The Youth and What Will Become of Them
FYI: OUR CULTURE IS OBSESSED WITH MULTIVERSE STORIES BECAUSE WE SEE NO VIABLE FUTURE AND ARE UNCONSCIOUSLY FIXATED ON FINDING AN ESCAPE HATCH TO SOME BETTER WORLD WHERE WE MADE WISER COLLECTIVE DECISIONS ALONG THE WAY.
It’s the pop culture middle ground between waiting for the Singularity so we can live forever as robots, and waiting for the Rapture so we can really start living once we are are dead.
TEXAS IS TAKING ITS NEXT BOLD STEPS TO END PUBLIC EDUCATION! All part of a once-fringe libertarian scheme to eliminate all property taxes in the state, cutting some $73 billion in yearly funds to keep government services going; specifically education, health care and law enforcement. Not all that shocking, given the mass privatization push in all of these sectors. The plan, presumably, is to push education exclusively into the realm of home schooling, for-profit (and religious) charter schools where non-union teachers make $19K/year, or simply have a a Send Your Children To Work Day which begins on their 12th birthday and lasts until the end of their lives.
This latest and greatest effort is being spearheaded by the state’s ethically-challenged Governor Greg Abbott, who himself received the benefits of a public education (Duncanville High School, University of Texas at Austin). Much as he benefitted from a multi-million dollar civil lawsuit from an accident that left him paralyzed, before going on to institute tort reform and pull the ladder up behind him. Tough luck for the Greg Abbotts of tomorrow, but maybe that’s for the best, given how they turn out.
JIM “THE JESUS” CAVIEZEL HAS A HOT NEW MOVIE called The Sound of Freedom based on the deeply shady activities of a child-trafficking “pedophile hunter” named Tim Ballard whose way of saving children seems part of the larger American strategy of going into foreign countries and creating a ‘child trafficking’ market by throwing money around to buy kids, and then busting said traffickers and subsequently ‘liberating’ the kids to American Christian families.
This is America ‘fighting child-trafficking’ much in the way that it ‘wages the War on Drugs’, by creating an insatiable demand for drugs and then consuming the stuff; thus keeping the rest of the world safe from getting high.
It may surprise you, dear reader, to learn that Ballard’s organization, “Operation Underground Railroad”, is a highly controversial, QANON-adjacent group which has regularly faced criticism for exaggerating its successes, engaging in shady financial practices that have earned it tens of millions of dollars, and even employing psychics in its ‘investigations’. Ballard announced that he was stepping away from the organization a few days ago for unspecified reasons, so maybe something pretty funny is about to happen.
Nonetheless, The Sound of Freedom’s popularity, at least among a certain group, is to be expected. Americans absolutely love fixating on crimes against children. Besides making it easy to convince yourself that you’re a ‘good person’ by mere dint of not being a pedophile (a rather low bar), the specter of crimes against kids justifies any and all violence you may wish to commit against the transgressor. Violence against LGBTQ+ is far more gauche in 2023 than it was in 1990 (at least in America), but if Those People are “grooming” your children by simply existing, anything goes.
Of course, the fact that the devoutly Catholic Caviezel would fix his righteous gaze in every direction except on the monolithic organization that is responsible for more child abuse than any other modern religious institution, might possibly speak to some kind of deeper denial and pathology that I’ll leave others to sort out.
HEY, LET’S CHECK IN ON SOME OF TODAY’S GENERATION OF UP-AND-COMING FILMMAKERS:
Greta Gerwig: Oscar-nominated director of Lady Bird and Little Women.
Recent/Upcoming Projects: Barbie, new Narnia films (Netflix)
Sarah Polley: Oscar-winning writer-director of Women Talking.
Upcoming Projects: Live-Action Bambi film (Disney)
David Gelb: Director/Producer of Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Chef’s Table Series.
Recent Project: Stan Lee hagiography (Disney)
Chloe Zhao: Oscar-winning director of Nomadland
Recent Projects: The Eternals (Disney)
Lesley Chilcott: Oscar-winning director of An Inconvenient Truth.
Recent Projects: Arnold hagiography (Netflix)
J.C. Chandor: Oscar-Nominated Writer/Director of Margin Call and A Most Violent Year
Upcoming Projects: Kraven the Hunter (Disney)
Ah.
Thirty years ago, this generation of filmmakers would be accused of ‘selling out’ en masse. But that’s not the case anymore, because the market has made ‘selling out’ redundant. There IS no market for small or even mid-sized films, nothing for artists who are not already an established brand unto themselves (e.g. Martin Scorcese, Wes Anderson, PT Anderson, etc). Only big-budget franchise IPs films remain-run by three or four studios-whose bloated budgets never quite seem to translate to the screen; hundreds of millions of dollars vanishing into the pockets of various executives, shareholders, and producers before reaching a film-like product whose special effects somehow look worse than a James Cameron movie from 30 years ago.
No, the aim for major studios is to get up-and-coming artistes who are skilled enough to perform the basic craftsmanship of filmmaking, but lack the political power to exert any control of the final product. This is the ideal system for the bosses.
And so, if you are an up-and-coming filmmaker, the best you can do is affix yourself, barnacle-like, to one of the noble houses of media- and hope to prove your worth before they can figure out how to automate your job, too. (Especially since the Director’s Guild of America signed its agreement with the producers, and won’t be going on strike for anything better.)
Michelangelo did the Sistine Chapel as a work-for-hire but at least Pope Julius II was smart enough to get out of his fucking way and let him work.
CULTURE CORNER!
WARRIOR (Seasons 1 and 2 on ‘Max’, Season 3 current airing): Based on a rejected TV pilot written Bruce Lee, ‘Warrior’ is set in late 1870s San Francisco, where a Chinese martial arts prodigy comes looking for his long-lost sister, before getting pulled into Chinatown Tong Wars of the era. It’s a wonderfully cast, action-packed romp that is violent, sexy, and beautifully shot, with amazing fight choreography. It does an impressive tonal balancing act, treating Civil War-traumatized brutality, racism and labor exploitation of the era quite seriously, while melding it with a pulpy Spaghetti Western vibe that is fun to watch. It’s the kind of ‘inclusion’ that isn’t just corporate window-dressing, allowing its cast (most of which is Asian) to portray a full spectrum of complicated characters and juicy roles, rather than mere victims, idealized salt-of-the-Earth immigrants, or Fu Manchu archetypal villains.
