conviction. In VERA CRUZ, Lancaster plays a cynical mercenary, a man without honor, who nevertheless dies in a way that is halfway honorable: Fair gunfight where he is out-drawn by Gary Cooper’s character. It is no different in ATLANTIC CITY. But unlike some of the brash, tough characters Lancaster played at his peak, his Lou is nothing but talk. He’s not even a former tough guy or big-time gangster fallen on hard times. He isn't even a genuine has-been since he never was a ‘been’. At most, he rode on the coattails of real gangsters and flattered himself as part of the crew. In essence, he was little more than a flunky, an errand boy or a shoeshine boy to the mob figures. In his old age, he keeps up 'appearances' if only to fool himself. People who remember the old times haven't a clue about Lou, and he is nothing to the black community but just some old white guy who collects lottery money for the local boss, a black guy who leeches off other blacks. (To be sure, there were men even below his station who do remember him. Even a small dog has a smaller dog.)
Lou wears cheap suits, looks shabby and worn, is ignored by everyone, and runs into (mis)fortune only because Dave left the stolen drugs at his place. To exploit the old man, Dave shmoozes him and claims to have heard things about him in Vegas, and Lou responds favorably, but of course, Lou knows Dave is lying and also knows that Dave knows that he, Lou, is lying, and in turn, Dave surely knows that Lou knows that he, Dave, is lying, but none of this matters. Truth isn’t the issue as long as the protocol of illusion is maintained to the satisfaction of both men; they have an understanding where Lou gets a piece for stashing the stuff for Dave. They are nobodies pretending to be somebodies to seal a deal. Dave ‘trusted’ Lou with his stash of stolen cocaine because he knows Lou, a nobody and loser, wouldn’t even know what to do with the stuff. For Dave, Lou is nothing but a hanger-on. As it turns out, Dave overestimated his own smarts and is tracked down by the gangsters who kill him and then go after Sally and whomever else to recover the stolen drugs. Before Dave got killed, he directed Lou to make a delivery to a bunch of poker players in a hotel, and the cash fell into Lou’s hands. Lou makes another delivery soon after and pockets the cash for himself. He is finally able to buy a fancy suit and put on fancy airs. He approaches Sally and lends a hand in paying for Dave's funeral services.
Sally is suspicious at first but grows appreciative and even admiring as the regal old man seems to be both loaded and knows his way around the city. And when Lou turns on the charm(of a natural actor), he has a winning personality. It’s a superficial veneer, a mere counterfeit, but works well enough as long as he does the talking and buying. Sally, distraught over series of setbacks, is grateful there’s someone who shows concern for her, even paying her bills, taking her to a nice restaurant, and giving her tips on the ins-and-outs of the town. He seems a seasoned operator, a player. He is mysterious and fascinating, a man without a social security number, no official identity; it's as if he’s a figure of myth, a living ghost of past glories when Atlantic City had really been something. But when she teases him about his missing fingerprints, he loses his composure and retorts like a child. His facade stumbles, but Sally treats the moment like a joke, and Lou carries on with the charade though Sally senses something off about him. But even if Lou isn’t what he pretends to be, what could possibly go wrong with her spending some time with a generous and helpful old man, a 'sugar daddy'? As it turns out, plenty. The gangsters, eager to recover the drugs/money, naturally suspect Sally as an accomplice and pounce on her for street-style interrogation. While she’s met with ‘rough justice’ by the beefy henchman, Lou is pushed against a wall to watch helplessly. His pride is especially hurt when Sally, after collecting herself from the ground, asks him if HE is alright.
It is a crisis point for Lou, whereupon he can no longer carry on with the charade of Willy Loman of Atlantic City. His entire past comes back to haunt him: The fact that he was always a nobody, that he was a coward who ran when the going got tough, that he never fooled anyone and was not some great lover, that is until he ran into some luck with Dave’s drugs and cash and charmed his way into Sally’s life and, by golly, even made love to her, his one great triumph; but just when he seems to be living the life(even if momentary as drugs and cash won’t last forever), he is rendered worthless when the woman is beset by a couple of thugs. And there’s also an element of guilt because she got roughed up for the drugs and money that he took possession of. If indeed Lou is a somebody, would the hoodlums have treated him so? As Lou is a nobody, he has no strings to pull to deal with the thugs who messed with ‘his’ woman. Few things are more humiliating to a man than sexual humiliation, especially if the man puts on the facade of being bigger, stronger, or more important that he really is. It's sad(and funny, which makes it all the more sad) to see the bubble burst. When push came to shove, Lou was exposed as weak, a mere witness to the violence. German soldiers in Occupied Paris made French men feel weak and sterile(and today, stronger black men are making white Frenchmen feel like a bunch of wusses). When Soviet troops rampaged across Germany and raped hundreds of thousands — or even millions — of women, there was nothing German men could do but stare. They could only watch(or look away) because if they dared do anything, they would have been killed on the spot. When Americans occupied Japan, Japanese men had to watch their women be reduced to a whores to American G.I.s. With the rise of Negro athletes in schools and professional sports, white females are turning into mudsharks, and white men are reduced to ‘white boys’ who must accept their role as second-rate males, and of course, Jews are loving every minute of it as their agenda has been to castrate and humiliate white male pride into oblivion as both a form of revenge and political control. Both THE BIRTH OF A NATION and THE SEARCHERS are about sexual revenge of white men who refuse to be humiliated by savages. With revenge comes the hope of renewed pride, and this is precisely the mindset that Jews seek to suppress in white males. In times past, if a black thug killed a white women, proud white men would have tracked him down and hanged him from a tree. Today, when such things happen, white males just watch TV(showing black rappers and athletes) and play video-games and vote for the likes of Obama. Or they shout BLM slogans and pretend to defend blacks from white violence when, if anything, they suck up to black power as the stronger horse and sacred cow. They’ve been reduced to a bunch of pansy-ass pussy-boys. They, as 'anti-racist' whites, pretend to challenge White Power, but they strike out at whites precisely because cowards attack the weak and craven, and most whites today are utterly craven and pathetic.
Of course, Jews know that white rage cannot be entirely suppressed, and so, they seek to channel white male rage at external enemies, especially Muslims, Arabs, Iranians, Russians, and Chinese(and North Koreans as ersatz Chinese, as directly insulting the Chinese might hurt box office potential in the growing market of China). And so, white males, though compelled to ignore the realities of black sexual crimes against white women and of Jewish sexual exploitation of white women in America, are allowed an outlet for their sexual frustration through movies like TAKEN and SPARTAN that would have American audiences believe that the greatest threat to the sexual integrity of white girls comes from Muslim men, ROTFL. But such is pathetic compensation for white American men who must know, deep in their hearts, that the main sexual threat to their race comes not from Muslims but from blacks and Jews. It's the Jews who own the media and entertainment complex — and run the porn industry — who push the interracist agenda. It was Jews who funded Obama, the son of a mudshark, and then used the media to have him re-elected in 2012. It’s Jews who run the academia and brainwashed white gentile elites toward impugning their own heritage and history while sweeping under the rug all the truths about the history of violence, aggression, and brutality of blacks and Jews. While Russian pogroms killed thousands of Jews, Jewish communists killed millions of Slavic Christians. Blacks practiced slavery for eons before the creation of the United States, and it was the Anglos who launched the campaign to end slavery worldwide. There are plenty of vile Muslim thugs in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and certain areas of Europe, but they are simply not the main threat to white well-being, at least in the US where Muslim power is almost non-existent. And even most Muslim attacks on US soil wouldn't have happened if the US weren’t such an attack dog for Zionist interests. When it comes to sexual politics and culture, it’s the Jews and feminists(many of whom are Jews) who've spread the most poisonous ideas and attitudes, encouraging both the shamelessness of slut culture and the hysteria of crying rape all the time — imaginary rape by white men get more attention than real rape by Negroes. Indeed, it’s amusing that both feminism and popular culture are on the ‘left’ but accuse the American Right for the sins that they themselves commit most often. Feminists complain about misogyny and the sexual objectification of women, but does the 700 Club or Pat Buchanan own Hollywood, MTV, porn biz, fashion world, pop music industry(especially rap music), and etc? Most of this ‘misogyny’ and ‘sexual objectification’ comes from Liberals, Jews, and homos who are predominant in popular entertainment. And then, you have Liberals who bitch about the repressive moralistic hysteria of American Conservatives, but the most hysterical complainers about the ‘culture of violence, disrespect, and aggression against women’ are the feminists. But then, feminists are more outraged by proposals to restrict extreme forms of abortion(which are like post-bortion or infanticide if not for a technicality) and the refusal of Georgetown University to provide free birth control pills than by the epidemic of black-on-white rape, the mass porn-ification of society(with the likes of Ron Jeremy celebrated as a trailblazer by Liberals), the lyrics and gestures so prevalent in rap music(the anthem of the black community plagued with crime and violence), and business culture of Hollywood where so many women, especially white gentile ‘shikses’, must put out to Jewish bosses. Such double standards are to be expected in a society that is so thoroughly dominated by Jews for whom sexual exploitation of white gentile women is regarded as 'sexual justice', no less than the mass rapes of German women by Soviet troops. Since Germany was the evil aggressor in WWII and carried out the Holocaust, Jews feel it was only right that German men be humiliated and German women be raped repeatedly. Though white American males fought and defeated the Nazis, Jews see Anglos and Germans belonging to the same family of Northern Europeans who potentially pose the biggest challenge to Jewish supremacist power, that is IF the Saxon begins to hate again. And since most white ethnic communities became substantially Anglo-Americanized in the 20th century, all of them too must be made to share in ‘white guilt’, and their women too must face 'historical justice' by either being raped by blacks or exploited by Jews — or by turning race traitor and having children with non-whites, especially blacks, as the Negro male poses the greatest challenge to the integrity of white manhood.
Sexual politics has been complicated in France for any number of reasons. On the one hand, it was an archly Catholic nation with the usual prohibitions, but on the other hand, French culture was also known for sensuality, and its elite aristocratic culture prior to the French Revolution was steeped in ‘gay sensibility’ of flamboyance, fancifulness, and decor. When times were good, all this opulence seemed the worthy display of civilizational greatness, but when times were desperate, it seemed like decadent excess of vanity, frivolity, and waste. Pomp and circumstances must be buttressed by Power and Control. At the beginning of the Great War(aka WWI), the glory of the Tsar represented Russian pride and might, but as the war dragged on and led to economic collapse, he seemed weak and, worse, life within the court seemed excessive and depraved(not least because of the rumors about Tsarina and Rasputin) at a time when Russian soldiers were losing life & limb and Russian children were going hungry. To an extent, the French Revolution was a secular Inquisition against the excessively sensualist elites having too grand a time when so many people were economically destitute. There was an element of puritanism in the French Revolution — especially under the reign of Robespierre — that sought to cleanse French society of sensual frivolity indulged by kings and aristocrats who didn’t produce anything and had gotten France embroiled in costly ventures: Wars and Balls.
And there were shades of this in the German National Socialist Revolution, the Chinese Communist takeover of Shanghai, Fidel Castro’s march on Havana, and Hanoi’s entry into Saigon. To many Germans faced with hard times, the Weimar Period was marked by the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer, but even worse, with the privileged classes(many of whom were Jews) indulging in all kinds of decadent pleasures while ordinary Germans gave up their entire life savings for a loaf of bread — furthermore, Jewish pimps and pornographers were urging German women to become whores and have sex with Negroes. To the Chinese Communists, the westernized urbanites of Shanghai were a bunch of decadent traitors who were about sex, drugs, and partying all night long — with ill-gotten loot made from greed and corruption — than about noble sacrifice for the good of the people, most of whom were in desperate straits. And when Castro’s troops swept into Havana, it was hailed as a victory for the noble and selfless crusaders against the decadent, selfish, greedy, and shallow privileged class that had whored itself out to imperialist America and organized crime. I AM CUBA and THE GODFATHER PART 2 are both highly critical of pre-Castro Cuban-style capitalism based on foreign domination and hedonism. And the Fall of Hanoi was cheered by many Western Liberals who viewed it as a new chapter in Third World history with yet another corrupt and useless lackey of American neo-imperialism having been toppled by selfless socialists who believe in struggling for the common good.
Many Western Liberals greeted the victory of the Sandinista in Nicaragua for much the same reason. While Western Liberals were not communists and loathed the idea of living under a communist system(and knew all about the repressions in the Communist Bloc), they thought communism would be better as a developmental model for the Third World that seemed unfit or unprepared for liberal capitalism, in which case the only alternative was either Marxist rule or Militarist rule. Since ‘right-wing’ militarism was associated with fascism, considered by far the worst ideology by Western Liberals, it was only natural that many ‘progressives’ hoped the Third World would fare better with 'humanist' communism. At the very least, communists seemed idealistic, selfless, committed, and courageous — and believers in the basic Western ideals of egalitarianism, even if minus civil liberties — , whereas right-wing military dictators seemed mainly concerned with using brute force to defend the propertied classes, especially in Latin America. (As it turned out, right-wing autocracies allowed more liberties and opportunities for the development of civil society whereas totalitarian leftist systems allowed little room for individual enterprise and expression, but that realization only came later. And if right-wing autocracies quashed the opposition when it got too vocal, leftist tyrannies nipped dissent in the bud.) In other words, communist Cuba may be a prison, but it was a prison where the prisoners were their own guards working for equal conditions, whereas 'right-wing' Latin American countries allowed people to be 'free' to be exploited and brutalized by traditional hierarchy and neo-imperialist greed. Better a prison that provides medicine to inmates than an open field where people are 'free' to starve and go unprotected. Of course, the Cuban economy was sustained by massive aid from the Soviet Union, and Latin American military dictatorships weren’t necessarily comparable to ones in other parts of the world due to history and demographics. In other words, 'right-wing' rule in Latin America may have been more ignoble not so much because 'militarism' is inherently corrupt and wicked but because the racial and ethnic divides made it less likely for the rulers to feel for the masses and vice versa. And, even though communist Cuba during its heyday did provide basic care for everyone, the racial divides have, more or less, remained, with the elites still being overwhelmingly white and the lower masses being generally black. Military dictatorships and authoritarian rule often worked differently in Asia and Turkey as there was more unity of nationality — real or perceived — , and in such cases, right-wing rule could be a modernizing force, indeed much more so than communism, which, despite its rhetoric of revolution and progress, tended to be far too totalitarian and repressive to allow the freedoms and civic life that provide impetus for organic development and socio-economic growth.
Anyway, the role of sexual politics in the culture was more complicated in France. Part of the reason was French culture had a notable feminine and poetic element at odds with its masculine projection of power. It was a perfumed empire. Also, the image or impression of France was too often confused with the reality. For instance, there’s been a long-held conviction on the part of Americans that the ooh-la-la French are into adultery and sexual libertine-ism, but a survey of sexual behavior of France and America in the 1980s revealed the French were hardly more adulterous than the Americans(though, since then, both countries seem to have become skankvilles). Given the centrality of arts & culture in France, the mystique often exaggerated aspects of French society that, under close inspection, proved to be not so different from their counterparts in the West. Of course, it could well be that Americans are now the most misunderstood people around the world as Americanism comes mainly from Hollywood and TV, much of which has little to do with the real America(though, to be sure, many Americans themselves buy into this false image and try to live up to it as shining model). Also, as most American news beamed around the world has a Jewish/Liberal slant — and as media in Europe share in the bias — , there’s an impression among Europeans that Americans are a bunch of fat gun-loving tards who eat like pigs, thump Bibles from morning to noon, and lock & load and shoot up schools.
Of course, Americans also rely on movies, TV shows, and biased news for their view of America, a vast multifaceted nation. And even before young ones get into the habit of gluing their eyes to movies and 'mainstream sources', their essential world-view is formed by public/politically-correct education that instills them with the cult of ‘white guilt’ and ‘white privilege’. Thus molded, many Americans can only tolerate the favored Narrative and feel 'triggered' by anything, however factual and true, that upsets their 'woke' apple-cart. Feeding them the truth is like trying to feed meat to a vegan. The 'spiritual' outrage of their mental-dietary taboo is too strong. Increasingly, education is less about the three R's than the one C, or 'correctness'. So, if a student is good at math and science but perceived as politically incorrect, he is deemed a failure of education; but, if he's deficient in actual skills but spouts PC mantras about ‘racism’ and ‘homophobia’, then he's a poster-child of success. It’s the latest example of what Mao called ‘red over expert’, though what with all the homo propaganda and BLM, it’s more like ‘pink over expert’ or 'black over expert'. That said, given the high achievement of homos in many areas, it’s also like ‘pink is expert’.
Anyway, sexual politics and the politics of sex(or something that might be called ‘sexology’) led to manifold problems for France, ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime. Granted, the politics of sexology is a problem for all human societies, and it is indeed rooted in the animal world. The default rule for most organisms is to be ruthless in self-preservation. A spider, for instance, usually cannot tolerate other spiders. But for the species to perpetuate itself, the male and the female of the species — that usually remain apart — must seek out one another and mate. It isn't that nature is defined by war of the sexes because, after all, violence in nature generally doesn’t discriminate along sexual lines. A starving male bear will kill male bears, female bears, and cubs of both sexes to cannibalize on their flesh. Female hyenas will fight female hyenas of other packs, and a female spider will fight another female spider for territory. If anything, bulk of the sexual violence among most bird and mammal species is intra-sexual than inter-sexual, i.e. males will fight other males with utter ferocity for the ‘right’ to mate and hold territory. Even so, notwithstanding the species where males and females form steady bonds — like among ducks and geese — , males and females generally remain apart in most species and try to avoid one another. It is during mating season that male raccoons and female raccoons end up together. Oftentimes, the female raccoon resists until it is forced upon by the male, whereupon its maternal instincts kick in. Primates are a social species, and their ‘sexual politics’ is more complicated due to higher intelligence, which means they have a sense of community and crude identity(and greater appreciation for pleasure). Though a male bear only feels as a male bear and mounts the female bear, the male chimpanzee may become cognizant of the fact that he has a 'chimpo'(Japanese for penis) and a female chimp does not. Also, the fingers of the chimp made it more sensitively aware of its differences from others. A male bear may sometimes suck on its own penis, but most of the time, it lumbers around on its four legs and gobbles up stuff, and in this, he is no different from a female bear. But a male chimp with its fingers could feel himself and become aware of organs that female chimps don't have. And a chimp may even learn about the true purpose/nature of the anus and realize that homosexuality is eeh-eeh-eww.
Also, even though all chimps will freak out and fight when necessary, they tend to have a stronger sense of sexual division of roles than most other mammal species. Most hoofed herbivores, when under threat, flee together. While the males of the species are more resistant against threats, their main instinct is to run, even ahead of the females. When wildebeests see a leopard, the males are often the first to run. Wildebeest males fight among themselves for the right to mate, but they generally run ahead of the herd than make an effort to protect females and calves. And this is also true of most deer species when threatened by wolves. The main impulse of most bucks is to run as fast as possible, even if it means the slower females or calves will fall prey to the predators. Under threat, male and female lions pretty much fight equally side by side. Though the male lion takes on the toughest foe, females do more than their share. But things are markedly different among the great apes. While female gorillas and chimpanzees can be awfully loud and aggressive, they are considerably less so than their male counterparts. There’s far more emotional and physical distance between a male chimp and female chimp than between a lion and a lioness. Also, when a chimpanzee tribe is under threat, even though female chimps will scream and shout like a bunch of crazed Negresses, it is generally up to the male chimps to guard the main line of attack/defense while the female chimps, along with the young, make a ruckus from behind. This is no less true among gorillas, where the female is merely 1/3 the size/weight of the male gorilla. So, among apes, there’s a stronger sense of sexual differences, and these differences eventually became conceptualized with the evolutionary emergence of the human species equipped with intellect. While apes have an awareness of the differences between male and female, they don’t have the concept of the ‘male’ and ‘female’; in contrast, humans developed sexual concepts with the invention of language(though, of late, terminology is being used less to describe and define things as they really are than to obfuscate matters in service to demented ideologies based on 'gender theories'. Thus, a man who says he's a 'woman' is said to have a 'female penis', and if a woman insists she is a 'man', then we must conclude 'men can menstruate').
It’s a truism that the first words that immigrants pick up are curse words, many of them related to sex. So, even before they learn to speak in proper sentences in accordance to the correct grammar, they become familiar with terms like ‘dick’, ‘pussy’, ‘fuc*’, ‘suck’, ‘balls’, ‘tits’, etc. This suggests that the first words invented by mankind involved sexual drives, if not food and water. After all, babies learn to say ‘milk’, ‘water’, and ‘eat’ before ‘computer’ and ‘book’. As early men often felt hungry and horny, their minds were likely obsessed with food and sex. The first word could have been for 'penis'. (The West, especially under Jewish and Negro influence, seems to be reverting to primitive ways. If Western Civilization sought transcendence and reached for heaven in spiritual and spatial terms, Post-Western-Civ is mostly about 'twerking' like Negresses and rapping about 'muh dick' like the Negroes. And Jews made pornography mainstream with 'portnoic' intensity. It's telling that despite all the technological wonders, the force animating the world of Mel Brooks' SPACEBALLS is the Schwarz. At the core of man's nature, not much has changed since the rise of the first man-like creatures.)
Primitive art seems to have developed along similar lines, as many cave paintings depict female 'sex objects' and prey animals(as akin to food advertising?) Cave men were surely often hungry, and they couldn't stop thinking about food. It could have been their idea of the Food Channel. Modern folks generally don’t associate animals with food since most of what we eat come neatly packaged and boxed. People don't eat cows and pigs: they eat 'beef' and 'pork'. And, unlike hunters-and-gatherers who eat whatever animals, fish, and fruits/vegetables they could get their hands on, modern folks eat mostly livestock and a limited variety of fish. Most Americans never ate insects or snakes(or even snails), and just about the only poultry in their diet is chicken. Furthermore, most people don't observe how living animals are killed, slaughtered, and processed for consumers. So, we almost ignore the connection between what had once been a cow and the steak on our plate. Also, many foodstuffs are heavily processed; hotdog and salami hardly look like real meat. So, we think of animals as ‘wonders of nature’ than as food. Our interest in animals is scenic than dietary. Cave paintings of animals don't remind us of food. But for primitive man, the mere image of animals was likely mouth-watering since any living creature was eaten right on the spot after it was killed. There was no means of processing or long-term preservation. Once the animal was brought down, it was cut up to be eaten, much of it raw, especially if the tribe had been famished for a long spell.
Anyway, even though females had to be plenty tough, primitive man developed a sexual division of role and labor where males did most of the fighting, hunting, and protecting while females remained behind to guard the supplies and children. Generally, men and women didn’t go into combat side by side as lions and wolves did. As with chimps and gorillas, males commanded the front lines while females remained in the rear. So, the male protected the land while the female protected the home.
But as man’s intelligence led to further conceptualization and then 'metaphorization' of reality, the politics of sex became stranger. For one thing, humans conceived of gods, and gods existed as males and females. Even though most cultures had male gods as dominant, all gods(even females) were more powerful than the most powerful man. Thus, even human males became worshipful of the power of the female principle as embodied by the goddess. Also, the metaphorical turn of the human mind made some cultures surmise that maybe the female principle was as powerful if not more powerful than the male principle. After all, the greatest power of all could be that of creation, and it was women who could ‘create’ babies, new life. Thus, man began to feel that the female principle governed nature because nature ‘created’ or ‘birthed’ all the things of the world: Plants from the soil, streams from mountaintops, sun from the horizon, and etc. Mother Nature. While men were stronger than women, their power seemed more after-the-fact, mundane, and mechanical whereas the female power seemed more mysterious and magical(even miraculous), as it took a long time for mankind to truly understand the process of reproduction, and even when mankind figured out the biological processes of sex and pregnancy, the longstanding tradition of female-as-earth-mother remained in the human psyche. (Also, as women or sexual deviants — usually homo men who didn’t make the cut as warriors or hunters — often served as sorcerers, witches, or shamanic mediums in certain cultures, a female-colored or female-centered view of spirituality took hold.) One might argue that the creation of certain religions was man's attempt to usurp the power-of-mystery from the female principle. The Torah, for instance, speaks of the one and only God who is male, and one of the two Creation stories of mankind says that man, Adam, was created before the woman, Eve, a being 'born' of a man's rib. The other Creation story says both were created simultaneously from mud, thus overlooking the female as the creative force. As God is male and as Adam preceded Eve and because Jews trumped the power of the male penis as the creative instrument over the female vagina and womb — though, to be sure, Jewishness came to be defined by maternal ancestry — , it suggests as to why the Covenant between God and Abraham is so crucial. It was as if God was saying that He, the male principle, is the creator of the universe, and this creative force has been handed down to Man in the form of the penis, and so as to appreciate this great gift, Jewish guys must have their foreskins slit, an agony that competes with the pain of childbirth, thereby undercutting the uniqueness of female suffering in the creation of life. (Also, with the rise of social order and the power of pen over sword, older men with broader knowledge of sacred texts and laws gained prestige and control of the spiritual/moral order. As it took much longer for men to become educated than to master hunting and/or fighting, which advantaged younger men, the locus of power within the society shifted toward older age.)
But other problems arose with the man’s projection of his 'metaphorizing' psyche onto the universe and spiritual/magical/mysterious realm. As mankind grew cleaner and more orderly, it became more mindful of the qualities of beauty independent of the power of booty. Among hairy and smelly chimpanzees, beauty is secondary if at all relevant. Male chimps feel horny and will hump just about any female, which is why there’s so much Harold-and-Maude action in the ape world. A young chimpanzee will not only hump young apesses but mature apesses and even apesses. All they know is that their balls are packed and their penises are ready to go, so any female with a hole will do, and female chimps feel mighty horny too and will gladly be humped by any male. Among primitive human societies(that still exist in the world), beauty is less of a factor than in advanced ones. Among black African societies, a woman is prized for health and energy, and this is mainly judged by watching her shake her booty. If you can shake that booty — the batteries or 'butteries' storing much caloric content — , you must be the kind of 'ho' who can cook meals for a man, bear many children, and still have energy left to stick out your ass for humping. Thus, black African societies were more about the value of female booty than female beauty(and the black influence is turning the West more into a booty paradise than beauty palace, especially as white women on 'booty call' go with black men and have children with simian features). As survival is difficult under trying conditions, a woman is worthless no matter how pretty she may be if she can't be tough, and this toughness is judged by the ability of her butt to get down and boogie-woogie. (Not for nothing have white people, especially the 'karens', been associated with 'fragility' vis-a-vis blacks. And yet, the PC solution to 'white fragility' isn't white honesty and boldness but even more fragile sensitivity in relation to blacks. According to race-hustlers, white people should stop being so cautious and timid about race matters and just prostrate themselves with raw passion at the feet of blacks. In other words, the abandonment of fragility isn't strength but more servility, even slavishness to the Other. The notion of 'white fragility' is dual in character. On the one hand, it assumes that whites are privileged & powerful over blacks and afraid to address this issue lest they give offense. This perspective assumes that many white people are well-meaning and 'anti-racist' but know all too well that the legacy of slavery & past discrimination and structures of 'systemic racism' work in their favor. They want to be good to blacks but lack the boldness to address and repair the deeper problems that hold blacks back. But another aspect of the 'fragility' theory rests on the observation that blacks are tougher and more vibrant whereas whites are bland and colorless. Therefore, whites, as the fragile race, should revere and serve blacks as the hardy race.) But in more advanced societies, there developed the surplus of food, and women(at least of higher classes) could be protected and sheltered from daily hardships. Thus, they could devote more time toward being beautiful. Of course, one could be beautiful and healthy, and indeed health(and strength) was of paramount importance in the 'bootistic' world of black Africa. While black African males preferred beauty and booty, the booty-minus-beauty was nevertheless preferred over beauty-minus-booty as a woman had to be tough to skin and cook an animal that her man done bring from the hunt and then stick her ass out in the evening to be humped all night long as Negroes had nothing on their mind but hollering and humping. And if an elephant or lion roamed into the village, the woman had to pick up her child in one arm and hold a clay pottery on her head and run like a mothafuc*a right as her man with other Negroes tried to hold back the wild beast. But in a civilized setting, powerful men could select women for their beauty alone — even if they weren’t the healthiest or fittest — and shelter them in their own perfumed paradisiacal world devoted to making themselves beautiful and fragrant for rich or powerful men. Thus, beauty could be separated from booty, and one notices that Egyptian sculptures and paintings don’t much emphasize the jiveass booty that be driving the Negroes wild. In time, beauty became conceptualized and appreciated as an essence — almost spiritual in quality — divorced from the ways of nature. Also, as beauty came to be seen and appreciated as something fine and elegant, there arose, especially in Europe and Asia, the ideal of beauty that favored the pale and sickly female over the robust and hale one, and this meant that the elites preferred to marry the Heathers or Hitomis than the Helgas or Hamakos.
Then, it is no wonder that the British elites became more fairy-like over the generations. It was as if beauty was distilled from nature in the way that certain chemicals are extracted from plants. Beauty came to be purified as an essence apart from the power of the booty. This was likely the case with the Ancient Egyptians, and perhaps this was one of the reasons as to why Egyptian civilization lost its dynamism and remained more or less static for thousands of years. Maybe the elites believed that they had bottled the essence of beauty as perfection, of both body and mind, and therefore, their civilizational purpose was to preserve this essence like wine in the cellar. Egyptians created some of the most beautiful art and images, but one hardly senses the element of dynamism. Also, it’s as if Egyptians were so enamored of beauty as spiritual essence that a certain androgyny took hold of the Egyptian imagination. In many images, the male and female seem less like different sexes than different variations of the single conceptualized beauty. Men and women are often seen sitting side by side, almost identical to one another in many respects. Men and women are also depicted in poses that seem remarkably similar. Though men are distinct from the women, a powerful sense of the masculine is absent. There’s a refined and pacific quality even about the men, as if their role is to be in harmonic alignment with the cosmic order of things — they seem like constellations — than to think or act individually. There is also the sense of beauty as a universal ideal, not to be confused with the notion that all things are equally beautiful. Egyptians were not egalitarians and understood beauty to be a rarity. Rather, their art suggests that all things beautiful conform to the cosmic ideal of essential forms. Thus, especially in Egyptian paintings, everyone of quality looks more or less alike. Instead of seeing beauty as a unique quality varying from individual to individual, Egyptians emphasized it as an essential/spiritual quality that unifies all that are deemed beautiful — animal beauty, especially of cats and hawks, is depicted in much the same way, and of course, some Egyptian deities were part-man and part-animal. This was less so in Egyptian sculpture than in paintings; the androgynous facial features and bodily shape of Akhenaten cannot be mistaken for anyone else. Even so, many Egyptian sculptures are not as individually distinct as the ones by the Greeks and Romans, and many of them depict different rulers in more or less standardized forms and poses. Also, the attire, very prominent and virtually the same through eons, commands more attention than the faces. In the Temple of Ramses II, the sculptures of the gods Ptah, Amun-Re, and Re-Harakhte are hardly distinguishable from Ramses II himself. Perhaps, it was because Egyptians believed the Pharaohs were regenerations of the same god, like Jack Torrance is the eternal keeper of the Overlook Hotel THE SHINING(and never to be its master, just like the seeker of the parable in THE TRIAL was meant to stand outside the gate, never to enter it); of course, Torrance wants to be master than remain eternal-servant; in the modern era, Jews stopped serving God and chose to serve themselves as gods — the film HEREDITARY is a manifesto of this Jewish satanism. Anyway, each pharaoh was yet another incarnation of the same god, implying that individuality is subservient to continuity. Thus, the pharaoh was less an engine of will than a palanquin of myth. And such concept may have influenced their view of sexual differences, i.e. that men and women are merely different manifestations of the same essence. The series of pharaohs came to blend into a single essence, especially with their prominent cobra-shaped headdresses, and it's fitting that the Egyptian-inspired Eternals in ZARDOZ disdain individual initiative. They are all part of the eternal unity, and it's heresy for anyone to individually deviate from the consensus.
Greeks were notably different from Egyptians in how they at once distilled/purified beauty as an essence and vitalized its dynamic connection to the power of nature. Thus, Greek art is both beautiful and lively. Timeless beauty is animated by urgency. Greeks didn’t believe in the transmutation or transmigration of souls but instead believed each individual had a distinct soul that lived one life and then faded into the underworld; this individualistic spirit was projected onto their gods, each of whom was distinct in personality, appearance, and style. This became even more so as gods were often featured as characters in plays and creative storytelling. If the Ancient Hebrews prayed and meditated and waited for messages from God, the Greeks interacted with their gods through the creative process and performing arts. Granted, not all Greeks were the same across regions, but then, these very differences were signs of their fiercely independent spirit. Each Greek city state emphasized and proudly guarded its unique qualities. Athens was marked by strict divisions between the sexes and steeped in arts and ideas; it was also heavily invested in trade and adventure. Sparta was indifferent to arts & culture(or one might say it expected Spartan citizens themselves to be molded into works of art, living objects of strength and beauty), disdained the outside world(with which trade was kept to minimum necessity), and was essentially an autarky of warriors & slaves(and oddly the only major city state that enslaved fellow Greeks as well as non-Greeks). But because the men were obsessed about health and strength, they valued the same qualities in the women, and on that level, the sexes were more equal(in feistiness and fighting spirit) in Sparta than in Athens. (Perhaps, what conservative or austere states like Sparta feared most about artistic experiment and cultural freedom is the pollution produced by the cultural process. Even though cultural freedom can lead to great achievements in arts and expression, for every great work there are many terrible ones. For every sublime use of freedom, there are far more wasteful and perverse ones, even from great artists themselves. Just like lots of pollution result from the production of energy, lots of cultural pollution results from the creative process. It could be such byproducts of the cultural process are what conservative orders dread most. If greatness results from trial and error, society must be willing to bear many errors. Cultural freedom can produce songs like 'Yesterday' and 'God Only Knows' but also rap music and heavy metal retardation. Sadly, so much of what passes for 'greatness' is anything but, which makes things worse. And then, there are undeniably great works that can only have detrimental impact on society, such as the song 'Sympathy for the Devil'.) Spartan hyper-masculinity affected femininity as well, and as the men were usually busy training to fight(more often to suppress the huge slave population than to fend off outside enemies), women had to take charge and run much of the affairs. Also, women were brought to taunt men for not being tough enough. Paradoxically, the cult of toughness led Spartan men to 'cuck' their wives to tougher men. Men deemed not-tough-enough became servile to tougher men. (We are seeing a similar phenomenon in the US, a nation defined by hyper manhood and sports culture. American idols have been cowboys, gangsters, and star athletes. Every American man wants to be an alpha male, so when he falls short of the much-obsessed idol-ideal, he becomes especially slavish to the proven alpha male. The cult of tough manhood has made white males suck up to blacks and even cuck their women to Negroes. A nationalist and humanist conception of toughness would require each man to be tough to the best of his abilities for himself, his family, and nation. But idolatrous/supremacist cult of toughness in America means that the top dogs of sports & pop culture must be adulated as demigods. So, the cult of toughness, in making white guys cuck to tougher blacks, has actually made white men weaker and wussier. And that will be the fall of the white race. Notice how blacks attack and destroy communities, but white wimps blabber 'black lives matter'. Though BLM is sold as sympathy for blacks-as-victims, it is really idolization of blacks as above-the-law because they are so tough and 'badass'.) So, the relative sexual equality of Sparta was deceptive. For women to have more ‘rights’, they had to be like men themselves, as was the case with women in communist states, i.e. equality as fellow comrades expected to carry the same load. Women were ‘equal’ as the ‘other men’ who also happened to have babies. Athens, in contrast, permitted less freedom for women, but the women there could be womanly in the way that Spartan women could not. Since Athenian women could be womanly, they developed differently from the men, and as Athenian men were involved in trade, arts, and callings other than warfare, there was less need for women to "do the jobs that men won’t do". Even National Socialist Germany, which ideally intended women to be wives and mothers, went into Spartan mode and recruited women for heavy industry as so many men were fighting on two fronts. Though Spartan society was part of advanced civilization, its emphasis on militarism made it prioritize the booty as much as the beauty, but then, the kind of beauty it prized most was masculine than feminine, as Spartan boys were raised and trained to become lovers of their male mentors. Spartan girls were taught to dance whereby their buttocks would be drummed by their heels as they jumped up repeatedly to fold their knees. It was a kind of dance practiced among certain black African tribes, and Spartans trained to be the most bad-ass people in the Peloponnese. Spartans were into beauty but one equally wedded or welded to the power of booty, though to be sure, Spartan booty-politics wasn’t funky like the Negro kind. Spartan women were admired for their health and beauty, but they were less feminine than other Greek women.
The mind of Greek civilization was Athens, and even though it accorded fewer freedoms to women than Sparta, its central deity was Athena, a most strange goddess whose qualities and characteristics were as male as female. But she wasn’t just the fusion of power and beauty(like Priss of BUBBLEGUM CRISIS) but of mind and heart(like Sylia Stringray of the same series); though Athena can be awfully vain and ruthless, she is also capable of compassion and even a degree of remorse(as in the story of Arachne). While Demeter is nicer than Athena, it flows from her character than wisdom. Being peaceful and giving is her nature, just like dogs are bred to be gentle and loyal. Athena, in contrast, is a thinking goddess — which sets her apart from Diana as well, the emotive goddess — , and therefore, Athena can think bad thoughts and good thoughts; whatever she chooses to do is an act of conscious will, and in this sense, she is the first truly moral deity if we define morality as a struggle within the soul to do the right thing. Therefore, to say Athena is a moral goddess doesn’t mean she is an embodiment of moral perfection; rather, it means that there is a conscientious struggle in her thoughts and actions, and as such, upon acting on impulse and causing undue harm, there is the possibility of reflection, even revelation.
This aspect of thoughtfulness, the sense that neither wild nature nor human nature need be fixed or 'determined' and that man and his world can be altered through thought and action, made her appealing to the Athenians who valued the art of reflection and transformation. At any rate, the politics of 'sexology' of the Greeks could never be simple because the Greeks, more than any other people of the Ancient World, had a keen appreciation of beauty. Though men can be beautiful, there is something feminine about the very concept of beauty(with the power of allure), and indeed the element of grace in Greek art makes even the male figures seem somewhat fine, even effete, so different from National Socialist Art where male figures are purely masculine and even female figures seem stiff and rigid.
Josef Thorak’s sculptures of female nudes look ridiculous in the disconnect of the head and arms from the rest of the body. The heads and arms are positioned to convey lightness and gaiety, but the stiffly erect bodies suggest boot camp, and of course, Adolf Hitler loved Thorak’s art because his agenda was to militarize ‘Aryan’ beauty into racial dogma. It’s grace as mace. Or look at the female figure(below) in this work by Thorak where she exhibits bliss from neck up but her body seems at attention in military barracks. It’s as if, even in love, the body must conform to duty to the state. It also looks like her thighs have been glued together.
Given the centrality of beauty in Greek Art and the prominence of homosexuals in talent, Greek 'sexology' couldn't be a simple one of the male principle at odds with female principle. Even though warrior men fight over Helen of Troy in THE ILIAD, the conflict was actually instigated by the vanity of three goddesses who come to play the most active/decisive role as Zeus chose the role of neutral observer, sort of like a referee. There was also the fiery personality of the Greeks, which often made for crazy female passions, a trait that lives on to this day and may well be the most prominent remnant of ancient legacy. Though all cultures have their share of bilious bitches, wailing wenches, and drama queens, angry Greek women take the cake in stories such as Clytemnestra's revenge plot against her husband Agamemnon, Medea getting even with Jason by murdering her two children, and other spectacularly outrageous acts. Of course, the vengeful women have their reasons — there are times when Hera too wishes she could wring Zeus’s neck — , and it’s not a simple matter of good vs evil, but when Greek women get angry, they lose their heads and go to hell and back to fulfill their vendetta. This is very different from an archetypal Anglo woman like Queen Elizabeth who was cold and ruthless, shades of which could be seen in Margaret Thatcher. For Elizabeth and Thatcher, it was never a zero-sum game but a calculated strategy of maximum gain and minimum loss. In contrast, an angry Greek woman doesn't care if everything burns down as long as she gets her wish — Lady Kaeda of Kurosawa's RAN may owe something to Greek tradition. Greek women give Southern Italian women run for the money in outrage theatrics; whereas Italian women throw fits with knowing exaggeration(as a form of emotional haggling), the emotions run truer and hotter with Greek women. While black ‘sheboons’ may be the craziest female creatures on the planet — even more so than female chimpanzees and baboons — , black craziness isn’t really craziness as craziness is the norm among blacks. So, when blacks are acting wild and crazy, they just being theyselves. In contrast, Greek women can be sane and civilized(and usually are), but their emotions can combust out of control. Even the angry Irish woman is no match for the raging Greekess. It's the difference between a hot iron and a flame thrower. And when it comes to vanity, Greek women are top contenders, as if the song "You’re So Vain" was written for them. Even Athena, the most thoughtful of the gods, promises Paris that she will lay all of Greece to waste if she is given the golden apple. So, even though ancient Greece was hardly sexually ‘enlightened’ or ‘egalitarian’ by modern standards, Greek men were deeply fearful of Greek women. Though he might beat her and put her in her place, she might cut off his balls when he's sleeping or kill the children, even if it means punishment by death. (SHUTTER ISLAND and INCEPTION with the crazy woman haunting or hounding the man owes something to Greek drama. The former's conflict between reality and fantasy probably appealed to the side of Martin Scorsese who dealt with a similar scenario in THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST.) A riled-up Greek woman doesn’t care what happens to her as long as she gets her revenge, and there's hardly any humor to leaven the situation, unlike with a Jewess or Southern Italian woman. A traditional Japanese woman wronged by her man might weep and kill herself, but a Greek woman could very well slit his throat or cut off his balls and kill the kids before killing herself or being executed. In contrast, Anglo women vent their cold fury with the silent treatment, wit & irony, dry contempt, or machinations of the law. The contrast between the Sicilian way and the Anglo way is interesting in THE GODFATHER I & II, especially as it plays out between Michael and Kay. In some ways, Kay retains her Anglo-American ‘prudish’ sense of right-and-wrong and coldly accomplishes what she believes to be the right thing; she aborts her son because ‘this Sicilian thing must end’. And yet, there’s a certain irony, as if the Mediterranean soul finally got to her because her act of killing the baby to punish the father is reminiscent of Medea destroying her own children. Kay's action was in a way coldly rational and morally logical, but it was also something that a crazy Greek woman would do. It’s as if the Anglo-American side of her fused with vendetta-driven Mediterranean womanhood. (It was noted that Apollonia, whom Michael marries in Sicily, looks more Greek than Italian. She is as different from Kay as anyone can imagine, but the Michael-Kay friction becomes like a Greek Tragedy.) Anyway, because Greek women could be plenty crazy when push came to shove, Greek men couldn't feel secure in their manhood. Spartan mothers and wives could be overbearing with their boys/men for falling short of the manly ideal. Also, the hedonistic and sensual aspects of Greek civilization encouraged men to indulge in pleasures, and this had the effect of making Greek wives angrier. In a culture where most men work, come home for dinner, and play the role of dutiful husband, wives can be more-or-less content. And Christianity, especially the Protestant kind in the North, did much to tame male social behavior toward fidelity to wife and family. But before the rise of Christianity, pagan Greek and Roman men indulged in excess drinking and whoring and returned home to find their angry wives wanting to cut off their balls. The way of Mediterranean men can bring out the 'Mediterranean women' even among women who are not Mediterranean. (The great irony of THE GODFATHER is Kay took revenge on Michael who was a faithful husband, unlike Sonny and even Tom Hagen, who, we learn, has a mistress to the disapproval of Michael — a sign of lack of loyalty.) Think of the Jewish wives of Jake LaMotta(the first wife before he marries Vicky) and Henry Hill in RAGING BULL and GOODFELLAS. The husbands fool around and make the wives howl like crazy Italian women. LaMotta’s first wife tosses all his clothes out the window, and Karen the Jewess holds a gun to Henry’s head when he awakens.
There is also the wife/whore complex, as in CASINO. If some cultures idealized 'maids' into wives, others fetishized 'whores' into wives. Maids-into-wives tend to be more accepting of the ways of men, whereas whores-into-wives demand respect and special favors for having sacrificed sensuality for home and hearth. Consider Ginger(Sharon Stone) in CASINO. She’s unstable and vindictive because she feels she gave up her true nature for fidelity. It’s as if Greek women are animated by the whore-into-wife syndrome. Their attitude is "I, a fiery goddess, gave up so much to be a loyal wife that my hubby better appreciate me, or I'll cut off his balls." In contrast, something like maid-into-wife mentality prevailed in Japan where, traditionally at least, women have quietly accepted their lot in life without complaint. It’s possible that the maid-into-wife mentality also prevailed in Northern Europe — at least outside Celtic regions where the women were plenty nuts — ;however, it could be women became more independent not so much because they grew stronger but because men grew weaker. It's worth asking to what extent the so-called women’s movement emerged as the result of women feeling stronger or men feeling weaker. If the women’s movement was a response to male oppression, why didn’t it flourish where men were most controlling of their women, places like the Middle East, Hindu India, and East Asia? If anything, most women in such societies accepted their roles without complaint or bitter silence. Rather, it was in the West where the men were least ‘oppressive’ toward women that women began to rise up and demand more ‘rights’. Did Western women sense weakness in Western men, and was this the real impetus for the women’s movement, i.e. not so much because men were pushy but because they were pushovers? If indeed Western men had been as brusque and hard-lined about sexual roles, would or could Western women have demanded and gotten what they did? On the other hand, one could just as easily argue that it was the growing power of Western men, as groups and as individuals, that inspired Western women to seek power too, as helpful partners than hostile rivals of white men; and white fathers raised their daughters to be educated and proud than ignorant and servile. Like father like daughter. After all, if demasculinization of men leads to rise of women power, why didn’t this happen in non-West communities where many men were forced to keep their heads bowed low? Lower caste Hindus couldn’t be the big men about town. Japanese village men couldn’t swagger around like samurai but kept their heads bowed like in SEVEN SAMURAI. And yet, in all such places, even though so many men had been ‘pussified’ by the ruling elites, the women didn’t ‘smell the blood’ and demand woman power. And in the American South, black men had to ho-de-do and shuffle and say "mornin’ massuh" when they was slaves, but this didn’t lead to any rebellion among black women. (Females follow males. So, if lower men are forced to bow down, lower women do likewise or bow down lower. So, men-at-top had to be free before men below could also be free, and then women-at-top sought freedom followed by women below. Or men-and-women-at-top had to be free before men-and-women could also seek freedom.) Perhaps, what was needed for the women’s movement was a combination of mass empowerment and demasculinization of culture. As long as most people were repressed by the elites, women of the lower classes saw their men keeping their heads low. If their men were afraid of the master class, they had to be doubly afraid as the weaker sex, unless the lower women were favored over the lower men by the Power, especially by offering sexual favors — consider cases where the conquering power ruthlessly suppressed the defeated men but offered favors to women if they put out. But in a social order where all men are considered equal and imbued with the same rights, the average man is likely to stand his ground and demand his rights. For all men to be 'equal', raw masculinity must be sacrificed in favor of brotherhood-of-man uniting alphas and betas. Then, the average woman takes her cue from the free Average Man. But if men acted like Big Boss Man, Sonny Corleone, or Alec Baldwin(in GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS), most women would realize the violence-inherent-in-the-system and stick to baking cookies. Modern Society favored the beta man over the alpha man(among both elites and the masses). Only then could most men be free. But in being thus free, they ended up with less manhood, and that meant women noticed less masculine authority. (There is also the factor of machines. Even though the rise of technology made the West far more powerful than the non-West and this fact, at least for a time, made white men seem mightier than non-white men around the world, the machines also robbed white men of manhood as machines did most of the heavy-lifting. A man with a gun is deadlier than a man with a sword, but the gun robs him of manhood far more than a sword ever could. Even a weakling can be deadly with a gun whereas a swordsman must be strong and skilled to use the weapon properly. Technology made white men seem mightier than all the rest, but the rise of mass sports had a 'white man unplugged' effect. Without machines and just man-to-man, white males were destroyed at the feet of the naturally tougher Negro, and this had a most devastating impact on the West though, in utter denial, white people pretend all is hunky-dory and wonderful as they cheer on the Negroes as evidence of their 'anti-racist' virtue.)
But ideas originate at the top and flow downward. So, despite all the noises about women-below taking on men-at-the-top, it was really about women-at-top vs. men-at-top. (Also, many rich fathers favored their daughters in privilege and status over lower-class men, thereby facilitating female power at the top.) Same with the whole homo agenda business. Jews and homos conspired to take control of the elites, and then white and black elites followed(if only for more money and favors), and then it was pushed on the masses via mass media and education. That the elites would be more conducive to social change or 'progress' would seem counter-intuitive as they've been traditionally associated with privilege, oppression, repression, exploitation, and status quo so as to preserve their own power and wealth. (Indeed, the most consequential revolutions were the result of resentful lower-elites toppling complacent, decadent, and/or unimaginative upper-elites. There have been cases of angry mobs bringing down the system, but sacking and pillaging without governing principles and guiding hand usually peter out, and order is eventually re-established with brute force by new would-be tyrants. Mobs, without vision and memory, destroy one order only to see it replaced with a similar kind of order ruled by the new boss.) While those features of elitism are very much alive in brutal and subtle ways, the elites have an Achilles’ Heel. One might say the elites are more enlightened because they are more educated, which is true to a degree, but the key factor is their vanity of reputation. (Also, if one was born into the elite world surrounded with excess privilege and without the roughhousing of reality, one is less likely to have fighting spirit and survival instinct.) Because of elite status vanity and the sensitivities of power, elites and their imitators anxious to justify their image of privilege before the eyes of the world. It simply won't do to claim they deserve more due to greed or ruthlessness. A loftier rationale is necessary, be it spirituality, morality, or nobility, which, though seemingly amoral, can be morally justified on the basis that the elites serve as the warrior-caste that defends the domain from would-be invaders. Of course, elite rationales for power/privilege change over time. Today, an illegal immigrant demanding amnesty won't get much sympathy from a hard-working average American. But, upon hearing such a plea, the elites are keen to appear wise, understanding, and sympathetic. It’s like John McCain was hungry for the approval of the New York Times even after it dragged him through the mud during the 2008 election. NY Times serves as the arbiter of elite opinion, and McCain cared more about what New York Jews thought of him than Republican voters in Arizona did; of course, New York Jews are vocal elites whereas most Republicans are members of the 'silent majority' soon to become the silenced minority.
The elites don’t just thrive on power and money but on the reputation of appearing ‘fine’ and ‘enlightened’, which can make them ‘soft’ on a host of issues. Consider today's British elites. Ever so anxious to appear jolly good ‘tolerant’ and ‘decent’, as well as pious and reverent, in a world of Political Correctness, British elites fall all over each other to parade their allegiance to the Holy Three of Jews, Homos, and Negroes. The British elites are deathly afraid of being shunned and disliked for having the ‘wrong’ and 'crude' kind of ideas deemed unworthy of genteel elements and associated with lower 'bad' whites. Now, there is much to be said of manners and decorum, and it’s also true that civility can soften arrogance, snobbery, and contempt. But, there is the serious problem of facade over factuality, endangering the future of civilization. (And 'truth' isn't only about factual ways of the world but what is deemed sacred and worth preserving. A civilization isn't just about an 'objective' set of 'good' ideas over the 'bad' but a subjective and impassioned vision of what must be. After all, Jewishness isn't merely historiography, anthropology, and/or archaeology but an insistence that Jews must survive as a people and culture with a certain destiny. Any civilization based on 'may the best man win' cannot survive. It means your people should surrender to another people just because they are smarter, stronger, more numerous, or more cunning. You see, they are 'better' in the ways of power. When whites realized that blacks could kick their butts, they should have chosen the subjective imperative and realized the threat posed by blacks against whites, i.e. tougher blacks would rob whites of manhood, and then, white girls would lose respect for white men and flock to Negroes, thereby turning white men into wussy cucky-wucks. But whites settled for 'may the best man win' and came to idolize blacks as the real superior race and champs of sports. The result is pretty dire in both US and EU. White surrender to Jews as the smarter people on the basis of 'may the best man win' led to Jews taking over all elite institutions and spreading white shame-guilt-suicide. Meritocracy is a good thing but only when it's intra-meritocracy within one people; inter-meritocracy that permits other groups to compete with your own can lead to decisive defeat, humiliation, and demise. It is why the original Greek Olympics were open only to Greeks, not to non-Greek 'barbarians' who might beat Greeks at their own game.) Any sensible person knows from observation that Europe will cease to be part of Western Civilization if it is flooded with hordes of Muslims and black Africans, but alas, Western elites are too vain and narcissistic(as well as craven) to say so because their sensitivities prioritize winning the approval of Jews, homos, and token non-whites that lends white elites the chimera of happy ‘inclusion’ and we’ve-come-a-long-way ‘progress’.
Imagine a hotel that is about to burn down because the lower floors have been taken over by non-whites from the Third World who ignore fire hazards and safety procedures. Suppose their crude ways also fill the lower floors with rats and other pests. Suppose the upper floors are inhabited by the elites who come and go on helicopters at the rooftop. Suppose the rat problem becomes so serious that some even creep into the upper floors, but suppose white elites pretend not to notice because noticing may provoke 'rude' comments about blacks and browns on the lower floors; God forbid candid discussions of black savagery and brown barbarity that might offend the non-white elites and their Jewish and homo sponsors with whom the white elites shmooze and seek approval from. So, the white elites pretend not to see the rats or even blame other whites(usually those in the middle floors) for not spending enough money on pest control, all the while willfully suppressing the fact that the problem is largely the result of darky masses having filled up the lower floors. Suppose whites in the middle floors complain to elite whites in the upper floors that they are threatened and undermined by blacks and browns from below, but the only response that whites-in-the-middle get from whites-at-the-top is the admonition "you are a racist" and "we will lock you up for hate speech if you say that again". And if the entire hotel were to finally go up in flames, the elites can fly off in their helicopters to another part of the world to enjoy their privilege and goodies(and of course they will be rewarded by Jewish globalists who value white cuck-collaborators while murderously hating white liberationists who call for resistance against Jewish Supremacism). This is why true conservatives at this point in history must go into national-socialist mode. Libertarianism is useless because white masses will only champion rich capitalists and successful/powerful elites, most of whom are not onboard with the globalist Zionist homo program.
Anyway, even though most Greek societies were ‘male-dominated’, Greek women were plenty crazy, and this quality was both prized and feared by Greek men. It was prized because the Greek man expected his woman not merely to obey but fiercely stand by his side. He wanted a woman who is passionately possessive of her children and willing to go to Hades and back for the family, whether it be haggling at the market or screaming curses at whomever insulted the family honor. Especially because the ideal of Greek male-hood called for Apollonian order, moderation, and self-control, the Greek male came to rely on the woman to play the part of his Id, as illustrated in Greek myths. As Zeus is supposed to be the great God who remains above the fray, he rarely blows his top. But he is not above using his wife and daughters as proxies for his emotions. So it was with Greek men as well. They aspired to the ideal of the balanced individual, and so, it was up to their wives to do the screaming. (People and dogs are the same way. Humans keep their poise while dogs do the barking.) Thus, if in some cultures men fight and women watch, in Greek society the reverse was not uncommon. So, if a man was married to a woman who wasn't fierce enough and couldn’t scream and out-shout the woman of another man, she was no good. And since Greek men grew up under such mothers — fierce, ferocious, protective, possessive — , they sought such traits in their brides. So, even though Greek society was ‘male-dominated’, it was female-fueled. Greek mothers, in their ferocity, had high expectations of their sons, but their possessiveness and protectiveness also turned Greek men into mama’s boys, though not on the scandalous scale of Italian boys. When Mussolini’s Italy attacked Greece, we saw the difference between wimpy mama’s boys and tough mama’s boys. Greek boys, when push comes to shove, will fight, whereas Italian boys may act tough, but when the going gets tough, they shit their pants and run off to their mamas. If a Greek boy ran to her mother like a coward, even her protectiveness would wilt at the sight of the pathetic loser, but an Italian mother will hug and hide her son no matter how he wimpy he acts. Because of the preponderance of organized crime in Italy, many people tend to associate Italians with toughness. But gangsters are essentially bullies who prey on the weak, so they cannot thrive unless cowardice is the prevailing mode within the community. If the Wild West had been filled with Italians, criminal gunslingers would have dug their claws in deeper. Why is crime so pervasive in Mexico? Is it because Mexicans are tougher than other people? No, it’s because too many Mexicans don’t have the guts and spine to come together to fight the criminal gangs and demand a legal system that really works. Mexico failed to produce Wyatto Earpez.
Greeks were also cultists of nudity, and this had a dualistic effect on Greek sexological psychology. On the one hand, the nude images accentuated the differences between the male and female. Look at nude images long enough, and maleness becomes associated with muscle and penis, and femaleness becomes associated with breasts and pooter(though some say 'cooter'). But nakedness also has a blurring and unifying effect since nudity becomes a common theme for both male and female forms. Also, clothing throughout history was designed not only to cover up naked sexual differences but to highlight and expand on the differences in other ways, which is why men and women wore very different kinds of clothing. It is no wonder that Sparta required both boys and girls to train in the nude as everyone felt the ‘same’ and ‘united’ in their nudity, something Plato praised in THE REPUBLIC. Besides, because of the ideal of moderation and balance in Greek art, there was a tendency of restraint from ‘extreme’ depictions of maleness as opposed to femaleness. Most Greek sculptures of the male form have figures with flaccid weenies, and most sculptures of the female form don’t emphasize humongous ‘titties’ and ‘big asses’. Male figures, though fit and firm, are not bulging in muscle like Lou Ferrigno. Also, as many Greek artists were likely homosexual, many male sculptures have an air of grace that may be thought to be somewhat effete. So, the Greek world, though ‘male dominated’, was never simple in its politics of sexology.
Given that Jewish culture and religion had only one God who was thought to be a patriarchal figure, one could say the Jewish way was more elementary in its sexology. Also, whereas many Greek myths were romantic and heroic in nature, conveying the poetics of love beyond biology/sex, there is little in the way of romance to be found in Jewish religion. Discovery of sex is associated with the deceitful Serpent that loses its limbs and becomes venomous in bite AND with the pain of childbirth as punishment for Eve. As man became separated from the miraculously productive and protective power of God in the Garden of Eden, he must fend for himself, make his own food, face death, and create life in the form of progeny as mortality shall overcome him(and all of his descendants). Of course, Greeks faced the same challenges of life(and held their own skeptical views of women and sex), but the two cultures emphasized different facets of life. Greeks believed in a less moral(or less moralist) set of gods and had a less certain sense of cosmic order than the Jews; it also meant they were freer in thought and without sin. (They were deeply flawed and fallen since the Golden Age, but as the gods had the same imperfections, the notion of 'sin' was a hard sell among the Greeks. Sin arises from exile from perfection, but as neither gods nor humans are perfect in Greek cosmology, there is no perfect grace to contrast the human stain.) If there is only one God who happens to be perfect, then there must be a perfect set of rules for mankind. Since mankind can't help but stray from these rules, it is bound to feel guilty at all times, which explains the gravity of tone throughout the Bible, with man being ever aware of God's judging eyes. (When Jews alone believed in the one-and-only God, they took pride in the power of morality. They were more moral as God was on their side whereas the pagans were amoral or downright immoral, what with their wanton worship of false idols. But once the goyim claimed God as their own via Christianity and then Islam, they became arch-moralists with God on their side, and this moralism was often directed against Jews as Christ-killers or Prophet-deniers. Divine monotheist moralism, once the pride of the Jews, came to be directed against them. Then, it is no wonder that Jews became less moralistic over the years, at least in mocking the morality of goyim who claimed to have God on their side. But mocking the God of Christians and Muslims was bound to be a sensitive issue. It was one thing for moralistic Jews to deride the amorality of false pagan gods but quite another to mock the God of Christians and Muslims who is the same God as of the Jews. Jews had to find a way to demean the Christian and Muslim interpretation of God without defaming God Himself, a truly slippery matter. But then, Christians and Muslims also did this. Even as Christians claimed to believe in the God of the Jewish Bible, they made a distinction between Old Testament God and New Testament God. But if there is only one God and if He was always perfect, how could He go from less perfect Old God to the more perfect New God? As for Muslims, they claimed that both the Torah and New Testament were corruptions of God's true message to mankind as finally revealed by Muhammad. Anyway, the problem with Jewish revilement of Christian/Islam moralism was that they could end up tossing out Jewish moralism as well, baby with the bathwater. Resentful of how Christians and Muslims came to invoke God's judgmentalism as their own moral arsenal, some Jews have rejected moralism whole hog and adopted neo-satanism as the basis for the new covenant with history. And with it came worldly power like never seen before. But can such an evil pact have lasting value?) But if a culture believes in many gods who aren't perfect, then guilt will be less of a factor. A less judgmental order is bound to inspire imagination beyond notions of moral duties and obligations. As such, romanticism of heroes and heroines comes alive, and Greek myths are renowned for beauty and wonder. Many are borne of free flight of the imagination, the vision of ‘happily ever after’, though the multifaceted Greeks were well aware of the darkness behind every corner and the ultimate futility of everything. Thus, every triumph is marred by tragedy, such as Theseus returning victoriously but inadvertently causing the death of his father. Perseus too accidentally kills his father following the great triumph of saving Andromeda from Greco-Godzilla. (But then, what is romanticism without tragic sense? The moment becomes special precisely because it can't last. This explains why romanticism attained its greatest depth with the Germans who had among the darkest visions of gods and heroes.)
This element of Greek mythology is found in TWILIGHT where the love between Edward and Bella goes far beyond biology and morality. Bella is not content with the human dimension of love. She longs for the deification of love itself. Also, it isn't enough that Edward and she find each other attractive. She desires immortal Edward as the eternal principle of beauty. Even before she learns he’s a vampire, she senses the otherworldly in him. And in NEW MOON, she fears aging and wilting while Edward shall live on as the god of beauty. She wants to be the goddess of eternal beauty. (However, TWILIGHT fails to live up to its full romantic potential by forgoing myth for fairytale. Tragic love is forsaken for a pat happily-ever-after ending to soothe its target teeny audience. If Edward and Bella couldn't be together forever, both his immortality and her mortality would be tragic. She would wither and die, and he would forever be haunted by memory of her. The great romanticism of VERTIGO owes to its tragic content. Stephanie Meyer is like a combination of Stephen King and the female character of MISERY. She turned horror into happiness.) Though Greek mythology establishes a clear demarcation between mortals and immortals & even though mortals are fated to grow old and die, there is a sense that passion and genius can gain immortality even if people cannot. So, even if all the Greek heroes are fated to die, their impassioned quests take on a life of their own as timeless myths to be told and retold. And even though Greek warriors expected to die young, the glorious manner of death would become the stuff of legend. So thought Achilles who set the template for many Greek warriors who followed in his heels. Dying young may bring one closer to immortality than living to a ripe old age. As The Who sang, 'Hope I die before I get too old' in "My Generation". And as critic Nik Cohn wrote in his classic ROCK FROM THE BEGINNING, the Rolling Stones should have died in a plane crash at the height of their fame and been remembered thereafter for their youth than fade into a nostalgia act, a mere parody of themselves. Indeed, the sight of Rolling Stones today is something of a joke. Bruce Springsteen would be more legendary had he died soon after BORN IN THE USA, his last great album. And the cult of MLK would have been diminished had he not been killed or ‘martyred’ in 1968. And Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Bruce Lee’s legendary statures owed to death in or near their primes. To die at one's peak is to leave the perfect snapshot for posterity. Imagine Fellini’s reputation had he died right after 8½. People would forever believe he had more masterpieces in the works; but, he lived on to make one big dud after another. John Lennon gained more in death than Paul McCartney in life. As Yukio Mishima said of his idealized vision of pagan heaven, immortality is for those who die young, strong of heart and muscle. (Through the ages, young men harbored romantic dreams of war and glory in the face of death. Though they’d rather kill than be killed by the enemy, death wasn't their primary concern as their vision of heroic death was truth itself, as in THE WILD BUNCH and even PLATOON where Willem Dafoe dies a warrior-messiah. If they die, they go out with a bang, worthy warriors for Valhalla. But of course, reality is quite different. Many soldiers drop dead like flies[without even knowing they met death], and many return horribly wounded and must live out their lives in pain and misery, the lesson for 'Ron Kovic'[Tom Cruise] in BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY and Gary Sinise character in FORREST GUMP. Warrior heroism is a potent but simpleminded myth, and greater courage is necessary to live beyond visions of valor and glory. 'Kovic' clings to the ideal of simple heroism and duty to country, but as years go by, his fixations ring hollower, not so much because ideals of heroism and patriotism are foolish per se but because he’d swallowed them whole hog without a moment of reflection and vaingloriously thought the entire community/nation would love and honor him for it. Like Lee Harvey Oswald, 'Kovic' had an all-too-grandiose self-image, as a gungho patriot who would show others what a true hero is made of, but in truth, on the eve of his being shipped to boot camp, the entire community is oblivious to his sacrifice, and he runs to the prom to find some girl for consolation. [Oswald and Kovic were what might be called 'minilomaniacs'. Unlike megalomaniacs or self-centered egotists like 'Jim Morrison', Gordon Gekko, psycho in NATURAL BORN KILLERS, and Oliver Stone, both Oswald and Kovic needed to attach themselves to History or some higher cause to justify their existence. They wanted to be top soldiers of history than its prophets. For all their pride, they were eager for approval, or attention if approval wasn't forthcoming.] Ironically, even as 'Kovic' in the movie turns against the war, he needs to be a foot-soldier of the anti-war movement. He learned a valuable lesson about life but, in some respects, remained the same self who gives his heart 100% to a new cause. Anyway, it’s tough to fight and die, but it’s tougher to survive and live as a broken casualty of war. This is perhaps why some people were turned off by Clint Eastwood’s MILLION DOLLAR BABY. If many wounded war veterans, despite horrible injuries, find the strength to live, why should a film look upon ‘favorably’ or ‘sympathetically’ an act of euthanasia for a crippled athlete? Isn’t that ultimately a coward’s way out, not to mention an affront to God? Is life meaningful only in victory and meaningless in defeat? Isn’t it more courageous to live and make peace with one’s condition because life itself is the gift of God? All such concerns are morally valid, but I doubt the film was endorsing euthanasia as a universal solution for paraplegics. Rather, it was an existential decision made by a man who, after much soul-searching, felt he owed it to her, but he still walks away a broken man. And when someone cannot move from neck down, surely we can understand why he or she would want to opt out. Whatever our ideas about the sanctity of life, reality is something else. The notion of sanctity of life can be just as delusional as glory in war. When confronted with the particularities of a given reality, facing life can be just as traumatic as facing death. A thought exists only when we think it; reality is ever-present regardless of what we think or feel. Also, couldn't it be argued that modern medicine can paradoxically be crueler in keeping alive those who would have died in earlier times? Perhaps, the high rates of suicide among wounded soldiers returned from Iraq and Afghanistan have something to do with this. In earlier wars, they would have died ‘honorably’ in the battlefield, but the latest technology can save even horribly wounded soldiers. It has reduced the mortality rate but also kept alive many men who can barely function or bear to look at themselves in the mirror.)
Though Greek heroes often lived to a ripe old age, most of the stories end with or shortly after the great triumph of youth as the epic moment. For mankind, life is mostly mundane and finally mortal and only the odd moment is worthy of immortal remembrance; such moments are rare as gold. Greta Garbo, after sharing her beauty on the silver screen, receded from public life as if she’d vanished into thin air. She wanted the world to remember her as the luminous goddess in the movies. Bella of TWILIGHT becomes possessed with the same kind of vanity, especially beginning with NEW MOON, the best of the series. When she looks at a snapshot of Edward and herself, she folds her image into the back of the photo. She feels Edward’s eternal youth and beauty will come to eclipse her sure-to-fade looks. For her beauty to gain permanence, she must become immortal at the cost of losing her ‘soul’. Edward believes one can have one or the other but not both, but Stephanie Meyer the authoress suggests one can have both eternal body and soul(or beauty = soul), which is too greedy for romanticism, a hunger to have the cake and eat it too, which is typically Neo-American. Maybe Mormons are more apt to feel this way as they're more health-conscious, what with their proscriptions against unhealthy living and drugs. Also, as most Mormons have been ‘lily white’ and committed to maintaining clean/orderly communities, they could be more image-conscious than others. Evangelicals, on the other hand, tend to be sloppy, with hillbillies speaking in tongues, Negroes howling like apes, fat preachers talking like Sam Kinison, and biker-and-rock-and-roll types with tattoos looking more intoxicated with moonshine than the power of the Lord. Mormons, as people of both pious communion and pliable commerce, may be more adept at tip-toeing around contradictions.
Anyway, the deification of love and beauty would have been prohibited in ancient Jewish culture. It’s not that Jews were blind to beauty and disdainful of love, as the Song of Solomon dispels that notion, — though, to be sure, Jewish physical and personality traits may have been less inspiring for poetic fancy than those of pagan folks, especially Greeks and Egyptians — , but that everything in the Jewish Order had to be subservient to the laws laid down by God , the one and only Deity, the perfect one at that. Greeks sought perfection in human forms and ideas because they couldn't conceive of spiritual perfection. Gods were more powerful than mankind but fell short of perfection. Also, gods didn’t lay down strict laws for mankind as the Jewish God did through Moses. Rather, the Greek gods guided mankind to find its own truths; indeed this is the stark contrast between Moses and Odysseus. Greek mythology works more like case law whereas Jewish religion works more like legal absolutism. Experience counted for more than absolutes among the Greeks, and the gods served as guides in human experience than providers of infallible laws. God chose Moses as the One, and Moses was given a clear mission and set of laws. And God promised Moses and the Hebrews a return home from the bondage in Egypt, and this homeland, both an old place to return to and a new place to be conquered, wouldn’t merely be A home but THE home, indeed the one and only home of the Jews, just as their God was the one and only God. So, even though sometimes Moses loses it and disobeys God's orders, there is a clear spiritual force and moral instructions for his mission.
In contrast, the gods, especially Athena, only guide Odysseus, and there is no clear path into the future. They must improvise, be creative and resourceful, and find their own solutions and answers. The gods can guide them at times, but in the end, they must find their own way and discover their own meanings. Also, Odysseus seeks to return to HIS home. Thus, it’s more of a personal journey than a tribal journey. Yahweh's relation to Jews is far more powerful; He is more guarantor than guide. And unlike Greeks, each of whom must find his/her own way with the gods, the entire Jewish Tribe has an iron contract with God. The gods provide aid to Odysseus(while other gods obstruct his path) but nothing like what Yahweh, the one and only God, does for the Jews. At any rate, as the Jewish God and His laws are perfect, all-powerful, and totally truthful, it made no sense for Jews to conceive of perfection in human terms. As humans could never live up to the perfection of God, they were always unworthy and must do as He commanded(through the Prophets); indeed, the very notion of human perfection was pure hubris, sinful pride. Therefore, secular ideas or expression of human forms as models of perfection would have been deemed idolatrous. As only God possesses perfection(in a form or forms inaccessible to mankind), the role of man was to obey God with due diligence and be mindful of his fallen state. Of course, even as God wanted man to be as morally perfect as possible, the very notion of man's moral perfection threatened God's unique claim to perfection — the figure of Job certainly discovered that too-good maybe isn't so good. (Of course, even though God could be seen as the real instigator of all the troubles that befell Job, He relied on Satan to ostensibly goad Him on as plausible deniability — 'Satan made me do it' — , which is rather like what the devious general does in PATHS OF GLORY. He pulls the strings and makes other men do his bidding while he himself remains above it all.) This could be why God made Adam perfect in body and heart but imperfect in mind. Adam never meant to do harm and had a heart of gold, but he lacked knowledge and wisdom. After all, if he was perfect in body and heart AND in wisdom, he would have been the near-equal of God: not only made in the image of God but imbued with His knowledge, and knowledge is power. Without the wisdom and the knowledge, Adam of perfect body and heart fell under the spell of the Serpent. This is the central moral conundrum of God. If He, as a perfect God, wanted to create a perfect world of perfect men, He should have made each man into His equal in body, heart, mind, and soul, if not in power — but then, if beings are equal to God in goodness and wisdom, wouldn't they be deserving of the same power, that is if power belongs to the good and wise? But if God made every man into another quasi-god, then God could no longer be the one and only God as the world would be full of other perfect gods who are copies of Himself. If indeed God is all-powerful, one could argue He could make a copy of Himself, indeed infinite copies. He could have made Adam into a being as powerful, wise, and profound just like Himself. But then, God would no longer have been special. So, for Him to remain Him, He could only make inferior and imperfect creatures who possessed facets of Him but not the whole bagel. So, Adam and Even are imbued with some of God’s essence but far from the whole thing. Also, there is the Clu-syndrome factor in God creating another god. In TRON LEGACY, Flynn makes a cyber 'clone' or 'cyberone' of himself and names him Clu, and initially they are like twin-brothers in perfect symmetry. Flynn leaves Clu to do the heavy-lifting in constructing the Tronic universe while he himself finds more time for leisure, reflection, and meditation; and then, something hits him that doesn’t hit Clu.
He has a revelation, a vision of possibilities far beyond his conscious will and imagination. He thought he knew everything, but from deeper recesses of his mind/heart/soul a revelation arises that profoundly humbles his prior sense-of-self. If Clu is his perfect double, why did this revelation hit him but not Clu? Was it because Clu was too busy engineering the Tronic universe to have time for reflection that inadvertently unlocked the spontaneous emergence of vision? Or was it because Clu was a perfect copy of Flynn at a certain moment in life and therefore not a copy of Flynn’s total self as an organic evolving being? The fact that Clu doesn’t age like Flynn indicates that his ‘soul’ and ‘psyche’ are frozen in the moment he was created. Also, he was cyber-cloned with Flynn’s technology that perhaps couldn't copy the entire self even though Flynn thought it could. It’s like scientists once thought bottled milk was just as good for babies as mother’s breast milk, but later studies found out babies absorb additional nutrients through the nipples. A problem of science has been the tendency to declare the latest finding as the final and definitive one. It treats science as a product than an ongoing process. Consider all those PBS TV specials that stated with absolute certainty that all human races were entirely of the same genetic material. But, more recent studies have shown admixtures of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in the genetic makeup of Europeans and Asians. So, Clu is likely 99.99% of Flynn, but as with DNA, even the slightest difference can make all the difference, and it was that .01% that provided the spark of revelation that affected Flynn but not Clu. (A similar albeit reversed concept informs the premise of THE FLY, both the original and the remake by David Cronenberg. If Flynn thought he made a perfect copy of himself only to discover the deepest recess of his psyche wasn't passed onto Clu, the scientist in THE FLY does perfectly teleport his entire self from one pod to another, but it turns out another organism was transported along with him.)
Perhaps, in this sense, it’s good that God didn’t make perfect copies of Himself, because perfect copies, like Clu, would have condemned Him for 'changing'. There are, after all, two ways to define the perfection of God. One definition would indicate that God is eternally and perfectly the same, the ever constant Being fixed in crystalline perfection. But one could argue that what is really perfect about God is the process. Consider a butterfly that goes through various stages. At which stage is it perfect? As larvae? As caterpillar? As winged insect? They are all part of its life cycle, so if we were to argue that the butterfly is perfect, we would have to emphasize the process than any particular stage of its being. Similarly, one might argue that what is truly perfect about God is not that He is static in perfection but is a part of a process where one part of Him remains constant while other aspects of Him keep metamorphosing. (Some people see America that way. America is not so much about a fixed population and culture but the very process of forming a 'more perfect union' by certain historical dynamics that allows for more freedom, liberty, opportunity, and progress for the individual. But if the current elites think 'diversity' and 'inclusion', along with Jew-Negro-Homo worship, will be a magic pill for future America, they are retarded.) Thus, God is like both Clu and Flynn. The various images and impressions of God contradict one another in the Bible, especially if we take into account the New Testament and the Koran, not to mention the Book of Mormon. Like Werner Heisenberg's quantum theory of how the observed is altered by the observing, God is shaped by the soul that seeks Him. And for this reason, many secularists and atheists have mocked the notion of God’s perfection and infallibility. But if we emphasize the process(over the product), then we can argue God's perfection is along a continuum of change, or what may seem like change to us but is constancy for Him. After all, the perfect warrior and the perfect peacemaker operate on different tenets, and yet both war-making and peace-making are two sides of the same coin. In war, you try to make the perfect bomb to defeat the enemy. In negotiation, you try to make the perfect peace. Thus, there’s a duality to the concept of perfection as it pertains to God. In one way, there is a sense of God as immutable and crystalline, but in another way, there is a sense of God as malleable and adaptable. Indeed, if God was indeed static-perfect, why would He have bothered to create man and his world? He would have been perfect on His own. There could be the malleable and ever-changing side of God that wants to observe and be part of a universe that is in the process of change. It's the only way there can be the dimension of time. It’s like how the Tao is said to be both eternally constant and ever-changing. If God had made a perfect copy of Himself in the time of Moses, this copy could have rebelled against the organic original God who is flux as well as fixed, just as Clu, the perfect copy of Flynn frozen in time, rebelled against the organic original Flynn who discovers new universes within universes. The concept of ‘perfect change’ is an oxymoron as why would anything need to change if it’s perfect? But a thing is defined by its motion through space and time as by its general form. After all, a taxidermized snake can be said to be frozen in perfect form, but is it more perfect than a live snake that wiggles around? While there is a basic form that defines a snake, the essence of the snake is in the movement, and therefore, no single position of a snake is most perfectly snake-like. As man cannot know the mind of God, he can only think of God. As man's thought can never be complete and all-knowing, he can only know God through his own limitations. The narrowing and broadening of thought will alter one's view of God. Too narrow and God becomes petty and rigid. Too broad and God becomes hazy and vague. A balanced spiritual view brings God into better focus but is a mere glimpse of Him. The great contradiction in Jewish Spiritual Conception is that God is too great and profound for human understanding and yet the all-too-human Jewish Prophets claimed to know His plan for Jews and mankind. It is at once the humblest and most arrogant spiritual view. So, depending on the needs of Jews and later Christians and Muslims, God changed and morphed into different manifestations of His essence, and that may account for His longevity. If God was totally rigid in conception, He might have become irrelevant with changing times. But then, if God was just a slave of fashion and Zelig-ishly malleable to every twist and turn of history, then He would have been reduced to a disposable fad, and of course, this is what Liberal Jews and homos have done lately to the Christian God. (Majority of Christian houses of worship in the West are now sodomy-celebration centers. Why any sane person would associate worship with sodomy or tranny-penis-cutting truly baffles the mind, but in the current West, Jews are the hand and weak goy minds are the clay.) When secular Jews attack God, they really mean the Christian conception of God. Even though secular Jews don’t believe in God as a living deity, they appreciate His power as a historical and social force, and they make a clear distinction between the Jewish God and the Christian God. Jewish God is the real God, whereas the Christian God is the God stolen from Jews by Christians who used it against the Jews. So, even though Christians believe that Jews believe in the same God, Jews don’t share this view. They believe they believe in the real God while Christians believe in a forgery, a false graven image of the true God. Even though most Liberal Jews are materialist and atheist — and most Jews are Liberal — , they cling to their concept of God as a galvanizing force in Jewish identity and power.
Even many atheist Jews prize the idea as the source of Jewish survival, profundity, resilience, fierceness, and toughness. Therefore, even atheist Jews are keepers of the Covenant as the bedrock of Jewish power. But such consideration doesn’t extend to the Christian God. While many Jews have a grudging admiration for Jesus as a historical figure, they despise the Christian concept of God and the New Covenant like an art historian despises forgeries of masterworks. So, when Jews piss on the Christian idea of God they don’t see it as sacrilege, no more than vandalizing a forgery of Mona Lisa would count as a crime against art. If anything, art lovers may laud it as destroying a crime against the one and only true original. So, it is no wonder that Larry David finds nothing wrong with mocking the Christian God because his Tribe doesn’t consider Him the equal of the Jewish conception of God. Of course, part of Jewish virulence toward Christianity has to do with Christian wimpery and weakness of late. After all, how many times have you heard Howard Stern, Sarah Silverman, or Larry David badmouth Allah and Muhammad? They know Muslims will not stand for it whereas the neo-pacifist(at least when it comes to Jews, Negroes, and homos) Christians will. Jewish bullies naturally heap abuse against the wussy and wimpy.
Anyway, the politics of sexology in Jewish culture wasn’t as simple as one might assume. Even though the Jewish God was initially masculine & patriarchal and insisted on clear divisions between male and female and had no tolerance for fairy-homo stuff in between — consider what He did to Sodom and Gomorrah for its tutti-fruity perversion — , there were aspects of Jewish culture that had a way of muffling sexual differences.
One reason was in the clothing, as is quite apparent in all those Biblical epics where the Hebrews are by far the worst dressed people on Earth. While pagan folks are dressed flashily, sexily, and magnificently in bright colors and in ways that clearly delineate between male warriors and female babes, Hebrew men and women are often dressed in similar robes or rags and don’t look very special. It’s no wonder that Delilah often refers to the Jewish woman in Cecil B. DeMille’s SAMSON AND DELILAH as the "milk faced woman with a cow's eyes". Jewish way of dress hid the sexiness. Jews were more involved in the biology and morality of sex, i.e. God and Jewish men made the Covenant whereby the foreskin-peeled penis was to be used for sex, the power to create life, meaningfully and morally and purposefully. Thus for the Jews, sex itself was a moral act and had to be, because violation of sexual taboos could lead to getting stoned real bad. Though pagans too had their strict sexual codes, they were more open to sensuality, and this made for heroic poses among the men and fancy strutting of colorfully garbed women who danced before the warriors or acted like Elizabeth Taylor in CLEOPATRA.
Though Jews could be aggressive and warrior-like, they were fighters by necessity than for reasons of militarism. Ideally, Jews prized the life of the Rabbis and the merchants. Though Rabbinical scholarship was limited to men, using one’s head was hardly most masculine or macho endeavor, for while a man can physically do lots of stuff women cannot, a woman can use her brains, at least if given a chance. So, the primacy of intellect and scholarship among Jews tended to reduce the macho content of Jewish culture. Also, the merchant life was different from the warrior life. In battle, men command the front-lines while women steer clear of battlefields, but in trade and business men and women might work side by side, and indeed it was common for women to be traders and small merchants throughout the ages.
Also, even though God began as a patriarchal figure, an element of asexuality crept in as He became more abstract and distant from human affairs in the later passages of the Torah, and it becomes somewhat manifest in the figure of Jesus, a Man whose love and compassion could be said to have shades of the feminine. If the Romans feared Jesus as a potential troublemaker, some Jewish Zealots hated Him for lack of warrior vigor against the Roman occupiers. In Roman eyes Jesus was spreading an dangerous ‘ideology’, and to Jewish Zealots — like the Harvey Keitel character in the THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST — , He was setting a poor example for Jewish boys who should be toughening up for a fight. When Jesus sermonized the ‘meek’ shall inherit the earth, it probably appealed more to women. Even a poor man could have his own little domain of authority. No matter how lowly you were, you could be lord of the house or hut, and your wife and kids would be your subjects. It’s like Ralph Kramden and Archie Bunker are blue collar workers but ‘kings of the castle’ at home. Thus, the family lent status to every man, even the lowliest of men, and this was one reason why feminists have hated the idea of the traditional family. They see it as 'privileging' even the lowliest man over the woman. So, even though most men throughout history hardly had any power, they could be boss at home; in a way, it was psychologically constructive because it is the nature of man to want to rule.
Besides, even though wives played the subservient role, the family was deeply meaningful to women because it's the nature of women to respect male authority. Even modern feminists sneak-read romance novels where some stud comes along and carries the woman away to show her who’s the real boss. Most fans of GONE WITH THE WIND have been women, and they get thrills up their legs when Rhett Butler carries Scarlett O’Hara to give her ‘what she really wants’. The independent modern white woman in Todd Solondnz’s HAPPINESS — a vile film to be sure though not without some revealing moments — keeps around a heavily muscled Negro stud to bang her once a while. And ‘power women’ want to marry even more powerful men, rich women want to marry even richer men, and smarter women want to marry even smarter men. Or, if the man is less intelligent, less rich, and less influential, she at least wants him to be big, muscular, and studilicious. Throughout most of history, most marriages were of course arranged, and this could be a blessing or a curse. If a woman found herself matched with a strong, handsome, and rich guy, she could be the happiest girl in the world. But if she ended up some ugly, timid, and gimpy dork, she felt sick in her stomach. Indeed, for all the feminist stuff about women wanting men to be ‘sensitive’ and kind, even most feminists dislike geeky and nerdy ‘nice boys’, that is unless the dorks happen to be rich. Feminist women like ‘nice guys’ as friends but not as lovers; they regard nice straight guys in the way that homosexuals regard ‘fag hags’: just buddies to hang around with. This isn’t to say women like boorish guys like Big Boss Man, Junkyard Dog, Honky Tonk Man, or Randy the ‘Macho Man’ Savage, though trashy women do. Women like men with class, looks, and aura of authority, and in a way, this is the essence of ‘cool’. Like Sean Connery of the 1960s. All the ranting and howling in stuff like professional wrestling isn’t very appealing because it’s ‘uncool’. It’s like animals act wild and crazy usually more out of fright than out of confidence. So, if a tribe of chimpanzees encounter a pack of baboons, both sides get crazy and hysterical. The aggression is borne of panic, a way of saying "Don’t mess with us cuz we will fuc* you up" when what’s really running through their minds is "What if the other side is stronger and whup our ass?" And humans sometimes act like this too. In contrast, ‘cool’ authority requires a measure of confidence and mastery. Coolness isn’t relaxed and slack. It’s about being crisp and sharp, sufficiently confident and masterly not to panic and lose one's nerves. Clint Eastwood in the Spaghetti Westerns is cool. Tuco as played by Eli Wallach is the opposite of cool. The ideal black hero has a quality that might be called 'coolorful' — cool and colorful — , and Samuel L. Jackson nailed this quality in Tarantino movies; he talks like a zen baboon.
Anyway, Jesus sort of revolutionized the feminine principle when He said the ‘meek shall inherit the earth’. As Jesus meant it, meekness-as-ideal wasn’t submission to human authority as in the case of Japanese society for example. Rather, Jesus was talking of humility before God, i.e. if one has trust in God, then vengeance shall be His, and the good will enter Heaven whereas the wicked shall burn in Hell. As God will be the ultimate judge, there is no need for humans to resort to violence to resist tyranny in the fallen temporal world. That said, meekness before God requires people to disobey, even if ‘passively’, the unjust demands of tyrants. For example, if your lord orders you to kill a whole bunch of innocent people, you should disobey the order even if YOU will be punished or killed; but then, you shouldn’t rise up against the lord either, for he shall be punished in due time by the Lord Himself. Instead, you should lay down your weapon and refuse to kill the innocent, and if the lord threatens to kill you, you should ‘turn the other cheek’ and accept the consequence as you will be rewarded by Lord in Heaven. Christian idea of meekness isn't about passive obedience/submission to authority but a ‘passive’ rejection of human authority, and this is why the Romans were probably increasingly alarmed by the teachings of Jesus. (Gandhi later showed what widespread disobedience could do even if 'peaceful'. Japan also began to persecute Christianity when samurai converts began to exhibit signs of allegiance to a higher authority, one associated with a foreign power, than that of the lord.) On the face of it, Jesus seemed to be spreading the principle of peace among Jews, hardly problematic to the Roman Empire. But Jesus wasn’t telling the Jews — and other subjects of the Romans — to be meek before the Romans but before a higher authority. While Jesus wasn’t telling the Jews to rise up against the Romans, the message was quite clear: He was telling them to ‘passively’ disobey and refuse to collaborate with the Romans, even if the ultimate price was death. And, Jewish Rabbis were anxious about an upstart would-be-prophet who spoke as if He had a direct connection to God, something even the most respected and learned Rabbis did not. Also, establishment Jews understood they had much to gain as collaborators and everything to lose as troublemakers. While Jesus wasn’t with the Zealots who called for open warfare, He was for open disobedience to the Romans because meekness before God meant one had to be willing to give up his own life even if it meant death for refusing to obey Roman decrees. You can’t serve two lords, which means you can’t be meek before two lords. Jesus urged people to be ‘passive’ before the Romans but ‘meek’ only before God. So, Jesus was actually a far more 'devious' figure than Christians would like to believe; He was a master of semantics, and one of his finest students was, of course, Gandhi, who also had something of Groucho Marx about him, running circles around the British and beating them at their own game as supposed upholders of Christian principles. Anyway, through His own brand of 'meekometrics', Jesus took a 'feminine' trait and revolutionized it into an instrument of power. He turned what people associated with weakness into something that came to be associated with inner-strength that, if amassed into a movement, could move mountains.
Also, there was the element of ‘rape’ in the way He was killed. Like a woman victim of gang rape, He was stripped naked and dealt with brutally. Indeed, a man on a crucifix looks so helpless, defeated, and conquered, like a woman spread-eagle to be humped by a bunch of lechers. Jesus didn’t die a warrior’s death or a hero’s death but a victim’s death, and yet, because He didn’t run — something He could have done — and took the punishment without complaint, this ‘rape’ came to be associated with triumph and reverse-conquest. (It seems the general trajectory of God/gods in the West is from god-as-muscle to god-as-muscle-and-voice to god-as-voice to god-as-silence. Gods-as-muscle have no clear moral message to impart and wield their power haphazardly and randomly like a drunken sailor. Such gods are to be feared. But then, the god/gods-of-muscle gained a voice and began to commune with man; as such gods laid down moral laws for man to follow, they themselves were bound by the laws because, otherwise, they’d be a bunch of hypocrites, and as such, their raw/random muscle power came to be curtailed. Also, as God or gods provided man with greater knowledge and order, the world of man became more stable and less unpredictable, and that meant the power of nature, once seen as the erratic hammer of God or gods, came to be feared less. In due time, God or gods had a voice but not much of a muscle. And with the spread of knowledge and historical memory, mankind began to communicate far more among themselves across class, tribal, and cultural lines; in time, their voices drowned out the voice of God or gods, which grew silent. Prophets, the kind who claimed to commune directly with God or gods, came to be seen as madmen, cranks, or heretics, and the spiritual order fell into the hands of priests who were more into ritualism and interpretation than revelation and inspiration.)
In contrast, Gaddaffi talked big when the uprising began and vowed to fight like a man to the end, but when set upon by the mob he shrieked like a girl being raped. This isn’t a mockery of Gaddaffi as even the toughest people crack under pressure and go wee wee in their pants. Unlike Gaddaffi, Jesus spoke softly to his persecutors but took the punishment like a man. So, there was a meeting of the feminine principle and masculine principle in His manner of death. Jean-Paul Sartre said of Algerians who came under interrogation that the ones who refused to break demonstrated greater strength than their torturers. Though conquered in body, they vanquished their tormentors in spirit. When faced with defeat, man becomes the bitch and is ‘raped’ by the victors, but by taking it like a 'man', he can show he is in fact stronger than the ‘rapists’. It's easy to act tough in victory but difficult to remain hard in defeat. This is perhaps why the whore came to be closely associated with the cult of Jesus through the figure of Mary Magdalene. A whore is a sexual figure humped by many men and, as such, more an object than a person. But Jesus, in saving Magdalene, implies that no matter how ravaged and abused a body may be, the soul can retain an element of purity; it may be the origin of the 'hooker with the heart of gold' conceit. To be sure, the hooker-with-the-heart-of-gold could also be the product of adolescent fantasy. In the past, many young men got their first experience of sex with a hooker and in their excitement imbued personal meaning upon her, much like law student Hart in THE PAPER CHASE thinks there is something special between Professor Kingsfield and himself.
Anyway, think of Sophia Loren in TWO WOMEN and Claudia Cardinale in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. Loren plays a mother who is gang-raped by soldiers, and her body is soiled but her heart remains true, and the Cardinale’s prostitute character Jill says to Cheyenne(Jason Robards) that he and his men can ravage her all they want because her body isn't the same as her soul, presumably as pure as the water she carries in the movie. (She was also the water-bearer in 8½.) Perhaps, this is more of an Italian thing as the culture has been so corrupt/compromised and beautiful/idealized. Corruption became a way of life among Italians, but Italians turned it into an art form, something that became a value system in its own right. Machiavelli turned treachery into an art. Consider the mafia, a criminal organization so obsessed with 'respect' and 'dignity', with 'virtues' of loyalty and honor. Consider the Roman Catholic Church, at once so corrupt & compromised and glorious & magnificent. Guido in 8½ is so deceitful and devious but always seeking the image of purity, which turns out to be a movie star madonna offering him a glass of water. And by some creative miracle, Fellini turned lie into truth with his masterpiece.
Anyway, both Jesus and Mary Magdalene embody the independence of spirit from body. Mary’s soiled body can be soul-redeemed. Jesus’s soul transcends His mutilated body. Also, regarding Mary the Mother(at least according to Christian myth), she conceived of Jesus without bodily exchange of fluids with Joseph her husband. Because the soul transcends the body-as-vessel of human sexuality, there is an element of asexualism in Christianity — the Pope seems rather maternal as well. And the requirement of celibacy in the Catholic order also had a emasculating effect on the culture of Christianity(though it could be argued it takes more will and toughness to resist the temptations of the flesh). Also, the cult of spiritual 'innocence' led to the Catholic idealization of childlike-ness and, for a time, some choir boys were castrated so as to have angelic girly voices. (Even though THE EXORCIST is about noble Catholic priests battling the forces of Evil, it could be construed as a mockery of the Church. Indeed, why would great Satan waste his time taking possession of a 12 yr old girl and making her puke and cuss? Perhaps, the movie was implying that the entire edifice of the Catholic Church's spirituality-morality is built on ridiculous moral panic about adolescent sexuality, especially of girls, which also seems to be the point of Fellini's JULIET OF THE SPIRITS. Instead of accepting budding sexuality as a natural process of growth and development, the Church has regarded it as something perverse, unholy, and filthy, thus most conducive to evil infestations. Paradoxically, puritanism fostered perversion because denial of nature undermines mental and emotional health. So, sexual panic/repression could be deemed the core foundation of Christian faith. From that angle, THE EXORCIST is a straight-faced satire about silly men who do battle with a girl because she wants to touch herself. And yet, even the pagans, though less panicked about sexuality, were deeply anxious about the transformation of boys and girls into men and women; it's no wonder they devised elaborate rites-of-passage whereby sexuality would be contained within marriage and family life. William Blatty, who was Catholic, surely didn't have a mocking view of Christian morality, but William Friedkin the Jewish director might well have been snickering throughout the making of the movie. Surely, sincere Catholics and cynical Jews didn't see the same movie. Anyway, Blatty was onto something in that the soul is most vulnerable to 'possession' when a person is under duress or without will, or when he/she is most passionate or least passionate. It is during crisis that a person is most likely to be possessed by either the holy spirit or evil spirit, perhaps both. Confused and panicked, he or she is more likely to surrender to or grab a hold of any kind of certainty. No wonder many people turn either to religion or drugs precisely when they're in trouble. Adolescence is a time of trouble and confusion, sexually, socially, and philosophically. So is what is known as the 'middle age crisis', which is why the 'cat lady' phenom kicks in during that period. The corrupt cop in Abel Ferrara's BAD LIEUTENANT doesn't seem able to tell apart the holy from the unholy. He's drawn to both dope and divinity. As for the senile folks in THE EXORCIST III, they are easily possessed by the Devil because they lack will and passion — the senile ex-Nazi in Atom Egoyan's REMEMBER is soul-possessed and mind-controlled by the Jew with a stronger will. It's no wonder that bored and apathetic Northern European types are so easily manipulated by wily Jews. They are emotionally like the people in old folks home in THE EXORCIST III, dry and crusty; they rely on an outside force to supply them with wet 'meaning' and 'direction'. So, when Jews tell them 'go gay', they are fanatic about celebrating globo-homo. No will of their own. Look all around, and those with personal crisis are most likely to be manipulated into espousing crazy causes. And those weak of mind/will are the most easily swayed by Mass Media, an electronic soul-possession machine.)
In time the spiritual ethos of Christianity would become secularized and inform communism that de-emphasized sexual differences and insisted men and women more-or-less don the same attire as virtuous comrades, and sexual differences only mattered in creating babies. Besides, overt emphasis on romance may lead to narcissism, and narcissism & the cult of beauty lead to envy, resentment, & greed, and then communism may give way to capitalist 'values' all over again. Also, the culture of celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church had the effect of attracting many homosexual men into priesthood while discouraging many men with masculine balls who sought marriage and sex — of course, many homos and straight men who entered the Church ignored the rules celibacy and did as they pleased; sadly, such cynical and calculating men are more apt to rise up the hierarchy as politics in any institution is more about connivance and opportunism than idealism and integrity; this is precisely why Jewish Power should not be mistaken with the Jewish tradition of wisdom and soul-searching because Jews who rise to the top are more like the cretinous characters in Woody Allen's CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS than the more decent ones who are more scrupulous(and less successful).
Another convention that emasculated Christianity was the methodology of separating spiritual authority from worldly authority. Though Popes too were engaged in worldly affairs, even battles, the general rule in the Christian West was the warrior caste would do the fighting for the Church. Thus, the Church took on the 'wife' role in relation to the protective 'husband' power of worldly rulers. The Church, as inheritors of the teachings of the peace-loving and forgiving Jesus, didn’t want its hands stained with blood, and so, war-making was up to kings and knights. Unlike Jesus, Muhammad combined proselytizing with warring, and so, the Muslim order didn’t see a need to separate spiritual authority from worldly power. Muhammad was a Man of both Word and Sword. The Christian order masculinized political power while ‘feminizing’ spiritual power, and even as the Church relied on warriors for protection and proselytization, it also had a habit of condemning the cruel and ruthless ways of the world, not least the bloody acts committed by its own side.
Thus, Christian Civilization laid a foundation of moral critique that came to define the secular West as well. The spiritual power gained from worldly power but also agonized over the compromise. Muslims, in contrast, felt less remorse as Muhammad fused Word and Sword; thereby, Muslim spiritual power was in the front lines along with worldly power. The element of self-reflection led to more progress in the West as long as Christian sense of guilt was not usurped by a hostile group, such as the Jews(who later did gain such control with dire effects on the white race and Christianity). There was guilt in Islam too, but Muslims were less likely to be burdened with doubt over having used violence to convert or conquer the Infidel. As long as the ‘feminine’ principle of the Christian Church was wedded to the robust ‘masculine’ principle of worldly power, both parties gained from the interior/exterior symbiosis of soul and shell. But, Jews eventually drove a wedge between spiritual power and political power in the West. As the new ruling elites, they severed the unity between Western spiritual order and Western political order, and both became subservient to Jews(and their proxies, mainly blacks and homos). Jews ordered the neo/post-Christian order to condemn the political history of the West as a series of evil aggression, mainly 'antisemitism', 'racism'(mostly against blacks), 'homophobia', and sexual repression, which could only be reversed by open pornography & sexualization of children as early as possible. As the Church had given sanction to West’s political aggression(especially against Jews and various non-whites around the world), Christians should hate themselves and seek redemption by sucking up to Jews and their favored allies such as homos; and so, homomania spread like wildfire in the cucked West. And as post/neo-Christianity is controlled by Jews and cuck-collaborators, the Western political order could no longer count on blessings from higher spiritual authorities. Without the cover of spiritual/moral approval, the white goy order could easily come under attack for its deeds, past and present, construed as aggressive, oppressive, wicked, evil, and etc. As Jews control the Shoah-business and the MLK cult — the two biggest official faiths of our age — , the only way that white players could gain moral credit was by sucking up to Jews and Zionists(and their allies the homos and mulatto Negroes). Judeo-centrism is about blaming and humiliating whites, i.e. in order for whites to gain moral credit, they must debase themselves at the feet of Jews and their favored allies.
Anyway, the politics of sexology was no simple matter in France. Despite the rise to great power status, French Civilization was seen as a mother than father figure, unlike rising Germany. Also, French language, a work of art in and of itself, could be said to have effete qualities. French is flowery and fragrant, whereas German sounds like the abrasion of metals. And as French culture became ever fancier, the elites became more effeminate and in a manner more flamboyant than the British counterparts who, at least, made a virtue of restraint and moderation. Excess came to be regarded as bad form among the British. So, a certain contradiction developed at the heart of French civilization. It was growing both stronger and softer. The Revolution and Napoleon reversed this trend for awhile, not least because of the creation of the People's Army made up of rough men. But Napoleon was defeated, and France once again fell into the hands of aristocrats who served as social models for the rising business class. Before the rise of united Germany, the two great powers of Europe and around the world were UK and France, especially with Spain's inexorable decline despite its huge empire. Despite or precisely because of its vast size, Russia was a local than global power. Its power derived from exploitation of land and labor than of human potential and spirit of discovery.
Prior to Germany's rise, the French and the Brits thought they had the best of both worlds: They could be hard and soft. They could be tough in military matters but elegant in culture. The German challenge upset this equilibrium because the Germans were deemed ultra-masculine in both war and culture, as in the music of Richard Wagner. Even German women seemed more virile than British and French men, what with big Helgas wailing to "Ride of the Valkyries". Modern nationalistic Germans seemed to lack balance. They seemed masculine and masculine. The men lacked gentler qualities that smoothed over rough edges, and even the women seemed more ‘natural’, though to be sure, Austro-Germans were regarded as more refined than Northern Germans who, for a time, dominated German politics. Furthermore, Germans apparently possessed the impossible(or unholy) combination of being both more natural and more controlled. Their musical passion, cult of nudity, love of nature & animals, enthusiasm for the outdoors & mountain-climbing. This side of Germans seemed downright neo-pagan and quasi-barbaric. Yet, Germans were also more disciplined, rigid, and thoroughgoing than most other Europeans. French were like poodles and Brits were like hounds, but Germans were like well-trained wolves. This made them more fearsome(and even awesome) to other nations. A people who are only ‘natural’ are aggressive, but they'd be too primitive to pose a threat to civilized order. Barbarians usually lost out to civilizations(with few exceptions), and savage tribes of American Indians and black Africans were no match for civilized Europeans, as powerfully illustrated in the movie ZULU and countless Westerns. One must lose the ‘natural’ to have civilization, or so the thinking went. A people who are tamed and trained can be trusted to be orderly and accommodating, the ideal of the British elites. There was a sense that British civilization wasn’t only about cultivation of manners and social training but the well-breeding of the Anglo race into respectable elites and respectful proles. Germans were about forests & animals, and the Brits were about gardens & dog-breeding. It was tea & crumpets vs beer & pretzels. It was as if British biology and British culture came to be in sync, and even English Romantics were a rather a genteel bunch who were mainly into poetry.
Holy Mountain by Arnold Fanck
In contrast, there was something fiercer and less predictable about the nature of the Germanics, as if they, though civilized, had never fully been domesticated at the genetic level. They weren't wolves turned into dogs but wolves in dog's clothing. They were rough-cut Teutons than fine-cut Europeans. And such perceptions led to prejudice. During the Great War, Anglos depicted Germans as subhuman ‘Huns’ who weren’t above slaughtering women and babies — it was their 'nature' to do so. Though much has been made of the German supremacist views of others, especially the Semitic Jews and the Slavs, Anglos and French often held similar views of Germans. It was as if, unlike the Brits who were civilized inside and outside, the Germans only had a veneer of civilization but were possessed of werewolf souls. It’s kind of like how the vampire Cullens regard the Indian wolf folks in TWILIGHT. Vamps and wolf-folks equally distrust the other side but it’s the Cullens with the conceit of superiority, as when Alice refers to Jacob as the ‘dog’, like he’s more beast than man. (Even modern Germans had a soft spot for American Indians whose doomed conflict with the Anglos evoked the lore of Germanic Barbarians at war with the Romans.) Generally, the rule is domesticated folks can build civilization while untamed folks can run wild in nature. With the domestication of man, something was lost — warrior vitality and virility —, but it was compensated with greater security and progress as basis for complex organization and technology, therefore more power — man to man, the savage/barbarian could beat the domesticated man of civilization, but an army of civilized men could vanquish any bunch of backward boors. For every gain, there is a loss. (The insanity of the current West is that civilized but naive, deceived, and decadent white people are allowing tougher and more aggressive savage blacks into their midst. Civilization exists to protect gentler folks from tougher/rougher savage folks, but the New Normal in 'Western Civilization' is to harbor destructive blacks as the best, noblest, and holiest of humanity. It is recipe for disaster. The current West is 'protecting' those who do the most harm to the weaker white race that is increasingly without protection from the 'groids'.) So, it seemed remarkable that Germans could retain their natural vigor yet also build a powerful civilization of discipline and unity of purpose.
(Recently, the novel WOLF TOTEM by the Chinese author Jiang Rong plays on a similar theme. It sees the Chinese as civilized but lacking in virility. Mongols, in contrast, aren't fully civilized but bursting with vigor. Chinese are like dogs and lambs, capable of building and maintaining social order but somehow deficient. Mongols may be crude and semi-barbaric, but they're brimming with warrior spirit. A neo-fascist novel, it argues that the modern Chinese man must become the fusion of nature and civilization. Ironically, though communist, Mao thought along similar lines. Mao reviled Confucianism for its prioritization of manners over manhood. He wasn't alone in blaming it as one of the key reasons as to why China became the ‘sick man of Asia’. As he was committed to communism, Mao couldn’t put it into fascist terms, but his idealization of workers and peasants had an element of nature cult. Mao often described revolution more as a natural phenomenon than a historical process. Mao used metaphors of hurricanes and mountains to describe the destiny of man. So, when Mao sent intellectuals to do farm work, it was as if Chinese elites must relearn to use their muscles and breathe in fresh air, though the Chinese countryside probably smelled like night-soil. [Mao, who'd taken such pains to leave his farming village, sure took pleasure in sending city folks down to the farm.] And Mao unleashed the Cultural Revolution like a storm, like it was the Natural Revolution whereby excited youths would culminate like a tidal wave and wash away the doldrums of a moribund bureaucracy. In other words, Chinese must unleash the 'mongol' within themselves; damage done to arts & culture during the Cultural Revolution may have been the greatest since the Mongol invasions. Chinese culture had been defined by weak-muscled scholars and bureaucratic lethargy, bottling shut the spontaneous and creative juices of man. Indeed, as a college student he had written an essay called ‘Energies of the Mind’. For Mao, energy had mastery over matter. As a boy, he read novels of ancient warriors and bandits, the sort of ‘popular literature’ disdained by the literati. But, there was a contradiction within Maoism because it called for spontaneity within an ideological straitjacket formulated to serve Mao's cult of personality. Youths were 'free' to obey Mao. Even though Mao had certain quasi-fascistic notions, his chosen path of communism compelled him to bury his emotions within the framework of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism. But with more freedom today, Chinese artists and thinkers can be candid with civilizational issues without forcing them into Marxist dogmas. So, Jiang Rong's novel gets at the center of the modern Chinese anxiety. True, Chinese are a civilized people with deep history, but the formula for longevity can foster stasis, mummification, and/or decadence, a kind of mausoleumization of culture, as happened with Ancient Egyptians who became frozen in their greatness, unable to adapt and progress any further. Each new generation can become buried under excess soil of tradition, thus failing to sprout and shoot up into the sunlight. It won’t do for modern people to become barbarians, let alone savages, — though, sadly, plenty of people now ape the behavior of blacks reverting to their jungle nature — , but something of barbarian vitality is essential to keep the fire lit within modern man. Anglo-Americans understood this for much of their history but lost it. They now have something to learn from Chechen semi-barbarism. Though Chechens can be plenty crazy and demented, they possess something that is fierce and manly, something that doesn’t take shit from anybody. Obviously, Chechenism cannot be swallowed whole hog as we can do without bride-snatching, rampant corruption, cutthroat tribalism, flashing gold-plated pistols, blowing up marathons, and etc. But surely something of value can be extracted from Chechenism and injected into white Americanism. It’s like a plant may be toxic but have chemicals of special value. The theme of WOLF TOTEM recalls ZARDOZ where the civilized order is advanced and stable but lacking in the element of surprise. So, the intrusion of Zed stirs up both anxiety and excitement, and when an ‘apathetic’ — an ‘eternal’ who has fallen into catatonia — comes in contact with him, she feels a surge of energy like a dead battery being charged. The Eternals are stable, secure, and comfortable in their advanced state; utopianism connotes perfection, and if attained, there's no more need for change and growth and cycles of birth and death. So, the arrival of Zed, in stirring up discord and anxiety, generates excitement. But as Zed is outnumbered and powerless before the psychic aura of the Eternals who, even when 'killed', are regenerated back into pristine state, his barbaric energy is contained. It’s like a wildass Negro in an overwhelmingly white and orderly society will be more likely to check his behavior and watch hisself; but, if there are too many Negroes, they lose their trepidation, act wild, and turn society into something like Detroit, Haiti, or Zimbabwe. As Jewish/white elites reside in ‘eternal-like’ communities with only token number of Negroes — and the well-healed ones at that — , their view of Negroes is rather like the Eternals’ initial impression of Zed. To the Eternals, he brings color and flavor to the social order. Anything to break the boredom. He’s like the Negro played by Sidney Poitier in THE LILIES OF THE FIELD who brings soda bottles to nuns to suck on. White elites can overlook the fact that blacks-in-critical mass cause major trouble because they themselves can afford to avoid to live away from the worst blacks. Worse, unlike Germanic Barbarians who could be tamed and civilized, black Africans are almost impossible to mold into complex modernity. It’s like stray dogs can be tamed, even if with some difficulty, but hyenas running wild are impossible to tame. So, even though all races had been barbaric or savage at one time or another, some races possessed natural personalities more amenable for civilization, and the black race takes the cake in civilizational difficulty, and it’s all the worse in the modern West because [1] blacks are physically stronger and judge others on the basis of toughness, which means they have no respect for ‘faggoty ass’ white boys and [2] the cult of ‘white guilt’ made blacks feel they're pure as snow and all their problems be whitey's fault. So, blacks reject white authority because it’s both too ‘faggoty ass’ and too ‘racist’. Blacks hate whites because whites are seen as too wussy & wimpy AND too rich & privileged, undeservingly so. As the black mind-set is muscle-dong-and-booty-centric, most blacks feel that the toughest and most ‘badass’ race, which be themselves, should rule & be served — much like tough black kids in schools push around wussy ass white boy students — ; so naturally, they find it unfair that the socio-economic order is dominated by pussy-ass Jews, wussy-ass whites, wimpy-ass Asians, and ‘faggoty-ass’ homos. Though blacks are allied with white Liberals, there's little truel understanding between the two groups, like there is none between European Leftists and Muslim immigrants; they are merely allied symbolically against the bogeyman of 'white supremacism' perpetuated by venal Jews. Most white Liberals and most blacks remain physically apart and are united around tropes pertaining to White Compassion and Negro Nobility. Anyway, Zed the barbarian is a welcome change to the static world in ZARDOZ, but Zed isn’t there by some accident. He is an agent who is there to destroy the Vortex, the Eternal Utopia. But ironically, he has been ‘created’ to carry out his mission by a rogue Eternal named Arthur Frayn who, along with his co-conspirator named Friend, wants the Vortex deconstructed. Frayn is a radical prankster, a would-be sorcerer and magician. He thinks it will be a grand show to shake things up by having Zed enter the Vortex and make trouble. He is like the British intellectuals described by Peter Hitchens, including himself of course. Hitchens wrote: "It wasn't because we liked immigrants, but because we didn't like Britain. We saw immigrants — from anywhere — as allies against the staid, settled, conservative society that our country still was at the end of the Sixties." Arthur Frayn, like Peter Hitchens in the 1960s, isn’t entirely a loathsome figure. He has correctly diagnosed the ills of the Vortex where the utopian formula has sucked the life out of life. So, he wants to infuse some drama, comedic and tragic, to his world. Yet, having taken immortality for granted for so long, he is as naively innocent as intelligent and knowing. His wit isn't the same as wisdom. Instead of trying to replace utopian idealism with healthy realism, he paves the way for another kind of idealism, the cult of mass death as liberation, and when the barbarians finally pour into the Vortex, death doesn't turn out to be beautiful and liberating but ugly, brutal, and painful. It’s like the Soviet invasion of Germany with massive looting, raping, and mayhem, the difference being that the Germans had no illusions about what was about to go down. The brutal reality is so different from the idealized vision of violence. Hemingway glorified the 'heroics' of bullfighting and hunting but couldn't bear the injuries from an airplane crash and began to lose his mind. Given he was badly injured in World War I, one wonders about his cult of violence — as a young man, perhaps he could better bear the pain — , what with his notion of the ‘moment of truth’ in the bullfighting ring when it's just cruelty to animals. Also, Yukio Mishima, another cultist of death, found out the hard way the discrepancy between the poetics and the reality of violence/death. But there is something in human nature that exults in idealized violence — one needs only to acknowledge the popularity of video games, contact sports, action & horror movies — , and this may owe to how the predator-hunter-warrior instincts within our psyche are intertwined with our creative and spiritual impulses, which may explain man's fascination with the Crucifixion of Christ. Even Joyce Carol Oates, who looks like a plucked chicken, is a big fan of boxing. And Olive Oyl loves Popeye and Bluto fighting over her. And audiences have thrilled to the ‘moment of truth’ catharses in THE WILD BUNCH and SCARFACE. And to the death-orgasm of the final scene of BONNIE AND CLYDE. The death ritual at the end of THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY is one of the most memorable. Real violence is usually inglorious, but we associate bloodletting with ecstasy, even for the losers. In John Woo movies, even the bad guys die in blood-gushing orgies in slow motion, moments of rapture. Perhaps, one of the less decrepit aspects of the horror genre is the grimmer sense of violence, but then, it is made worse with voyeuristic sado-masochism — many function as little more than make-believe snuff films. Anyway, Arthur Frayn’s vision of death as a pleasant romp on a Sunday afternoon turns out to be anything but. The slaughter is just ugly and pathetic. The once seemingly invincible Eternals are like zombies in Romero movies being cut down by unfeeling ruffians. These supposedly wise beings of awesome intellectual capacity have become so divorced from reality that they can’t even fathom what it means to be clubbed, chopped, slashed, or shot. But Zed escapes with an Eternal named Consuella — Charlotte Rampling who always had a thing for taking on racy roles — , and his barbaric seed and her civilized egg serve as the basis for a new beginning. Civilized folks cannot return to barbarism and savagery — unless they want to be raped en masse by Negroes — , but to keep a civilization from falling into stasis, decadence, and dissipation, it needs to be injected with vital barbaric juice now-and-then for re-invigoration. And the best kind is tribalism and race-ism, without which people seek out excitement in fads and fashions of decadence, like with globo-homo-mania. As Chinese elite culture came to be overly refined and genteel, it lost the element of vitality and vigor. And though most Chinese were laboring peasants faced with hardship, they were too servile to the state power, bound to tradition, and busy toiling on rice fields to retain regenerative quasi-barbaric vigor. Also, even the lowly folks looked up to elite conventions as the ideal. When China was thus weakened, it was invaded by barbarians from the North, such as the Mongols or Manchus. The invasions were brutal, but the decaying rot was cleared away with slash-and-burn swiftness; but then, the Mongol or Manchu overlords would eventually be subsumed into the higher civilization of the Chinese and grow dissipated themselves. Perhaps, Japanese culture was somewhat healthier because of the creative fusion of the barbaric and civilized. Though Japanese adopted Confucianism and Buddhism, they preserved the nature cult of Shintoism and idolized the warrior. Thus, what Mishima referred to as the ‘harmony of the pen and sword’ was achieved in Japan, and perhaps this duality made it possible for Japan to respond more sensibly and creatively to the Western challenge than the Chinese and other Asian folks did. Japan, like China, had its thinkers and bureaucrats but also the spark of the warrior who instinctively sensed the threat and understood what had to be done. European feudalism also had the balance of culture and nature. During the Romantic Era, especially with rise of neo-paganism, German thinkers were fascinated with similar ideas, with Nietzsche being perhaps the profoundest thinker along those lines. And if the new field of archaeology expanded interests in the ancient classical world, Richard Wagner's operas transformed pagan Germanic myths into a national cult. Without Wagner, the myths might have remembered mainly as folklore. Through Wagner, they became something far bigger than stories; they became cyclical visions. Wagner did to the myths what St. Paul did with the Christ story. He turned story into prophecy. Edith Hamilton in her book MYTHOLOGY noted that while Norse tales plumb depths unknown to the Hellenic imagination, Germanic tribes failed to produce a Homer who could turn the raw material into epic poetry. Norsemen had depth and darkness, even profundity, but a dull way of putting them into words; therefore, Germanic myths failed to gain the respect and popularity of, say, ILIAD or ODYSSEY. But this all changed with Wagner, the true Homer of the Germanic peoples. Finally, someone came along and transformed the myths into something far more than a good yarn. Wagner turned it into a national epic, a national religion. And in some ways, he was greater than Homer because music has power beyond words. One might even assume that Hamilton’s ideas on Germanic myths owed something to Wagner, i.e. she didn't so much interpret Norse myths in their own right but through the prism of Wagner’s vision. Hamilton described in her book: "The World of Norse Mythology is a strange world. Asgard, the home of the gods, is unlike any other heaven men have dreamed of. No radiance of joy is in it, no assurance of bliss. It is a grave and solemn place, over which hangs the threat of an inevitable doom. The gods know that a day will come when they will be destroyed. Sometime they will meet their enemies and go down beneath them to defeat and death. Asgard will fall in ruins. The cause the forces of good are fighting to defend against the forces of evil is hopeless. Nevertheless, the gods will fight for it to the end. Necessarily the same is true of humanity. If the gods are finally helpless before evil, men and women must be more so. The heroes and heroines of the early stories face disaster. They know that they cannot save themselves, not by any courage or endurance or great deed. Even so, they do not yield. They die resisting. A brave death entitles them — at least the heroes — to a seat in Valhalla, one of the halls in Asgard, but there too they must look forward to final defeat and destruction. In the battle between good and evil they will fight on the side of the gods and die with them. This is the conception of life which underlies the Norse religion, as somber a conception as the mind of man has ever given birth to. The only sustaining support possible for the human spirit, the one pure unsullied good men can hope to attain, is heroism; and heroism depends on lost causes. The hero can prove what he is only by dying. The power of good is shown not by triumphantly conquering evil, but by continuing to resist evil while facing certain defeat. Such an attitude toward life seems at first sight fatalistic, but actually the decrees of an inexorable fate played no more part in the Norseman's scheme of existence than predestination did in St. Paul's or in that of his militant Protestant followers, and for precisely the same reason. Although the Norse hero was doomed if he did not yield, he could choose between yielding or dying. The decision was in his own hands. Even more than that. A heroic death, like a martyr's death, is not a defeat, but a triumph. The hero in one of the Norse stories who laughs aloud while his foes cut his heart out of his living flesh shows himself superior to his conquerors. He says to them, in effect, You can do nothing to me because I do not care what you do. They kill him, but he dies undefeated. This is stern stuff for humanity to live by, as stern in its totally different way as the Sermon on the Mount, but the easy way has never in the long run commanded the allegiance of mankind. Like the early Christians, the Norsemen measured their life by heroic standards. The Christian, however, looked forward to a heaven of eternal joy. The Norseman did not. But it would appear that for unknown centuries, until the Christian missionaries came, heroism was enough." Actually, the source material of Germanic myths tends not to be all that dark or ominous. Much of it is playful and amusing, what with Odin/Wotan whiling away in search for better Mead, or honey beer. There’s often horseplay among the gods, and the telling is folkloric than grandiose. Also, gods and giants have a love/hate relationship — Odin has affairs with giantesses. Perhaps, Hamilton’s interpretation of Germanic myths was influenced by her appreciation of Wagner’s operas that rendered the myths ‘Wagnerian’. There is darkness in the lore, to be sure, but not as pervasive gloom-and-doom. Spirit of the original myths is more in the storytelling mode of John James’ VOTAN. Also, even though there are heroes and villains in Norse mythology, the divisions aren't as sharp as in Wagner’s operas where giants are to be dreaded, Nibelungen are dwarfish Jewish shysters, and Siegfried is the greatest martyr-hero of all time — his funeral march is one of the most overpowering in classical music. At any rate, at a pivotal historical moment when age-old certainties were called into question and new possibilities were dawning, Germans sought a fusion/balance of the orderly and chaotic, of the continuous and divergent, and of traditional and modern. It was this contiguity of the 'rational' and 'irrational' that others found so disturbing about Germans who at once seemed advanced and atavistic. Key thinkers sought to decipher the codes of the historical process. Hegel posited the theory of dialectics, which Marx appropriated and applied to the economic field with the conclusion that the class dialectics is the true driver of history. And many new ideas had a duality, appealing to both the destructive and constructive sides of man, to both the eternal and transitory sides, to both wanderlust and nostalgia. Marxism, for instance, promised the thrill of revolution and radical change but also envisioned a permanently stable classless utopia. Germans coming into hyper-modernity were both excited and troubled. Thus, there is both leftist and rightist elements to Nietzscheanism, which explains why he's been claimed by both sides. His ideas were disconcerting to traditional conservatives, especially to those for whom Christianity and/or bourgeois values were the centerpieces of civilization. Also, like Marxism, Nietzscheanism heralded unprecedented violence and conflict in years to come. Birth, whether of a single child or a new order, is bound to be traumatic. However, there was also the ‘permanental’ appeal of Nietzcheanism in its prophecy of the ‘over man’ whose power and privilege wouldn’t be based on lineage or orthodoxy but on will, charisma, force of personality, creative vision, genius, and ruthlessness. Under the rule of such men, the end-game of history wouldn’t be egalitarian as Marx envisioned, but deeply hierarchical, with greatness boldly towering over inferiority. Given the powerfully romantic and ‘irrational’ element of German culture, Nietzsche expressed his ideas more as prophet and poet than logical thinker. The 'rational' basis for the new hierarchy was taken up by English philosopher Herbert Spencer whose ideas were an economic version of Nietzscheanism though Spencer mainly drew his ideas from Charles Darwin. In some ways, Darwin’s theory of evolution was perhaps the most ‘radical’ and revolutionary, profoundly consequential and transformative to 19th century thought, and yet, Darwin generally avoided sweeping statements about the social implications of his findings. He came up with a most 'alarming' idea — the role of natural selection in the evolution of man, an idea so persuasive based on evidence that the theory of evolution went from speculation to genuine scientific theory — but made only modest forays into man and history. Even though Spencer drew from Darwinism for his ideas, he too focused on specific fields such as economics. Spencer may have been partly right or entirely wrong, but he presented himself as an observer than a prophet. In contrast, Marx wasn’t content with the role of intellectual or scholar. He had to be the modern Moses/Jesus unveiling the true laws of history that were to lead humanity to the promised land of proletarian milk and honey. Nietzsche also couldn’t sit still and play the role of mere academic, scholar, or philosopher. He had to be the new Prometheus. And in this regard, Marx and Nietzsche had more in common despite their diametrically opposed visions. Though Marx was 'Semitic' and Nietzsche was 'Aryan', both were steeped in German culture that was more emotion-driven than Anglo culture. Though style isn’t substance and attitude isn't action, style and attitude can determine the thrust and trajectory of substance and action. Indeed, two individuals with similarly genteel styles but different ideas may actually get along better than two individuals with very aggressive styles but similar ideas; the latter pair is more likely to be driven by personal ego. This was why, historically speaking, even ideological rivals in Britain got along better than ideological allies in France, especially during the Revolution when radicals got into the habit of killing fellow radicals, often over trivialities. It was pride over prudence. Of course, Jews have a ‘craziness’ all their own, and German Jews were often doubly crazy, instilled with both Jewish ‘craziness’ and injected with German ‘craziness’; Karl Marx was one crazy Semito-German, but then, this ‘double craziness’ inspired him to see further and deeper than others. The tensions of civilization vs barbarism and of rationality vs irrationality in German culture led to two tumors in the 20th century in the form of Franz Kafka, a Czech-German Jew, and Adolf Hitler, an Austrian-German. Both were sickly and deviant characters borne of profound contradictions of history, society, and genetics. Kafka was a sensitive child of an insensitive father. Ideological but withdrawn from the world to make an impact. There have been speculations of homosexuality, something that dogged Hitler as well. Kafka had troubled relationships with women. He was peculiar but led a quiet bourgeois existence. He wrote prodigiously but didn’t think his works would or should see the light of day. His pathology laid one of the key foundations for later writers and artists such as William S. Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, David Lynch, and David Cronenberg. As he wrote prose than sought power, he left behind a trail of ink than blood. 'Healthy’ is not how one would describe his works, but sickness and degeneracy, if approached perceptively, can be fertile material for art. It may seem perverse to mention Hitler in the same breath as Kafka as Hitler did leave behind a mountain of dead people, some of whom were Kafka’s relatives. Also, while Kafka was a great artist, Hitler wasn’t much of a painter and his tastes tended toward the kitschy. But from a psychological perspective, Hitler too was the sick product of Europe's convulsions in birthing pains a new order. Hitler was just as odd and eccentric as Kafka, but if the latter could readily tap into his own strangeness for introspection and inspiration, Hitler feared his own shadows and latched onto shining ideals of Aryanism to shield him from his own neurosis, the subject of the interesting film MAX by Menno Meyjes: The curse of a strange man who can't handle strangeness. When 20th century gave way to the 21st, most people around the world got used to the idea of breakneck change. The Cold War finally ended, and one could almost believe in the End of History, and even 9/11 attacks didn’t lead people to believe that there's an alternative to the globalist order dominated by the West and its allies/puppets... though cracks in the New World Order are emerging of late all over. But when the 19th century gave way to the 20th century, there were many more unresolved issues. Europeans were ruling over vast areas outside Europe, and it was only a matter of time before the natives would rise up, not least in emulation of European Nationalism. Europe itself was divided, with UK, France, Germany, Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Russia all vying to be great powers. China was seething with resentment over foreign domination, and Japan was making moves to dominate Asia. United States, which had been occupied with conquering and settling the West throughout the 19th century, was eyeing for a bigger role in world affairs. The swift victory in the Spanish-American War filled America with new confidence. Capitalism, the dominant force in the most powerful nations, came under serious challenge from socialists, labor movement, and radical thinkers. And social consequences wrought by rapid industrialization and urbanization were unpredictable and unprecedented. Rapidly transforming nations like Germany and Russia sought to both maintain monarcho-aristocratism and make accommodations with the bourgeoisie & proletariat. Oddly enough, Germany prior to the Great War was both politically more ‘regressive’ and economically more ‘progressive’ than UK and France, as German rulers arrived at far-reaching agreements with Social-Democrats to provide universal safety nets. Also, nationalism and imperialism sometimes complemented one another and sometimes opposed one another, especially as the ‘subjugated’ or ‘oppressed’ people began to gain national consciousness with the expansion of transportation and communication. Thus, if various ethnic groups mostly had a local village mentality for centuries under Austrian rule, by the late 19th century each ethnic group in the Austro-Hungarian Empire was clamoring for greater autonomy and even full-blown independence. Greeks had already liberated themselves from the Ottoman Empire in 1832, something the European powers had supported, but if Greeks could cut loose from Turkish rule, might not various ethnic groups in European empires make similar demands? In the case of Arabs, a bunch of desert tribes with only the vaguest notions of modernity, the British fanned the flames of ‘Arab nationalism’ to exploit Arab 'resistance' against the Ottomans to impose British hegemony; much later, the US would fan Afghani nationalism, as well as global Jihadism, against the Soviet Empire. For these and other reasons, the halcyon days of 1900 were a very dangerous period. Though that year was relatively peaceful and European powers could certainly have practiced more sensible diplomacy to prevent the calamity that was the Great War that set off the Bolshevik Revolution, German defeat & rise of Nazism, and then WWII, the truth is people are generally poor readers of the future. Also, the elites who decide on grave matters tend to be motivated by a blend of vanity, egotism, greed, pride, cutthroat competition, and/or craven status-mentality to make wise decisions. It's like athletes must always handle the ball under pressure, making most moves unstable. When people cannot prevent or stop a forest fire, it can end only by burning out. It took the horrors of the Great War to make the French and Brits realize the futility of war, and it took WWII to convince Germans of the same. The fact that France and Britain won World War I made it easier for them to forsake war. They could do so as proud victors. In contrast, defeat made Germans obsess more about wounded pride than world peace. Americans didn’t learn much from Vietnam and dove straight into the Iraq War, a disaster for everyone except hideous Zionists who exult in the mass slaughter of goyim. Too often in history, the lesson could only be learned the hard way — like Jake LaMotta in RAGING BULL comes to his senses only in utter physical defeat and exhaustion beyond his will and volition — , and at the beginning of the 20th century, too many Europeans from top to bottom were simply blind to what lay ahead IF they didn't choose peace. And after World War I, Hitler and Germans couldn't foresee that playing with fire would lead to utter destruction of Germany; to be sure, Jews also played with fire by provoking National Socialist Germany at every turn, cornering Hitler into desperate moves that ultimately led to the slaughter of Jews. It was a time of great uncertainty, but more fatally, a time of innocence, faith, and honor. Uncertainty and anxiety could lead to doubt and paralysis, but at least they could foster trepidation, caution, and skepticism. The problem was uncertainty and anxiety were stuffed under exaggerated faith and honor. Indeed, many embraced faith and honor to relieve their minds of the mounting anxiety and uncertainty of Late Modernity. Anxiety and uncertainty provoke questions and thought, but people don’t want to face questions as thinking usually leads to more questions and more worries. With all the changes wrought by modernization that was changing the world like never before — and with the emergence of new ideas like evolution and ‘death of God’ — , uncertainties and anxieties were multiplying everywhere. Everyone was feeling displaced: Noblemen by the bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie by new bourgeoisie, rural community by urban life, European power by Jewish power, and etc. Furthermore, there were huge cultural and developmental differences all over Europe, between east and west, north and south, and between urban cities and rural villages. Modernization made all these separate entities collide on a scale and at a speed hitherto unknown. For many Europeans, escape from anxiety meant seeking a new chance in the Americas. While emigration was also fraught with uncertainty, anxiety of new opportunities was preferable to anxiety of old prejudices coming to a head in a much divided continent. Anxiety could be fuel for artists and thinkers, the sort of people enthralled with rifts and ruptures, but many were left feeling stranded in a world without direction or with too many directions. Many people were, as yet, unable and unwilling to grow accustomed to anxiety and uncertainty as the 'normal' modes of modernity, not least because this was still a time of material scarcity for the masses. Productivity was still far below what it later came to be, and social benefits were limited at best even in advanced nations. It is then hardly surprising that many hoped for something to believe, to march for, to fight for, and die for. Something that would crystallize the purpose of their lives. In earlier times, most people would have been farmers working sunup to sundown with little time and energy for much else. Also, armies in earlier times weren't as destructive. Back then, misuse of faith and honor led to unnecessary wars, but the damage was far more limited. But this was no longer the case on the eve of WWI, a war which hastened the development of even deadlier weapons, and by WWII, the leading European powers had the means to destroy entire cities in a matter of days with saturated bombing. After WWII, all Europeans learned to accept uncertainty and anxiety as the nodes of modernity, as there was too much at stake if Europeans were once again to fall under the sway of faith and honor as during WWI or succumb to mass fever, as Germans did once again under Hitler — of course, even as modernity meant more destruction, it also meant swifter recovery, as well as forgetfulness as so many people fell under the spell of electronic popular entertainment. Perhaps, this is why existentialism was, for a time, the leading philosophical school in Europe and had a big impact on Japan as well, another nation that learned the lesson not to mix anxiety/uncertainty with faith/honor in the age of nation-busting weapons. It wasn't a game of swords and muskets anymore, and the notion of honorable death was moot in modern mayhem where countless men were ground into mincemeat by machine guns and artillery, not to mention entire cities razed with bombs from heaven. Existentialism articulated to an entire generation that there is no essential/official truth, therefore it is up to each individual to use reason, conscience, and knowledge, especially of his own experience, to arrive at his own truth, which is his own, as opposed to purported universal or permanent truth, and subject to change with more experience, knowledge, and thought. Don't act on received truths and instead find one's own truth. Don't act on received values of honor and faith but construct one's own code of conduct. If there is no God, then everything is truth according to man. So, when the Power tells you to die for God, King, Country, or some higher cause, it is really men-with-power imposing their will as 'essential' when it is to serve their narrow interests — to be sure, the very power could be under its own spell, i.e. believe in its own myths. That the main proponent of existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, was a diehard Marxist betrayed the fact that the addiction to essentialism wasn’t really dead, though Sartre regarded Marxism as more an approach, a useful guide, than iron dogma; also, as the intellectual class produces nothing and is essentially parasitic, it latches onto radicalism to appear 'committed' to justify its mostly useless existence. Though Marxists claimed the mantle of‘scientific materialism’, their ideology was a kind of faith and was bound by honor of commitment to the cause. Even as the Left mocked the conservative faith in matters of God, country, military honor, and tradition, it was creating its own icons and canons of neo-faith around figures such as Marx, Mao, Che, MLK, and etc. And the Counterculture, while dismissive of the conformism of earlier generations, had its own catechisms and conventions that soon became cliches. And French radicals who took up Maoism in the 60s and 70s were so enthralled with their 'brilliant' interpretations that they remained willfully ignorant of its true character. French intellectual narcissists were more infatuated with their clever take on Maoism than with the thing itself. Such mentality surely accounts for the ludicrous praise showered on Chantal Akerman. It's all a matter of what the ‘intellect’ makes of them. If elite-college-educated French intellectuals could turn mindless Maoism into a serious 'school of thought', why not with the films of Chantal Akerman? This too is a form of faith, the faith of intellectual cinephiles enamored of their own supposed brilliance/profundity; naturally, when impressionable young cinephiles fall under the sway of certain ‘experts’, they come to believe it's their honor and privilege to join the camp. If the ‘leading critics’ say Akerman’s films are deep and profound, who are they to say otherwise? An old trick, you can make anyone see anything simply by suggestion. If you tell a classroom of kids to be quiet and concentrate on a certain sound, real or not, a bunch of kids will hallucinate faint tones. Similarly, with powers of suggestion, ‘expert’ critics can persuade young dupes to see and hear ‘depth’ and ‘profundity’ where there is none. Take the opening of JE TU IL EL. For about 20 minutes, we see the lumpy naked body of Akerman as she walks to and fro in a room eating a bagful of sugar. Seriously, what is that? It’s self-indulgent BS, but a clever critic insists on significance. It’s no different from French intellectuals seeing profundity in Maoism, an ‘ideology’ of near-zero philosophical content. Jonathan Rosenbaum listed the communist Chinese propaganda BREAKING WITH OLD IDEAS as one of the great films of the 1950s, a work made when Maoism was embarking on a crazy socio-economic experiment that came to claim tens of millions of lives. But surely the brilliant and insightful Rosenbaum saw something profounder and deeper than mere propaganda. Rosenbaum bitched and bleated that THE DEER HUNTER and MISSISSIPPI BURNING aren't true to history, but he has no problem with the historical lie of Dovzhenko’s EARTH — a film made on the eve of forced collectivization that would kill millions of Ukrainians — and the Red Chinese film BREAKING WITH OLD IDEAS, a film made at the start of an insane campaign. What hypocrisy, but it isn't just a matter of ideology but personality. Too many Jews have the vile and deceitful personality of Rosenbaum for whom 'truth' is only an agent of ideological or ethnic preferences. He seems hardly bothered by Zionism, a form of rightist Jewish nationalism, which goes to show he’s a tribalist hypocrite like others of his kind: nationalism and tribalism for Jews but not for goyim. Granted, EARTH is a great film on aesthetic grounds, but if historical truth is so important to Rosenbaum, why the outrage over MISSISSIPPI BURNING's inaccuracies — FBI's positive role in the Civil Rights Movement — than over BREAKING WITH OLD IDEAS and EARTH's propagandistic purpose in service of utterly insane campaigns of terror?)
To Be Continued.
