Sacha Baron Cohen‘s best jotting so far in his theatrical put-on campaign for Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (20th Century Fox, 11.3) wasn’t inviting “Premier George Walter Bush” to a screening of the film (Cohen actually went up to the White House gates on Wednesday to try and hand-deliver the invite), but the announcement that “Mel Gibsons” has also been sent one.
Cohen’s was at the White House to capitalize on today’s official visit by Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Kazakhstan press secretary Roman Vasilenko expressed again his and Nazarbayev’s concern that some might get the idea that Cohen’s Borat — an anti-Semitic Kazakh TV reporter — is a reflection of real-life Kazakhstan culture. Cohen “is not a Kazakh…what he represents is a country of Boratastan, a country of one,” Vasilenko told Reuters.
Now it’s time for a fifth involving the installation of seed-pod mindsets, with the change agents being the Millennial and Generation Z sons and daughters of today.
I’m talking about a scenario in which the Anglo Saxon whitebread gene is regarded as inherently arrogant, criminal and bad for the planet — flawed, cruel, heartless, exploitive. A consensus emerges that the only way to correct this abhorrent culture is to fully indict the historical criminality of whiteness over several decades and in fact back to the beginnings of this nation — what it’s been, what it is now and where it’ll lead if things aren’t turned around.
Alien spores float down from space, affecting only the children and grandchildren of boomers and GenXers. Once turned, the awoken are free to call Anglo-Saxon culture by it’s true name — oppressor, a cancer, a scourge upon humanity. Within days the idea is spread that it’s time for enlightened non-whites to marginalize or dilute or even overthrow white culture so that POC culture can re-shape things and bring in a little fresh air and more fairness, freedom and opportunity.
Gradually seed-pod consciousness spreads to members of the liberal intelligentsia, and more and more of them are suddenly embracing the program. The general idea is “let those shitty old crusty white guys eat some of the shit that POCs have been eating for the last couple of centuries,” etc.
Gradually it becomes accepted that if you’re white and straight you’re kind of a bad person, or at the very least suspect. And that you probably need to re-educate yourself and embrace the new reality…or else.
A clever horror-comedy satire that ten years ago would have come and gone and been forgotten by awards season is transformed by seed-podders into a Best Picture contender, and those who question the validity of this are regarded as cranks or closet racists.
Friends and family members of seed-pod film critics begin to notice a certain robotic manner and a glassy, out-to-lunch look in their eyes. Local constable: “But he looks like his picture, madam. Obviously he’s Guy Lodge, the Variety critic.” Mrs. Lodge: “But it isn’t him, I’m telling you. Something is missing. It’s just not Guy!”
Liberal-minded film critics Anne Thompson and Eric Kohn declare that they’ve been making sure that POCs are ranked prominently in their year-end awards ballot, partly because they admire their films but also because they’re about or were made by POCs.
Seed-pod urban culture begins to adopt other changes. Millenial and GenZ types begin to regard heterosexuality as a problem, and it’s gradually decided that it’s time to let LGBTQ folks run the culture and push heteros off to the side a bit. They’ll be allowed to walk around and buy groceries, but they need to accommodate themselves to the notion that straight whites are an underclass.
And if educated liberal Democrat white guys complain about any of this on social media platforms, the seed-podders tag them as closet Republicans or closet racists or closet homophobes. Would the seed-podders be delighted to bust these white guys on any of these counts and thereby eradicate or at least marginalize their asses and put them out to pasture? You have to ask?
The transforming of society has never been a gentle process, and to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs.
I’m watching the Critics Choice Awards right now and thinking, “This is a nightmare…we’re all immersed in a benign, thumbs-up, positive-energy horror film…the seed pod wokey-wokes are everywhere and too terrified to think, comment or behave otherwise, and only a few of us have escaped the takeover syndrome — playing it cautiously out of fear of being called out, and yet thinking and assessing like semi-free human beings and secretly sharing un-woke thoughts.
We’re in the middle of a cultural-racialist-genderist revolution and a general consensus that bad white guys need to sit in the back of the bus for a few years, and as long as the revolutionary wheels are churning and crunching and filling the air with aspirational social fables, Hollywood will continue to grapple with the fact that for many in the industry, streaming and theatrical movies will serve the cause of enlightened social propaganda.
Wokeness might be good or (sadly) necessary for social change, but it’s not much of a propellant for the creation of knockout award-season flicks that really reach out and touch Joe & Jane Popcorn.
The bottom line is that the erratic pursuit of sweeping, penetrating, soul-touching art (a rare achievement but one that has occasionally manifested over the decades) has been more or less called off, it seems, because such films or aspirations, in the view of certain #MeToo and POC progressives, don’t serve the current woke-political narrative.
Friendo who’s also watching: “Ugh…Ariana DeBose says ‘no matter how you identify you are unique you are smart you are talented just as you are.’ Isn’t that the problem? This is what we have done to an entire generation — this is how they see the world…that they are special and each of them must be recognized.”
Now it’s time for a fifth involving the installation of seed-pod mindsets, with the change agents being the Millennial and Generation Z sons and daughters of today.
I’m talking about a scenario in which the Anglo Saxon whitebread gene is regarded as inherently arrogant, criminal and bad for the planet — flawed, cruel, heartless, exploitive. A consensus emerges that the only way to correct this abhorrent culture is to fully indict the historical criminality of whiteness over several decades and in fact back to the beginnings of this nation — what it’s been, what it is now and where it’ll lead if things aren’t turned around.
Alien spores float down from space, affecting only the children and grandchildren of boomers and GenXers. Once turned, the awoken are free to call Anglo-Saxon culture by it’s true name — oppressor, a cancer, a scourge upon humanity. Within days the idea is spread that it’s time for enlightened non-whites to marginalize or dilute or even overthrow white culture so that POC culture can re-shape things and bring in a little fresh air and more fairness, freedom and opportunity.
Gradually seed-pod consciousness spreads to members of the liberal intelligentsia, and more and more of them are suddenly embracing the program. The general idea is “let those shitty old crusty white guys eat some of the shit that POCs have been eating for the last couple of centuries,” etc.
Gradually it becomes accepted that if you’re white and straight you’re kind of a bad person, or at the very least suspect. And that you probably need to re-educate yourself and embrace the new reality…or else.
A clever horror-comedy satire that ten years ago would have come and gone and been forgotten by awards season is transformed by seed-podders into a Best Picture contender, and those who question the validity of this are regarded as cranks or closet racists.
Friends and family members of seed-pod film critics begin to notice a certain robotic manner and a glassy, out-to-lunch look in their eyes.
Liberal-minded film critics Anne Thompson and Eric Kohn declare that they’ve been making sure that POCs are ranked prominently in their year-end awards ballot, partly because they admire their films but also because they’re about or were made by POCs.
The National Museum of African American History & Culture, an adjunct of the Smithsonian, has posted some instructionals about white culture and behavior vs. non-white culture and behavior. Below is a portion of a NMAAHC chart that explains some of the basics. After looking at it, I couldn’t help but think “hey, I’ve seem something like this before.” It hit me a second later. The NMAAHC chart is in the same general vein as a September 1972 National Lampoon article titled “Our White Heritage,” which was written by Henry Beard, Michael O’Donoghue and George S. Trow. Not exactly the same, but they do seem cut from a similar cloth, certainly in terms of listing white traits and characteristics.
General Patton: “What’s the matter with you?” Shell-shocked soldier: “I just can’t take it, sir. The recruitment officer promised that our battalion would maintain ‘safe spaces’ once we got into combat and they didn’t, and there’s so much harsh language and a historical lack of respect for non-white cultures.” General Patton (bending down on one knee): “What did you say?” Shell-shocked soldier: “I need safe spaces, sir. I just can’t take it if there’s no protection from racism.” General Patton: “‘Safe spaces’? Why, you’re just a goddam snowflake!”
Here’s a small but curious oddity in Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman‘s Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, which will open just after Labor Day.
The film begins with footage of Ronstadt, 73, visiting the Mexican town of Banamichi, where her grandfather was born, and listening to a music festival. A significant portion of the doc is about Linda’s ethnic as well as musical identity. The last 25% is about Ronstadt’s decision to musically celebrate her Mexican heritage with 1987’s “Canciones de Mi Padre” as well as “Mas Canciones” (’91) and “Frenesi” (’92).
The film conveys a clear sense of Ronstadt having found spiritual fulfillment and completion by way of embracing her family’s history and traditions.
Except all through the ’60s, ’70s (her biggest commercial decade) and most of the ’80s nobody knew Ronstadt was of Mexican descent. For the simple and obvious reason that she has a German last name. In the doc media mogul David Geffen and fellow troubador Jackson Browne both say they didn’t know about Ronstadt’s Latin ancestry. Nobody did until she went ethnic in the late ’80s. All fine and good, but that’s a significant cultural-identity issue — German last name vs. Mexican heritage — so you’d think that Epstein and Friedman would include a line or two of explanation. But they don’t.
In a statement provided to Hollywood Elsewhere, the filmmakers said that “we only went back as far as her grandfather, the generation she would have personally been acquainted with. Otherwise it was just too much backstory to work in, and didn’t seem relevant to her musical story, which was our focus.”
I understand this answer, but ignoring where “Ronstadt” comes from still seems a bit odd. The Wiki fact is that Linda’s great-grandfather, graduate engineer Friedrich August Ronstadt (who went by Federico Augusto Ronstadt) “immigrated to the Southwest in the 1840s from Hanover, Germany, and married a Mexican citizen, eventually settling in Tucson.”
It’s a minor omission and unimportant in the greater scheme of Ronstadt’s musical life, but the decision to avoid mentioning Friedrich or Federico is still a head-scratcher.
So here’s a theory or, if you will, a suspicion. The reason Linda’s great-grandfather is completely ignored is because it would have been politically incorrect to have mentioned him. [Full disclosure: My mother’s family, named Grube, was half-German.] The arc of the last third of Linda’s life was about reconnecting with her Mexican family roots. The movie, as mentioned, is all over this aspect, but no one wants to hear about some knockwurst-and-sauerkraut guy from Hanover, Germany who came to this country 175 years ago. Even if a brief mention of same would have explained the basics.
Because whiteness, let’s be honest, isn’t especially cool these days. Certainly by the standards of the progressive community. The basic agreement in media circles is that white culture (whether descended from England, Germany, France, Russia or the Nordic countries) can be acknowledged but is better off ignored. Because we’re living in an era of positive progressive redefining in which non-white cultures are experiencing a significant upsurge, media-recognition- and ethnic-celebration-wise.
In the view of writer Joelle Monique, Green Book had to be racist because it was made by white guys. The fact that Mahershala Ali was easily as much of a strong collaborator as director Peter Farrelly cuts no ice with her. She’s basically saying that no matter how you slice it, “dominant white guy input” guarantees racism, or certainly a lack of a fair perspective.
Which is another way of saying, in a broader sense, that in any realm white-guy dominance can come to no good end because white culture has been historically incapable of fairness or justice, and is not likely to change its spots. There is abundant truth in that viewpoint, but on the other hand what are amiable, well-educated white guys supposed to do?
The basic idea is that even well-educated, urban-residing fair-skinned folks who wear Bruno Magli lace-ups are fundamentally bad news no matter what. Maybe so. Hollywood Elsewhere regrets its whiteness as well as the unfortunate genetic inheritance that I was sadly cursed with when I took my first breath.
On the other hand I yam what I yam. I’m a curious, well-educated, fairly liberal dude…world’s full of guys like me. I say “please” and “thank you” all the time. I observe traffic laws and have good taste in music, and I watch TV with headphones when it gets late. I’m not going to kill myself anytime soon, and I’m going to work hard and try to be fair with everyone I run into. And if that’s not good enough for certain parties, tough.
During last night’s chat with John Brennan, Bill Maher said something about the Trump miasma having put America and Americans in the midst of one of the three biggest critical crossroad moments in our nation’s history, the first two being the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.
It’s now clear that a highly significant minority (i.e., the entire country outside the cities) is ready to abandon the basic tenets of democracy and for that matter sanity in order to submit to a crime-family autocrat who at least, they’re telling themselves, is trying to preserve a semblance of white-male dominance as they remember it from the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. Beast that he is, Trump’s supporters are rationalizing that at least he’s standing foursquare for heartland white culture (or claiming as much) and trying to prevent the multiculturals and LGBTQs from gaining too much ground.
“The thing about all the shocking Trump revelations is that they are already baked into Trump’s image. His supporters, and there are tens of millions of them, never had illusions. I’ve not met one who did not have a pretty clear picture of Trump. They’ve known all along that he’s a needy narcissist, a womanizer, a lowlife, a liar, a braggart and a generally miserable human being. That’s why the Access Hollywood tape or the I-could-shoot-somebody-on-Fifth-Avenue boast did not kill his candidacy.
“There’s a deeper question, which comes back to the extraordinary Western landscape and the high American idea enshrined in it. Americans elected Trump. Nobody else did. They came down to his level. White Christian males losing their place in the social order decided they’d do anything to save themselves, and to heck with morality. They made a bargain with the devil in full knowledge. So the real question is: What does it mean to be an American today? Who are we, goddamit? What have we become?
Now it’s time for a fifth involving the installation of seed-pod mindsets, with the change agents being the Millennial and Generation Z sons and daughters of today.
I’m talking about a scenario in which the Anglo Saxon whitebread gene is regarded as inherently arrogant, criminal and bad for the planet — flawed, cruel, heartless, exploitive. A consensus emerges that the only way to correct this abhorrent culture is to fully indict the historical criminality of whiteness over several decades and in fact back to the beginnings of this nation — what it’s been, what it is now and where it’ll lead if things aren’t turned around.
Alien spores float down from space, affecting only the children and grandchildren of boomers and GenXers. Once turned, the awoken are free to call Anglo-Saxon culture by it’s true name — oppressor, a cancer, a scourge upon humanity. Within days the idea is spread that it’s time for enlightened non-whites to marginalize or dilute or even overthrow white culture so that POC culture can re-shape things and bring in a little fresh air and more fairness, freedom and opportunity.
Gradually seed-pod consciousness spreads to members of the liberal intelligentsia, and more and more of them are suddenly embracing the program. The general idea is “let those shitty old crusty white guys eat some of the shit that POCs have been eating for the last couple of centuries,” etc.
Gradually it becomes accepted that if you’re white and straight you’re kind of a bad person, or at the very least suspect. And that you probably need to re-educate yourself and embrace the new reality…or else.
A clever horror-comedy satire that ten years ago would have come and gone and been forgotten by awards season is transformed by seed-podders into a Best Picture contender, and those who question the validity of this are regarded as cranks or closet racists.
Friends and family members of seed-pod film critics begin to notice a certain robotic manner and a glassy, out-to-lunch look in their eyes. Local constable: “But he looks like his picture, madam. Obviously he’s Guy Lodge, the Variety critic.” Mrs. Lodge: “But it isn’t him, I’m telling you. Something is missing. It’s just not Guy!”
Liberal-minded film critics Anne Thompson and Eric Kohn declare that they’ve been making sure that POCs are ranked prominently in their year-end awards ballot, partly because they admire their films but also because they’re about or were made by POCs.
Seed-pod urban culture begins to adopt other changes. Millenial and GenZ types begin to regard heterosexuality as a problem, and it’s gradually decided that it’s time to let LGBTQ folks run the culture and push heteros off to the side a bit. They’ll be allowed to walk around and buy groceries, but they need to accommodate themselves to the notion that straight whites are an underclass.
And if educated liberal Democrat white guys complain about any of this on social media platforms, the seed-podders tag them as closet Republicans or closet racists or closet homophobes. Would the seed-podders be delighted to bust these white guys on any of these counts and thereby eradicate or at least marginalize their asses and put them out to pasture? You have to ask?
The transforming of society has never been a gentle process, and to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs.
Yesterday I posted a riff about Scott Feinberg‘s 7.7 Hollywood Reporter article about the Academy expanding its membership with hundreds of filmmakers from foreign countries (“How the Globalization of the Academy Shakes Up the Race“). At the end I wrote the following kicker: “All hail the policies of inclusion, and down with the dominance of the proverbial 62 year-old white male who used to represent the typical Academy voter.”
This drew a complaint from “BadHatHarry,” to wit: “Does the obviously racist slant of this mean, if the harbinger here is true, that the day may come when one could vocally wish for the sidelining of the ‘proverbial minority female’ who now represents the academy? Or will they be the majority by then, freeing us to weep and gnash our teeth that we don’t hear enough white male voices?”
My reply: “I’m sorry, you’re right — it’s racist to denigrate the proverbial 62 year-old white guy and his supposed preferences as far as Best Picture contenders are concerned. I was just expressing the conventional view of the Hollywood herd, which is basically a healthy notion that the Academy needs to free itself from that 62 year-old white guy mentality by opening the gates to all tribes & agendas — women, people of various shades and ethnicities, LGBTQs, etc.
“At the same time we have to acknowledge that for quite a few years now (remember the early ’70s National Lampoon piece “Our White Heritage“?) the entire urban progressive culture of this country (i.e., hipsters, well educated wealthies, blue cities) has been frowning upon and pitying the history, legacy and attitudes of white culture. At least in terms of public discourse and now Twitter.
“It saddens me to acknowledge this, but the resulting narrative — i.e., it’s time for white culture to cede power to the multiculturals while accepting the lash for its horrid, corrupt history — is probably the single biggest factor (along with too many people hating Hillary) that led to Trump being in the White House. The 2016 election was mainly about race and to some extent misogyny, and was significantly propelled by rural & rust-belt under-educated whites pushing back against the p.c. elites & multiculturals.”
Vikram Gandhi‘s Barry, which I saw and praised during the Toronto Film Festival, began streaming on Netflix on 12.16. Not just a smart, finely tooled character study but one of the year’s best indies — trust me.
On 9.16.16 I called it “a modest but sharply etched character study of young Barry Obama between ’81 and ’83, when he began and completed his junior and senior years at NYC’s Columbia University as a political science major, and more particularly when he began to grapple with his half-white, half-black identity.
“Yes — another young Obama flick on top of Richard Tanne‘s commendable and charming Southside With You. Barry is obviously smallish but quite fluid and specific — carefully made, nicely layered, more observing of small details and generally a looser, craftier film than Southside, which (don’t get me wrong) I felt respect and affection for on its own terms.
“Barry, in short, is basically a ‘who am I?’ flick about social conflict, racism (both the benevolent and hostile kinds), hesitancy and uncertainty start to finish — a whole lotta frowning and meditating on Barry’s part.
“It basically studies this athletic, mild-mannered young dude and gives him the time and the room to find his own way as he becomes friendly with a variety of black, brown and white characters on the Columbia campus and near his off-campus apartment on West 116th Street.
Posted today by former Breitbart.com editor-at-large Ben Shapiro about Steve Bannon, the just-appointed Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to President-Elect Donald Trump: “Is Bannon anti-Semitic and racist? I have no evidence of this. But with that said, as I wrote at The Washington Post [last] August, Bannon has openly embraced the racist and anti-Semitic alt-right — he called his Breitbart ‘the platform of the alt-right.’
Former Breitbart honcho Steven Bannon, the just-appointed chief strategist and senior counselor to President-Elect Donald Trump.
“The alt-right, in a nutshell, believes that Western culture is inseparable from European ethnicity. (Wells interject: In other words, it believes in fortifying a dominant white culture in the U.S. of A.) I have no evidence Bannon believes that personally, but he’s happy to pander to those people and make common cause with them in order to transform conservatism into European far-right nationalist populism. That means that the alt-right will cheer Bannon along as he marbles Trump’s speeches with talk of ‘globalism’ — and that Bannon won’t be pushing Trump to dump the racists and anti-Semites who support Trump anytime soon.